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Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for LinuxFluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for LinuxPosted Jan 15, 2007 20:27 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876)Parent article: Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux
I am not sure whether I should like or hate this :). I never bothered with win32 codecs on *nix, and I prefer open source / free software. Though, I must admit that sometimes it would be handy to be able to play Windows Media files, and this is a legal way to do it.
At any rate, thanks to Fluendo for making this possible legally, and implementing this.
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Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 15, 2007 20:29 UTC (Mon) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link] of course don't bother to mention way more popular players like xmms (iguess it does do gstreamer?) and of course amarok...
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 15, 2007 21:30 UTC (Mon) by azhrei_fje (guest, #26148) [Link] Ditto. I typically use MPlayer or VLC, both of which have very good codec/plugin support. Oh, and I've ripped my CD collection to OGG Vorbis, of course. :)
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 15, 2007 20:51 UTC (Mon) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link] ffmpeg already includes a free WMV decoder as well as (as far as I know) all the relevant MPEG decoders. Binary win32codecs are rarely necessary these days unless you want to decode Real content or newer Quicktime video.
I guess Fluendo has gotten patent licenses hence the 'legal' argument. I personally could not care less and will continue to use the more flexible free solutions.
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 15, 2007 21:49 UTC (Mon) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well even then Real has Linux codecs aviable for most their stuff. For example there is one specific website I use Real for and I listen to it on my PowerPC laptop using Mplayer with the Real codecs.
I reinstalled my OS a while ago when I got a new harddrive. Went 64bit and so far I have had absolutely no need for the win32 codecs so far.
That being said (and keeping in mind that I am a total free software fanboy) having commercial codec support for Linux is important for people who want to _create_ content using Linux.
As you know it's difficult for Windows or OS X users to get good support for codecs outside their native formats, especially free software codecs. So if there is a practical reason why you'd want to support video/audio playback on those platforms it's probably going to be nessicary for you to produce content that is easy to support for those platforms.
For instance it's common for people to offer a feed in both WMV and Quicktime formats on news websites.
So if you you work for a corporation or any sort of business that has to cover it's butt legally then during the creation of encoded video/audio it's important to make sure that you follow the letter of the law. Currently this is not possible if your using Linux. It's not so much of a issue with codec support per say, but it's more of a matter of the legality of that support.
It's a conspiracy of propriatory software lock-in on it's customers and legal realities that makes these things usefull on Linux.
So using these Gstreamer/Fluendo stuff you can create a Linux media server for the internet that will tailor content to the end users. Do something like stick a button on your website that will produce a stream in wmv or whatever (and hopefully including free software codecs)
I don't paticularly like it, but this is just how it's going to be for the time being.
Fluendo announces playback/decode only support Posted Jan 16, 2007 3:06 UTC (Tue) by undefined (guest, #40876) [Link] the premise of your entire post is based on the assumption that these fluendo plugins support encoding ("creation"). i couldn't find anything to substantiate that claim.
https://shop.fluendo.com/ says the "plugins will allow you to play and encode these popular formats" but i've read each and every plugin description (AC3, MPEG4, MPEG2, MMS, WMV, MP3) and not a single plugin claims to support encoding.
so though fluendo makes that generic claim, i can't find specific proof of it.
Fluendo announces playback/decode only support Posted Jan 16, 2007 3:43 UTC (Tue) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link] Well if they don't then it's becuase they don't yet support encoding. It's just not finished.
It's definately one of their plans to support encoding. This is probably being limited by development in gstreamer by quite a bit, though.
This is the reason why they hired a developer to work on Pitivi, a NLE. They plan on supporting it as Free software while commercial users purchase codecs for it. It's something they've stated a couple times.
Maybe they changed their mind, but I still expect they would want to make money off of something like that.
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 17, 2007 0:48 UTC (Wed) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link] If this were what was going on (and it's not) it would be a bad thing.
