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RealNetworks Releases Helix Source
teeheehee writes "According to this DigitalMass article, RealNetworks yesterday released source code for their audio and video players, with server-side and encoding software coming maybe in December. The code isn't complete, it's missing things like burning-to-cd routines; and they're getting flak from Microsoft calling it a ploy. Regardless, anytime a big company releases their source only good can come of it (for the public.)" Our story a few days ago had more information on the licensing, and gathered a couple of interesting posts from one user.
The code isn't complete, it's missing things like burning-to-cd routines;
How long before some enterprising h4x0r finds a way around this?
And what license is this released under? Can the code be legally extended/tweaked by others?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Real has realized that if they do not embrace OSS, they will be swept under the rug by the combined might of M$ (Windows Media) and AOL (Nullsoft Winamp).
If we see a real open-source Real-compatible player out there soon, it will fill a huge void in the rich media world. Combined with the existence of WMA codecs, we will at last have a simple, spam-free player that just works. No one uses RealOne or WMP or even QuickTime because they want to. These players are slow, intrusive, proprietary, and often loaded with spyware. Bring on the OSS alternative!
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
it's microsoft!
I know this article fits right in with Bash Microsoft Day (everyday!!) but I urge you to reconsider. The RN player is trashy and they're giving out the pieces of the code which nobody could benefit from. No one is going to use their code in other projects because their player is substandard, so it's a bit like being able to fuck an elderly, ugly whore for free... sure, it's free, but who gives a rat's ass?
It's called marketing. Real Networks doesn't need any help coding. I'm sure that they don't want any. They're just doing it as a marketing ploy to get more uber geeks releasing media in their format, and using their products. They're a company. They want to make a profit. They're not going to do something "for the good of the community" just for the hell of it. It's marketing, that's all. Anyone who thinks that they're being altruistic is very naive.
I was trying to add RTSP/RTP support to wget, but it turns out that Real uses a "secret handshake" to validate clients before xmiting data.
I am simply not smart enough (or at least not knowledgeable enough about debuggers and asm) to reverse engineer the protocol. I tried to check the Helix source a few weeks ago . . . but obviously it wasn't there.
Does anyone know if the handshake code is included in this source release?
-Peter
Between the popups, the annoying array of links to Realnetworks and their affiliates in multpiple bookmarks, start menu, control panel, system tray, desktop, the registry, and who knows where else...
I'd consider this nothing but a cheap marketing ploy. Real network has ZERO creditility with me. I hate them with a passion. They are the AoHell of media players.
eTrade SUCKS
It's about time.
Microsoft Corp
Company Press Release
REDMOND - 11:03 AM PST - We're happy to announce that in response to Real Network's move, Microsoft Corp is releasing the source code to our acclaimed Windows Media Player. The code isn't complete, it's missing things like burning-to-cd routines, playing audio routines, playing video routines, encoding, decoding, recording, saving, loading files, or generally functioning as a Media Player. However, we are sure the open source community will embrace our efforts and the three lines of code we did release.
Most of the codecs are still binary, the ones that there's actually source included for are ones that we've already had for a while. All we've gotten is another media player shell..
https://www.helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/client
c'mon only MP3 and H.263? weak!
Microsoft is just upset because Real used to be just as rabid about protecting their source code as Microsoft is and now they've released it. Interest in Real media formats is not exactly skyrocketing, and by doing this, they may be able to boost these sentiments, at least among the geek crowd. Integrating this into something like XMMS (personal preference) would be a Good Thing(tm).
"and they're getting flak from Microsoft calling it a ploy"
hah, ofcourse and microsoft believes that anything open source(or alike) is a ploy against them!
I hope XMMS incorporates some of Real's technology, so my Linux box can crash as frequently as my Windows one!
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
So, yes, this is somewhat significant, but if you think your garden variety basement Linux hacker can go from Recipe Blaster 2000 to writing good codecs, well, I need only remind you the chaos that resulted when Luther decided to publish source code.
A. Rightmann
Sounds to me like a last ditch effort to keep out of Chapter 11.
