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."

Comments

Wonderful!

[DarkHelmet]

Yup... just as I thought.

The only thing preventing the free / open-source community from reaching fruition is access to young 18+ sluts on webcam.

Thank you Ole André! You've given us geeks accessibility to the last 5% of the Internet's perversity that we couldn't access before.

God, I love you, man! I knew this glorious day would come!

Re:Wonderful!

[dmayle]

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)

Re:Wonderful!

[Simon (S2)]

but I used to have to boot into Windows at home every weekend so that I could actually SEE my girlfriend.

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.

Re:Wonderful!

[ilithiiri]

Anyway, it would be grat if this project would be somehow implemented by gaim.

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 ;)

Reverse Engineered From The Disassembly

[Pants75]

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

Re:Reverse Engineered From The Disassembly

[mccalli]

Also, the fact he has a C implementation will hopefully imply portability between architectures, not just OSes.

Linux isn't the only OS without an MSN video client, OS X/PPC could do with one too. As nice as iChat is, unless everyone you know is on the AIM network you're somewhat limited. I understand AIM is the largest IM network in the US, however in the UK I'd (unscientifically) say that title belongs to MSN.

I'm fully aware that having a C implementation doesn't necessarily mean portability (endianess, 64 vs 32 bit etc.), but it certainly helps.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Reverse Engineered From The Disassembly

[FireFury03]

I call troll...

A less trivial (and possibly more legal) undertaking would have been to code a new framework from scratch

1. There is no legal problem here - it's completely legal to reverse engineer for interoperability.
2. How exactly is your "new framework" going to interact with existing (closed) systems? Or are you expecting the likes of Microsoft to implement a new open protocol so they can interact with the FOSS community?

we complain that MS "embraces and extends" all the time -- how is this any different?

Microsoft does "embrace and extend" on well defined open protocols and screws everyone over because of their market position (which basically forces everyone else to adopt their extensions). This is simply "embracing" (not extending) a propriatory system so we can interoperate with it - no protocols are being broken here.

I much prefer *actual* open source projects. Not open source derived from disassembly of closed source.

Like it or not, when interacting with propriatory systems you have to reverse engineer them because the propriators are sure as hell not going to give you the specs. The same is true of hardware drivers, etc. (an aweful lot of the hardware drivers in Linux were reverse engineered by looking at how the Windows drivers interacted with the hardware). How would you suggest doing it?

Why not use ichat/AIM's video protocol?

[Anonymous Coward]

> 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?

Sure, until MSN 7 comes out of beta

[the_unknown_soldier]

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."

That is until MSN 7 includes a new codec or in other ways blocks this implementation

WTF?

[gowen]

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

Is it just me, or has slashdot started to sound more an more like TASS did in the mid-80s

I don't want it!

[Pants75]

It gives me comfort having no evidence that the person I'm chatting with is a trucker called Bubba.

Just how many video codecs do we need?

[Viol8]

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??

Re:Just how many video codecs do we need?

[aldoman]

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 $$$.

Wait ...

[ggvaidya]

Until MSN changes the protocol again. Timothy's byline is imho the most insightful part of the document: it's an extract from an ancient quote that goes, "DOS isn't done until Lotus won't run". [ref].

MSN's frequent "we won't let you run messenger because we need to install crucial updates for which you need to be administrator" errors is why I use Yahoo these days, but I can see how the videocam feature would be helpful to people - and how easy it would be for MSN to change it's protocols around.

Of course, GAIM had the same problem with Yahoo messenger, and they just fought them tooth-and-nail. What I'm saying is, unless somebody really puts their muscle behind this, MSN will just keep screwing around with them.

Re:video conf between windows and Linux ???

[Sodki]

Gnomemeeting already played very nice with Microsoft's Netmeeting, present in almost every Windows box, sound and video included.

Re:Just great.

[Alexis Boulva]

This site has links to sites with linux drivers for several Logitech webcams... It's thanks to this site that I got my "QuickCam Messenger" working in linux... IMO it's running better in linux... But no big surprise, there, eh...

All professional VTC is open source anyway...???

[J Barnes]

90% of all video conferencing done in the professional world is based on open standards already, H.323 and H.264 are much more viable options then a propriotary microsoft product.

If linux and other GNU/GPL/open source projects are to routinely tout the viability of open source standards, why not simply use the existing and tested open sources already in use in the vast majority of VTC solutions?

Unless it's a bunch of linux users that want to taunt microsoft fans on MSN.

Look! It's a Windows user!

[ImaLamer]

No, it's more like: now you can watch windows users re-install in real time!

Re:patents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Er. Hence the storm of european software patents! - they _aren't_ currently enforceable in most european countries, but the patent office has been granting the patents anyway. Right now, mimic or whatever it's called is likely 100% legal in europe.

And just to make another point, to those who say FOSS is "just playing catchup" or "always copying" or whatever: Many early Webcam-style applications were BSD-licensed, things like VIC/RAT from the MBONE suite. If it weren't for the installed base of proprietary users, this package would be unnecessary. This is why Microsoft is usually careful not to care too much about "piracy" (and why you shouldn't "pirate" software even if you disagree with copyright...): network effects which dominate the computing market establish lock-in of their proprietary tools.

Bounty!

[dsginter]

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).