Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux [LWN.net]

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 15, 2007 20:51 UTC (Mon) by bk (guest, #25617)
In reply to: Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux by danieldk
Parent article: Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

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.

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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.

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.