Real is known for proprietary products that take over a user's system.
Their most recent free player installs a system tray icon that can't be removed. Includes an auto-update feature that can't be disabled. And periodically uses that auto-update feature to spam the user.
Finding the free version of their player on their website is next to impossible.
The compression techniques are bulky and result in a lot of artifacting (both audio and video).
Its a bad product by a bad company and I refuse to install it on my systems. If there is something I want to see/hear and its only available as a RealMedia stream/file, then I don't download it.
Granted, in the long run, this may be a good thing because it is already a commonly used, established format, which is the kind of thing open-source software thrives on.
But like I said, I'm more inclined to believe that this is a last-ditch effort by RealNetworks to get their install base back up to the kinds of numbers they used to have.
I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
Can rejoice -- looks like this is what you were waiting for (assuming that this is what it looks like -- an open sourcing of the client codecs).
It was sort of a no-brainer. The video/audio codec is one area where the OSS community has kicked the crap out of the closed source community with free, technically excellent stuff like divx and vorbis. You want to compete with WMV, you need every edge you can get.
This is quite impressive. Apple's gone to a BSD core, Real open sourcing their software...
It's pretty much come down to the rest of the world using UNIX-like stuff/open source versus Microsoft. If this can't take down MS, then there's not a lot of hope for anything ever doing it.
May we never see th
... did they remember to remove the spyware and phone-home code before they released the source...err, sorry, "Secret Blueprint"? (you have to RTA to get that)
If I knew the wedgies I gave you back in 6th grade would have resulted in this . . . I might have taken a moments pause.
posted this earlier today, with some more details. Personally, from what I understand about it, this is a Good Thing (TM), because RealNetworks Realplayer offerings on Linux have always been a bit...crap? (Yes I know, the codec itself is still closed source, but still)
I'm going over here and I don't know why!
Is this any different from this article?
I never really liked Real anyway. The end result of their compression makes for really ugly video that still isn't that great of file size. I see no real need for their style of streaming video. Their software is crammed full of spy/ad ware. Anything they can do Apple or Microsoft can do better. Real comes across as pretty much worthless in my books.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Finaly Ill be able to dl RM clips again, without having to use their damn spy-ware/annoy-ware player/virus.
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
I can't wait until the first non-spyware players come out that will play the worthless .rm files that people like using for some reason. Even better would be a .rm to .anything_else encoder...perhaps that new video format Xiph is working on?
Here's some more coverage at Salon. Dig M$'s reaction:
It will be great when I can get a version of their players without all the messager and email stuff.
If a person has 40 gigz of audio or video in one format they will not lose quality to convert it over to another format.
Unless there is a plugin for winamp or xmms that will support Real Audio/Video, this attempt to get people to switch formats will have failed.This is why I beleive mp3 will never go away...LAME and OGG are both supported by xmms and winamp.
It all comes down to wether there will exist a quality ALL in one player
Get it to play QuickTime without installing the QuickTime player and I'm set (I know, it's a dream, and Apple should port anyway)
What a coup it would be for helix to have WMA compatibility. I'm just superimposing ffmpeg's WMA efforts over helix, though.
possibilities, possibilities...
i was hoping they'd release the source for the popups and that awesome tray app, the "No, Thanks" buttons, the code to make RealOne take over everything from *.mp3 to *.bat, and that sweet program that lets you download stuff just like normal, except with banner ads, and whatever code is responsible for that feeling that Satan is laughing somewhere whenever I click "run" or "accept eula" of anything made by that fucking company.
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
I remember just a few short days ago on the last post of this topic there were several cries of "vaporware" and "to treat it as anything but is a injustice to what IS out there".
Nice to see they followed up on it.
"The saddest words of mice and men, are not those which were, but should have been."
So RealNetworks has released a portion of their code. The problem is that it's only a portion. That's not going to do much in the way of improving adoption of their audio format, especially considering the existance of MP3 and OGG formats, both of which offer much better quality.
