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Windows Media Player in Linux
mr lee writes "Today CodeWeavers released CrossOver plugin 1.1 which now supports Windows Media Player 6.4 under Linux. As much I would not like to see or support sites that use Windows Media shite, its still really nice to have this option. Not too mention kick ass QuickTime playing." Update: 02/27 18:30 GMT by H : I've actually been using this - it's done really really well. I'm planning on doing a fuller review soon, but it's very well done.
IIRC Windows Media Player was the one program where Microsoft released a native Linux version. It didn't last long though.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
It probably won't make any difference, but doesn't this, in a way, legitimize the wma format?
My Karma was at 49, then they switched to words. All that work for nothing!
I want to see if somebody can get this to download the latest codecs from Microsoft servers
which supports Win32 Codecs including Quicktime MOV, etc. see Here.
Mplayer already does pretty much everything Windows Media Player can do, and it's native to Linux. The Quicktime support mentioned in the writeup is a red herring, Windows Media Player (IIRC) still does not support Sorenson Quicktimes, making it no better than xanim at playing modern .mov files.
I read the internet for the articles.
This is typical:
Ooo... DRM is bad! Die DRM
Hey! I can use windows media under linux now. yay!
Lather, rinse, repeat.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Not to scare you guys (no web site, just a mailing list?), but - did any of you ask Microsoft about this before you wrote it?
I'm not implying that you did anything wrong, but in today's insane world, the DMCA can pretty much be wielded like a baseball bat. People like CNN who use WMP to distribute their advertisements before their content in a streaming manner expect their ads to be preserved. If you've added an extra functionality in here, or any method whatsoever to bypass ads, save streaming video, or otherwise do anything but sit in your chair and watch what they send you, you might get hit by the eager-beaver Microsoft Legal Team. In fact, just making this functionality user modifiable (i.e., open source) might be enough for you to become a "circumvention device".
Care to comment?
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
The use or non-use of WMA/WMV by less than one percent of the web-browsing market has exactly zero bearing on the "legitimacy" of the format. Please see a doctor about these delusions of grandeur.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Apparently you're talking about the encoder. I'm talking about the player.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Companies are like little greedy children, they don't play nice together. Apple has quicktime, Microsoft has windows media player. Quicktime, as you say, runs like garbage under windows, and from my experience, windows media player runs like crap on the Mac platforms. The only thing that works on all are "standard" file types such as mpg, mp3, etc.
Most people wait until it's time to post a comment until they trot out the usual anti-Microsoft karma whoring. Congratulations "mr lee", for lowering Slashdot pandering to a new level.
Windows Media Player does work just fine. Quicktime is the app that will attempt to take over associations and bug you with "upgrade now?" reminders every time you run it.
Ok, you might want to read this:
The crossover plugin will let you play Windows media player files, but emedding inside the browser is very problematic. Why? simple - The Windows Media player when works with Netscape - uses Netscape's Java (1.1.x) to communicate with the player and to embedd the window.
What does this means to you? it means that you can watch WMP embedded in your browser - if you're using the old Netscape - Version 4.x - not Konqureror, not Mozilla (any build).
It's not CodeWeaver's fault - it's the way MS did it - the exact thing will happend on Windows. The guys from CodeWeavers will look into it and probably try to hack something..
Other features that are not mentioned - you can now use Trillian, Real Player 8 (the much better Windows version, not the crappy Linux version), you can install fonts directly from MS web site, and the speed seems to be imrpvoed.
Lots of other plugins has been added to the crossover, and IMHO it's worth the $19.95 price (there is a free upgrade to previous owners), and of course - all the hacks that was done to wine - are rolling back to the main tree - so your money helps open source...
I'm sure that people here will write that "don't buy it since it support non standard audio/video format" - to them I'm saying that when 90% of the people have those players - webmasters won't give a crap about others...
Cheers,
Mesh Mesh
I bought CrossOver back in November, and I LOVE it. As a previous poster talked about, I don't enjoy "legitimizing" uber-proprietary formats like Sorensen Quicktime or Windows Media, but sometimes one has no choice. This is where CrossOver comes in, and it does its job admirably. The install and setup are simple, and best of all, it JUST WORKS, just as all payware ought to. If all commercial/payware software was as well made and as well supported as Crossover, Free software wouldn't have nearly the appeal that it does right now, IMHO...
