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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."

3 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. Helix obsolete.. by Penguinoflight · · Score: 1, Troll

    Helix just came out a few days ago, and already, it's not the best. Woohoo!

    --
    "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
    1 John 4:14
  2. NorthWoodsman by NorthWoodsman · · Score: 2, Troll

    Woohoo! One less reason to use Windows

    --
    1p}{ 1 sp34k |33+ +|-|e|\| p30p13 \/\/il| 8e i/\/\pr3553|)
  3. Who ? by tmark · · Score: 3, Troll

    Note there isn't any encoder yet, but who would like to encode into WMA while we have better and more open solutions?

    I don't get it, on one hand the poster is trumpeting the availability of the WMA codec and on the other hand he's wondering why anyone would want WMA in the first place ? If WMA is so redundant/inferior as he suggests, then why does ANYONE need WMA or hacked/reverse engineered WMA codecs ? Why would this thread be interesting at all ?
    If WMA availability is interesting, then as far as I'm concerned this means that the ability to encode WMA must be desirable to at least some people, as well.