I understand that the real issue is in the streaming media format, and sure, a few modifications to the code they have released will allow RealMedia streams on portable devices (can you imagine watching a news broadcast on your digital, internet-enabled, camera equiped cell phone?). However, if people don't like the license, or have difficulty understanding the code... or for that matter, have difficulty getting support in understanding the code, then all of this will turn out to be an excercise in futility for RealNetworks.
Did anyone else read that as "RealNetworks Releases Helix PANTS?"?
The RM timeline for trying to make a profit
1) Release free proprietary media player
2) Sell customer usage data
3) Bombard with ads and paid for links
4) Release source code
5) ???
6) Profit
In reality it looks like they are trying anything to get people to use thier software in hopes of actually making money some day. The software package alone does not seem to be generating anything consistant in user experience or in income. Not good for a software only company making very few things. The problem is thier software is so intrusive and ad aware that people only use it because they HAVE to!
Now we can remove the skads of useless, annoying crap that the player comes with (not trying to troll, but the official RealPlayer is an incredibly annoying application) and cut it down the core--the excellent video and audio technologies that they have developed.
Wrap it up in a package 500K and have a nice, useful tool.
Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes. --E. W. Dijkstra
I have used RealProducer (yes, there is a linux version. thanks for asking) in the past to encode reealvideo to stream home movies to my family who lives 465 miles south. I don't like having to tell them to install realplayer so I have played around with Divx encoding. The problem is streaming.... divx doesn't start playing until the entire clip is downloaded (unlike realvideo which starts after the buffer rquirement is met). Will the new player and/or Helix server support streaming of different media?
Anyone know of a way to stream video under linux?
Maybe video-on-demand-over-IP is moving a step closer to reality.
Jeff
Real doesn't have to use GNU - and while I prefer GNU in most cases, they can do a simple "business vs personal" licensing system. People who want access to the client - go ahead, knock yourself out, code away. If you want access to the stuff that *makes* the RealPlayer files, the code might be out there - but if you're a business, be prepared to pay.
Now, I'm a business developing stuff. Do I go Quicktime/MS Media, where I can't see the code and it costs $$$, or go Real where I can see the code, and it's being improved (hopefully, granted) by all the Open Source fans out there who want to give it more powers.
Or Real can simply give away the code, and charge service for maintenance, adding new features, extra special versions for corporations, etc, etc, etc. There are companies now (Snort, Red Hat, etc) that use Open Source in that way and seem to be doing financially well.
Open Source doesn't have to mean suicide - if you're smart and wise about it.
52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel
For years I avoided Real Player like the plague because of its highjacking of other formats, and then endless updates & "features" that are configured by default to connect back to Real.
I just re-installed it and learned it can play dvd's, it is easier than ever to unsubscribe from all the Real updates, and they are releasing most of their code which should add some helpful updates in the future.
I will give the functionality and the design of the new player a thumbs up, although it can't play all the formats yet.
Add the trial version of intervideo windvd 2000, then uninstall it keeping all the shared files and your real player will play more dvd's with less hassle.
According to the Salon article someone already linked, the Helix license doesn't fulfill the Free Software or Open Source definitions. Royalty-free redistribution is only permitted noncommercially. Also, according to another post, most of the Realplayer codecs--the only parts of Realplayer that are interesting at all--are still closed.
We should stop and think about the fact that a major competitor in the multimedia playback and streaming market has embarked on it's promised initiative of open source development. This is significant. The opening of the code will allow highly adept open source hackers to "learn a few new tricks". If this "ploy", as some call it, is successful, then we can expect an increased amount of participation with the FOSS crowd from RealMedia. Such a thing could persuaude other companies to join the fun....
Well, it looks like someone has a little problem.
:)
The helix community server is tossing Internal Server Error about every 5th or 6th time I access it... Opps.
I wonder why?
BWP
Why all this ragging on RealPlayer? They offer a free linux client that works great. Of course the windows client is going to have stuff to go around, most free windows programs do. Just be glad that it doesn't make you install Gator, or any other nasty spyware. If you go to custom install you can prevent ANY of the icons from being placed on your desktop. You can choose not to use any of the other garbage (like the download manager).
