Windows

We’ll start with the good news: OggConvert now runs on Windows. However, it’s early days and it isn’t hasn’t had much testing, so it might not work very well. In addition, installing it is quite tricky, due to the large number of dependencies required. Nevertheless, if you’re dedicated and want to try it, here’s how.

Instructions:

  1. Download and install the PyGTK all-in-one package from http://osl.ulpgc.es/~arc/gnome/pygtk-setup.exe.
  2. Go to http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/pkg/windows/releases/ and download and install (at least) the gstreamer, gst-python and gst-plugins-base packages. You’ll probably want all the others too, but see below for known issues regarding gst-ffmpeg. When GStreamer asks you if you want to download a new version of Glib, say no.
  3. Finally, download OggConvert from http://oggconvert.tristanb.net/releases/0.3.1/oggconvert-0.3.1-windows.zip and unzip it somewhere
  4. Double-click on runpython.py. If the OggConvert window appears, then hurray! It’s worked. (In testing, GStreamer popped up an error about libpng here, but the programme still ran correctly.)
  5. If you want to get rid of the command window that appears when you run OggConvert, you can set up a shortcut to it that runs with the “pythonw.exe” interpreter rather than the “python.exe” one.

Known problems:

Unfortunately, even after all that, it’s not plain sailing.

  • Translations (probably) don’t work, because my Windows installation is in English and I haven’t been able to test anything. In the unlikely event that they do work, please let me know!
  • It looks rubbish. Yes, but that’s GTK on Windows for you. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t going to change in the near future.
  • The file selector is rubbish. See above about GTK on Windows. It may be possible to use the default Windows file selector via Python instead, but I haven’t looked into it yet.
  • It doesn’t open many files. As on Linux, GStreamer only understands media formats that it has plugins for. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many plugins available for GStreamer on Windows as there are on Linux at the moment. This should get better as GStreamer on Windows gets more attention, and the DirectShow wrapper (see below) gets further development.
  • It crashes. I’ve had this happen a couple of times when decoding files using FFMpeg. If this worries you, then don’t install the gst-ffmpeg package in step 2 above, or remove it if you have installed it. You actually won’t miss out on that many formats, as the gst-plugins-bad set has an wrapper which lets GStreamer use DirectShow for decoding, and you’ve probably already got a large DirectShow codec pack installed.

So if you fancy a bit of experimentation, please go ahead and give it a try!

Finally, if you’re an NSIS/MSI guru and fancy creating an installer to do all of the above, all of OggConvert’s Windows users would be eternally grateful…