2020-06-11 09:51:32 +02:00
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# PipeWire Overview
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PipeWire is a new low-level multimedia framework designed from scratch that
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aims to provide
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* graph based processing
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* support for out-of-process processing graphs with minimal overhead
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* flexible and extensible media format negotiation and buffer allocation
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* Hard real-time capable plugins
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* achieve very low-latency for both audio and video processing
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The framework is used to build a modular daemon that can be configured to:
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* be a low-latency audio server with features like pulseaudio and/or jack
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* a video capture server that can manage hardware video capture devices and
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provide access to them
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* a central hub where video can be made available for other applications
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such as the gnome-shell screencast API.
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2020-06-11 13:29:30 +02:00
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## Motivation
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Linux has no unified framework for exchanging multimedia content between
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2020-09-14 20:00:59 +02:00
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applications or even devices. In most cases, developers realized that
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2020-06-11 13:29:30 +02:00
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a user-space daemon is needed to make this possible:
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* For video content, we typically rely on the compositor to render our
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data.
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* For video capture, we usually go directly to the hardware devices, with
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all security implications and inflexible routing that this brings.
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* For consumer audio, we use PulseAudio to manage and mix multiple streams
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from clients
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* For Pro audio, we use JACK to manage the graph of nodes.
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None of these solutions (with perhaps to some extend Wayland), however,
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were designed to support the security features that are required when
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2020-09-14 20:00:59 +02:00
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dealing with flatpaks or other containerized applications. PipeWire
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2020-06-11 13:29:30 +02:00
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aims to solve this problem and provides a unified framework to run both
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consumer and Pro audio as well as video capture and processing in a
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secure way.
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2020-06-11 09:51:32 +02:00
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## Components
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Currently PipeWire ships with the following components:
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* a PipeWire daemon that implements the IPC and graph processing
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* an example session manager that manages objects in the PipeWire
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daemon.
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* a set of tools to introspect and use the PipeWire daemon.
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* a library to develop PipeWire applications and plugins.
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### The PipeWire daemon
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### The example session manager
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### Tools
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### Application development
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