Created attachment 158574 [details]
gst-openal plugin source

Wasn't sure which component to use, so apologies if I picked the wrong one.

Here is a plugin I developed to allow output using OpenAL. It relies on the ALC_EXT_thread_local_context extension, which currently only exists in OpenAL Soft 1.12. The sink will properly look for this extension and not register itself if it's not found.

This sink could be very useful for applications which already use OpenAL for sound, such as games, since it has properties to allow outputing on a specific opened device or device context. This helps avoid issues such as getting GStreamer to use the same audio device as the main application, or allowing concurent access to the sound hardware where such may not be available (however rare such a problem is these days).

It also lets an application manipulate the OpenAL source object used for playback, allowing for a good level of integration into the main application (like placing the output of a media stream into 3D space, or applying audio effects).

I used gst-template for the plugin build system, and alsasink for the actual plugin. I ran 'make distclean' before building the tarball, and excluded the directory I built in and .gitignore.

A very small/minimalist application using the sink and describing its uses can be found here:
http://kcat.strangesoft.net/gst-openal.cpp