Windows and Mac users can easily get support for free codecs. If that support isn't quite as 'brain-dead easy' as it is for them to stick with proprietary codecs, that would be because there isn't enough demand. 'Content creators' using free software codecs is the only thing that will improve the situation. Using proprietary codecs to encode instead, for the short-term convenience of customers on proprietary platforms, merely results in the continuation of the lack of demand for free codecs on those platforms.
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 15, 2007 23:11 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (subscriber, #27876) [Link] ffmpeg already includes a free WMV decoder as well as (as far as I know) all the relevant MPEG decoders. Ah, that's certainly good to hear, thanks!
ffmpeg supports real codec(s) Posted Jan 16, 2007 2:39 UTC (Tue) by undefined (guest, #40876) [Link] real codec is supported by ffmpeg as "ffcook".
it's at least good enough to listen to bbc streams. and this is under debian amd64 pure, where win32 dlls don't help (without the hassle of configuring a chroot or messing with incomplete 32-bit library packages).
ffmpeg supports real codec(s) Posted Jan 16, 2007 20:54 UTC (Tue) by DonDiego (subscriber, #24141) [Link] An AMD64 native binary codec package is now available from the MPlayer website.
mplayer provides binary amd64 real libraries Posted Jan 17, 2007 3:38 UTC (Wed) by undefined (guest, #40876) [Link] i stand corrected: real supports linux on amd64, so mplayer has included those binary libraries, and only those libraries, in an amd64-specific codec tarball.
thanks for the heads-up, DonDiego.
It's legal in Europe. It's the US and Japan that have problems. Posted Jan 16, 2007 13:22 UTC (Tue) by dwheeler (guest, #1216) [Link] Software patents are not permitted (enforceable) in Europe, so there's no legal impediment to using FLOSS implementations such as ffmpeg for such codecs in Europe. The problem only arises in countries that unwisely permit software patents (e.g., US, Japan, etc.). In those countries you do need permissions. It's odd that they charge Euros; I'd expect U.S. dollars and yen to be the more common currencies, since they're the ones who need to pay.If they can generate 64-bit Linux versions (presumably this wouldn't be hard), they could help implement World Domination 201.
It's legal in Europe. It's the US and Japan that have problems. Posted Jan 16, 2007 20:16 UTC (Tue) by gravious (guest, #7662) [Link] fascinating - thanks... this puts esr's recent linspire shenanigans into context - this is as insightful and interesting a document as the original 'the cathedral and the bazaar', it may turn out to be just as seminal - in any case, by the authors' thinking we have but two years in which to win the desktop or lose it until the next big hardware transition. it is possible with the rise of consoles/set top boxes/media centers that consumer hardware may fragment in the near future or at least for a while in which case we may not have the case where either microsoft or apple get to dictate the face of computing and thus the world (i mean of course my world) for the next 20/30 years... interestingly i also saw the end of '07 as a point of congruence for the linux desktop - we have a config-less X.org shipping soon (7.3) we have the nouveau driver, we have beryl/compiz, we have the fluendo guys and mp3 (and just today Windows Media, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4!), we have avahi, we have a groovy wireless kernel maintainer so basically i predict that (my os of choice at the mo but surely all linux will benefit) ubuntu 7.10 will absolutely rock out of the box... of course the whole world domination 201 essay should be tempered with the usual refrain - those who are willing to sacrifice a few liberties will fall foul of the gnu tribe :)
thanks for the link dwheeler
ps: the killer 4GB+ app has to be the 3d web - think second life on steroids (streaming content within a 3d build-on-able shareable decentralized web 3.0), that much is obvious
Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux Posted Jan 16, 2007 17:39 UTC (Tue) by robert_s (subscriber, #42402) [Link] The thing that really concerns me about this is that this is directly funding the very companies who are fighting the pro-software-patent fight. By licensing software patents from them. So you've got to remember that every time one of these is purchased it is (financially at least) slightly reversing the efforts of those of us who have spent the time to turn up in Brussels after a bad nights sleep and sit in meetings and talk to MEPs all day.
Apart from that, Fluendo do some great things in Free software - pitivi, cortado, flumotion, much of the gstreamer maintenance, so this really conflicts me.
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