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XMMS Plugin Competition
Olle Hällnäs writes "XMMS team is proud to announce a plugin competiton with prizes.
The competition will be held between the 10th of November and will run until the 10th of December. The XMMS team has also releaseed a QSound iQ Effect plugin for XMMS - more details are online, along with a press release. "
We need a plugin to make Xmms a shoutcast server!
Fix it... Would be less confusing then...
This is great. Winamp has so many cool plugins, and although I love XMMS, I often wish it had some better eye candy. I wonder if there's any way Winamp plugins could be used through winelib?
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Stick to real standards man!
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with all the cool winamp plugins out there this should hopefully get xmms some cool plugins. For one of my friends xmms maybe a killer app to let him move to linux. He's one of those people who obessses over mp3s. this would make it easier for him and others to move to linux.
.sig
matisse:~$ cat
I would like to congratulate the fellows working on XMMS and 4front for their support. They really are doing a great thing by supporting a good open source media player. I like that they are bringing other players in to the scene with plugins for proprietry code. They just recently changed the license to allow binary only plugins and this is a good thing.. just like how you can do it with Linux kernel modules.
To the other person who said they wanted a plugin to broadcast icecast streams.. uhh that's pretty ridiculous. That is what icecast is supposed to do and I don't see any real point in that. It is gpl ( or atleast generally free ). XMMS can already play (ice|shout)cast streams well, and that's what it is, a media player!
rm -rf ~/.signature
I think it's a good thing that XMMS got a sponsor for their contest so they could give away some prizes. However, the whole XMMS contest reminds me of the recent Loki Hack contest - with one major difference: Loki's games weren't open source.
My question is this: Should an open source project need something like a contest to get people to develop? My understanding of open-source projects is that those who are interested in contributing do so. That would lead me to the conclusion that nobody would enter the contest that wasn't already contributing to XMMS. Say, for instance, someone who was previously contributing to XMMS wins the contest and gets a prize. Does this person go on to code for free, forgetting the momentary gain? Perhaps - I'd like to think I would. Of course, I might also just go out and look for another contest to get prizes from. After all, I'm still contributing to open source, just not XMMS anymore.
What does everyone else think? Is this a trend in 'commercializing' (as far as such a thing is possible) open source, or just an innocent contest blown a bit out of proportion?
-Denor
Someone needs to write a plugin that can allow DJs to use mp3s under linux. Features needed are things like pitch control and jumping forward and back in time. I don't know how bad the latency is, but there are existing plugins for WinAmp.
Maybe now I'll get off my ass and finish the OpenGL visualization plugin I started awhile back... I really don't care about the prizes (although another sound card would be nice... my Alpha's kinda quiet :-) And I really could give a flying fsck about an OSS license. Who needs licenses when you have GPL'ed sound drivers? :-)
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
I hope people concentrate om making plugins for
not yet supported soundformats.
Try to take a mp3 compressed song and turn the
bass almost of. Then try the same with your
original CD. No doubt the CD sound is richer.
My point is. The sound effects only sounds good
when the music isn't psycoacustic compressed like
mp3.
The new plugin they just announced costs $10, but I just tried the demo version, and it's definitely worth it. Also, some of the proceeds go to xmms development, and I think that's not too bad.
Andrew Huntwork a-huntwork@uchicago.edu
We will NEVER charge for XMMS.. The reason we charge for the plugin is the fact that we licensed the stuff from QSound. Peter Alm (peter@xmms.org)
Uhhh...xmms is gpl'ed. I think that means the current code will forever be free. Maybe new stuff could conceivably be charged for, but in their little irc conference, the xmms people said 1.0 would definitely be free. I have no intention of debating what they meant by "free", but I imagine they meant "GPL". Also, the file plugins.h or whatever the plugin api is based on is no longer GPL, so anyone can write their own for profit module. I consider this a Good Thing, but I bet someone will disagree with me.
Andrew Huntwork a-huntwork@uchicago.edu
I can see it now. Pipe the spectrum analyzer into GLWolfenstein.
Your actions are now dependent on the audio you're playing. Spikes in intensity result in gunfire, changes in frequency alter direction (notes go down, view goes left), and tempo determines speed of movement.
Just think...playing 'The Who' might actually get you through a level!
