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The Next Generation of XAnim
You don't hear much about xanim anymore, but it's certainly an old stand by (FAQ: Yes, you can use it to play cinepak encoded movies if you have a few closed source modules). But are you curious about what's happening with old faithful?
rsk noted that the
next generation xanim featurelist is online. It's not ready yet, but it's nice to see an update.
As psergiu said, "polite".
And every time someone emailed him about it, Cmdr Taco delayed the Slash code release 24 hours!
* Quicktime for Linux does [rare] MJPEG encoded Quicktime for Linux
* Xanim doesn't fully support MPEG1
* SMPEG is also only MPEG 1 based
* XMovie does MPEG2
* AviFile is an interface for MS-MPEG4, among others
* Livid [library] and OMS [player] plays DVD movies
* RealPlayer plays RealMedia content and nothing else
Each of these libraries implements the same features over and over again. Different rendering modes, resampling for screen sizes, fullscreen mode, player interfaces and skinning, plugins [visualization, etc] etc.
This is a massive duplication of effort and [unlike similar duplications of effort] neither project covers the full spectrum of whats ouyt there [compare this to KDE - GNOME, which both happily run whatever apps are out there providing the libraries are installed].
We need to put a standard for pluggable codecs / extensions [an extension being a parent for other codecs - eg, the AviFile version of WINE, or a non-Real interface for RealPlayer codec]. Perhaps integrate it into SDL if appropriate.
The result would be a standard api [which a number of players could be used on top of] suitable for Audio and Video, and easily extensible. Can the developers of all the projects mentioned in this thread start please talking to each other?
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RealNetworks sucks anyway. See this article.
But with DivX ;-), isn't QuickTime dead? Sorenson or any other codec? OK, the AVI / DivX ;-) combination is not streamable, but for Star Wars trailers, TV show episodes or movies you don't really need streaming anyway. I hope the promised 2nd generation will come up with something easy to use that is *free* and available on all platforms. No more closed codecs...
Jane and Joe mightn't care, but that doesn't mean it's not important. It also doesn't mean that noone cares.
Sue Secretary certainly cares when Word and Windows continually makes her day a misery. How she wished that she could get her boss to hire a freelance programmer to fix the bugs that _really_ irritate her! Unfortunately, her boss would love to spend a bit of money to allow her to be more productive, but it's just plain impossible to fix bugs in Word or Windows. Worst of all, Microsoft aren't supporting these versions anymore, and so won't fix the bugs. Sue's boss would much rather give money to a programmer who can fix their problems than to the company who has abandoned them, but he has no choice.
Don't be a dick. These things really do make a difference to normal, everyday people in normal, everyday ways. Not caring about them is like not caring about what kind of insurance you have on your house/car/whatever.
I'm getting sick of the "what about your car's code?" question. Realise that free software is designed for general purpose computers, like PCs, as opposed to embedded, special purpose stuff. It may also apply to these things, but I dunno, I haven't thought about it enough yet.
On first glance, there does appear to be some merit for it, at least once a model of car has been discontinued. If you drive an older car, one before all this computerized gadgetry became embedded in them, then it's relatively easy for you to fix your car when it breaks. You can go to any spare parts place and get what you need, and failing that you can probably fashion it yourself out of sheet metal or a similar model or something.
But if it's the embedded computer which needs fixing, and the car company has told you that they don't support your car anymore (and so won't sell you spare parts), you're substantially more fucked. In fact, you're basically stuck with the proverbial car-with-hood-welded-shut. It's the computer, not the hood, that's welded shut, but the effect is the same. If the car company had decided to release the source and specs to your car as free software, then you and other owners of your car, perhaps with similar problems, could fix it. Hell, you could even make it better, fix any bugs or tweak things to be exactly how you like them! The patches and tools could be available on the Internet. If you can't do it, then you could hire someone to do it for you - techies could make a living doing this kind of thing on weekends. It's really the same as Sue Secretary's case.
Like I said before, don't be a dick.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
A lot of people are trivializing this article as "just another software announcement" - and an old one at that. True, "Slashdot is not Freshmeat!" But I say it's much more than that. I don't have the URL handy, but there was recently a survey of current Windows users (including CEOs, CTOs, and IT admins). The subject was "Given that UNIX is considered much more stable than Windows, why not migrate?"
IIRC, about 4% said a move to a UNIX-based OS would result in incompatibility issues. Another 7% mentioned having to retrain employees. But approximately 84% replied that UNIX - and Linux in particular - has no support for viewing pornography in a video form. One Fortune 500 exec noted that the online porn industry is rapidly migrating to streaming video because of the high availability of bandwidth. Until Linux, BSD, etc. decide to support this vital part of the market, Microsoft will continue to dominate.
yes, of course I'm kidding
-- "Complacency is a far more dangerous attitude than outrage." -Naomi Littlebear
I noticed this is going to be under a proprietary "free for non-comm" license.
