Multimedia
Here are some miscellaneous resources related to audio, video and graphics systems under Linux:
Also see the section on User Interfaces.
Contents
CELF 2.0 Specification for AVG
(more like a set of recommendations rather than a specification)
Audio Video Working Group
Please see the CELF wiki for more information: Audio Video Graphics Working Group
Some AVWG related [Outdated pages]
DirectFB study
What is DirectFB, How Does DirectFB Work
Sample Implementation of DirectFB on an embedded Linux platform
Some DirectFB benchmark on embedded Linux platform
Related Projects
Graphics/Video out
Framebuffer
- http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/fb
- http://linuxconsole.sourceforge.net/fbdev/HOWTO/
- http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Framebuffer-HOWTO.html
Stores the frame information in the videos ....
DirectFB
V4L2
- http://www.linuxtv.org/
- http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/video4linux/API/V4L2_API/spec-single/v4l2.html
X11
NanoX
OpenGL (OpenML)
SDL
- http://www.libsdl.org/ immediate renderer library with very bare bones primitives like rectangle fill and blit. Since it exposes just framebuffer and few primitives, it's easy to port to different platforms, actually it was born as a way to port Windows games to Linux.
Cairo
- http://www.cairographics.org/ is an immediate renderer library that can do complex vector graphics, including matrix transforms. It runs on top of DirectFB, X11, memory buffers and more. It is the base of some toolkits like GTK and applications like Firefox.
Clutter
- http://clutter-project.org/ is an object-oriented 3d canvas on top of OpenGL (or OpenGL-ES) with scene management. It is based on GLib/GObject and matches nicely GNOME platform. Many powerful Linux mobile devices will ship with Clutter-based intefaces in near future, like Intel's Moblin, Ubuntu Mobile and Maemo.
Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL)
- http://www.enlightenment.org/ contains Evas, an object-oriented 2d canvs on top of OpenGL/X11, XRender/X11, X11, FB, DirectFB, DirectDraw and more. It includes scene management and integrates with Ecore, matches nicely other EFL components like Edje. It's used by some media centers and the OpenMoko phone.
Gstreamer
- http://www.gstreamer.net/ is a modular media engine based on pipelines, you can construct them as you wish to either record or playback, from/to any media supported by its plugins. It's very flexible, but that also makes it complex to use, however it ships with helpers like playbin and decodebin to make simple case easy to use. It is built on top of GLib/GObject and integrates well with GNOME platform, but can be used with others as well.
Xine
- http://xinehq.de/ is a playback media engine that handles most of the complexity for you. It's based on threads, so clock and synchronization are handled automatically. May worth noticing that this library is GPL and your application must be GPL as well to use it.
MPlayer
- http://mplayerhq.hu/ it's not a library but an application, however it's controllable from other applications and it's used as media framework for some systems. It's GPL as well as xine, but since it's externally controlled you don't need to make your application GPL to use it.
Documentation
- Presentation Choosing embedded graphical libraries held by Thomas Petazzoni at the ELCE 2008
Video in
V4L[2]
- http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/video4linux
- http://www.linuxtv.org
- http://www.linuxtv.org/downloads/video4linux/API/V4L2_API/spec-single/v4l2.html
OpenML
LinuxTV (DVB API)
Audio in/out
OSS
- http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/sound/oss
- http://www.4front-tech.com/oss.html
ALSA
- http://www.kernel.org/ (1) KD26/sound/alsa
- http://www.alsa-project.org
OpenAL
Users of AVG
Video Lan
Freevo
LinuxTV
MythTV
DVR
OpenPVR
Morphine.TV
Other
ARIB architecture
Boot Splash
Digital Home Working Group
Disko Framework
Free Type
UPnP
- see UPnP
TV Anytime
TV Linux Alliance
Note (1) - KD26 refers to the Linux 2.6.X kernel tree, which has a "Documentation" sub-directory.