Slashdot Mirror
Xine Gets Native Sorenson3 Decoding
gooofy writes "Freshly (im)ported from ffmpeg, xine 1-beta12 finally has native support for Sorenson SVQ3 video. This means that you're finally able to
watch the latest quicktime trailers on any xine supported hardware platform, not just on x86. Other goodies in this release include support for ogg/theora, playback of cd/dvd over the network, improved handling of mpeg-2 files
(resyncing) and many detail improvements."
1: One less reason to run a Windows platform. 2: No more annoying "don't you want to buy this" ad when you're trying to watch a new trailer.
-A.M.
Pimpin' all the Karma Hoes!
Great! Now all it needs is an interface that doesn't suck majorly. Have you tried to use their configuration dialog? What were they thinking?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Does it work on OS X?
Oh wait... I've got quicktime. Sorry.
Yes, all those macos-on-ppc people are having so much trouble with that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Could droping in its source tree the new version ffmpeg in lieu of the one that comes with it make Mplayer support native Sorenson 3 too? Or would some additionnal modifications be needed in the Mplayer source?
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
Most movie trailers and stuff that i'd need quicktime for are embeded in webpages. It's a pain in the ass sometimes to find the url for the file you want and download it so you can play it.
Liberty.
I think you read the article wrong... Whis is a native implementation of Sorensen 3 that can run on all supported platforms (including x86). It used to be that watching a Sorensen 3 encoded video involved the use of Win32 DLLs (either through WINE, or later by directly accessing the DLL). Now it isn't needed. So indeed one _can_ watch a Sorensen 3 video on x86 using the lates version of xine without any nutty DLL hacks.
The time of day is 29:33.
Will mplayer be able to take advantage of these native sorensen codecs also? While mplayer plays quicktime files, they are not native and they aren't great, (specifically once you play 1 mplayer will crash if you attempt to play a second). Also, I am pretyt hooked on mplayer by now.
I do security
Acually the quote said "not just on x86"
.. AND others ... essssh. ... can't wait for gentoo to .. hmmm .. think I'll write one just the same ...
So it works on x86
all in all very nice
have an ebuild for this
bain
Sanity is a majority vote.
Who are these guys? I'm amazed at what they're pulling off, encoding and decoding all these proprietary formats. This isn't the kind of stuff that some bored college student can churn out on a lazy Sunday afternoon. And how do they manage to decode a format like Sorenson that isn't even publically documented (AFAIK)?
Will it play the audio on the trailer for The Matrix Reloaded?
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
First of all, Xine is not a web calendar written in PHP. It's written in Perl.
And Mplayer isn't free, you have to download it.
Sheesh.
What's amusing is getting modded up when you confuse headlines...
Does any one know how it ranks on progressive DVD benchmarks?
This benchmark has lots of screen shots of correct and bad behavior: DVD Benchmark
to get all this free publicity? The ffmpeg and xvid people do all the hard codec work and the mplayer people support every codec, container format and play even severely broken files, setting new records for tweakability to get it to excel even in really bad circumstances (it can play DVD in real-time on my EPIA-M 9000, using software AC-3 with stereo downmix; go ahead and read all the reviews that say it can't be done even under Windows where they have hardware MPEG-2 acceleration and use an external S/PDIF decoder).
xine is always lagging behind. Their main "innovation" is that unintuitive and ugly GUI. WTF were they thinking when they created a GUI that is unusable without all those tool-tips?
I have no idea whom the xine people had to bribe to get all this slashdot exposure, because it sure as hell didn't earn it on technical merit.
Yeah, lame troll... Xine has much better performance on older PC's, and also has much better synchronization for NTSC MPEG-2 such as DVD's. Mplayer is more of a bleeding edge player, is great for transcoding/encoding stuff, and gets new codecs before Xine, but it is really jerky on NTSC MPEG-2 (dunno 'bout PAL). I prefer Mplayer for encoding DVD's to AVI's in Linux, and watching DIVX and DV AVI files, and I prefer Xine for DVD's and its support for DTS passthrough. But, if I'm going to use a separate program for file/DVD playback, I might as well just use Ogle for DVD's, since it now supports DTS and Dolby Digital passthrough. Xine supports seeking in streams though, so it has one advantage over Ogle.
You know what? All the programs are great, and I really like having a choice. Now if only I could figure out if it's legal to sell HTPC's that have Open Source DVD software pre-installed (with source code included).
Oh, BTW, all three are Free and free.
It's only breaking the law in countries where idiocy is encouraged in leaders. That means you're safe... Um... So, um... yeah, it probably is. :/
If you want to encode with free tools so that anyone can watch it, why not use MPEG-4? Or VP3, since anyone who has Sorenson has VP3.
