2. You misunderstand. You can already show divx movies in linux. All that's required is changing a.bik file into a.avi file using the current tools (in windows), putting it on the CD and getting the viewer working in Linux. 5. It's pretty unlikely the massive holdup is the movies, seeing as it would be so easy to just do they in another format. You can't just download the audio. And if you think you can, trust me, you can't.
It's simplicity itself to port the movies. Takes about three clicks from the RADvideo interface.
The audio's an entirely different story. Miles can do some awsome things, which is presumably why everyone uses it.
I'd imagine that unless they're trying to write their own Bink decoder, the big problem is trying to find a sound solution. I don't imagien anybody else has written one, so they might very well have to write their own surround-sound, feature-packed audio engine. Suppose they can always license it themselve once it's done, though.
along with putting to shame solutions like BINK and Miles
Wow, a Linux user who's never seen a real computer game. I'm shocked.
Bink is practically the standard for in-game movies these days. Has been for quite some time. If you think Bioware (a company that make role-playing games) is going to come up with their own high-quality video / audio codec which will 'put Bink to shame', think again. They don't appear to want to switch (they could easily have moved to divx/mp3 or any variety of other formats, the wording of that release looks very much like they don't want to).
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
If they wanted to do that they could do it in a heartbeat. RAD Video (who make Bink and Miles) have a tool which enables conversion of their formats to AVI extremely easy. I suspect if they wanted to just go DivX it would have been done.
3) port the player. painful.
I think that's what they're doing.
4) find an OpenSource player that's stable, common, and supports Bink. Unlikely. I doubt mplayer supports Bink, but even if it did, it's not necessarily stable, uniform, or common enough. Though a binary COULD be built and called by the game to play the movies. If it supported Bink, which I doubt.
How do you suggest incorporating a GPL video player into a proprietary game, exactly?
5) offer it as download. Bandwidth costs money.
Offer *what* as a download? You mean ship without video and put a note in the box saying "plz come to nwn.com in 6 months"?
6) have a cheap hack to disable videos - definitely not cool.
Go do it yourself. With any luck the separation of the codecs from the actual player should make it possible to create a solution that doesn't require the installation of RealPlayer (8) itself.
Your reputation as an organisation of spyware peddlers persists because you insist on using the World's Most Sinister Installer (TM). People judge on looks, and when it looks like
- the default video display is 60% adverts - it's impossible to get it to stop asking you to upgrade every eight minutes - you can't figure out how to give your mp3s back to Winamp - after uninstalling it YOU CAN'T PLAY YOUR DAMN CLIPS IN REALPLAYER 8 BECAUSE REALONE LEAVES A FUCKING REGISTRY ENTRY SPECIFICALLY DENYING YOU THE RIGHT TO PLAY VIDEO ON OLDER VERSIONS OF REALPLAYER ANY MORE - you find that your media player wants to also be your download manager, web browser and mother-in-law
you are going to get a reputation for putting things on their computer that they don't want. Untrained users have learned to call this 'spyware'.
The "spyware" complaints have persisted for years after someone found one rogue chunk of code that sent us a lot of useless information that was going in the bit bucket (if you look at what was being collected, it really wasn't interesting).
hopefully it isn't some BS source license like the microsoft "shared source", that is useless to the OSS community..
The encoder's license isn't. You get to wait until the server until you see the - what's it called - RSCL, which is the key to making sure they make money out of this endeavour.
MPEG4 is a proprietary format with patent and royalty encumbrance that make it in no way superior to Real for freedom.
Unadulterated bollocks. I can edit, convert, re-encode and generally mess about with my MPEG4 clips all I want. I have to pull teeth to extract content from proprietary Real files, which use patented technology to boot.
There are open-source implementations of MPEG4 such as Xvid. With an open-source codec which can create standards-compliant streams, you have the portability required or at least the potential to be covered against the death of the company holding the keys to your media, and more importantly you have immediate control of said media - the ability to convert it to other formats, for instance.
It has the same potential as any other open source media player. Except that my understanding was that, in a similar vein to Mozilla, Real were actually opening the source of their proprietary product in order to improve it. The current Windows binary release won't even play stock Real video clips for me, and I'm assuming it's been written from scratch.
So essentially, what you get is an open source media player which isn't very great just now, under a special Real license, which can maybe play proprietary RealMedia files when it gets better. And you have an encoder, which is under a special Real license, which can use a proprietary Real codec to create proprietary Real files.
so to recap:
a) it's under a lovely license which makes you tick a lot of boxes to get anywhere.
b) it doesn't let you do anything with Real content that you can't do with their current proprietary player / encoder.
c) it doesn't appear to be built from the current apps either, so you haven't just got an extensible adware-free version of RealOne.