You guys are so busy complaining about things on RealPlayer that can be changed in less than 2 minutes, yet you've probably spent countless hours getting a website _just_ right. Oh and the horrible, horrible system tray icon? Preferences -> System Tray Icon -> turn off. Nag screens? check the "please don't send me Special Offers and stuff". Was that so horrible?
I for one like RealOne Player. It pretty much plays anything under the sun. Just because you have to spend a couple minutes to set it up the way you want it to act doesn't mean its trash. Plus its prettier than WMP. (oo, there goes all my credibility right there)
He allready did look once.
It's not as if he's asking you to do the work for him.
When somone asks "does anybody know if" it doesn't always mean they're too lazy to do the research themselves, and in this case I'd say it's a sign of intelligence. It's similar to asking "has anyone found the needle in the haystack." before going and looking for it yourself.
Is this at all unclear that I am having problems with a Real extension to the protocol?
YES.
If you said "I added RTSP/RTP support to wget, but it terms out Real uses a 'secret handshake' to validate clients" then it would've been clear. But the fact you said you were *trying* to implement the protocol, followed by saying you weren't knowledgable enough to reverse engineer *the protocol* indicates that you're having trouble with the *protocol*, not with the Real validation scheme.
A simple "I tried the RFCs, but they didn't have the information on Real's validation scheme" would've been a much more reasonable response (as well as less typing). As it is, you get to be immortalized as an ass. Good job.
Well done.
Is it everything the community could wish for? Of course not. Is it everything that you plan on releasing? I hope not. Is it a gutsy step by a technology company trying to open up parts of its IP? Absolutely.
There's been a lot of people whining here about the pieces that aren't open-released yet. Remember that many of those are not Real's to release, but rather incorporate technologies that they themselves have licensed. They say that they are trying to resolve these issues - give them the benefit of the doubt here.
If the community is going to jeer anything less than full source release of all commercial software, it's going to be really hard to convince commercial software developers to release anything.
Works great for Spin-Amp, they only problem is it needs real audio installed.
If you google for it, you'll find that WiMP has had a bit of good spyware in it. Quicktime keeps pestering me to register. I use winamp...when i'm in win32. Real at least has a linux player...not that i'd ever use it. *shrug*
Who is this Anonymous Coward character, how does he post so much, and why is he always such a whore?
"Microsoft said RealNetworks' Helix initiative is a ploy."
MS should know. Lets see:
1) Ploy #1: bundling IE, WM Player, Outlook Express, etc. with Windows.
2) Ploy #2: using its billion in cash to enlist the help of politicians.
3) Ploy #3: calling open-source a 'virus'.
4) Ploy #4: due to the failure of Ploy #3, sharing some of its source in its shared-source initiative.
smd4985
Its about their website and services that it brings to their "partners"
Their media player was working fine on version 6 and with the advent of their "realone" it is merely now a device to get you to their website and subscribe to their services, nothing more nothing less, a very targeted webbrowser if you will, on Windows it actually uses the IE activeX control as a core browser part of the player (including alert dialogs) which is probably why we havent seen a linux version (thank goodness).
The battle of the players was won long ago, its now about "web services" , Microsoft took a leaf out of Real ones's book and with Windows Media Player 9 they are now no different,
I have 8 buttons on the front panel of WMP9, 3 of those directly lead to windowsmedia.com and what they and their "partners" offer, plugins ? sure i gotta pay for those (unlike winamp) track identification ? via cddb ? nope MS want to do that so they can match me (with their unique player id (selected on by default of course)) with my music tastes and help their partners sell to me (via the msn network), of course RealPlayer has a unique ID option and 70% of the buttons on RealOne lead to Reals website.
I installed RealOne free player and i had a hell of a time losing all the spyware crap and firewalling their encrypted communications to the Real mothership and iam a "power user" imagine the millions of poor users who have no idea whats going on behind the scenes with their imho "private" data, after firewalling Real off the player became severly crippled and most of the functions wouldnt work without me being pestered to "upgrade" (translation: pay money to see their partners adverts) upon every boot Real would try to contact the mothership with encrypted data, spyware in the truest sense of the word
This is why the actual protocol source isnt released its the only thing that forces people to download their player to see streams, sure give away the player shell and server app source for free and when the user hits the stream with their old Real player 6 they are forced to get a modern player which will be RealOne, job done
give them the glass pipe for free but the rocks of crack you gotta pay for.