Install apt-get for rpm, or configure urpmi, or just get debian, or emerge. Then do one of the following: apt-get install xine urpmi.install xine emerge xine Wait, you now have xine. Xine has long since been packaged well enough by third parties to make install a snap.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Says the PFY as he fires up MPlayer(having downloaded the illegally-distributed Windows DLLs from the mplayer authors) to watch The Matrix trailer. I seem to be saying this a lot on slashdot lately, but, get a grip!
Linux has half a percent of the desktop market. Apple, with MacOS, has something like 4-5%, I think? Maybe 8% tops? Why exactly -should- Apple give a hoot about Linux? They're not THAT big a company, and they're busy as hell(have you stopped to think about how many software products they now produce? OSX, OSX Server, Quicktime Streaming Server, Quicktime, iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie and Final Cut Pro, iDVD and DVD Studio Pro, iCal/iSync...the list is ENORMOUS.) They don't, quite frankly, have the time to screw around with, essentially, something that can't even be called "competition"(Apple's products have always represented the complete antithesis of Linux - coherence, ease of use, simplicity, elegance...)
I've owned Macs for years, and no-official-quicktime-or-wmp-player doesn't bother me. Why? Because there are clever(if sometimes annoying) people out there who figure out how to do it themselves. While Apple hasn't released a player, their normally vicious legal department has, by its lack of action, practically applauded mplayer for using the quicktime-for-windows DLLs. Apple's not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth, basically. They get their cake(quicktime support on linux for those who really want it) and they get to eat it too(nothing to develop, maintain, or even support). Besides, the DLLs are getting used the same way a Windows application would use them- about the only thing Apple could get the mplayer guys on would be distributing the DLLs alone and without license.
You say, "oh, but Apple just doesn't care enough". Apple cares about lots of little things, including people making themes that look like Aqua. Their legal department has no qualms about making a mountain out of a molehill if something displeases them(this is actually one of the things I hate about Apple the most- their legal department head is a total psycho-policy-bitch, completely the wrong thing for a cute-and-cuddly computer company. Lady, get a job at MS or something, you may be making a hit in the legal world, but you're pissing off thousands of Apple customers and techies with every move you make.)
Please help metamoderate.
Female Prison Rape in NY
This would be great considering that the alternative would be to use expensive Apple software on a Mac.
You mean $30 for quicktime pro?
Certainly you can pay more for better encoders from sorenson, but I'd hazzard a guess that if there are ffmpeg encoders for sorenson they're probably not even on par with apple's basic one since its only just been announced.
I like the new lib because it finally does full-screen DVD playback right.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
According to Xine's website there is a Mozilla plugin in the works that provides embedded stream playback. Until then, if you install gxine it comes with a Mozilla plugin that all you need to do 'ln -s' it into your ~/.mozilla/plugins... this will launch gxine and start playing with a nicer interface.
My favourite part of xine is the plugins for DVD nagivation.
Personally I prefer using mplayer because it's faster and higher quality. It's also got DirectFB and Vidix drivers so I can output the signal to my TV while not in X.
However my girlfriend isn't overly keen on typing a long list of switches to activate mplayer with the right video driver, input source, chapter and track, and xine's DVD Navigation shines in this area.
I don't know why the mplayer developers insist that it is virutally impossible to incorporate dvd navigation into mplayer. Maybe they are right and it is really hard to do.
Anyway I just read that xine supports Vidix and Vesa drivers, so hopefully it actually works on mine AND dvd navigation also works without X. Anyone (Radeon users pissed-off at no tv-out under X) gotten xine working in this way yet?
Even in the United States, reverse engineering for "interoperability purposes" is legal.
Not if the end result is unauthorized distribution of an implementation of a patented invention; then, it's called "patent infringement". Or do you claim that Sorenson owns no valid patents on methods used in its codec?
Will I retire or break 10K?
I don't think Sorenson has ever been an open standard. QuickTime is, I believe; but then, it's quite possible to encode a movie in QuickTime _without_ using Sorenson. Sorenson is just one of the many possible codecs usable in the QuickTime "wrapper" format. Same goes for AVI and several other formats; they just wrap the several sub-encodings together. So you can encode both audio and video using two wholly unrelated formats, or whatever. (not a multimedia format expert...)
Or VP3, since anyone who has Sorenson has VP3.
Especially because VP3 is free software now.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Interestingly enough, this WOULD be legal, if it weren't released under the GPL...
The GPL says you can't redistribute the program if it has any restrictions, just as patents covering it. So, if you are in some location (such as the USA) where these video codecs are patented, it would be a violation of the GPL to release any changes, or even to redistribute the package...
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Before I ask, I have to say that I did STBM --went through their webpages and looked at the stuff, FAQ, Documentation etc.
The webpage says that it supports formats such as RealMedia, WMV7 etc. See their documentation.
They also seem to be interested only in opensource codecs etc. See this FAQ entry.
Correct me if I am wrong, aren't RealMedia and WMV7 format proprietary? As far as I know, Microsoft or RealNetworks haven't released any open-source codecs of the above. Nor do they seem to have released proper format specifications (as Adobe does for PostScript or PDF).
