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.

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It is a ploy, sort of, but we stand to benefit

[GreatDave]

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!

Re:It is a ploy, sort of, but we stand to benefit

[0xdeadbeef]

It ensures an enduring mark upon the outside world, but doesn't provide any benefit to anyone.

It disperses food for local scavengers.

and if anyone knows how to spot a ploy...

[Sagarian]

it's microsoft!

Of course it's a ploy...

[NineNine]

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.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[eric6]

regardless of their intentions, isn't this a beneficial result? We get free, clean media players, they get a bigger market share. Sure it's for their benefit, but ours too. "Not being altruistic" isn't necessarily a reason to be against this. I'd be far more suspicious of a move that had nothing in it for the mover.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[GlassHeart]

They're just doing it as a marketing ploy to get more uber geeks releasing media in their format

Somehow I doubt that there'll be a big market demand for original movies made by ubergeeks.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[benwaggoner]

They certainly do want 3rd party help in porting client software to non-mainstream OS's. RealOne is only available for Windows and (in beta) MacOS X. While they've had a *NIX client in the past, I'm guessing that this source release is how they expect to address those platforms in the future.

Which, given how much "if they just released the source, I'd port it" offers media software have received on Slashdot over the years, it's certainly a fair calling of that bluff.

They've said one of the big motivating factors being their OSS initiative is the daunting task of having to port RealPlayer to about 30 different mobile phone platforms. Real simply doesn't have enough engineers to do all that in-house.

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[SirSlud]

> They're a company. They want to make a profit.

I'm not sure how to say this in non flame bait terms, so I will follow Ed the Sock's advice: "If you dont have anything nice to say, say it often."

So, I'm going to punch the next person who says what you said. Everybody knows companies must make a profit. Nobody doesn't know.

I am so sick of posters quickly pointing out that company A isn't making move B because they've turned into gum-drop fairies who suddendly transcend the need to make money. Of course they don't! Who thinks they do?! Companies are meant to serve a market and can only exist in the absense of selflessness. While you can definately make a case that individual companies may sacrifice time to time in the interest of the overall health of the market, companies *must* and *do* place self interest (survival of the company) above the health of the system (the market).

Now humans, we can be selfless, because we have different goals other that simply surviving as individuals. Our desire to see others succeed where we may not, for example, may cause a human to sacrifice in order to contibute to another human or an overall social order. You can find humans who would _happily_ die if they could sufficiently contibute to an external social order they are ideologically aligned with (think of everything from organ donations to suicide bombers.)

If you were to ask me, the existance of apparent altruism shows how humans (at least some, I contend most) ultimately seek to live lives with a minimal amount of social conflict. We will 'pay it forward' and risk acting in selfless manners even if we cannot be garaunteed that our actions will result in the desired consequence (ie, less social conflict.) Much how people are willing to spend 2 dollars a day for lottery tickets despite no garauntee of winning. The perceived result of acting selflessly is sufficiently wanted enough to motivate us to engage in said behaviour even in the face of evidence that might suggest we may never experience it; just like the lottery.

But the bottom line is, who cares if they're being altruistic or not .. is this good for us or bad? Any discussion on whether Real Networks is being selfless or not is moot and a waste of time.

Please pass this message on to other folks. These kinds of parent posts get people all worked up, but for no reason at all!

Re:Of course it's a ploy...

[digidave]

And how often is a web developer/master responsible for choosing media formats? I'd guess more often than not they are in small companies. I know I am and I'm not even in a small company. My boss came to me a couple of months ago with a proposal he got to stream our video. The format was Windows media, but I had to say that it was ok because there are no appropriate and available alternatives.

This changes that and you can bet that if this takes off at all I'll be pushing for it next year. With a couple of thousand streams per day this is important for us, and I love the idea of embracing a technology that everyone can use.

The Real Player Secret Handshake

[pete-classic]

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

Re:The Real Player Secret Handshake

[pete-classic]

Are you fucking serious?

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.

Is this at all unclear that I am having problems with a Real extension to the protocol?

To answer your question, I have. One of those pages indicates that Real is within the bounds of the protocol (RTSP) to give a challenge and refuse to stream the data if it doesn't get the "right" response.

I guess I am not clear if you are trolling me, or if /. has degenerated to the point that when someone asks about trying to implement a protocol, links to the relevant RFCs is actually considered insightful.

I'm not sure which would be worse . . .

-Peter

Re:The Real Player Secret Handshake

[vodka2112]

Well, actually, I know exactly what you are talking about. I implemented an RTSP streaming server for my former employers. It supported, among others, the Real Player too.

I even figured out a work-around, and I vaguely remember what it is. It's been 3 years, so you'll have to excuse me if I get some minor details wrong.

IIRC, there was an undocumented MD5 sum which came along with the SETUP request, which needed another MD5 sum in the response to the SETUP request. Not responding with a sum, or with a faulty sum caused the player to puke out then and there.

Now, I figured out that this MD5 sum was based on the "Date" field in the request, and on nothing else. So what I did was take a trace of a session between a real server and a real player, and pulled the date and the sum out of that.

Using the same combination of date and sum, and all other fields with whatever values they are supposed to have got the player to acknowledge the server.

I am sorry I do not remember more of this. I might have some further info on this on my comp at home. Since it's been 3 years now, I think my NDA with my former employers should have expired too.

Try this out and see if it's helpful.

