psychtoolbox-3-common 3.0.9+svn2579.dfsg1-1 / usr / share / psychtoolbox-3 / PsychDocumentation / GStreamer.m

% GStreamer - Installation instructions for the GStreamer media framework.
%
% Psychtoolbox in all versions for GNU/Linux, and in (future) 64 bit
% versions for Mac OS/X and MS-Windows uses the GStreamer multi-media
% framework for all multi-media related operations.
%
% All movie playback, movie creation, video capture and video recording
% operations are based on GStreamer. These functions won't work without a
% working GStreamer installation on your system.
%
% You will need at least version 0.10.24 of GStreamer, but we recommend to
% use the latest available versions, as not all Psychtoolbox features are
% fully supported by version 0.10.24. Especially video capture, video
% recording and movie creation may be limited in functionality or
% performance if you don't use a recent version of GStreamer.
%
% By default, the 32-bit versions of Psychtoolbox for Windows and MacOS/X
% use Apple's Quicktime for those operations, so GStreamer isn't strictly
% needed there. You can however use GStreamer (once installed) instead of
% Quicktime if you add the following command to the top of your experiment
% script, before any other Screen() command:
%
% This uses GStreamer instead of Quicktime for movie playback:
% Screen('Preference', 'OverrideMultimediaEngine', 1);
%
% This uses GStreamer instead of Quicktime for video capture or video
% recording:
%
% Screen('Preference', 'DefaultVideocaptureEngine', 3);
%
% So what's the deal with GStreamer?
%
% GStreamer (Webpage web: http://www.gstreamer.net ) is a free software /
% open-source multimedia framework. The summary on its webpage summarizes
% it as follows:
%
% "GStreamer is a library for constructing graphs of media-handling
% components. The applications it supports range from simple Ogg/Vorbis
% playback, audio/video streaming to complex audio (mixing) and video
% (non-linear editing) processing.
%
% Applications can take advantage of advances in codec and filter
% technology transparently. Developers can add new codecs and filters by
% writing a simple plugin with a clean, generic interface.
%
% License: GStreamer is released under the LGPL. The 0.10 series is API and
% ABI stable."
%
% In summary, GStreamer is for the free software world what Quicktime is
% for Apple's "walled garden". It is used a the standard media framework
% for many (most?) Linux desktop systems, netbooks, and MeeGo, Web-OS (and
% also Android) based tablets and Smartphones. It is also used on many 
% Linux based embedded devices.
%
% GStreamer itself is very high performance, mature and stable.
% Psychtoolbox's support however is in its early stage, so don't be
% surprised if you find bugs or limitations. Report them on the forum
% instead, so we can fix them.
%
% Installation instructions:
%
% GNU/Linux: Any half-way recent Linux distribution will include support
% for GStreamer in its package management system, so you can easily install
% it via the software management tool of your system.
%
% You will need at least the core GStreamer runtime and the gstreamer-base set
% of plugins. Modern desktop distros usually already ship with these. A simple
% way to make sure GStreamer is available is to install the "totem" multimedia
% player. This will pull in the needed GStreamer packages as a dependency.
%
% E.g. via 
%
%    sudo apt-get install totem
%
% for Debian distros and derivatives like Ubuntu.
%
% You may need to install some restricted plugin packages to play back all
% common audio and video file formats like MP3 and MP4. Video or movie
% recording with high quality (DivX, H.264) will also require recent versions
% of additional plugin packages containing support for these formats. These
% are usually not installed by default due to licensing and patent clauses in
% place for some territories. You may want to specifically add them to your
% system depending on your format needs.
%
% On Debian 
%
%     sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
%
% MS-Windows:
%
% We currently provide GStreamer support on Windows with 32-bit Matlab V7.4
% (R2007a) and later, as well as on Octave. In fact, a fully working GStreamer
% installation is mandatory for Psychtoolbox to work on Octave for Windows,
% otherwise the Screen() function will fail to work at all, regardless if
% you use multi-media functions or not. For Matlab, GStreamer is still
% optional. We don't intend to ever provide GStreamer support for Matlab
% versions older than Version 7.4.
%
% The current Windows implementation is a sneak-preview for people interested in
% testing and giving feedback, not neccessarily for the average user.
%
% You can download and run a standard MS-Windows setup.exe installer from:
%
% web: http://code.google.com/p/ossbuild/
%
% For best results, you'd currently (beginning June 2011) choose this
% one or any later version: "GStreamer-WinBuilds-GPL-x86-Beta04-0.10.7.msi"
% The current download link is:
%
% <http://ossbuild.googlecode.com/files/GStreamer-WinBuilds-GPL-x86-Beta04-0.10.7.msi>
%
% If you are a fan of stable versions, we recommend this one:
% "GStreamer WinBuilds v0.10.6, LGPL (x86)"
%
% However, some features may be disabled or limited with such an older
% version.
%
% IMPORTANT: Users of Octave under Windows must not only install GStreamer
% on their system. They must also delete (or rename) the file iconv.dll
% that comes with Octave. This file is incompatible with a iconv.dll of the
% same name provided by GStreamer. On Octave 3.2.4 you'd delete, rename or
% move away the following file:
%
% C:\Octave\3.2.4_gcc-4.4.0\bin\iconv.dll
%
% For example, you could rename it into
%
% C:\Octave\3.2.4_gcc-4.4.0\bin\iconv_DISABLED.dll
%
%
% Mac OS/X:
%
% No support for GStreamer yet. Stay tuned!
%