[maemo-developers] Python and GStreamer

[From: Austin Che]

Jesse Guardiani <jesse at guardiani.us> wrote:

> And no, before you ask, I don't think it's not Nokia's fault. gstreamer
> is just unexpectedly buggy. Too bad ALSA doesn't support inline mp3
> decoders... life would be easier for all of us...

    I've been wondering: what is the performance hit for not going
    through gstreamer? So based on my understanding, going through
    gstreamer, the mp3 is decoded on the DSP. Supposing it was decoded
    on the cpu and sent out through alsa, which of the following is
    likely to be true:
    
    - The CPU wouldn't be able to handle it (playback would skip)
    - The CPU could handle it just as well as the DSP but the rest of
    the system might be less usable
    - The battery life would decrease (how much?)
    - some other reason this wouldn't work well?
    
    And the related question is: given an existing program that sends
    stuff out to ALSA and doesn't use gstreamer, how difficult is it
    generally to port it so that it works properly? By this, I'm
    thinking of a typical C program that plays mp3 files. Would it
    likely require a complete rework of the code structure or is it
    probably a "trivial" replacement of function calls?