Re:The Real Player Secret Handshake

[kilonad]

I realize you're not asking if it's been done before, but rather if it's included in the release. I'd almost put money on it not being included in the release, and here's why. A couple years ago Real shut down a little company for producing two products: StreamboxVCR and StreamboxRipper (could be one in the same, it's been a while). IIRC, the major reasons for doing this were twofold: they reverse-engineered the secret handshake, and you could save streamed media. Real realized that if people could easily save media streamed over their protocols, the big media companies would flock to a competitor (i.e., microsoft) and therefore shut the company down. I'm not sure if the fact that they reverse engineered the handshake actually had anything to do with the shutdown, but it was the previously missing key to saving streamed media. I highly doubt they'll just give it away now.

Meanwhile...

[CySurflex]

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.

Re:Meanwhile...

[unicron]

*/
Windows Media Player Code follows:
*/

Re:Meanwhile...

[dozer]

Actually, I have the source code to Windows Media Player. Here it is in its entirety:

/*
* Windows Media Player
*/

void main(void)
{
CallSecretWin32MediaPlayFunction();
exit(0);
}

Re:Meanwhile...

[poot_rootbeer]

*/
Windows Media Player Code follows:
*/

Figures that even this amount of MS code contains a bug...

Most of the Codecs are Still Binary!

[PhoenixK7]

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!

Re:Most of the Codecs are Still Binary!

[Ilgaz]

So, they will Open the source of that Realvideo 9 (which is ages ahead of wmedia imho), ms will grab the source than release Windows Media 10 with all those features?

I am a windows media 9 beta user too... I, in fact had to install it since my player was seriously broken. It still misses features, the fun is, MS can't still use flash etc in streams (makes some funny scripting in browser for that functionality), it can't render HTML in a presentation while Real uses IE dll's to make that stuff happen.

It sounds like Sorenson matter to me... What will they do than? work at some pizza place? :)

A ploy?

[Spazholio]

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).

The source code is not a panacea

[Adam Rightmann]

especially for something as real time intensive as multimedia software. You need to be a proficient, educated coder and write highly optimal code if you want to make improvements to Real Player, we've all seen the jaggies, blur, blocks and skipped audio resulting from poorly written multimedia code.

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.

I smell a rat

[Dynedain]

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.

Re:I smell a rat

[squiggleslash]

Funny thing is that MPlayer has done exactly that. I have a recent build on my PC, 0.90pre8-2.95.3, and it recognises an installed copy of RealPlayer and uses the codecs. Usually works, except in the occasional rare instance where I don't get any audio. This even works with MEncoder meaning you can convert your .rms into more standard formats.

Of course, stuff like RTSP: doesn't work (yet)...

And all of you running PPC or Alpha Linux

[0x0d0a]

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.

The Register...

[GalionTheElf]

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)

Article at Salon

[No_Weak_Heart]

Here's some more coverage at Salon. Dig M$'s reaction:

"Real is using open source theatrics to try to change the perception among the developer community that they are hard to work with and too restrictive in their licensing terms," said Michael Aldridge, lead product manager of Microsoft's Windows Digital Media

Re:How open is this source?

[be-fan]

It wouldn't have to be a hax0r. The thing is open source, so any code monkey could do it. What most likely happened was that the CD rom burning code was licensed from some other company, and had to be ripped out for the open source release.

Re:How open is this source?

[The Evil Couch]

probably little time at all, considering how many freeware CD burning programs there are.

going open source can only help them out. hell, just a few minutes ago, I was banging my head into the wall trying to record a real video stream. with new programs and UIs for manipulating real formats, people may actually use real video.

maybe they'll also quit hiding the free version of their player on their website

aww, this sucks

[frenetic3]

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.

Re:How open is this source?

[lewp]

First off, the CD burning routines aren't that important. There is plenty of Open Source code out there that can burn a decent CD. The media playing bits are the important and interesting part.

Real appears to have two licenses available for use. One caters to the Open Source community and one seems to cater to businesses that aren't as keen on OSS.

Under the RPSL (the license intended for the OSS community) code based on the Helix source needs to itself be released under the RPSL, but it can also be dual licensed with a great deal of Open Source licenses including, among others, the BSD license, the (L)GPL, and Apple's source license. The full list can be found here:

https://www.helixcommunity.org/content/complicen se

It looks like they've got a really good start here for being a good citizen in the OSS community while not alienating potential customers who aren't comfortable with the concept yet. I still need to read the RPSL thoroughly, but it'll be interesting to see what happens with this.

This is very good

[Sivar]

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.

Actually, I see an alternative

[Dark Paladin]

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.

gratis, not libre

[phr2]

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.

This could be significant

[mao che minh]

All this bickering over the particulars of what was released and how useful it is (on the very day of the code's release, no less)....

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....

Server Problems?

[bovinewasteproduct]

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

Its free, quit whinning.

[Anonymous Coward]

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)

One Flame deseres another

[Ted_Green]

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.

Re:Big deal

[pizza_milkshake]

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?

which way is the elderly ugly free whore?

wimp

[Dave_bsr]

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*

It's not about the Mediaplayer

[sh0rtie]

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.

RealVideo 9 is an extremely inefficient codec

[benwaggoner]

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.

This is totally worthless

[Ogerman]

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..

the codecs and protocols are all that matters

[g4dget]

The only things that matter are the codec specifications, with the streaming protocols a distant second. And those only matter because there is a lot of RealAudio and RealVideo out there on the web, not because there aren't good open source alternatives already.

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.