So to sum up what hundereds of poor would be plugin writers have asked in the past...
Where's the docs? How about a plugin tutorial/guide? (in xmms's defense I just checked out winamp's page where it states: "COMING SOON: Plug-in tutorial")
I would bet that there are a number of people out there excited about the contest, but are missing the basic information to give their learning curve a swift kick in the @$$.
There is limited time for this contest when you toss in school and work, and that time is much shorter still if we have to go decipher the xmms code base... The plugin.h file linked from the contest page won't cut it. An architecture doc would be excellent.
For example allow me explain a problem I had the other week. (begin whining...)
Say I want to run multiple xmms sessions that are outputing to a software pcm mixer (esound, dbfsd, whichever you choose), and you want each xmms session to control its own output volume. The math is easy. As the input cojmes into the plugin, adjust the sample amplitude by some percentage. But, due to output buffering etc, the volume change becomes audible after a 3-4 second delay. Ideally the change should be immeadiate. Going through someone elses code to derive the architecture behind what is occuring is painful and time consuming...
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
- Full duplex support on all cards
- Built in PNP support (runs my AWE64 without ever messing with ISAPNP, unlike OSS)
- Quad speaker support
- Multiple card support (I run a Trident 4DWave and an AWE64 in my system, and both work great)
- Multiple applications opening the same sound device simultaneously (with a card that supports this in hardware)
- Better organization and more configurability - save and restore all your settings for all your cards in one command line
The only things going for OSS now is a slight edge in the number of cards supported. When this is dealt with, I'm all for ditching OSS and moving to ALSA. If you're card is supported by ALSA, try it out - I guarantee you'll like it.It is cool that OSS is supporting the contest though - community support in any form is always nice.
There's a plugin.h file on the page showing the functions and structures you need to use. Chief Archer
We have a flash plugin for Linux Netscape.. I actually use it and it's not buggy at all. The site actually looked pretty cool in flash Chief Archer
When I hear the word XMMS I think of mp3 player but I've always used GQMpeg even back when XMMS was still called X11Amp. Sound playback is a pretty basic thing which can be accomplished by hundreds of programs without much issue. It's, well, an mp3 player that, well, plays mp3s. It seems like 4front Technologies is putting a lot of money into this program to turn it into the all-in-one solution for audio but I've yet to see any reason to use it for anything.
defining the structures is all well and good...
But to learn how to *use* the structures requires deciphering somebody elses code. Multiple Hours of coding vs. an hour of doc reading.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
There is already a free "enhance stereo" (or something) effect plugin that comes with xmms. It works really well, and I like it a lot.
Has anyone used the two for comparison purposes? I don't see why the iQ plugin could be so much better that it's worth $10?
(I'm at work now on an SGI, and I can't get xmms to compile, or else I'd try...)
I got razzed in Efnet's #linux chatroom a few days ago for bringing this up, but now seems like the perfect time to say it (and kinda eerily concidental).
There's a plugin for Winamp called DFX. It adds psuedo- hi fidelity sound to MP3 playback. It's demoware in Win9x, but let me just be the first person to say this -- it is INCREDIBLE. The bigger the stereo system, the better it sounds, but it even sounds great on headphones. How about something similar to this for XMMS? If it's done well, it's an almost sure-fire win.
Note: I can't program, or else I'd be one of the first people trying to do this ^_^. Also, for those who want to check out DFX, it's at www.fxsound.com
I'm seriously hoping something BETTER than DFX can be created for linux. OpenGL / Spectrum Analysis / Visual plugins are cool, but you're not listening to music to watch some wavy effects.
Check out This. I hate it when contests act like what they're giving you such a big deal. Value $120 my butt... $40 in 4front software(that actually costs them nothing to distrubate, I'm not saying it's wrong of them to charge, just giving it out in a contest costs them _very_ little.), and a $80 soundcard that's really $18? Heh. I love xmms, and I'm looking forward to the plugins this will bring, but please don't lie to get people participate in contests.
I've been considering doing just that given the VQF plugin that uses WineLib. XMMS and Winamp's plugin interfaces are ridiculously similar - XMMS just renames all the functions so AOL won't sue them :)
Can winamp plugins do this?