How do they then support these formats?
They do not seem to be interested in MPlayer like hacked-up binaries or the use of Windows DLLs (see the FAQ entry referred to above).
Plus, I just downloaded the source. It is a measly 600KiB-ish. How do they manage to put all this in here.
If I examin the soruce may be I could get some of these questions answered, but I have to post these questions before the Slashdot story dies out and no-one reads the post.
Thank you
GrimReality
2003-05-12 04:05:00 UTC (2003-05-12 00:05:00 EDT)
You could not possibly be more wrong. The current generation mplayer (G1) will probably die soon, but there still is work going on. A'rpi, who was the driving force behind mplayer, has decided to start a complete rewrite from the base up, for now called mplayer G2 (yeah, mplayer has a thing with bad names). From what I've been reading, it seems to be going fairly well. Check out the current status on the (all of week-old) mailing list here:e v/
http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-g2-d
No, no, no! That's COPYRIGHT LAW. Nothing like fair use exists for PATENT LAW.
Please see http://www.mec.ac.in/events/rms/trans_2.html for an excellent speech by Richard Stallman on Software Patents. "So the most important thing for you to start with is never mix copyrights and patents as topics. They have nothing to do for each other." (There's also an audio recording of the speech on gnu.org, but I'm unable to locate it at this moment.)
Sheesh! mplayer has been 100% GPL since version 0.90-pre1.
Um, they aren't illegally distributed. Apple themselves distribute them for free - they'd be hard pressed to argue in court that while it's OK for random multimedia CDs and websites to redistribute QuickTime, it's not ok for the MPlayer guys to do it.
Linux has half a percent of the desktop market. Apple, with MacOS, has something like 4-5%, I think?
Er, what? You need to get a handle on statistics dude! Nobody knows how big the market share of Linux is, but it's easily 2-3% - companies like IDC say this, not some random joe off the net. Apples market share has been declining steadily for some time now, go read OSNews, they have reported on it several times, and it's now hovering slightly above 2%. So you're smoking some serious stuff if you think MacOS is a long way in front of Linux in terms of market share - it may even be the other way around .
They don't, quite frankly, have the time to screw around with, essentially, something that can't even be called "competition"
Apples biggest competitor is Linux by a long, long way. It's the only OS that also appeals to the UNIX-minded user base and can be installed on Apple hardware. No, Windows basically targets a different market at this level. I suspect this is the biggest reason they aren't doing anything - if you look at their contributions to free software, they've done basically what the licenses forced them to do and no more. They're happy to use free software to further their own ends, but aren't really happy to actually take part in the community.
their legal department head is a total psycho-policy-bitch, completely the wrong thing for a cute-and-cuddly computer company
Apple aren't cute and cuddly, not even close. You might like to think they are, but go through and learn about their history, Jobs' working style, you clearly already know about their legal tendancies. They're a company out to make the biggest buck they can, and the "cute and cuddly" feeling is a glow projected by their fearsome marketing department, not by their actions.
That said, I by no means want to say mplayer and video lan client are bad, I use them regularly myself (for divx/xvid avi's with mp3 audio tracks). They're not as stable as Quicktime Player though, and fast-forwarding or rewinding doesn't always work (there seem to be points in some movies you just can't get by except at normal playing speed, both in mplayer and vlanc). Switching from full screen back to windowed mode doesn't always work either in vlanc (afterwards, the window is often black until you switch back to fullscreen mode).
Donate free food here
"in relation to the codec used in Sorenson Squeeze"
Not true. The legal action is over the CODEC used in Flash MX (Sorenson Spark), as Squeeze can use either SV 3.1 or Spark - Apple maintain that their agreement with Sorenson Media gives them exclusive rights to use A Sorenson CODEC, Sorenson says not ANY Sorenson CODEC.
Incidentally, Sorenson's MPEG4 CODEC is a beaut, and gives MUCH better encodes than Apple's.
That was classic intercourse!
Repeating made up numbers doesn't make them true. The fact is that nobody knows how many people are using Linux. It actually seems likely to me that there are more Linux desktop users out there than there are OS X users (many of them dual-booting Windows).
In any case, no matter what the market share is, Apple needs to realize that Linux users can cause them real problems: as this shows, the Linux community is capable of developing codecs themselves if Apple doesn't supply them. In the long run, that erodes Apple's control over a market segment that they desperately want to control. Linux MPEG-4 encoders are already among the best and fastest in the business, for example.
Of course, that's what I would like to see happen anyway: so, keep up the good work--keep NOT shipping proprietary codecs for Linux, we don't want them anyway.
Both of xine and MPlayer use FFmpeg, which now supports native SVQ3 decoding. Ever since this weekend my CVS version of MPlayer has been able to play SVQ3 natively.
MPlayer (G1 - let's call it that) is not likely to die anytime soon. In fact we will soon release another stable version, 0.91 and 1.0 will most likely come from the main development branch and not from G2.