[Development] The dark side of QtMultimedia

[Gianluca]

Il giorno 11/nov/2014, alle ore 13:09, Knoll Lars <Lars.Knoll at theqtcompany.com> ha scritto:

> On 11/11/14 11:32, "Gianluca" <gmaxera at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> 
>> Il giorno 11/nov/2014, alle ore 10:41, Knoll Lars
>> <Lars.Knoll at theqtcompany.com> ha scritto:
>> 
>>> On 11/11/14 09:47, "Simon Hausmann" <simon.hausmann at theqtcompany.com>
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> On Monday 10. November 2014 09.43.25 Holger Hans Peter Freyther wrote:
>>>> [...]
>>>>> Now really getting to my two cents. Instead of wrapping API
>>>>> Qt should make sure the framework can be integrated. E.g. in
>>>>> terms of GStreamer provide plugins that allows to easily embed
>>>>> video into Qt applications but ask users to use the "native"
>>>>> API to manage the pipeline/playback.
>>>> 
>>>> I share that philosophy and support any efforts towards making
>>>> integrations 
>>>> like that easier. In the case of multimedia that can be tricky though,
>>>> but 
>>>> that's not necessarily Qt's fault. It did take a while until gstreamer
>>>> had 
>>>> basic OpenGL texture streaming support, while frameworks on other
>>>> platforms 
>>>> have had it longer. Nevertheless once you can get hold of that, I think
>>>> the Qt 
>>>> Quick Scene Graph API is rather well suited for the graphics
>>>> integration.
>>> 
>>> Well, if you’re doing a complex multimedia app, this might be the right
>>> approach. But for the 90% use case (show a video, play a sound, capture
>>> something from the camera), we can’t tell people to write 10 different
>>> implementations for the 10 platforms/OSes we support.
>>> 
>>> Cheers,
>>> Lars
>>> 
>> 
>> Dear Lars,
>> you are right, but Qt Multimedia is very far from achieve what 90% use
>> case needs.
>> Since Qt 5.1, I wrote some small apps showing video and playing sound and
>> capture camera, and even when the target was just one platform (iOS most
>> of the case), Qt Multimedia failed to works and I was forced to use the
>> native API and write a lot of code for using Qt Quick with native
>> multimedia API that was more than the code for the rest of the app.
>> So, I like the Qt Multimedia approach, but it’s not usable now. For me
>> the status is something like alpha instead of stable as it seems from the
>> Digia’s blog.
>> I’ve never filed a bug regarding my situation just because a simple
>> search on the forum will arise always with a documentation somewhere in
>> the wiki indicating that the features was not supported on that platform.
>> 
>>> From a user that does not need to write complex multimedia apps, but
>>> just need to show some videos and doesn’t know almost anything about the
>>> complexity of videos playback, the frustration of using Qt Multimedia
>>> module is from the lack of clear statement of all “hole” in the
>>> implementation.
>> I don’t know if the Qt Multimedia team has the awareness that from
>> external point of view what appear from Digia’s blog and documentation
>> about the Qt Multimedia is something like the holy gral of cross-platform
>> multimedia library, but when you try to use in a toy situation just
>> doesn’t work as expected.
>> 
>> For me, at the moment, Qt Multimedia is the most weakest module of Qt and
>> at the same time is the most advertised.
> 
> I will agree with you that’s it’s one of the modules that need most work.
> Andy’s email explains pretty well why this is the case. I’d be extremely
> happy if we can finally find a way to fix that situation, but it isn’t all
> that easy unfortunately. I certainly don’t think it’s the most advertised
> module we have. Qt Quick and e.g. Qt WebEngine are for sure getting more
> focus in terms of marketing.
> 
> Cheers,
> Lars
> 

Dear Lars,
I’m using Qt from more than 10 years, and I like so much the Qt library that I always want to contribute in some way. I cannot afford at the moment to put myself in working at the Qt code, so often I think to buy a commercial license only to contribute in some way to development even if I don’t need it. But I cannot afford it too.
So, I throw a suggestion for the future in this email even if it’s off-topic: why don’t ask donation for some specific module improvement and development ? I was very happy to donate some money to help the development of Qt Multimedia. And maybe, with a survey it would be possible to know which module will get more contribution to its development via donation.
What do you think ?

Cheers,
Gianluca.