It hasnt been about the technicalities of producing a better more efficient media player that can actually help the user for a couple of years now, its about how Real/Microsoft and their "partners" can increase their ROI and make us much profit out of each customer/punter/mug any way they can.
So now that RealNetworks has released some of the dna for their RealMedial product line, does that mean someone's gonna write code to infect it? That's just what we need. If email viruses weren't bad enough, now our PC's will start getting sick of playing music... literally!
I'll skip past most of your whining, and focus on something you're just straight-up technically wrong about.
The RealVideo 9 codec has the best compression effciency (bang for the bit) of any publically available codec in a GM version (I'm discounting Windows Media Video 9, since it is still in beta, but that would be somewhat better in some cases).
Sure, it rarely looks perfect, but it does better than other codecs.
Bear in mind that going from uncompressed video to modem data rates is about a 12000:1 compression! Folks used to watching DivX don't often realize that those files use data rates several times that of typical real-time streaming even over broadband. Also, a file download can have huge data rate spikes that aren't as possible under real-time streaming.
My video compression blog
This is about as exciting as Microsoft releasing the sourcecode to Notepad or DOS 1.0. Hoo fucking ray.
Opportunity knocks. Karma hunts you down.
At least by my definitions, Real is neither "going the Open Source way" nor becoming a true community player. The code they have released does nothing that MPlayer and others can't already. We already have (usually superior) Open Source implementations of MP3, H.263, RTSP, RTP, RTCP, etc. and we don't need their cheezy bloated client frontend. Real makes money on their proprietary codec licensing and associated marketing / branding / etc. Although I believe this is a flawed business model, it's unlikely they will change anytime soon, though we can hope for the best. I think most of their protocols and codecs have been reverse enginneered and re-implemented by now anyways. If not, it's only a matter of time. Unless they get big into the whole DRM nonsense game..
Why not choose a license that people understand? Why not offer the code *ALSO* under the GPL license.
This what Mozilla, Sun (OpenOffice), Trolltech (QT) and no doubt others, realized was the best course (often IN ADDITION to other licenses).
Any non-free competitor (like MS) is not going to be able to use the GPL code, so I don't see how it will hurt.
I guess they don't want you to have the freedom to distribute commercially, so they would object to Redhat etc.. charging for a CD with their code on it.
They may need to make an exception to the GPL, to allow for their binary only modules to be linked in, but that is not unheard of.
jabber: johnynek@jabber.org
Where do you get Vorbis offering better quality at a given data rate? Try doing a 64 Kbps CBR encode (since it is for streaming) to .ogg versus a 64 kbps RealAudio 8 Stereo Music encode. RA8 will sounds a LOT better. And you can still dance to it at 32 Kbps.
My video compression blog
How about a dumb player for Win32 and Linux? Plays Real formats, and does nothing else. . No adware. No spyware. No themes. No unnecessary buttons. Then those of us who don't trust Real (for good reason) could play content in their declining format.
It'll be interesting to see how/if Real pulls through now that Helix is mostly open source. The only other example that comes to mind of a company that started with a proprietary product and then took it open when the sky darkened is Netscape. I'd wager Real may be looking at a similar fate. AOL would have probably devoured them already if not for their current financial system. It's pretty clear that AOL likes Real in the same way they like Nullsoft, as Real is distributed with Netscape.
So the question is... will Real survive, will they be eaten up by a bigger fish, or will they tank and GPL their source?
"I am root. Bow before me." To this I say, "You are root, and you bear the sins of the world upon your shoulders."
