gstreamer/RELEASE

            GStreamer "GEPpiness is a warm gun" 0.4.1 released [1]

   The  GStreamer  team  is  happy  to  announce  another  release of the
   GStreamer  streaming-media  framework. This release has mainly focused
   on  code  clean-up  and  rounding out of the features. Large chunks of
   GStreamer  are  API  stable  at this point. In preparation of a stable
   release,  we have also done a thorough license audit to make sure that
   the licenses of all plug-ins are properly documented, and that as many
   of  them  as  possible  are  available  under  the  LGPL  license that
   GStreamer uses.

   We are starting to have a really nice collection of applications under
   development using GStreamer. If you are looking for something specific
   check out our [1]applications status page.

Updates and Enhancements

  General

     * Further  work on the Graphical Pipeline Editor, getting to be very
       stable and well working.
     * KDE/Qt bindings created for easier creation of KDE applications on
       top of GStreamer
     * General  C++  bindings  for  use with gtkmm and other C++ projects
       added to gst-bind module (in CVS)
     * Effectv  and  virtualdub  based  plug-ins  relicensed  under  LGPL
       (previously GPL)
     * Some   manual   examples   updated   and  extracted  to  code  (in
       examples/manual)

  Core

     * Many memleaks plugged
     * Lots of code cleaning
     * Many documentation improvements
     * Small change to [2]Plugin API
     * Removed  use of -Wall and -Werror from release tarball for non-gcc
       compilers, more permanent solution upcoming.
     * Old  schedulers  renamed:  we  now  use  basicomega as the default
       scheduler,   with  the  others  being  fastomega,  basicwingo  and
       fastwingo.

  Plug-ins

     * BSD and Darwin cd playing
     * New Mixermatrix plugin added
     * New Flash plugin added
     * RTP  plugin  moved  back to librtp and plugin now includes library
       code (still experimental, check configure --help on how to enable)
     * New v4l2 plugins
     * Updated v4l plugins
     * Improvements to dvdnav plugin
     * iRadio support added to gnomevfs plugin
     * Median video plugin updated and now working
     * Fixed many major bugs in the gnome-vfs library
     * Got rid of misleading warnings from plugins
     * Avi muxer much improved
     * Fix bug in mad plugin that caused loss of frames
     * mp3 typefind fixed to properly handle id3v2 tags

Known Issues

   GStreamer  currently  ships  with  schedulers  based  on  two cothread
   packages.  The  'omega'  cothread  package  is  the  one  we have been
   shipping for a long time now and is still the default in this release.
   There  are  however  some  limitations  and thread-related bugs in the
   omega  scheduler.  These  limitations  are  not present in the 'wingo'
   schedulers, but unfortunately it does not work with i686 glibc at this
   time  due  to  differences  in the way threads are handled compared to
   other  architectures,  including  i386.  A new (third) scheduler (that
   doesn't use cothreads) is being developed.

   As  for  the  bugs  in  the  'omega'  schedulers, we did not feel they
   warranted not releasing 0.4.1 as they are rather obscure. For instance
   if  you are using Rhythmbox you will need to be playing over 500 songs
   nonstop to trigger it. You can choose a different scheduler by passing
   --scheduler=(name) to any GStreamer application.

   Wim  Taymans  has  started  work on a new scheduler. The first part is
   already in CVS, but it will probably still be some months before it is
   ready.

GStreamer Homepage

   More  details on these features can be found on the project's website,
   [3]http://gstreamer.net/.

Support and Bugs

   We  use  [4]Gnome's Bugzilla for bug reports and feature requests. The
   "product  name"  is  GStreamer  (capital  G).  Please do the following
   before writing a bug report :
gst-feedback &> feedback 2>&1

   and  attach  the  file  "feedback" to your bug report, so that we have
   some information useful in the debugging process.

Developers

   GStreamer  is  [5]hosted on SourceForge. All code is in CVS and can be
   checked  out  from  there.  Interested developers of the core library,
   plug-ins,  and  applications  should  subscribe to the gstreamer-devel
   list.  If  there  is  sufficient interest we will create more lists as
   necessary.

   We  are  still  looking for people with access to Solaris, HP-UX, Irix
   and  True64  that  would  be  willing  to  try  building  and  testing
   GStreamer. Patches fixing such problems are also more than welcome.

Contributors to this release

  Patches to the core of Gstreamer

     * Wim Taymans <wim.taymans(AT)chello.be>
     * Thomas Vander Stichele <thomas(AT)apestaart.org>
     * Andy Wingo <wingo(AT)pobox.com>
     * Steve Baker <stevebaker_org(AT)yahoo.co.uk>
     * Cameron Hutchison <camh(AT)xdna.net>
     * Iain Holmes <iain(AT)prettypeople.org>
     * Ronald Bultje <rbultje(AT)ronald.bitfreak.net>

  Plugins and Sample Applications

     * Richard Boulton <richard(AT)tartarus.org>
     * David Lehn <dlehn(AT)vt.edu>
     * J<>r<EFBFBD>my Simon <jsimon13(AT)yahoo.fr>
     * Zeeshan Ali Khattak <zak147(AT)yahoo.com>
     * David Schleef <ds(AT)schleef.org>
     * Charles Schmidt <cbschmid(AT)users.sourceforge.net>
     * Goraxe <goraxe@ntlworld.com>
     * Colin Walters <walters(AT)gnu.org>
     * Kristian Rietveld <kris(AT)gtk.org>

  Misc

     * Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller <Uraeus(AT)gnome.org>
     * Tim Jansen <tim.jansen(AT)kde.org>
     * Leif Morgan Johnson <lmjohns3(AT)eos.ncsu.edu>
     * Christian Meyer <chrisime(AT)gnome.org>

   [1]  It  is  a  little-known fact that the Beatles decided their track
   listing  for their albums based on a process called the 'GEP' process.
   After  some  initial  problems,  this worked very well. The only known
   failure  of  this  process  happened when George Harrison commited the
   out-of-place  'Within  You  Without  You'  to  Sergeant Pepper without
   review  by  the  other  band members. This near split-up led to one of
   their finest songs on the world-reknowned White Album. 

References

   1. http://www.gstreamer.net/status/?category=2
   2. http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/1504/0/9557296/
   3. http://gstreamer.net/
   4. http://bugzilla.gnome.org/
   5. http://gstreamer.sf.net/