Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

[Posted January 15, 2007 by cook]

From:		"Christian F.K. Schaller" <christian-AT-fluendo.com>
To:		info-AT-ap.org, pr-AT-lwn.net, gstreamer-announce-AT-lists.sourceforge.net, fluendo-announce-AT-lists.fluendo.com
Subject:		Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for GNU/Linux and Solaris
Date:		Mon, 15 Jan 2007 20:54:51 +0100

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for GNU/Linux and
Solaris

Fluendo announces an extensive set of plug-ins enabling Windows Media,
MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 support for GNU/Linux and Solaris systems

Tuesday Monday 15th, 2007 - Barcelona, Spain

Fluendo, leader in GNU/Linux and Unix multimedia solutions, is expanding
its offerings with the general availability of a wide range of codecs
for the GNU/Linux and Solaris desktop and server systems. The Fluendo
codecs plug directly into the popular and widely used GStreamer
multimedia framework available on all the major GNU/Linux and Solaris
systems.

Users of GNU/Linux and Solaris operating systems have previously lacked
solutions which enabled them to license and use popular media formats
such as Windows Media, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 in accordance with the laws of
their country. Through Fluendo's agreements with Microsoft and MPEG LA
such a solution is now available.

By closely integrating with the GStreamer multimedia framework,
Fluendo's new plugins enable support for these widely used codecs in
popular GNU/Linux and Solaris applications such as Totem Video Player,
Rhythmbox music player, Banshee Music player, Elisa Media Center and the
Jokosher sound editor. The close cooperation between Fluendo and the
Totem media player project means that the plugins automatically enable
support for media enabled websites such as cnn.com which use Windows
Media formats and streaming protocols.

With this announcement Fluendo makes available plug-ins to handle
Windows Media Audio, Windows Media Video, Windows Media MMS streaming
protocol handling, MPEG-2 video decoding, MPEG-4 Part 2 video decoding,
ASF container format demuxing, MPEG-2 Program and Transport Stream
container format demuxing, MPEG-4 ISO container format demuxing and MP3
audio. Further codecs are planned for release over the course of 2007.

âWe are very happy to be able to provide the GNU/Linux and Solaris
communities with this set of multimedia codecs. We have had these codecs
in development for quite some time, to ensure they are of the highest
quality possible and that all legal aspects are properly covered. By
offering this drop-in solution we hope to increase the competitiveness
of the GNU/Linux and Solaris platforms., says Fluendo co-founder Pascal
Pegaz.

Fluendo S.A.

Fluendo is a company specialising in delivering products and consulting
services focusing on UNIX and GNU/Linux multimedia. Fluendo employs
several of the central developers of the GStreamer multimedia framework,
which is quickly establishing itself as the de-facto standard multimedia
framework for GNU/Linux and UNIX systems.

Fluendo Web Shop

All the codecs announced here are immediately available from the Fluendo
web shop at http://shop.fluendo.com

For more information

For more information on Fluendo, visit the website at
http://www.fluendo.com/
or mail <info@fluendo.com>

Fluendo would like to thank Carlo Piana of Tamos Piana & Partners for
his legal advice and assistance during the process of licensing and
developing these codecs. Being a lawyer and legal expert on issues such
as software licensing, software patents and open source and free
software licensees his assistance has been crucial for bringing this
project to a successful completion.


Christian F.K. Schaller
-------------------------
Business Development Manager
Fluendo S.A.
Office Phone: +34 933175153

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Jan 15, 2007 20:27 UTC (Mon) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link]

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.

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 (i
guess 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 (guest, #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 (guest, #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.

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 15, 2007 23:18 UTC (Mon) by russell (guest, #10458) [Link]

Will they provide update repositories that fit in with the more popular Linux distributions? Or is this going to be a binary interface that will break occasionally?

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 15, 2007 23:34 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Only when apt-get and yum learn how to charge you 28 for the "complete set".

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 16, 2007 9:41 UTC (Tue) by Segora (subscriber, #8209) [Link]

At least some apt integration can be had by using the ssh method with key based authentication. To make it end user friendly, a few more things would have to be done:

* define a format for software sources in web pages
* create gui for adding software sources from web pages and providing the public key to vendors
* integrate scp file server with subscription database

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 16, 2007 19:51 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

deb http://downloads.company.com/debian main private/youruid

A similar method was used by Progeny for its "transition" service, IIRC.

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 16, 2007 14:34 UTC (Tue) by gdt (subscriber, #6284) [Link]

I'd be a bit careful. As far as I know Microsoft has never opened a patent pool or otherwise asked for intellectual property assertions for its WMA/WMV formats. So Fluendo's license with only Microsoft for WMA/WMV patents may not be adequate. You'd want an indemnification clause in the contract in case other parties come forward with patent claims against you.

The Microsoft patents have not been tested. It is possible that they will not survive a challenge. So you'd want a clause that if someone challenges the patents then you pay into a trust fund from that moment and your trust monies are returned if the patent is defeated.

Also, you need to be careful about global differences in patent laws and registers. Our EU friends don't have software patents. And the patent register in other countries may differ from that in the USA. In this gloabal scenario you don't want a license for specific patent so much as an license for all patents held by Microsoft that may reasonably by used in creating or using WMA/WMV technologies. But without seeing the license who know what you are buying?

I don't understand why end-users need patent licenses at all. The economic value of the patent can't be much -- Microsoft gives its media playing software away, Fluendo is selling them <$10. So in parts of the world that treat a patent breach as a economic crime you're looking at a fine of $10.

I also don't understand why these are binary. After all you've paid for the patent license. Perhaps MS have licensing terms with a NDA, but MPEG doesn't.

As binary modules which remove a small legal risk for people in the USA the Fluendo offering isn't that attractive. The risk of binary modules stuffing your system is much more than the risk of MS stuffing your system.

Fluendo announces Windows Media and MPEG codec support for Linux

Posted Jan 16, 2007 15:08 UTC (Tue) by coulamac (guest, #21690) [Link]

I'll reproduce Christian's post on Slashdot regarding the announcement(hopefully with his approval). The post addresses the free codec issue:

I see a lot of people confused about why we are releasing these codecs when there are things like the open source ffmpeg codecs etc.
Our goal is not to provide the community with codecs which there is absolutly no support for already as
that would be foolish. Our goal is to provide a 100% legal option which I know a lot of companies who have or
want to deploy linux desktops have been looking for. These companies like open source, but they also have policies in place
which hinders them from deploying solutions which have clear patent issues hanging over them in their country of operations. This is unfortunatly
the case with most multimedia codecs and even though we have spent a lot on resources on Xiph codecs here at Fluendo and are now working with BBC
on Dirac there is still some way to go before the need for non-free codecs are gone.

So for those in a situation where they can freely use gst-ffmpeg and similar options, more power to you! For those who the lack of licensed codecs
has been a hinderance or problem for adopting Linux (or Solaris) desktops at your company or institution or even private use, then we hope our plugins will be a good solution.

Christian Schaller
Fluendo