Just how? All people have to do is to reverse engineer the protocols or emulate them and presto! instant copliance.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Thanks for explaining this to that guy. I love you guys. BTW, I just bought me a copy of that QSound Plugin and it rocks.
I have a little theory. In all the hurry what happened to the pc speaker? I have always thought that someone who has much more education than me could code something that would approximate a random sampling of the music then translate the sound to notes and then produce the notes at a specific frequency on the pc speaker. There is a kernel patch that allows .wav's to be kind of send through the speaker in a garbled manner but it dosn't work too good. I have an hp48g calculator and it can produce entire symphonies (Bach I believe) from the sound in the speaker. A remember a program for dos that had files that could create whole songs and the like from the pc speaker but this stuff is conspiciously(sp) absent in linux which should be able to do more.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
Why, plugins of course... Personally I like gqmpeg as well. But xmms plugins allow the ability to add functinality without rewrite the central code base. XMMS has greater inpur format support, and also has greater visualization capabilities. Check out the xmms plugin page for a full list of its capabilities... There are many more than gqmpeg. www.xmms.org
But, hey, if you don't need/want the extra functionality there's no reason to bother. GQmpeg will still take care of you.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
I just bought and downloaded QSound Plugin for XMMS and it rox. Does what that DFX plugin does and it's for XMMS for Linux.
Where can I get this ALSA? I have never herd of it. However I'm a big spender so I will pay.
Yep, just like the DVD guys. You can see how great that worked out.
Luckily the shockwave folks were serious about their technology and made a linux plugin. I applaude their efforts.
Perhaps it's my shoddy soundcard (a Yamaha OPL3SA-2 based card), but I really can't hear anything that great from the "Extra Stereo" plugin and the iQ QSound plugin. I have Altec Lansing ACS44 Speakers (nothing spectacularly great, but sure beats the Rat-Shack tin cans I was using for a while). The QBass makes the bass obscenely large and overpowers the rest of the music. I like some bass, but I'm not one of those people who cranks up the subwoofer all the way. It just sounds ridiculous. With the "Extra Stereo" plugin it does the opposite, and makes the high-end way too overpowering.
I have my two cube speakers about 2 feet in each direction on both sides of my desk, with my subwoofer about 2 feet to my back right, chair in the middle of all of it. I'm not getting any "spatial" effects off either of these plugins. I'm probably "too close" to the speakers to hear that magical third channel which my brains supposed to register as being behind me (not going to happen). They both seem to just muck with the equalizer a little, pump up the high-end and low-end a decibel or two and introduce some echo. Is this supposed to sound "good"?. A friend of mine has a true 4 speaker setup, and this just simply doesn't compare, or even come close - even at $10 or free.
Granted i have not tried alsa yet... But I didn't see any reason too.
Last month I shelled out $30 for the OSS license and driver (20 for the base licencse, 10 for each card...)
I ran their install program, it autodetected both my ISA and PCI soundcards. Quite possibly the most(least?) painless of my linux experiences.
As a DJ, I have found their code to be solid and robust when it comes to running and mixing 4+ audio players for over 6 hours at a time. No problems whatsoever.
I look at it this way. Sound support for *nix is what these guys do for a living, nearly every day, of every week, of every year. They were the ones to release Linux sound support years before alsa was a twinkle in someone's eye.
They might not be open source, but they do support a free version of their Intellectual Property, and also monetarially support opensource projects. There's a lot of talk about how to get funding for beneficial opensource projects, and how to get people working on opensource full time. I did my part by sending these boys a check. Monetarially, there's more invested in the rotting leftovers in my fridge.
Honestly, what's $30 compared to the amount you'll spend on computer parts/upgrades/etc over the next two years? You can't get a good game for that amount of money. I found the cost negligable.
As a developer, their API is simple and cross platform. I wrote my own wrappers for it in under an hour, and haven't had need to change them since. Personally, reading the ALSA api makes my eyes hurt.
"You want to kiss the sky? Better learn how to kneel." - U2
"It was like trying to herd cats..." - Robert A. Heinlein
Sig:
Barbeque is a noun. Not a verb.
