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Logitech MSN Webcam Codec Reverse-Engineered
Alexis Boulva writes "Tonight, Ole André Vadla Ravnås of the Farsight project (LGPL), which 'is an audio/video conferencing framework specifically designed for Instant Messengers' for the GNU Linux operating system, finished coding a release candidate of libmimic, 'an open source video encoding/decoding library for Mimic V2.x-encoded content (fourCC: ML20), which is the encoding used by MSN Messenger
for webcam conversations.' Ole, on the libmimic site, remarks that 'It should be noted that reverse-engineering for interoperability is 100%
legal here in Norway (and in most European countries).' Looks like the Free/Open Source Software movement is very close to closing up one of the most noticeable software gaps remaining from its glorious efforts."
These guys have reverse engineered the protocol between the camera and the PC, not between two PC. It's damn hard to convert the video to ichat/aim if you can't get a readable video off of the camera in the first place.
What's cool about this is that Logitech are the kings of decent webcams, and now they can be used with free software like linux.
Schrodinger's cat is either dead or really pissed off...
Now where is the Linux driver for the QuickCam Pro USB (dark focus ring), so that I can actually, you know, use Mimic?
Gnome Meeting anyone?
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Gnomemeeting already played very nice with Microsoft's Netmeeting, present in almost every Windows box, sound and video included.
We're currently debating wether to implement the new copyright etc laws though. (and be 'we' I mean fringe left and some computer scientists complaining, while the main stream press keep their daily schedule of reporting fairly amazingly trivial and non-important 'news')
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Does implementing iChat's video protocol magically make it work with Microsoft's software?
Patents. Everyone has his own codec and patents it. Even the "open source" Dirac codec will be patented.
The reason it will be patented is that if they don't, some other company can just go ahead and patent the same thing, and the only way to rectify it is a long and hard court case which will cost lots and lots of $$$.
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For god's sake read the damn article. This is NOT a webcam driver. It is a codec for Mimic V2.x. Which MSN Messenger uses for sending video between PCs.
Why? GnomeMeeting is compatible with Netmeeting on Windows (both use the H.323 protocoll). You can just use that.
Anyway, it would be grat if this project would be somehow implemented by gaim.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Dumbass.
Gnomemeeting already worked.
Gaim-vv already worked.
The videoconferencing was already available.
The issue here was _interoperability_ with MSN using friends, where Microsoft played as an obstacle, now removed.
GnomeMeeting is compatible with Netmeeting on Windows
Maybe, but H.323 (the network protocol *meeting uses) doesn't pass through firewalls without an awful lot of effort. It can pass through a Cisco PIX (en expensive, but very good professional firewall), but I don't know a single consumer grade firewall that can pass H.323, which means that at least one of the ends must be unfirewalled (or using firewall software only). In that case, whoever is unfirewalled needs to be the receiver of the call. It's very limiting, and doesn't suit many needs.
gaim-vv is the answer: it's a fork of gaim, specifically created in order to have GAIM capable of doing audio/video conversation.
It relies on external libraries, so the topic's related to the (hopefully near) advances in gaim-vv to support msn and other protocols: as of yesterday you were only able to see other people's webcams from a yahoo! account.
I hope that things will change, now
If anyone can hear me, slap some sense into me But you turn your head, and I end up talking to myself
That may work on one side, and maybe it is a full implementation, but H.323 opens up random ports greater than 20,000, and then communicates this over the control channel. A firewall would have to continually monitor control to keep opening/closing ports as needed.
What we really need is a well defined stardart for usb video interfaces!!
Why do USB MassStorage and USB HID are standartized protocols and USB Video isn't!? I just can't understand that.
Right now is a very difficult task indentify a Linux-compatible USB Webcam... most use a combination of two chips, the CCD sensor and the USB interface. Linux must have drivers for both chips, and some combinations don't work. Worse, some manufactures mix different combinatios of those chips under one webcam model, so you can't know for sure if one model is really supported.
A real mess...
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
There was a post on slashdot a while ago talking about why they forked it. This webpage is the webpage of Gaim-vv, and talks about how it is a "friendly fork whish will be backported".
Basically they forked to experiment, and will backport once it is tweaked to working.
There might be a legal issue if he disassembled the code...because most license agreements explicitly forbid disassembly, a court may say he used improper means to get the necessary information. That is, even though reverse engineering is legal, you can't violate other obligations.
Most licences prohibit "reverse engineering" too - it's just not enforcable since the local laws explicitly allow reverse engineering. Of course IANAL so I can't tell you if the lagal "reverse engineering for interoperability purposes" also include disassembly. I would think it did.
http://blog.nexusuk.org
Compaq reverse engineered the I386 architecture and that is how non IBM PC's (clones) were born. Yep, that monster gaming machine you are sitting in front of is a product of reverse engineering.
Reverse engineering is a good thing.
Umm, let me correct you there: gaim-vv and msn videoconferencing no longer work as of the latest gaim-vv release, for which the changelog notes that it will be using Farsight for msn webcam/videoconferencing...
Yes, this is all wonderful and amazing that we have Linux software for videoconferencing but...
How do we actually use the stuff when it's near to impossible to get any off-the-shelf webcam to actually have driver support in Linux?
Seriously, this is one FAQ I really wish was in huge bold typeface on the sites for GnomeMeeting and similar projects:
WHERE DO I GET HARDWARE THAT WILL LET ME USE THIS PROGRAM?
What kind of cameras are the people who hack on these chat clients using, how expensive are they, are they still on the market, can you get them in Australia and New Zealand, what Linux distribution do you need to be running to have out-of-the-box hardware support without compiling from source, etc.
There's the Qbik list, but it's pretty cryptic and not always up to date, and I've not yet got a simple straight list of 'these models of cameras work with GnomeMeeting, go buy them'. Why is this so hard? Why can't it be in the software FAQ? It's the number one question on every potential user's mind, surely.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC