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Real Announce Helix Grant Program, Player
Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks made two announcements at LinuxWorld this week: we will be giving out up to $75,000 by the end of the year for development of open source projects based on the Helix multimedia platform. Also, we just formally launched the Helix Player project, which is a project to build a GTK+ based user interface for Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems. Press releases for the grant program here and player project here"
The Helix program is nothing but a set of "standardized" shells. The media player is simply the player sans any codecs and the server is simply and encoder/server again sans the codecs. Apparently, you're supposed to buy the codecs from Real. Even more annoying is the fact that you can't even download the blasted beta software without becoming an active developer and signing and faxing 5 different NDAs! What the hell kind of "open source" is this anyway?!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
But anyway, better read all this carefully.
options.c
bool DRM_Enabled = True;
bool player_works = True
etc.. etc..
sounds like this could be a good thing. the older versions of real player for linux worked with moderate success. but they were shoved far out of reach on the real site like that guy in office space who likes his stapler so much. the versions weren't quite current and the players were sub-standard compared to the windows version. it'd be nice if they released a decent media player for linux and even better if it were open sourced.
Can I port the bit of Realplayer that takes over your browser and can only be removed with holy water and a complete reinstall?
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Its half of their yearly revenue these days...
smash.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
When open source meets traditional business the results aren't always what the GNU and FSF might get excited about, but an honest effort is better then nothing.
Just imagine if someone like Adobe showed this much community support with open source.
Programmers could be the bounty hunters of the future, coding and chasing down bugs for profit and adventure.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
TRPlayer
thor
Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems.
Why not just sum that up with "Derivatives of SCO IP" ?!?
People these days...
The unofficial
Now only if apple would follow suite, we wouldnt have to rely on cross over plugins to play these formats.
Ummm... hello? There are NO CODECS included with Helix. It supposed to be some "open platform" for media.
Translation: a way to drum up "good feelings" about RealPlayer by giving away a worthless shell that you have to sign an NDA to get.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Real >>>buffering 34%>>> Player is some >>>buffering 46%>>> of the >>>buffering 54%>>> finest >>>buffering 60%>>> software I've ever >>>buffering 70%>>> come across.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
While any commercial software that gets developed for Linux is a plus for everyone involved, I think their $75k would be better spend on a programmer for a year. This seems like an inexpensive way for them to generate "buzz" around their product in the OSS community - even though their product is not OSS.
Don't get me wrong - I think the REAL codecs are great, but this "offer" isn't.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
While I love MPEG-4 for what it's good at, what it's good at doesn't include real-time streaming over the public internet. Darwin + MPEG-4 doesn't offer any good form of scalability. Thus, if you encode a file at 400 Kbps, and a user's connection is 350 Kbps for a few minutes, they'll get a horrible quality experience.
RealMedia supports SureStream, which lets you put up to eight pairs of video and audio into a single file, and the server and player communicate in real time to determine the optimum data rate for the transmission. It'll even raise and lower data rate as connection speed changes - very useful for cable modem and shared bandwidth from work.
This will come in MPEG-4 eventually, via Fine Grain Scalability (FGS), or some future scalable version of the AVC codec. But that's a couple years away from being in real consumer products I'd guess.
Oh, and I totally don't believe that you really regularly use MPEG4IP for volume compression. I mean, the TOOLS are there, but you have to go through like five different command line steps to make a file. It can produce fine results (it uses Xvid), but MPEG4IP is really like LAME - it's not meant as an end-use tool in and of itself. Well, the player is fine stand alone.
My video compression blog
Should Slashdot editors post an article by someone who works for RealNetworks? He only gave links to sites run by Real. Shouldn't it at least contain a few links from actual news sources like C-Net, who might put things in a less partial perspective?