:)
Anyway, if you're running Linux and you've ever missed not being able to watch movie trailers, certain pr0n stuff, etc, don't suffer any longer! Plunk down the $20, it's worth it! You get great software AND you're supporting the single largest (to my knowledge) contributor to the WINE project. (Not to mention helping put some food on the table for some great geeks - I live near St Paul so I got a free tour of their office; they're cool people.
The Free desktop that Just Works
Mplayer is awesome, I view divx movies with it. There's even a spanking new pretty gui. It's the only movie player for nix that actually works well. There's also aviplay, while it's worth a mention, the code is messy and it doesn't work as well.
Liberty.
That's all well and good, but Mr. Lee wasn't talking about Quicktime under Windows. He said, and I quote:
He is clearly referring to using the Crossover Plugin to play Quicktime under Linux, which it indeed does a "kick-ass" job of doing.
You might want to have that jerking knee attended to by a physician.
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
Most sites require media player 7 these days.
Have a Happy.
The fact I just saw an ad for Visual Studio .NET on Slashdot.
"It takes many nails to build a crib, but one screw to fill it."
While it's great that Codeweavers has managed to get enough of WINE working to support Windows Media Player, it's still a very bad idea for us to use it. Here's why.
Every time you click on a Windows Media file, you are sending a message to the site operator which basically says "I support Microsoft's efforts to monopolize digital media." You're voting with your mouse.
Right now, in most places we still have a choice of formats: Windows Media, Real, streaming MP3, whatever. If everyone just mindlessly chooses the Windows Media formats without a second thought, site operators are going to look at their logs and say "well, nobody is using the Real/MP3/whatever formats, so let's just start webcasting exclusively in Windows Media format." Do you want that to happen? I sure don't. We cannot afford to let Microsoft monopolize this market. Think of the ramifications of Microsoft having a 100 percent lock on digital content. Digital Rights Management? Easy... just put it in Windows Media. Region lockouts? Put it in Windows Media. Want to work around those problems? Sorry, you can't, because digital media is Windows Media and you don't have any other choice!
Let's not forget that even though Windows Media Player may now run on Linux, you'll never see a Linux distribution that includes it, because the Crossover Plugin is not free, and Microsoft's licenses prevent WMP from appearing on Linux CD's.
Great technology, bad way to use it. As Linux users we must keep on clicking on those non-Microsoft formats, and politely asking site operators to maintain or add media in non-Microsoft formats. Let's not succumb to the urge to satisfy short-term viewing/listening needs at the expense of sacrificing long-term interoperability.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I'm an avid FreeBSD user, so I'm curious as to if this works in FreeBSD. Does CodeWeavers have a FreeBSD port, or does this work under Linux emulation? If it does, I'll be purchasing it ASAP!
Lack of Multimedia? Netscape crashing every 10 minutes? When was the last time you tried Linux? You should give it another go, you might be surprised...as it is, the only multimedia format I couldn't play on my Linux box were .wma and .asf (I've had Crossover for Quicktime for a while, now - works beautifully). As for Netscape crashing, I ran Netscape 6.1 for four months and maybe the application unexpectedly quit two or three times (and it was on all the time...)
No, the only thing Linux lacks right now as far as multimedia goes is a strong competitor to Adobe Illustrator and a non-linear video editing program (like Avid, or even Premiere). The rest is all there, son.
Reminder: find a new sig
So, am I to understand that MS sucks so very bad that we need to run out, install a different MS-free OS and then get a utility to run pieces of MS software to have a decent computing experience yet give no "thank you" to MS for making a product that enables us to have that enjoyable computing experience?
This reminds me of street beggars spitting on people who give them money for being capitalist pigs. Sheesh.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Um, no, it wasn't fake. The 'slide in' effect came from the video source. If you've ever changed resolutions on an older video projector, you'd see that the horizontal alignment starts way off and then slides to the center.
I can't remember where I read it (it is on the Codeweavers site, though), that the reason WiMP wasn't supported from the get-go was that the license says something about how it can only be installed in the Windows platform, and Crossover/Wine kinda doesn't qualify.
Ah, yes, here is the snippet from the support forums (Tue, 28 Aug 2001):
..but I'm not going to complain or anything, of course! Now the only thing I need my MacOS and Windows boxed (any work, anyway) for is, well, games!
