xine aRts plugin update for KDE_3_1_BRANCH

[Ewald Snel]

Hi George, Neil,

[...]

> > >   Please do not enable video thumbnails until the outstanding critical
> > > bugs are fixed.
> >
> > Well, I thought it was established that Xine 1 *fixed* the outstanding
> > bugs.

xine 1 has a new video processing API, which should be much more reliable than 
the old 'give-me-last-frame' API. It should now be possible to implement the 
algorithm originally intented for the video thumbnailer.

The algorithm consisted of reading frame 1, 2, 4, 8 ... until there is enough 
variance in the pixel brightness of the current frame. This should probably 
be limited to some maximum stepsize and no more than a few seconds of video 
for performance reasons (see "videocreater.cpp" by Simon MacMullen).

>    I'd like to see that.
>
>    Last I checked, it basically renders my machine useless until I can log
> in remotely and kill the processes.
>
>    Xine on its own is generally fine.

The default xine ui doesn't create thumbnails, but the snapshot feature of the 
xine ui could cause the same problem (in theory). It would also be much 
better to use the xine libraries directly and not through the aRts server for 
creating video thumbnails (IMHO). This should provide some protection against 
the problem you described.

bye,

ewald