Nik Butler put out a vlog, vodcast, video today commenting on the state of multimedia in FOSS. This is my response.
I was going to reply in kind – I’ve had a kyte account for quite a while – but the truth is my built-in webcam only sort of works in Ubuntu, and Flash doesn’t see it at all so I can’t use the likes of kyte or Facebook Video. I even went so far as to boot into the dusty copy of Vista that came with my laptop, but I needed to install a bunch of updates, agree (or ignore) the free anti-virus software that came with it, convince it that my wireless network did exist and did use WPA, which triggered a whole new batch of updates, and I still needed to install Flash. So I ditched the idea, and decided to stick to more traditional methods until I find a reasonably priced, decent quality webcam for Linux that a) works and b) works with Flash (which only recognises V4L, not V4L2). This experience did remind me why I no longer use Microsoft Windows though, so some good came of it.
Back to Nik. He complains about the lack of decent support for iPods, how iTunes + iPod is a much better experience, and how multimedia support is “multimediocre” – his term – in FOSS.
Apple = Proprietary
Whilst I agree with his sentiments about the iPod, the simple fact is that the iPod is an Apple product and it is their choice as to which platforms they support it on. Yes there are a lot of people out there who own iPods, and hopefully they will want to try an alternative OS but I don’t believe we as a community should be criticised for imperfect support of a proprietary product. If these users want to use iTunes or their iPod under say, Ubuntu, then they need to ask Apple to let them do so. Apple certainly has the resources and knowledge to enable this, but they will not do so until there is sufficient demand.
That being said, many people are successfully using their iPods with Linux thanks to the efforts of the developers of applications like GtkPod, Rhythmbox, Banshee, and Amarok to name a few. It may not be the same experience as iTunes, but at least the device can be made to work.
Multimedia Support
I see multimedia support falling into two categories – consumption and production. As my tale of webcam support shows, production capabilities are still lacking – especially as the focus moves away from the desktop towards web applications. On the other hand there a huge numbers of applications – and even a few dedicated distributions – out there that support media production at various levels, but they do tend to suffer from the usual FOSS problem of user un-friendliness.
Media consumption however I feel is well supported. With a little effort – mainly caused by patent and/or legal workarounds – most distributions can be made to support the popular forms of media. Applications like VLC will play almost anything you throw at it, whilst GStreamer allows media to be used easily by (yet another) huge number of applications.
Is multimedia support ‘mediocre’? Not in my opinion.
Can it be improved? Yes.
Is it being improved? Continuously.
What needs the most attention? The experience.
Experience
Nik is quite right that the iTunes + iPod experience is excellent, and it’s this level of experience we as a community need to strive for in our multimedia applications but as always we should seek to innovate as well as emulate.
Jokosher is a good example of this. They didn’t just try to make yet another multi-track recorder, or copy an existing application; as well as making a solid application they tried to make the experience of using it as good – and intuitive – as possible.
Sacrificing Freedom
I’m no RMS, although I admire him for his conviction and ideals. I believe that we have to sacrifice some freedoms to encourage adoption of FOSS, but at the same time we have to maintain some boundaries. If someone wants to use a device that does not implement published standards and is not supported by either the manufacturer or the community then caveat emptor. They will require extra effort to use. The problem is how do we consistently make them aware of what works and what doesn’t, and how can we convince manufacturers that there is sufficient demand for them to support (or help the community support) their products.
Caveat emptor indeed
I came this close to buying an iPod myself this week. Thankfully I wasn’t quite decided, and Nik’s vlogcasteo™ got me thinking enough to both write this and re-think my decision.
Great thoughtful post. If you’re still in the market for a DAP, llok at the products from Cowon / iAudio. In most of their product descriptions they specifically mention Linux support, though that has flagged somewhat with their newer firmware images requiring Windows to install. However, I have a U3 and I _love_ it. It Just Works, and includes FLAC and OGG decoding, as well as a slew of other features iPods can’t touch. I don’t really need to replace my U3 it, but I am seriously lusting for an iAudio 7, which is basically a U3 with an improved interface and larger capacity. http://www.cowonamerica.com/
Nice post indeed, about the player, I too recommend looking at cowon players, I have their D2 player which also capable of playing video, among other options, it shows images, plays more audio formats than any other player I know and have an SD expansion slot, should you require more storage. Under Linux it shows as simple USB storage device.
iAudio7 looks very nice also.
Yep, nice post, and I agree with you on that.
I think that webcams are moving towards more open hardware, or more open specifications.
They are starting to learn that Linux is a market indeed.
For the rest… still not enough. Still… "mediocre".
There are also problems that no one is admitting that they exist actually. Perhaps this is due the key people not having any comparison points. If I for instance open a WMV video clip (works with ffmpeg+gstreamer), the colors are washed out and the image is blocky. Flash videos are not much better. 90+% of present videos on the internets being those two you should be able to see the problem…
It is *not* due my setup or versions or anything like that, I have experienced this using several distros, during several years, with several video clips, using several different hardware. It’s not very apparent until you see the competition on Windows. They do some really smart post processing, leading into a lot nicer and more vivid colors, and far less blocky video quality. The difference is so huge between those that it is a blocker level issue for some people, and some just "don’t get impressed" without realizing what the reason is and like the competitive products better - and will keep using them.
This was just one example, there are many on the field that you touched with your post. There are huge user experience related problems that are not being handled. In fact most of the developers are denying that the problems exist. There is no development on a few of these critical areas. Thus there is no hope at all.
I’m not recommending it for a media player, but I was plesantly surprised to find that my SideKick III was recognized as a multi-media device when I plugged it into my desktop after updating to Feisty Fawn in Ubuntu. It offers to open either a audio manaagement program, (Rhytmbox I believe) a photo management program, (gThumb) or to ignore the device. It still auto-mounts the drive, and provides an icon representative of a media device for that drive.
I actually have media devices that are not handled that way, and will have to investigate what I need to do to get them handled so that I can use those features. (A couple of xm/mp3 players, as well as some stand alone mp3 players.)
I don’t consider the status perfect by any means, but I am regularly surprised at support that I was not aware was there, actually working better than expected.
As with iPods, I would love to be able to sync my contacts and content between the software on my SK3 and my desktop, but the only sync software that is out there does not support Linux, and apparently never will (restricted contract between them and Microsoft apparently.) I can’t see the data on the USB connection, but it is available on the internet. Screen scraping seems to me to be a stupid way to manage contacts, schedules, and notes, but that may be the only way that I will get that sort of stuff done.
All of that said, it is my decision to either move to a different platform, or live with the issue and make my desires known to the relevant developers or companies. Or for that matter look into developing tools myself, or find someone who is willing to work on those tools. Complaining that their not supported, and saying that this is the fault of the OSS community would be stupidity on my part. By electing to use OSS software, I am a part of the OSS community. Either I put up with the lack of support, or I work on solving the problem of lack of support and make it supported. Complaining in this case is whining.