Hilary Rosen's speech was about her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money.
I took a quick look at the EULA in my Windows Media directory. This snippet seems important:
IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A VALIDLY LICENSED COPY OF ANY VERSION OR EDITION OF MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98, MICROSOFT WINDOWS MILLENUM EDITION, MICROSOFT WINDOWS 2000 OPERATING SYSTEM OR ANY MICROSOFT OPERATING SYSTEM THAT IS A SUCCESSOR TO ANY OF THOSE OPERATING SYSTEMS (EACH AN "OS PRODUCT"), YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO INSTALL, COPY OR OTHERWISE USE THE OS COMPONENTS AND YOU HAVE NO RIGHTS UNDER THIS SUPPLEMENTAL EULA.
Earlier in the EULA, Windows Media Player is described as an"OS Component". So, it looks like any use of Windows Media Player on a non-Windows operating system is probably not permitted. If it were, you can be sure MS would fix that in the next version of the EULA.
It will be interesting to see whether MS tries to do anything to CodeWeavers on this front.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
Note on Java Support. The Operating System Components may contain support for programs written in Java. Java technology is not fault tolerant and is not designed, manufactured, or intended for use or resale as on-line control equipment in hazardous environments requiring fail-safe performance, such as in the operation of nuclear facilities, aircraft navigation or communication systems, air traffic control, direct life support machines, or weapons systems, in which the failure of Java technology could lead directly to death, personal injury, or severe physical or environmental damage.
What does this say about microsoft's views towards java technologies?
start > run > mplayer2 > hit enter....
then view > options > formats > hit select all then ok. close mplayer2 and run some windows media formats. you'll notice that you get the old one back without using the wmp8 hog.
Kick them for using the most widely supported media format out there.
Hmmm. I'm not exactly armed with the latest media format usage figures (and, right now, I'm not exactly inclined to go looking for a reliable independent source that provides them), but I very much doubt that WMA is more popular than MP3 or WAV, or that WMV is more popular than MPEG or RM.
Care to provide any impartial hard evidence to back up that claim?
Just look at how many third party players support the various formats. And look at how many downloads out there use one of Microsoft's proprietary formats as opposed to one of the alternatives I mentioned.
Maybe, just maybe, you're wrong.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Already we have the library avifile for managing nearly any WMP format, as well as xine and mplayer. Quicktime was important because no one has gotten Sorenson to work in any form under linux. Windows Media not only plays using avifile and such, but keeps the wine stuff at the lowest level possible, even replacing win32 codecs with native ones when possible (i.e. vorbis, mp3, divx, etc...). This means for one thing performance is tolerable. For another, at the higher levels you are guaranteed to do more sophisticated things with the output. Foremost of these is making use of hardware overlay surfaces in different color formats (YUV overlays) providing hardware colorspace conversion and smooth scaling, improving both quality and performance. Using WMP through wine means that not only is much more of the code done in inefficient win32-in-linux mode, it means there is no capacity for native codecs and that all colorspace conversion, scaling, and filtering must be done in software, prohibitively slow.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
This is slashdot. It has always been like this. I consider myself very lucky when the LINKS work in an article, let alone if the article is actually accurate. I am ver, VERY lucky if there are no mispellings in the headlines.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I'm not trolling, but I wish WiMP worked as good under Mac OSX as it does in 'Doze. I have an iBook 500MHz G3, and the videos are often choppy when I play high bit rate videos (1000kbps+). Quicktime plays the same high quality video just fine. I make my own videos and like the compression of windows media format though, seems to offer really good quality for file size.
but i don't use it much because it proprietary.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Of course, to play realmedia files maybe you should try realplayer? Just a thought... Thought the site is horrible to navigate, you can find it. Basically, you have to request the older version, then select unix, then poke around enough and you can even find a RealOne beta for linux, which supports the XVideo extension for hardware scaling and colorspace conversion.
For Windows Media, try avifile, PythonTheater, xine, or mplayer. Though it is good they are working towards this stuff, Windows Media Player through wine is inelegant, since the overhead imposed by wine and the lack of XVideo support makes media playback bad. Only reason to tolerate QuickTime through wine is because there is no other option for Sorenson encoded media...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Sinjun trolls:
Way to go there buddy. Kick them for using the most widely supported media format out there. How dare they ensure that the largest number of people can view their stuff!?
