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Native Sorenson Playback Comes to Linux

Pivot writes: "With the release of Xine v0.9.11a, it is now possible to play back Quicktime movies encoded with the Sorenson SVQ1 encoding natively. There are still some minor issues with sound, and still no support for SVQ3 encoding, but overall this is a major achievement. Downloads are at xine.sf.net. I wonder what apple will do about this." Note: you may have to cut and paste that "movies" link into a new tab or browser.

16 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Linux is catchings up... by papasui · · Score: 2, Insightful

    but articles like this really do point out the weakest points of it. If your strong into multimedia (graphic design, sound mixing, 3D modeling, etc). You're still better off in most cases to be using a Win/Mac machine with a much more mature and complete software solutions. This isn't a knock against linux or other *nix's just points out what the weakest links are.

    1. Re:Linux is catchings up... by Roadmaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This has absolutely nothing to do with Linux. The reason why "You're still better off in most cases to be using a Win/Mac machine" for multimedia, is the fact that application developers DONT WANT to target Linux. It's certainly not Linux's fault that, since Apple refuses to either port Quicktime to Linux or provide info so somebody else can implement compatibility, we have to go around hacking stuff like this.

      Lack of (certain niche) applications certainly hurts Linux, but it's NOT the Linux community's fault. And I guess if the companies don't want to target their products for us Linux users, then too bad for them, it's lost business for them, not for me.

    2. Re:Linux is catchings up... by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This isn't a knock against linux or other *nix's just points out what the weakest links are.

      And a working Sorenson codec available for Linux is a good step toward closing some of those gaps.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    3. Re:Linux is catchings up... by 1010011010 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      application developers DONT WANT to target Linux

      That's a problem, but the crappy sound support (OSS, Alsa will be better), non-existant color management (X says: what's that?), poor font support (-including-a-strange-30-year-old-craptacular-nami ng-convention),
      "window managers" making window placement a quirky and non-standard thing, etc. -- are all much more serious problems.

      I like Linux, it runs on my home computers 24/7. But, as Linus recently noted, "all the interesting stuff is on the desktop" -- it's where the most work is needed at the current time.

      How many things in X will we need to fix?
      * font support

      * color management

      * alpha blending support

      * usable configuration (Think Mac, Windows, even BeOS)

      * changing resolutions on the fly

      * vnc (or other RFB) server support, so I can view my desktop -- the one shown on the monitor -- from another computer.

      --
      Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  2. Does it really matter? by Turbyne · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Apple will keep on rolling out Quicktime, A/V people will keep buying Apple products, and as for the media player wars, how many people actually paid ~$30 for the "Pro" versions? The real money's in the content creation tools, e.g. the video editor, streaming server, etc. Apple makes some decent money from this department, so I don't see how throwing another player into a market saturated by freebies is going to change anything.

    And DivX is based on MPEG-4, which is supported in Quicktime 6.

    --
    ~A'Ëq'i4d)^'$ÊSÈòB
  3. Re:Licensing? Patents? by G-funk · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Stuff them, release it AC somewhere, post it here, then by the time somebody starts to "cease and desist" it'll be too late.

    --
    Send lawyers, guns, and money!
  4. Re:Licensing? Patents? by moyix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Definitely agree with some of the above posters--release it anonymously and securely. This sounds like a job for... Freenet!

  5. Re:Licensing? Patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    If that guy does send out his code, i will send out my code, which may or may not be different.

  6. This is NOT clean-room implemented by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you read the thread you will see that the author looked at Apple's QT binaries for codebooks to decode some of the encodings. I'm sure there are EULAs that prohibit this. This patch is going to have a lot of legal problems. That's a shame because it is a big boost for QT and thus for Apple, but that's the way it is. I grabbed a copy of it so that when they get an injunction from Apple I'll still be able to post it somewhere in the Free World (ie, not in the US).

    1. Re:This is NOT clean-room implemented by blakestah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This logic is all confused. You all assume this relates to copyright infringement. It doesn't.

      Patent protection is valid against reverse engineering. Clean room implementations are irrelevant. What needs to be shown is that the functionality is accomplished without using any of the methods in the patent. This is true whether the person making the decoder knew of the methods or not. This is 'working around' a patent.

      Clean-room reverse engineering is useful for making work-alikes of copyrighted methods. In those cases, copyright protects specific expression, and not methods. So, using a different specific expression to accomplish the same methods is fine. The same algorithms can be used.

  7. Re:who cares by LiENUS · · Score: 3, Insightful

    saying divx is better than quicktime is like saying msie is better than the gimp
    they dont compare
    qt is a container
    you could say qt sucks avi is better
    or sorensen sucks divx is better
    but not qt sucks divx is better.

  8. Not really Apples problem by Lord+Kenja · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Well it seems a lot of people has some missunderstanding regarding Sorensen and Apple. So let's get it right: Apple don't own Sorensen what Apple owns is the exclusive right to distribute Sorensen for use in video playback (wich is why they complained when it was going to be used in Flash also. They have to enforce contracts like these or they will be invalid).

    This isn't redistribution however. As far as I understand it's a standard QT for Windows that's running under Linux (that's what Wine does. Makes windows apps run under Linux - right?). So it don't change anything. On the other hand someone posted that they have reverse engineered some of the binaries from QT. Depending on if it's Apples binaries or Sorensens one of the two might not like that (Sorensen most of all perhaps. Since they have an interrest in protecting their technology).

  9. Re:YAXSP (Re:Linux is catchings up...) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You've just agreed that colour management, alpha blending support, usable configuration, changing resolutions on the fly and VNC (or other RFB) server support are all either not done, not mainstream or not used. I'd say the original poster was right.

  10. Re:YAXSP (Re:Linux is catchings up...) by 1010011010 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So what you're saying is that, at the moment, there is no alpha support, usable configuration, resolution and color depth changing, or VNC support, and that there is also no color management support in X applications -- is the XCMS broken? Why don't people use it? Color management gets used on Macs. Why not X, if it's been supported for 15 years?

    SO your post comes down to, "We can use freetype to render truetype fonts." Yeah, okay, what about the -ugly-and-wierd-font-descriptors-it-uses?

    --
    Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  11. MPEG-4 codec will even the playing field by AIXadmin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The whole purpose of MPEG-4 is that it takes the player out of the game. All that matters is that you can decode/encode MPEG-4. In a year or two, Sorenson should be irrelevant, and XINE will just need MPEG-4 support.
    That being said, doesn't MPEG-4 have some pretty herendous licensing restrictions of its own?
    Slashdotter's, none the less, should be campaigning for sites to support MPEG-4 . If they want Linux, and *BSD to become fully supported across streaming sites.

  12. Re:Licensing? Patents? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You missed the point. Just laws and injust laws here. Apples and oranges.

    It is immoral to abuse a child.

    It is immoral to "steal" a DVD.

    It is immoral to edit a copyrighted Sorenson MOV and pass it off as your own.

    It is not immoral to watch a DVD you paid for.

    It is not immoral to watch a publically available Sorenson MOV.