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Logitech MSN Webcam Codec Reverse-Engineered

Posted by timothy on from the until-lotus-won't-run dept.

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."

5 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Reverse Engineered From The Disassembly by Pants75 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    So for fun, and challenge, I reverse-engineered the original implementation by studying the massive amount of assembly code involved, and after a lot of hard work I ended up with this implementation in C.

    Nice, gotta give the guy props for that.

    That is not a trivial undertaking at all.

    I tip my hat to ya.

    Pete

  2. Why not use ichat/AIM's video protocol? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    > 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

    Why not use ichat/AIMs video protocol. It's a fully open standard, described completely on Apple's developer site. All there ready to go.

    Or is it more important to chase what Windows does, rather than what Works?

  3. Just how many video codecs do we need? by Viol8 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is getting crazy , why do software companies and open source developers keep spewing out endless video codecs. We don't keep seeing alternatives to TCP popping up every week, why is video so different? WHat the hell is wrong with mpeg anyway??

  4. Re:Wonderful! by dmayle · · Score: 5, Interesting

    access to young 18+ sluts on webcam

    Yeah, sure, that's funnay and all, but for anyone with friends, significant others, family distant from them, this is a godsend. I use Linux every day at work, and at home, but I used to have to boot into Windows at home every weekend so that I could actually SEE my girlfriend.

    You see, I live in France, while my now-ex lived in the U.S. On the upside, I'm now dating a French girl, but I'd still like to be able to see my mother, and my sister and brother-in-law. This way, I don't have to boot into Windows at all... (And even when if I ever have to, I'd prefer GAIM on Windows any day over MSN, which is so limiting)

  5. Bounty! by dsginter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I hate to piggyback on your post but I wanted this to be seen.

    I am currently working for a company that spends prohibitive amounts of money on videoconferencing. Not because they are stupid but rather because there are no "enterprise" quality videoconferencing products out there at an affordable price. By "enterprise" quality, I mean that the device needs to have the following:

    1) PTZ Camera (PTZ = pan, tilt, zoom)
    2) Complete control from remote control (including PTZ)
    3) H.320, H.323 and SIP
    4) Massive profit

    Currently, we are paying about $50,000 USD for a dual plasma installation. While I realize that the 42" plasmas are a reasonable portion of the cost ($10,000), the rest is just a PC with a camera and some software. We don't even do any advanced multi-party capabilities - just connect to a bridge and let it do the work. It would be real nice if some bright spark would enter this market and offer something at a reasonable price (but still at huge profit).

    --
    More