Oooh oooh, and
d) to cap it off, the intent is to make people use the proprietary Real codecs (which aren't, I believe, freely licensed for large-scale streaming etc.) to encode their media with.
What's the point in building yet another open-source media app, just to make proprietary files?
notepad's Help Topics doesn't cover keyboard usage, how to access the menu, the importance of file extensions...
Does an operating system need to come with a 'use this having just climbed down from the trees'-level help system built in? Is it not reasonable to expect that the user DOES have access to a 'unix for dummies' book before attempting to use it? It's not as if a car's manual tells you how to drive...
He's experimenting with an intellectual troll. Essentially he's hoping to be modded up as insightful despite deliberately posting a lot of rubbish, and / or to be agree with by people who are actually being serious.
As an aside, I've discovered that doing these kind of post reviews in topics while logged in is a good way of making sure my karma stays in the 'average user' category. although i suspect my fun will be over soon as I should be on about 1 by now.
Meta-moderation is for inappropriate mods, not disagreements. I don't mod down mods who have posted something 'interesting' which is in fact highly boring unless what they're saying was either covered in the article or simply a load of old tripe. On the other hand, Any time the words "Windows", "BSOD" and "+5" come up I'll mod it inappropriate, simply to reduce the amount of idiots who keep the circle going.
Especially as he's offtopic anyway, and that pic's being doing the rounds for ages. Actually, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a post that was ever so badly in need of about -5 Overrated whacks.
You will not be modded up for that. You've given a random troll (actually, it's more likely another "troll researcher" doing another psychological test on slashdot readers) some job satisfaction, and you've wasted severla minutes of my time and yours. Happy?
So what happens then? All phones will look like ass, except for a tiny subset which look great but don't perform as well and cost three times as much? And every time anyone gets one of the commodity ones to not look like ass, Slashdot runs it on the front page as if it's the first time it's ever been done?
Slashdot Mirror
Oh god, what? Insightful? Could this BE trollier? "I think getting DirectX working in linux would be easy" gets Insightful these days?
Meh. natalie portman hot grits goatse.cx
- Chris
2. You misunderstand. You can already show divx movies in linux. All that's required is changing a .bik file into a .avi file using the current tools (in windows), putting it on the CD and getting the viewer working in Linux.
5. It's pretty unlikely the massive holdup is the movies, seeing as it would be so easy to just do they in another format. You can't just download the audio. And if you think you can, trust me, you can't.
It's simplicity itself to port the movies. Takes about three clicks from the RADvideo interface.
The audio's an entirely different story. Miles can do some awsome things, which is presumably why everyone uses it.
I'd imagine that unless they're trying to write their own Bink decoder, the big problem is trying to find a sound solution. I don't imagien anybody else has written one, so they might very well have to write their own surround-sound, feature-packed audio engine. Suppose they can always license it themselve once it's done, though.
- Chris
Wow, a Linux user who's never seen a real computer game. I'm shocked.
Bink is practically the standard for in-game movies these days. Has been for quite some time. If you think Bioware (a company that make role-playing games) is going to come up with their own high-quality video / audio codec which will 'put Bink to shame', think again. They don't appear to want to switch (they could easily have moved to divx/mp3 or any variety of other formats, the wording of that release looks very much like they don't want to).
- Chris
Bink's an MPEG format now, is it?
- Chris
1) delay the release
They're doing that already.
2) find an OpenSource or simple way to convert them to mpg, play them. Unlikely.
If they wanted to do that they could do it in a heartbeat. RAD Video (who make Bink and Miles) have a tool which enables conversion of their formats to AVI extremely easy. I suspect if they wanted to just go DivX it would have been done.
3) port the player. painful.
I think that's what they're doing.
4) find an OpenSource player that's stable, common, and supports Bink. Unlikely. I doubt mplayer supports Bink, but even if it did, it's not necessarily stable, uniform, or common enough. Though a binary COULD be built and called by the game to play the movies. If it supported Bink, which I doubt.
How do you suggest incorporating a GPL video player into a proprietary game, exactly?
5) offer it as download. Bandwidth costs money.
Offer *what* as a download? You mean ship without video and put a note in the box saying "plz come to nwn.com in 6 months"?
6) have a cheap hack to disable videos - definitely not cool.
That appears to be an extension of 5.
- Chris
If by 'lite sort of RPG' you mean 'incredibly in-depth and cutomisable D&D game which is the best one BioWare have done yet', then you'd be right.
- Chris
Shit, I thought these had stopped being funny until just there.
- Chris
Go do it yourself. With any luck the separation of the codecs from the actual player should make it possible to create a solution that doesn't require the installation of RealPlayer (8) itself.
