KDE Multimedia Roadmap

von Scott Wheeler (SAP LinuxLab), Matthias Kretz (KDE Project)

Samstag, 25.06.2005, UG3: Hebel, 13:30-15:00 Uhr

Since KDE 2.0 KDE's multimedia has been focused around the aRts system. During the KDE 3 development cycle it has become clear that there are new challenges that must be solved, both technically and politically and that a new architecture for KDE multimedia is necessary.

During aKademy, the KDE conference in Ludwigsburg in 2004, many of the active KDE multimedia developers began designing a new architecture that would allow for significant advances in capabilities and extensibility for what will become KDE 4.0.

This architecture is based around the ideas of producing an abstraction layer to make it possible to use one of the emerging multimedia infrastructures. GStreamer and NMM (Network Multimedia Middleware) are the two most interesting candidates for fulfilling the backend role.

In this talk we will be discussing the problems facing multimedia-enabled desktops today and the current state of KDE's emerging architecture for meeting those needs. We will give a technical description of the application interfaces that will be available for application developers as well as discuss some of the technical aspects related to the implementation of this framework. Additionally we will detail the remaining steps for implementing this architecture in the KDE 4 time frame.

Über den Autor Scott Wheeler:

Scott Wheeler is a Linux specialist who has been employed in the SAP LinuxLab since relocating to Germany from the United States in 2002.

Scott became active in the KDE project many years ago while studying Computer Science at Calvin College in Michigan. As time has passed he has become one of the most active developers of KDE's multimedia software and is involved in several other KDE subprojects and core development. He is most known for his work on JuK, a jukebox distributed with KDE, and TagLib, an audio metadata library used by more than a dozen applications including KDE's metadata system.

Scott has given presentations on KDE and Open Source technology at conferences, universities and Linux users' groups in North and South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Über den Autor Matthias Kretz:

Matthias Kretz has been an active KDE developer since 2000.

He worked on serveral components of the KDE desktop. His main interest from the beginning was multimedia on Linux. To get started with KDE development he worked in the KDE graphics module as the maintainer of KView as well as contributing to KDE core components from time to time.

In the last few years he has shifted his focus towards aRts and KDE multimedia and is one of the chief architects of the upcoming KDE 4 multimedia framework.

He is currently in his third year as a physics student at the University of Heidelberg.