[edit] 3rd party codecs

The generic platform cannot depend on closed source drivers nor patented codecs. Therefore, there are very few codecs included by default.

[edit] Adding extra GStreamer plugins from 3rdparty repositories

NOTE: These probably contains source code that may have patent issues (like libmad, the mp3 decoder library) or have GPL lisence.

Tuomas Kulve provides a multimedia repository that is meant to be used with the generic-2 release of the platform. It provides the following components that are more or less smoke tested:

• faad2
• flac
• gst-ffmpeg
• gst-plugins-bad
• gst-plugins-ugly
• libid3tag
• libmad
• speex
• theora
• tremor

To enable the repository, add this to configdirs:

ConfigDir(
      url      = "http://git.pingu.fi/repositories/multimedia/config/multimedia.git",
      branch   = "multimedia-3",
)

[edit] OpenMAX on OMAP3

There is an open source implementation of the OpenMAX IL layer called Bellagio. It uses ffmpeg to do the actual work.

To enable using OpenMAX IL components in GStreamer framework you can use GstOpenMAX. It has been tested to work on top of Bellagio.

In practice gst-ffmpeg is more mature and complete than the above combination but using GstOpenMAX may provide convenient abstraction if one is expecting to get hardware optimized OpenMAX IL implementation from e.g. hardware manufacturer and already have applications using GStreamer (and not directly OpenMAX).

The Zoom project provides interesting software components for Zoom. Many of those are actually OMAP3 specific and not Zoom specific. There is also OpenMAX IL implementation using the DSP core of the OMAP3 CPU. Currently (08.08.2008) it claims to have MPEG4 AAC audio and MPEG4 video decoders. ARM side libraries are licensed under LGPLv2 but the DSP related software is more restrictive.