Starting Encoding Profiles

Two weeks without reporting, but here I am. I spent this time with implementing the proposed interface, which I did all in glade format and I can easily edit it. Also, the project is detecting format - oh, I spent some hours implementing my own pipeline with decodebin to get info from files in the input and just later I found gst.extend.discoverer... ok, now I have more experience with pipelines, and I'm working in the xml format - I really don't know for now how can I represent the pipelines for themselves, as they need some processing power. For an example, to encode to mp3 I can use id3mux or id3v2mux, but to choose one I need to tell to try each. I saw the method of Banshee, using S-expression, is very useful but I would like to use only XML, just not sure exactly how.

A way that I was thinking is like:
<element id="audioconvert" type="required">
<element id="lame" type="required">
<property id="bitrate" type="optional">
<property id="vbr" type="">
<if expression="vbr!=0"> <!-- vbr!=0 need to use html encoded chars -->
<property>
</property>
</if>
<if expression="vbr != 0">
<element id="xingmux" type="optional">
<element id="id3v2mux" type="optional">
<else>
<if expression="exist(id3v2mux)">
<element id="id3v2mux" type="optional">
<elif expression="exist(id3mux)">
<element id="id3mux type=">
</element>
</elif>

Suggestions?

update: I corrected the XML code which was not appearing.

A dialog proposal for conversions

I made a simple UI dialog for gst-media-services, as the following (and at the wiki):

• Files to convert: is a list that user can add or remove files with the right-side buttons, where user can add any number of files to input them. I'm not sure if that way is understandable to the user that he can choose many files to do a batch operation or he can choose audio and/or video and/or images to mix them. When a file is added, the list can have the properties on it to set properties of the mix (like in what time it should be shown, for how much time if is a image, what is it volume if is a sound, and so on). Not intented to be released at a first time, the input could be a stream or an URI address, considering any stream too.

• Video Output: here user (or the application which uses this dialog) choose the video format, based in the Encoding Profiles. Each profile has some properties, which is under discussion at the EncodingProfiles section. The default option depends of the input, the selected files: If user choose only audio files, the video appears as "No Video" (better is to disable it). If he choose a video, this box goes to a "maintain the same format" option, considering that there weren't any application which called the dialog with a format input. If user choose many videos, the dialog counts how much videos have of each format and the major format is the selected, so user can convert the minority videos to the majority format. If user choose videos and images, audios and videos, audios videos and images together, or just images, it's a mix case and dialog can handle this by showing some advanced options for each file selected.

• Audio Output: default is to let the same audio. When user choose a video format, the audio choose the video-audio's profile, as I'm planning that all videos links audio profiles for its audio part. A "No Audio" option need to be done too.

• Target folder: Where the results should be dropped. - problem with the mix operation: how can I presume what is the name of resulting file? Should I add another field for it if I detect a mix case?

• Bottom Buttons: Edit profiles is a button to open the Profiles Editor, a tool that I want to do later, to help users to build their own profiles. At least, this button can let the user build its own pipeline, or change a pre-defined one. Transcode button transcode the files (is it the best name? Should I use Convert / Extract / Mix depending of selected operation?), and appear two new buttons when the operation is finished: "Close" and "Open target". A progress screen should appear when the transcode button is pressed.
  

I think I'll not change very much this dialog, and my wish is to offer this to applications to use it. I didn't cover some use cases yet, like when dialog do conversions or to just return the Gstreamer pipeline to the application which is calling gst-media-services. I'm already implementing the basic functions for the dialog, but I need to work in a XML parser for EncodingProfiles too.
Any suggestions, just drop in comments!

Desired transcode operations

I'm inviting everyone to help with the desired transcode operations, what operations of conversion, extraction and merging of videos, audios and why not images do you want to do easily, or you already do but not so easily. Here at the project wiki you can just use the template to fill with your operations. This can contribute to I see what Gstreamer can offer (with my gst-registry read, previous post) and what people want to do. And if you hate wikis you can email me or just comment here at the blog and I put at the wiki!
I also created a space at google code where you all can track my work of transcoder application, and redesigned the wiki. I also didn't so much in this last week because of some exams, and I have some this week too so I want to collect information to the application too, while I'll design some possible UI dialogs for the project. The idea of these dialogs is to offer them as a part of gst-media-services to all applications, so a great challenge on this is how to make them usable by different apps. Suggestions are welcome.