Are there any gpl'd players out there that will:
1) Use the video4linux api;
2) play realtime onscreen with controls;
3) optionally create a video file (prefer mpeg but others are ok).
TIA.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Because people make typos when they are typing with just one hand.
pr0n is more of a geek term than one for l33t-haX0rZ -- look it up in The New Hacker's Dictionary
Here's a prediction for you. In a few years time, when Linux and other Free OSes have a very substantial market share, every company and their dog will be barking to port their stuff to these platforms. Presently, these companies doesn't need Linux, but I think there'll come a time when they do. When that time comes, they'll have no choice but to submit and make their stuff Free, because they will want to get their stuff on Linux but will cop "hostility" if it's not Free.
And rightly so. If they want to get onto this bandwagon and reap the rewards, then they need to be prepared to play by our rules or else be shoved off. They would fight if we tried to enter their proprietary software arena and not play by the rules, after all. They shouldn't be surprised that people using Free OSes want Free software to play movie files.
Apple (and others like them) shouldn't be surprised if their current attitude puts them in a worse situation in the future.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
xawtv.
apt-get install xawtv
quality is so-so (could be the card) but it will vidcap 12fps (avi format) on a 400mhz box, and display what appears to be full speed.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I read the webpage, but it doesn't say if it will finally support the Sorensen codec for quicktime or not (biggest reason to browse in windows besides windows media player).
On a related note, does anybody know if it is at all possible (via wine or something) to listen to windows media player streams in Linux ? I find that honestly Realplayer streams blow chunks, and I would really love to listen tp WMP streams instead (www.com is a perfect example)
-- the cake is a lie
MPEG is very well supported with the SMPEG library, thanks to loki. There's even a plugin for xmms that works quite well.
AVI's are _fully_ support with avifile. I mean fullscreen, full frame rate support of ever avi filetype, including the DivX ;-) codec. This is a jaw-dropping piece of software.
There's even a project called XMPS which takes smpeg, avifile, and a couple other programs and puts them into one great piece of software.
So why do we need xanim?
Since Apple doesnt seem to be doing anything about the linux community anytime soon, i wonder if there are any plans in the works to make xanim able to play sorenson encoded quicktime files..
all those pretty trailers like Final Fantasy (The Movie.) Its the best cg ive ever seen, but i cant watch it because xanim wont play it.
And all those funny commercials on adcritic. is there maybe a way using windows dll's or something?
It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
I've never gotten Xanim to work properly.
One great alternative though, is xtheater, which can play DIVX AVI files, and last time I checked, Microsoft's ASF (Not reliably thought...)
Check it out at http://xtheater.sourceforge.net.
I suppose everybody here knows about aviplay (DivX is a fast way to make yourself popular) but although it uses .dll and
other "non open source" resources who cares?
After reading the XAnim page it's obvious
that the player won't be GPL (at least since
the beginning) and that it will keep using those
precompiled modules to play certain formats.
Latest aviplay (0.50) can even play DivX sound,
and they are working hard on support encoding (not
too reliable at this moment), soon we will all be able to backups our DVDs from Linux. If only we
would have got a decent DVD player... how many
nightmares the RIAA could have avoided ...
Regards,
- german
PS: you can found aviplay at http://divx.euro.ru
This planned feature list is not 'news', but that's not my point. I last checked up on the latest version of xanim months ago because I was trying to find something that would play mpegs properly, and thought that a new version might be able to do so. The answer was no, but I did find this feature list, which does not appear to have changed much since I saw it then. This project appears to be quite sluggish.
Once the new swiss-army-knife-xanim actually gets released, then let us know.
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
Aviplay is actually a Linux iomplementation of...welll....aviplay, a Windows multimedia API made by Microsoft. It uses small chunks of Windows based source code to provide the environment a Windows based codec expects, then provides a native Linux interface for players [most notably aviplay player] to plug into. It works surprisingly well.
;-)
;-) Audio
Here's the full list os supported codecs...note the Microsoft ones.
ATI VCR-2
Cinepak®
DivX
Indeo® Video 3.2, 4.1, 5.0
Microsoft MPEG-4
Motion JPEG ( based on rather slow libjpeg, so not yet very usable )
Audio:
DivX
Microsoft GSM 6.10
IMA ADPCM
MSN Audio
MPEG Layer-1,2,3 Audio
PCM
On an unrelated note - RealPlayer for Linux is version 7 and won't play any of the recent media streams. Time to add Real to your Book of Grudges again.