Um, the MPEG-2 Video Codec works in Windows Media Player, Real Player, Quicktime Viewer, DVD Players, VCD Players, and dozens of Free Software programs on pretty much any platform with decent processor speed and video specifications. It produces good quality video in a reasonable file size as well, and lets the producer decide just how much to compress the video. By any sane measure, it is the "most widely supported [video] media format out there".
Calling a Windows-only media format that just one program can view "the most widely supported" is either naively ill-informed or a deliberate lie.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Actually, my bigger concern here would this:
From the Windows Media Player EULA:
NOTE: If you do not have a validly licensed copy of any version or edition of Microsoft Windows 98, Microsoft Windows Millenum Edition, Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system or any Microsoft operating system that is a successor to any of those operating systems (each an "os product"), you are not authorized to install, copy or otherwise use the os components and you have no rights under this supplemental EULA.
Oops.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
I have MPlayer, Xine, and Oogle. I can play DivX4, MPEG, etc. What else am I missing that Media Player v6.4 can handle? Is it only WMV and WMA? If so, then I thought it was only supported in 7.x+?
Thank you in advance.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
'Free' software only really appeals to those people that refuse to pay for software outright... and would end up pirating pay software anyway.
How about:
'Free' software only really appeals to those people that refuse to pirate...
I've "discovered" the fact that i can't switch many people to Linux because they better like pirating Windows stuff. The very second things become unpirateable, they'll start bitching like babies and will run to Linux OR pay for cheap alternatives to the defacto standards of today.
unfinished: (adj.)
Wine has been able to run Media Player 6.4 for some time now. I wrote a small script to launch it some time ago, called mplayer2, so as not to be confused with the Linux Mplayer.
/bin/mplayer2 "%u"
/bin directory.
#!/bin/sh
cd "/mnt/windows/Program Files/Windows Media Player"
wine --managed --debugmsg -all mplayer2.exe $1
Then set the mime type in Navigator/Mozilla/Galeon/Konqueror like this:
MIMEType: video/x-ms-asf
Application:
The above is for Navigator, but you get the idea. I of course made the script executable and as you can see moved it to the
It's not going to embed it in your browser and most of the commercial sites that offer trailers require the newest player. But it will work as well as the Codeweavers plugin if the need should arise, without the cost.
Disclaimer: I have purchased the Crossover plugin and am very happy with it.
Or how about "a thurough review".
Clickwrap 'licenses' ain't worth the photons emitted by your display. Ignore it and get on with it. CodeWeavers might not have the lawyers to officially tell people to use it and certainly couldn't bundle it (copyright has nothing to do with a EULA) but that's a practical limitation and not a legal or moral one.
Democrat delenda est
I agree with you, but don't you think you could have said it a bit more elequently? Perhaps you wouldn't be considered flamebait, and might even be taken seriously if you learn to refrain from using phrases like "giant, stinking, smelly, steaming, smoking pile of dog-doo."
I work in a Community College computer lab, (The Windows half, the other half of the college is Apple-only) and I absolutely hate how QuickTime forces itself into the Control Panel, crams itself into the starting programs list and consistantly begs you to upgrade to the pro version every time you open a file with it. I admit that I've never liked the company, but it's not bringing itself into any better standing with non-Apple fans with this kind of behavior. So far only RealPlayer and MSN messenger have managed to top its annoyance-factor.
Try Irfanview. It's small, it's unobtrusive, it's fast and it's freeware. There are plugins for many different media types. If you like it, be sure to thank the author for all of his hard work!
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
I use it on a regular basis and it never crashed (but I only used it to watch trailers etc.)
The cost is $20 for CrossOver plugin. Also if you paid attention CrossOver is neither "free" or "open source" so whatever argument you are trying to hammer together is not even attacking your intended target.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Plugger 4.0 worked well for me with an MPlayer/Galeon combo. I'll give out a Plugger hint you won't find on the Plugger site. At on my Debian machine it needed a little help to register it's MIME types with Mozilla. Put a copy of the pluggerrc file in the .mozilla directory in your $HOME. Any time you edit the pluggerrc (the one in your $HOME/.mozilla) to add another MIME type, delete the appreg file in the same directory. This forces Mozilla/Galeon to reparse the pluggerc file.