Currently for playing mods, xmp whips all over mikmod when you have an AWE card, because it uses the wavetable features. Unfortunately there isn't a 'libxmp' available so porting it over to Mikmod isn't easy, and the mikmod owners seem not to be interested in AWE wavetable support. Bah, mikmod authors just read the stinking xmp code and integrate! sheesh. mikmod is feature-stripped IMO.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
I worked for a while on a VQF plugin and got it working most of the way (http://www.csn.ul.ie/~mel/projects/linux/vqfplugi n). I said I would do the rest - seeking and visualisations during the Christmas. I think I'll drop 4th year and try and win me a sound card instead :-) .
:-/
:-))))))))
then again.........
maybe I'll just submit it as it is
Vote me if you like VQF's
I know how to win! How about a plugin to monitor a user's listening habits, and transparently send that information back to a central site that can keep a big database of all user's listening habits?
Why should the commercial people have all of the fun of selling purloined user information? I think it's about time that the open source community got in on the action!
So that's my proposal: the Open Source User Exploitation (OSUE) plugin. Let's act like all those "professionals" out there at commercial software companies!
www.alsa-project.org
The best supported card for AlSA is the Trident 4DWAVE-NX or DX (NX has quad speaker output). You can get these from www.hoontech.com for $50. It also supports a ton of other cards.
I think the coolest plugin someone could make would be a free implementation of the QSound plugin. Too bad I don't know how to do it :)
Just because 4Front charges for the oss drivers does not make them evil. If i'm not mistaken they do also provide freebee drivers for many sound cards. I personally bought the oss drivers because it was the only way to get sound out of my machine. It worked, it was worth $30.
This plugin contest is not about them trying to scam people into writing free code that they intend to sell. It's about providing some insentive to get people to contribute and make xmms a much better thing.
I'd much rather live in the Linux world where people give stuff away up to the point where they need to get money to help make the development work worth while, rather than the windows world where everything is crippled or time bombed shareware.
The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
I'd love to use XMMS, but I can't afford the RAM! I've only got about 64 megs or RAM in this box, and XMMS often shows up as taking up as much or more RAM than XFree. Why does an MP3 player take up so much RAM? As it runs it takes up more and more, leading me to beleive in some sort of a memory leak.
I'd much rather use XMMS, but mpg123 works fine and doesn't take up nearly as much memory. I just wish it could do visualization plugins and stuff.
Anyone else experienced this?
Did you even read the contest rules?. What it says is that you can write any type of plugin: GPL or closed sourced. If you write GPL, we cannot sell it because it's GPL'ed, if it's closed source you keep your code and you sell your own plugin.
Loki's hack contest was similar but different in the sense that the free hacks help them sell more Civ:CTP games. We aren't selling XMMS - it's GPL'ed for heaven's sakes.
If you don't want to pay for OSS buy SuSE or Turbolinux - these vendors have put an unlocked (no support) version of OSS. If you want support, pay for OSS or use OSS/Free - they work just like the commercial drivers once you get them working. So where's the "OSS TAX" as you call it.
Best regards
Dev Mazumdar
How long has it been since xmms has been updated? They should at least move to a 1.0 release. In generaly, xmms is the best mp3 player I've ever heard. It uses 3% CPU and has insane quality! They really do need more plugings though.
:-) When visualization was turned off it claimed to be using 0.0% of the CPU, which is impossible, regardless of how fast your processor is :-)
It does sound very good, but it uses a lot more than 3% CPU. The CPU it uses just doesn't show up under 'top' because of the way they do it - all the mp3 decoding/sound card output is handled by plugins, which don't show up in top (I don't know why, though) Awhile back I wrote a little mp3 visualization program, and since I was too lazy to write mp3 decoding code I just had it use X11Amp's plugins (back when it was still X11amp
"Software is like sex- the best is for free"
-Linus Torvalds
I'm impressed, XMMS is a pleasure to use and the IQ plugin is so good I bought it after listening to the trial version for 5 minutes.
Great job guys, thanks so much.
--Paolo
The trick is to buffer the data yourself and feed it to the output plugin closer to the actual output play time instead of just filling the buffers till they indicate they are full.
I don't imaging that this is any more difficult than what I had to do to get around the buffering provided by the hardware/driver that I was talking to for output purposes. It was really quite easy, although I dumped the whole scheme and worked around a couple of bugs in the driver to just provide an interface to its buffering scheme. The end result is small and seems to be free of bugs.