ffmpeg: Free Software's WMA decoder

mmu_man writes "This morning, after the usual spams, I got this from the ffmpeg-devel mailing list: Here it is, something we waited for long. Now we have a FreeSoftware (LGPL) WMA (Windows Media Audio) decoder. WMA is the highly proprietary audio codec M$ is pushing along with its user-locking tools like DRM. this will free us from the ugly DLL hacks required to play DivX until now. Note there isn't any encoder yet, but who would like to encode into WMA while we have better and more open solutions? With this new codec, ffmpeg really proves itself as the most complete audio/video grabbing, convertion and streaming solution, for Linux, but also FreeBSD, Windows and even BeOS. Note ffmpeg codecs are used in a lot of other FreeSoftware projects, like mplayer."

Comments

Slashdot Beatitudes

[Anonymous Coward]

And seeing the multitudes, He went up unto the mountain: and when He was set, his disciples came unto him: And He opened his mouth, and taught them, saying,

"Blessed are the poor in threshold: for theirs is the Kingdom of the Page-Lengthening and Page-Widening Posts.

"Blessed are they that mourn the death of *BSD: for they shall be comforted with an ultradense Linux server from VA Linux, now sold by California Digital Corporation.

"Blessed are the posters of smug one-liners: for they shall inherit an Account Capped at 50.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after The First Post: for they shall have the Third or Fourth Post.

"Blessed are the karma whores: for they shall obtain "Score: 5, Insightful".

"Blessed are those who dismiss out-of-hand: for they shall fail to see the Point of the Original Post.

"Blessed are those who seek to associate themselves with the latest techno-fad: for they shall be called 3L33T for at least Another Half Hour.

"Blessed are they which are persecuted for their own self-righteousness' sake: for theirs is the Kingdom of "Ask Slashdot".

"Blessed are the over-eager, who believe that Open Source is a social movement heralding the rise of a new generation: for they shall not realize that There Are No Sacred Cows.

"Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for the sake of your Favorite Operating System.

"Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you.

THIS IS THE WORD OF THE LORD

can anyone else hear

[waspleg]

the silenced black helicopters of M$'s strike team starting to lift off with balmer leaning out the side of the lead one doing the monkey dance to inspire his Crack Team of Black Ops Lawyers to victory in the inevitable DCMA suit they will bring against this project

the key word is propreitary

Re:Microsoft / Slashdot crowd...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about that list link, it was wrong... try this one instead (my "M$" clipboard added a space into my last post.)

http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2002-07 -22

That's a Dec

[nickovs]

"With this new codec, ffmpeg really proves itself"

Surely this is a "dec", not a "codec". A codec is a Coder/Decoder, and what they've got here is just a Decoder :-)

Re:That's a Dec

[Virtex]

Surely this is a "dec", not a "codec"

Nah. These days it's called a "Compaq".

Re:Is this REALLY a good thing?

[benwb]

You get audited every year for the rest of your life for being "too smart for your own good."

Re:Is this REALLY a good thing?

[Rich0]

1. It might be breaking the DMCA, by reverse-engineering or by circumventing DRM. I do not know if this might apply though.

Simple fix:

In config.h:
#DEFINE DMCA_COMPLIANT

In drm.c:
#include "config.h" ...
#ifdef DMCA_COMPLIANT
if (DRM_enabled && DRM_no_rights) dontplay;
#endif

In FAQ.txt
75. Can I comment out the #define DMCA_COMPLIANT flag?

Nope - you can't do that. It would make you a VERY BAD person...

Gotta love open source... As distributed it is completely DMCA compliant and DRM enabled.