Plugger recently updated to 4.0, be sure you're using that version. Plugger can be had from:
http://fredrik.hubbe.net/plugger.html
BTW. I was able to compile it under Debian PowerPC and it worked fine there.
that with the .dll codecs themselves, you can play .wmv & .asf in xine.
I've never used codeweavers wine, I only use the standard one, and I've had WMA 6.4 running for over a year now.
David
This is great!
You simply have no idea just how much I'm itching to try out WMP on my Linux box, especially after reading all of today's coverage, including this .
"Provided by the management for your protection."
yes, a lame hack for a lame player. But better than nothing.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Word and Excel run using Wine (not sure about Publisher...never really heard of it). OpenOffice is also a suitable replacement for those programs in almost every case (hasn't failed on me for any Word or Excel documents, and sometimes opens documents better than the "real" Office!)
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
I'm a FreeBSD user, so I've even further removed than all you Linux users out there, but AVIFILE has never failed me so far. If Windows Media Player can play it, so can AVIFILE. So I have to ask, what's the problem? Why the need for more emulation?
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Last year a company called Starbak released a streaming server on Linux that supports Window Media Technology (WMT). They built the server from scratch without using any Microsoft code. They initiated OEM discussions with several companies. These large companies got nervous about a reverse engineered server and wanted Starbak to get a license from Microsoft. Suprisingly, Microsoft didn't object and licensed the technology to Starbak. Starbak lists Microsoft as a partner and they talk about Microsoft licensing WMT to Starbak.
From the Starbak
"STARBAK has a Windows Media Technology (WMT) server license to support the delivery of WMT to the desktop over the company's proprietary embedded operating system (OS) platform. This WMT licensing event represented a first for the streaming media industry"
The proprietary embedded OS is actually Linux.
Microsoft was even willing to license the source code to other companies to port WMT to other OSes. I don't think anyone has taken them up on their offer.
FWIW, I bought Crossover when it first came out, and have used it to view some Sorenson Quiktime stuff.
But I hope people stop and think about what they're doing today, beyond merely the proprietary format angle. And it's this: You're going to run Microsoft code no your box?
I wasn't afraid to run closed Apple code. I wsan't even afraid to run closed Macromedia code (though maybe I should have been). But now we're talking about the company that gave the world applications like Word and Excel, which have powerful macro languages embedded in documents. We're talking about the company that gave the world Outlook, which in some versions, executes scripts that have been sent to it. We're talking about the company that gave the world Internet Explorer, which will download and execute code from a website (AxtiveX controls) and run it without a sandbox or any restrictions on what it can do.
I don't know anything about the wma format. That's the whole point of it being proprietary. Can there be "active content" in there? Does Media Player do anything strange and unusual? Has the code been audited -- or hell, even casually glanced at -- by anyone who isn't mentally infected (e.g. outside of Microsoft).
No thanks. I don't won't have MS code on my box. People who read proprietary MS formats and run MS code, are in a sort of a "fool me ten times, shame on me" situation.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
What's the #1 reason why people still use Windows, even though they hate its broken crappiness? Alternatives like Linux and BSD lack backward-compatibility with Windows.
What does does the CrossOver plugin offer? Partial, but significant, backward-compatibility with Windows. Net result: more people use Linux, so more Linux-native software is developed, Microsoft is marginalized, and everybody wins.
I just bought the downloadable version of the plugin, you really should, too.
My "Windows-only" characterization was ill-informed, I was unaware that Windows Media Player was being distributed for the Macintosh. That still doesn't change the fact that there is better support for MPEG-2 than ASF on the Mac (support is included with the OS), and MPEG-2 support on Windows is as good as ASF support. To my knowledge there is no support for ASF on any platform other than Windows and Macintosh.
Yes, MPlayer and Xine are capable of playing ASF files on many platforms, but as far as I know they are only able to do this by using codec libraries written for Windows. Furthermore, this use of these codecs is generally in violation of software EULA's. I do not call this support.
My point stands without that that single inaccurate phrase. Replace it with "Windows-centric media format", or "Windows Media only format" as the AC suggested.
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Open mind, insert foot.