Come on guys, two repeats of recent articles in the same day. I saw the article on the AP Wire and did a search on /. for Helix to discover that . The other repeat from today is that yellow superworm article. Here's the previous posting.
for anybody downloading or streaming random video these days -- trying to find out how to decode the 3 million different codecs and or "slightly different" formats of video is no small task. Can you imagine how un-succesfull or frustrating music trading would have been with 75% of music files be labeled "mp3" yet needing 55 different decoders in order to be able to play most of them? And then having to have commercial (proprietary -- Sorenson) codecs to play the other 25%?
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
Hey, I'm curious: Does the slow uptake of open source software signal the movement's peak or just the normal amount of Linux h4x0rz hypocrisy?
www.worldtechtribune.com
Make sure and give this post a negative rating and call it a troll, freaks...
It looks like this maybe actually possible soon!
Anyone know if this software will let me convert
Scott.
Come on guys, two repeats of recent articles in the same day. I saw the article on the AP Wire and did a search on /. for Helix to discover that it was posted two days ago. The other repeat from today is that yellow superworm article. Here's the previous posting.
This post isn't meant as insult or hostile, so don't take it that way. I've been reading post after post saying how horrible this is going to be, how horrible real has been, blah blah. I don't think i saw one post that had the line "after trying the player...". I mean, yeah, realplayer sucked, but this is somehting new, why judge it so harshly before you've even tried it. Right now i'm d/l and compiling it, maybe you guys should do that too before posting.
just my $.02
--Andrew
In related news, RealNetworks, Inc (RNWK) stock was down 7.22% for the day.
And, guess what, the codecs for Real's audio and video formats are just what they aren't releasing in source form.
All we are getting with Helix DNA is a lot of useless infrastructure code--no meat. Thanks, but no thanks. This is a useless marketing ploy.
For what it's worth, if a player attempts a RTSP connection to a real server and it fails it'll then attempt to get it via HTTP. By default, a newly installed real server is set up for http access to get around restrictive firewalls.
So basically, even w/o RTSP you still get a free (and open source) player that works for a variety of file formats (real, quicktime, mpeg, etc.). HTTP real streams sound just fine and often times can perform better that RTSP. In the past, I've seen many problems with users conencting via UDP (RTSP via UDP ports 6970-32000) and then getting a lot of drop outs. When this happens, I tell them to change their player preferences to HTTP and it performs better for them every time.
As an aside, I've been using helix server for a few months now and it's really great. Users didnt even notice when I killed an exisiting windows media server and migrated the streams over to our new helix box.
I'd personally like to see the following happen:
1) add support for streaming mp3. currently helix will stream mp3 files (only on-demand... no live streams) but it only works with real players. yech! why not allow winamp, itunes, xmmp, etc. to join the party?
2) ogg support for the few who want it
...until this happens. And believe me, it will happen a lot.
Umm yeah compared to a DVD source maybe, but considering that most real streams are scaled 4x on both axis and usually have half framerate (160x120x15fps) for modem connections, that's not so hard. That alone gives you a 32x reduction from the original source so now you only have to compress 375:1, which is well within the realm of divx and mpeg4's performance.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
RealNetworks source code?
something like that:
#include
#include
main()
{
spyonuser();
crashfrequently();
}
(And yes, it's all open source.)
(But no, it doesn't do the Real Networks challenge-response either :-(
business: transactions benefical to all involved sides
ploy: attemt of one group involved to harm another involved group
So, IMO, it's not a ploy while also "we" will benefit ftom this.
hany
Actually, I was shocked watching the announcement yesterday that RealPlayer was gobbling 80% of the CPU on my iBook, and still stuttering. Do you find it disproporionately resource-intensive compared to MPEG-4, Sorenson 3, Windoze Media or the other contemporary codecs?
--Chris (realinvalidname)
Still, that's $600 more than gcc and/or ProjectBuilder, and $600 more than I'm willing to spend to participate in an open-source project.
realinvalidname
Ogg Theora was going to use the old VP3 codec and build on that... what does this implicate for Theora? And Tarkin, for that matter?
[insert witty comment here]
Standards are different for all things, so the standard set by man is by
no means the only 'certain' standard. If you mistake what is relative for
something certain, you have strayed far from the ultimate truth.
-- Chuang Tzu
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