GStreamer plugin proposal for GSoC 2009

[Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu]

Hi,

I'm interested in working with you as a student to create a GStreamer
plugin for Wine.

First, a little background about me. I'm a 2nd year student from
Bucharest, Romania; my major is Systems Engineering. Last summer I spent my
time developing kmemtrace (a memory tracer for the Linux kernel) under the
mentorship of Pekka Enberg <penberg at cs.helsinki.fi> from Linux Foundation,
that is GSoC 2008. So this would be my second year in GSoC. And I do
tend to stick around after the SoC is over, since it's a great
opportunity to get comfortable with a code base. You can check out my coding
style and performance by looking at these Git repos:

Ingo Molnar's -tip tree (my current "upstream"):
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux%2Fkernel%2Fgit%2Ftip%2Flinux-2.6-tip.git&a=search&h=HEAD&st=author&s=eduard.munteanu
My repo holding kmemtrace's userspace app:
http://repo.or.cz/w/kmemtrace-user.git

However, I'm aware of the differences in coding style between Wine and
the Linux kernel. Regarding my skills, I'm quite proficient at using Git
(managing my own tree and sending patches), coding in C and using
autoconf. I also know some very basic concepts about DirectX, OpenGL and
Wine's architecture.

Also, this isn't my first contact with Wine's source code. Even though I
haven't sent any patches to the mailing-list, I've spent some time
reading the source code (chasing performance issues in Direct3D, but to
no avail). You might have also seen me on IRC, bugging people about
those issues. :-)

Now getting to the point... I find the GStreamer plugin a very good
idea. Glancing over GStreamer docs, I see it's very modular and could
solve more issues than those already mentioned on the GSoC ideas page.
I'll focus on what hasn't already been told.

Firstly, it could also improve GDI+'s handling of images, as GStreamer
already handles some image formats. Secondly, I've seen a patch
implementing texture handling in d3dx being rejected because there is no
general image library support in Wine and FreeImage wasn't a
comfortable dependency:
http://archives.free.net.ph/message/20080828.215032.87fd785e.en.html

So this work could also have a positive impact on the proposal regarding
the implementation of d3d9_xx DLLs. Bottom line is this won't "just play
movies for DirectShow/Quartz", but it has a much greater potential.

I admit, my main interest in developing Wine is improving a few games
(e.g. Oblivion). I find this GSoC idea quite achievable for my skills
and positive towards this goal. I also hope this experience would make a
good introduction to implementing better DirectX support on Wine,
generally speaking.

Please let me know what you think and whether I've missed something. And
please keep me Cc-ed if more people pitch into the discussion, as I'm
not subscribed to the mailing-list.


	Cheers,
	Eduard