KMPlayer Interview - App of the Month
You can also check out the overview of KMPlayer
KMPlayer - interview with Koos Vriezen
When did you start working on KMPlayer?
At the end of 2002. There was a thread on kde-devel about a frontend for MPlayer. Because I had already something running for a while, I posted it and started improving it.
What is the original idea behind KMPlayer.
I needed a test KPart for liveconnect testing. I implemented the Java<->Javascript communication for the 3.1 release of KHTML and I wanted it to be general for all KParts. I had a patch for Kaboodle, but because Neil didn't like it, I looked for something else. First I tried KGhostview, but that didn't work at that time. Later I noticed the -wid and -slave options of MPlayer, so I started using MPlayer as my test KPart. After 3.1.1, KJAS became a KPart too. Maintaining these two parts helped me keeping the plugin features general enough so that in principle other parts could use it too.
You are listed as only author. Does KMPlayer originate from you alone? Is there anyone else to mention, when talking about KMPlayer?
Joonas Koivunen did the postprocessing options for MPlayer and redesigned the config dialog having a tree instead of tabs. Some smaller fixes done by various kde developers and build issues by Dirk Mueller. And of course the translations done by the KDE translators.
Do you get any financial support for KMPlayer?
No, but if there are ways to get any :-). Seriously, most credits should go to the MPlayer/Xine and ffmpeg people. They did an incredible job supporting all those formats. Of course, also many thanks to the KDE core developers and GNU and Linux hackers for making this possible in the first place.
How did you pick up the knowledge for programming?
I've been programming since my father bought a C64. During my study, which was for becoming a math/physics teacher, there where some programming classes. But I became serious with programming after two years of being a teacher and having decided to change profession (before turning gray). I remember in 92/93 doing my first c/c++ exercises on Linux and also my first project (that eventually got compiled with djgpp for DOS). After that my second and (current) third occupation, I have mostly done c/c++ programming for Windows and Linux and doing Linux system/network administrating.
How active are you developing KMPlayer? What are your future plans for KMplayer?
Not very active ATM. There are some things that needs to be done for Xine, so that recording and TV watching will work too if one doesn't have MPlayer. Playlists should be added as well one day. And recording should have more options. KMPlayer should give some more info about title/author/.. to the user.
All kinds of small things that are not very interesting to do. I think this is the difference with doing stuff for fun or being paid for a job. Now there is also KPlayer and Kaffeine. From what I read, the both seem to be more popular. So I mostly concentrate on the plugin now. However if I get an idea about something, I will surely implement it. For example, I read about the cool audio visualization in Kaffeine and though: "hmmm I want that too, but how to do it with an external Xine player" (KMPlayer isn't linked against the Xine libs, but uses a homebrew executable (KXineplayer) that embeds inside KMPlayer). So a challenge was born and I started implementing it using QDom, which was new for me.
An other thing is the look of KMPlayer. If I compare KMPlayer with Quicktime/RealPlay/WMP, I doubt if standard GUI widgets are suitable for on-screen purposes (I mean non-dialog windows). Eg. the position slider looks really ugly IMO. The small control buttons are also wider than needed and definitely look more ugly than the commercial ones. Development of amaroK is interesting in this area.
KMPlayer was published under the GPL. How do you think about "Open Source"? Have you never thought about distributing your software commercially?
I run open source software for more than ten years and I've learned a lot from it. But then of course, I'm a programmer myself.
I don't think a commercial KMPlayer would have sold a single copy :-). I have nothing against commercial software, but on Linux it's probably very hard to compete against all those volunteers and paid by a distro people. Otoh, Linux is very usable for use in one customer projects. Because it keeps the cost down, has all kinds of (network) service available and is very easy to extend. With open source, in case of trouble, at least you can find out why something doesn't work like expected.
How do you imagine the "Desktop of the future"? How far are we still away from that?
Looking back the past ten/fifteen years, there hasn't been much of change on how we interact with the desktop (of course everything look nicer now). The only real change, at least for home users, is the internet. For companies network becomes more imported too. In our company I see a move to more network application for groupwise tasks. Reasons are that software installed on clients rot eventually like become unstable after an update or are slow and use too many resources.
I hope that this also happens with common applications like office. And perhaps that will be the desktop of the future, a browser. With KPart technology local applications with remote/local data, with Java/Flash or some other kind of virtual machine for downloadable applications with remote/local data. Maybe one day we enter eg. a paid gaming site to play, instead of buying and installing from CDROM. I'm aware this isn't any new idea, it is already happening. Also the PC will become more and more a communication medium, replacing the phone/radio/TV for good (or should I say the TV/radio/phone of the future will be our next PC).
What do you think of the current state of multimedia on the KDE desktop?
For what I use, watching TV/DVD/web streams and burning CDs, I guess I can't complain about the software to choose from (although I still use xawtv, but there is a stable kdetv now). System sounds suck IMO. Too often I hear a sound of an event half a second ago. I don't know of any video editing software or audio recording for KDE. Would be nice to have all these applications listed somewhere. http://multimedia.kde.org only shows what's inside kde-multimedia AFAICS.
KMPlayer uses arts for volume settings. I noticed that linking against the arts libraries makes KMPlayer startup at least two times slower. For this reason it is possible to disable this with the '--disable-arts-volume' option. I didn't figure out yet why this becomes so slow, but it would be nice to have a 'lighter' interface with the sound daemon than we have now.
What is your current hardware configuration and which software do you use on a daily basis?
At home I have a P4-2.4GHz with FC-1 and SuSE (I forgot which version) dual boot. I also have a K6-300MHz with also SuSE and Debian dual boot and a 486-33MHz with a homebrew busybox/uclibc ramdisk firewall. For testing KMPlayer I have dvd/CDROM/TV-card/USB webcam/ADSL internet/10 MB LAN available. I don't have any special software installed other than what comes with a Linux distribution.
Please talk a little about yourself - what are you doing professionally? How do you spend your spare time?
I'm working for a small company nearby. We do industrial automation. I'm mostly supporting the PLC programmers with dial up networks/remote services, writing things like console utilities and serial/network communication tools. Did write some control software too with serial, digital I/O and/or TCP network. Currently, I'm working on a cool v4l vision application. In my spare time I read a lot, from internet nowadays. Also I like sports, running and badminton. Of course going out for a beer I don't skip for more then a week and I like dancing (after drinking a few)
Koos Vriezen can be reached by email at koos.vriezen@xs4all.nl. The interview of "Application of the Month" KMPlayer is conducted by Jasper van der Marel.
You can also check out the overview of KMPlayer
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