One could argue that it's better to get an article straight from the source, then read the comments for impartial opinion and review. However, I disagree. Slashdot should be a collection of articles that the community found interesting and submitted on their own. It shouldn't become a press release distribution ground for promoting corporate agendas to Linux geeks.
my blog
And if you want interoperability, Real is still the way to go. There is no other format for streaming media where all the following applies:
- Streaming server running on Linux
- Encoder running on Linux
- Players for Linux (including Alpha, PowerPC and IA32 architectures) and a few other Unix-type systems: Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Mac OS X.
- Server and players capable of understanding SMIL
Plus, most of the server, encoder and player code is open-source (except the GUI). I have already compiled it, and it works great.And people who really understand about streaming media know that MPEG4 is no alternative, yet.
Dear Real Networks,
Please go away and rethink your business model and come back when you are ready to release something of value.
If you wish to win the hearts and minds of open source developers you need to do more than your current offer which smacks of "Here is 75K, code & licenses of questionable value, please go do our coding for us".
Instead you might want to check out a _profitable_ business model like that used by TrollTech, SleepyCat Software, ZeroC and others. The scheme is this: Release your codecs as a GPL library that allows open source (GPL) code to link against it. Proprietary software is required to purchase a seperate license to use the library. Sell a high quality proprietary multimedia production app that uses these codecs.
Remember, business is about taking measured risks, and it's time for Real "realize" this.
Otherwise Real risks fading into obscurity. The sentiment here [in my office] is that this has already happened. The time for bold action has arrived.
Helix has got a much more advanced streaming technology. It can get/send streams by TCP, UDP and HTTP. It supports multi-bitrate streams (a single stream can be encoded in more than one bit rate). The player has better buffering. And it supports something than neither Xine or MPlayer have ever dreamed of: markup and scripting with SMIL, RealText and RealPix.
The kind it was designed to be--that movement doesn't consider the freedom to share and modify the program to be as important as the practical development advantages to a business. Sometimes this means approving licenses that are also considered free software licenses, sometimes it will not. The FSF has an informative article on the philosophical differences between the two movements.
Digital Citizen
The codec is only a piece of the picture. The container format is very important, and usually what people standardize on. Helix is giving us that and more.
The project was not, I suspect, suppose to be an 'end-user' type project. Note that they did not release any binaries. Helix is a platform.
Helix provides a uniform, client, server, and encoder source base. All open source. All we need to do now is build binaries around that. Industry will much easier pick up a product built on Real's helix, than something managements never heard of.
I'd wager that the legality of MPlayer and xine is questionable. From the dll's they import to the codecs they emulate. Real is giving us something that they own for sure.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Getting the code is admittedly more complicated than it needs to be (and we're working on that), but hyperbole like the parent post should not be modded up as "Informative". The steps are:
1. Sign up for the site, filling in a form with proposed user name, real name, company name, and email.
2. Receive confirmation URL, and visit included URL
3. Agree to site terms of use
4. Agree to RPSL (an OSI certified license)
5. Get source code via CVS/SSH
Why are we being hardasses about making sure that people agree to licenses? It's a combination of the way the legal system works, and our general conservativeness that stems from being a publicly traded company.
There are good reasons to ensure that "manifestation of assent" occurs, even for open source. I'll defer to Larry Rosen's excellent paper on the topic. Larry, as you may know, is the General Counsel for the Open Source Initiative, and while his opinion is only an opinion, it's a very well informed one.
As for the functionality, it's more than just "shells". There's complete software there, and it's the foundation of our commercial products. Additionally, the combination of Ogg Vorbis, SMIL 2.0, JPEG, GIF, and PNG is very powerful, and *all open source*. No RealAudio/RealVideo necessary, and the app is pretty unique. For an example which plays in the Helix Player (and versions of RealPlayer/RealOne Player with the Ogg Vorbis codec installed), check out the following link:
http://rtsp.org/2003/demos/oggsmil/oggdemo.smil
Once one starts looking at SMIL (especially SMIL 2.0), you begin to realize that a system that can support it does a lot.
Rob Lanphier
Helix Community Coordinator