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ffmpeg: Free Software's WMA decoder

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the way-to-go-guys dept.

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."

6 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. can anyone else hear by waspleg · · Score: 3, Funny

    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

  2. Re:Microsoft / Slashdot crowd... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    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

  3. That's a Dec by nickovs · · Score: 4, Funny

    "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 :-)

    --
    If intelligent life is too complex to evolve on its own, who designed God?
    1. Re:That's a Dec by Virtex · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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

      --
      For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
  4. Re:Is this REALLY a good thing? by benwb · · Score: 4, Funny

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

  5. Re:Is this REALLY a good thing? by Rich0 · · Score: 5, Funny
    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.