Projects/Multimedia/Phonon

Phonon is the Qt multimedia toolkit. It allows developers to add multimedia functionality to applications with minimal effort.

Features

• Works on Linux, OSX, *BSD, Windows, Meego, Maemo, and likely more
• Leverages pre-existing multimedia frameworks such as GStreamer, VLC, DirectShow, etc.
• Eliminates the need for developers to worry about installing codecs, managing pipelines, decoding to the proper format, learning XVideo or DirectShow, and more.

Documentation

For the most detailed and up-to-date information on using phonon, have a look at the latest API documentation. Several tutorials are also available:

• Introduction to Phonon
• Debugging Phonon and Phonon-based applications

Backends

To provide cross-platform support, Phonon is powered by various backend libraries. The stable backends are:

• GStreamer
• VLC

Other backends have been created in the past, however they are currently unmaintained and looking for developers:

• MPlayer
• Xine
• DirectShow
• QuickTime

Support

For general Phonon support, you can join the KDE-Multimedia mailing list. If you wish to join us in backend development, you might also want to subscribe to the phonon-backends list.

If you desire a more real-time support method, you can also hang out in #phonon on freenode.

Contributing

Phonon's source code is hosted on the KDE infrastructure and is available for viewing at projects.kde.org. It is recommended that you also join the kde-multimedia and phonon-backends mailing lists mentioned in the previous section. Finally, join us in #phonon on Freenode.

Our current developers:

• Harald Sitter (apachelogger), phonon master overlord, VLC backend developer
• Trever Fischer (tdfischer), GStreamer backend developer