- Chris
Your reputation as an organisation of spyware peddlers persists because you insist on using the World's Most Sinister Installer (TM). People judge on looks, and when it looks like
- the default video display is 60% adverts
- it's impossible to get it to stop asking you to upgrade every eight minutes
- you can't figure out how to give your mp3s back to Winamp
- after uninstalling it YOU CAN'T PLAY YOUR DAMN CLIPS IN REALPLAYER 8 BECAUSE REALONE LEAVES A FUCKING REGISTRY ENTRY SPECIFICALLY DENYING YOU THE RIGHT TO PLAY VIDEO ON OLDER VERSIONS OF REALPLAYER ANY MORE
- you find that your media player wants to also be your download manager, web browser and mother-in-law
you are going to get a reputation for putting things on their computer that they don't want. Untrained users have learned to call this 'spyware'.
- Chris
Ignore Apple. Ever heard of Project Mayo?
- Chris
Really! RealDownload is one rogue chunk of code?
- Chris
The encoder's license isn't. You get to wait until the server until you see the - what's it called - RSCL, which is the key to making sure they make money out of this endeavour.
- Chris
Unadulterated bollocks. I can edit, convert, re-encode and generally mess about with my MPEG4 clips all I want. I have to pull teeth to extract content from proprietary Real files, which use patented technology to boot.
There are open-source implementations of MPEG4 such as Xvid. With an open-source codec which can create standards-compliant streams, you have the portability required or at least the potential to be covered against the death of the company holding the keys to your media, and more importantly you have immediate control of said media - the ability to convert it to other formats, for instance.
- Chris
It has the same potential as any other open source media player. Except that my understanding was that, in a similar vein to Mozilla, Real were actually opening the source of their proprietary product in order to improve it. The current Windows binary release won't even play stock Real video clips for me, and I'm assuming it's been written from scratch.
So essentially, what you get is an open source media player which isn't very great just now, under a special Real license, which can maybe play proprietary RealMedia files when it gets better. And you have an encoder, which is under a special Real license, which can use a proprietary Real codec to create proprietary Real files.
so to recap:
a) it's under a lovely license which makes you tick a lot of boxes to get anywhere.
b) it doesn't let you do anything with Real content that you can't do with their current proprietary player / encoder.
c) it doesn't appear to be built from the current apps either, so you haven't just got an extensible adware-free version of RealOne.
Oooh oooh, and
d) to cap it off, the intent is to make people use the proprietary Real codecs (which aren't, I believe, freely licensed for large-scale streaming etc.) to encode their media with.
What's the point in building yet another open-source media app, just to make proprietary files?
- Chris
Doesn't it? I'm sure I was told that as a kid. I wish I'd listened too.
- Chris
notepad's Help Topics doesn't cover keyboard usage, how to access the menu, the importance of file extensions...
Does an operating system need to come with a 'use this having just climbed down from the trees'-level help system built in? Is it not reasonable to expect that the user DOES have access to a 'unix for dummies' book before attempting to use it? It's not as if a car's manual tells you how to drive...
- Chris
Nor have you read the reasons why it wasn't included. Slashdot really needs a -1, MyReallyDumbTwoCentsIANAL mod.
- Chris
He's experimenting with an intellectual troll. Essentially he's hoping to be modded up as insightful despite deliberately posting a lot of rubbish, and / or to be agree with by people who are actually being serious.
As an aside, I've discovered that doing these kind of post reviews in topics while logged in is a good way of making sure my karma stays in the 'average user' category. although i suspect my fun will be over soon as I should be on about 1 by now.
- Chris
Insightful? Ass-clowns.
- Chris
Meta-moderation is for inappropriate mods, not disagreements. I don't mod down mods who have posted something 'interesting' which is in fact highly boring unless what they're saying was either covered in the article or simply a load of old tripe. On the other hand, Any time the words "Windows", "BSOD" and "+5" come up I'll mod it inappropriate, simply to reduce the amount of idiots who keep the circle going.
- Chris
Especially as he's offtopic anyway, and that pic's being doing the rounds for ages. Actually, I'd be hard-pressed to come up with a post that was ever so badly in need of about -5 Overrated whacks.
- Chris
You will not be modded up for that. You've given a random troll (actually, it's more likely another "troll researcher" doing another psychological test on slashdot readers) some job satisfaction, and you've wasted severla minutes of my time and yours. Happy?
- Chris
So what happens then? All phones will look like ass, except for a tiny subset which look great but don't perform as well and cost three times as much? And every time anyone gets one of the commodity ones to not look like ass, Slashdot runs it on the front page as if it's the first time it's ever been done?
- Chris
They definitely won't have thought of that. What an ingenious idea.
- Chris