Totem, xine-lib and gstreamer: need clarification

[Nick David]

M3 Freak wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>Well, I have Totem installed on my FC2 system, and I'm a little confused
>about the two backends available for it: xine and gstreamer.  My
>questions:
>
>1. What's the difference with xine and gstreamer?
>2. Why would one want to choose one over the other (i.e. xine and
>gstreamer)?
>3. I've tried playing WMVs with Totem, but no go.  I know if I install
>the "w32codec-0.52-1.i386.rpm", I will most probably be able to play
>WMVs.  However, I thought xine could play WMV files anyway.  What's the
>deal?
>4. Quicktime files can be played with Totem after installing
>gstreamer-ffmpeg from Freshrpms.  But, I'm not using the gstreamer
>backend with Totem.  In fact, I'm calling Totem from the Gnome menu with
>just "totem": how the hell do the Quicktime files play, then?!
>5. I installed the gstreamer-extra-plugins-audio and
>gstreamer-extra-plugins-video RPMs from Freshrpms.  Before doing this,
>playing some mpeg files was not possible (e.g. the Enterprise season
>finale).  Again, I thought with the xine backend (which I don't know how
>it's being used), mpeg files would just work.  Why are these extra
>packages required?
>
>I'm fairly confused with Totem.  I know it needs xine-libs to work, but
>a lot of the files I tried to play through it wouldn't work without
>installing additional packages, even though on Xine's site it says they
>should have.  Being able to use gstreamer as a backend just makes it
>even weirder. 
>
>If someone could so kind as to explain what the hell is going on, I'd be
>grateful.  I know, it's a weird request, but I just want to know what
>the differences are between xine and gstreamer and what the
>advantages/disadvantages are in the context of Totem.
>
>Thanks,
>
>Kanwar
>
>
>  
>
You have a very old w32codecs package to use it you must have xine I 
have never heard of gstreamer but if you install xine-lib and w32codecs 
you should be able to play wmvs. You can get a newer codec package at 
links2linux.de