Unfortunately, neither of these will play the stuff that I really want to see, like the Lord of the Rings Trailer or the D&D movie trailer. I'm forced to fall back to VMWare for that. Damn Quicktime...
> Why did it make it to slashdot...?
.fli|.flc files and old quicktime ones. And is available on most unices not only on linux and freebsd (like avifile).
Because it was the first movie|animation player for unix|linux and it was the only one available for free for a loooong period of time. It deserves our respect. I do install-it every time i find-it packaged in a distribution even if i use-it very seldom.
An xanim has his strenghts - it's the only one that can play
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
avifile may read divx's, but it certainly doesn't work for all windows video CODECs. Have you ever tried getting it to use one other than those it comes bundled with - I hav't been able to get a single additional one to work - then all fail in different ways.
Still, if you do want to use avifile, aviplay and XMPS are not the best players. Try LAMP or XTheatre instead.
There are better options for MPEG also. SMPEG only works for MPEG-1 (as does mtvp). For MPEG-2, try xmovie, xine, or the VideoLan client.
There's also at least 3 Open Source divx (i.e. MPEG-4) CODEC efforts that I'm aware of - I submitted the story yesterday, but it was rejected.
Okay... I'm friggin tired of this attitude. Yes, it is *damn* important that it's Open Source. Did you ever think in your tiny little mind that there *might* just be something that you aren't getting about Open Source/Free Software?
It's not the quality... for every quality comparison where Open Source wins (Apache vs. IIS 4.0, BSD Networking vs. the rest of the world), there is another where closed source wins (Any DTP program).
The difference is that Open Source is a not a magic bullet to quality, but rather places the onus of quality on the userbase. It's not about free software, it's about the potential of Free software.
Look around... not counting the people who use Linux on faith (either because it's trendy, or because someone they trust told them to try it), most users of Linux are people who make a living using computers. Most are people who have a serious personal investment in computing. And they choose Linux. It's hard to explain to someone who isn't a developer (heck, it takes time for even a computer developer) why XML is better than a binary file -- i.e., why open standards are better than propietary. Why the following is worse than 20k of code to read an XML file (pseudocode ahoy!):
struct foo {
int head,
int torso,
char lleg,
char rleg
}
write(fp,foo,sizeof(foo))
It's faster, smaller, leaves a smaller footprint... why not use it? For the exact same reason Linus refuses to change the /proc fs to binary read files. There is a philosophy inherent that is time tested, and experience shows that will result in more work at first, and less work later.
And that's what both Open Source and Free Software are... philosophies that pay back later. Some of it pays off now (gimp, Konqueror, qmail), but it's the potential that, once it hits critical mass, will pay off in the future.
--
Evan "Typed hurriedly, not proofread, as I need to catch a train..." E.
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
xanim doesn't fully support MPEG-1 - it's not buggy (not that xanim doesn't have bugs in other formats) but just that it only supports MPEG key frames, not intermediate ones.
Try mtv, smpeg, xmovie, LAMP..
If you want decent fullscreen support on a slower speed machine (as you would get in Windows), then you need XFree 4.0 with the Xv extension and a player that supports it. Xv supports shared memory transfer of YUV images (MPEG decoder output) from user space directly to the graphics card memory, and uses the graphics card's hardware YUV-to-RGB conversion and scaling support.
BTW, there's only a few cards (such as Matrox g400) that have Xv driver support yet.
If you don't have Xv support, then second best would be a player like LAMP that supports DGA (direct video memory access under XFree).
xmovie
LAMP
What, I don't count? Drat! :)
Anyhow, user numbers shouldn't count for anyone who was on slashdot before we had them, and mholve and I both fall in that category...
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Avifile does almost everything that windows media player does. It's excellent. Have a look at it here: http://divx.euro.ru
Dear Sir / Madam
Today, many video clips are powered by the Sorenson codec. I notice that there are decoders / viewers for Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh, yet there are none for GNU/Linux and UNIX in general.
There is a UNIX video stream player called 'Xanim', found at http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/ . This program has the ability to plugin binary decoder modules, to allow playback of many different codecs. I note that the Sorenson codec is not among them.
Because of Xanim's ability to accept binary modules, the source code to your codec does not need to be revealed to anyone. Please consider supporting the Linux and UNIX communities by providing a module for Xanim. We all look forward to watching videos powered by Sorenson!
Regards
My name here
The last thing we need is them refusing, on account of rude people emailing them...
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Is that an African or European swallow?