Fluendo walks the line between free and proprietary codecs


 
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Old 08-14-2008
Fluendo walks the line between free and proprietary codecs

08-14-2008 11:00 AM
Despite all its advances, GNU/Linux remains weak in its support for proprietary audio and video codecs. Because these codecs are often encumbered by patents, distributions must choose either to include support of questionable legality or else exclude it altogether. In the middle of this controversy sits Fluendo, a Catalan company of about 50 employees that is a main contributor to projects like GStreamer, and supports open formats, but also offers licensed, proprietary codecs such as Windows Media Video and MPEG4. While many would argue that this dual position is necessary, it's one that sometimes creates an unasy balance for the company, says Muriel Moscardini, Fluendo's sale director.



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aviplay(1)																aviplay(1)

NAME
aviplay - QT-based movie player SYNOPSIS
aviplay [options] [ files | URLs ] DESCRIPTION
aviplay is a QT-based player for various avi, asf, mpeg4 movie files. Avifile project creates library that allows programs to read and write compressed AVI/ASF files (Indeo Video, DivX :-), etc.) under Unix OS. (De)compression is performed with various plugins (included Win32 DLLs for x86_32 OS) if native codec is not available. Win32 libraries have to be downloaded separately. Primarily the ffmpeg project is used for codecs and also for stream parsing. Over the time it's possible the project will mostly blend into ffmpeg. FEATURES
* low CPU usage (movies playable even P200MMX) * smooth video (using threads and frame precaching) * supports streamed .asf files * audio resampling suppport * modular design OPTIONS
-h --help Show help message -c --codec [help] Set codec options (use help to see options for this parameter) -s --size <width:height> Start playing movie at dimensions X * Y. -f --fullscreen Start playing movie in fullscreen. -f --maximize Start playing movie in maximized mode (i.e. preserve current resolution). --seek <position> Seek to given position in movie. -sub --subtitle <filename> Use give file as the source for subtitles. -subcp --subtitle_codepage <codepage> Select codepage for subtitles. They are internaly encoded into UTF-8. See iconv(3) for available codepages. Codepage "default" means current default encoding in system. Example of codepages: CP1250, ISO8859-2, default. -subfont --subtitle_font <fontname> Select font for subtitles. At this moment only X11 fonts are supported (either in traditional "-misc-*" or TTF notation) -ac --audio-codec <codecname> Prefered codec to be used for movie audio decoding. Use with "help" to see available audio codecs. -vc --video-codec <codecname> Prefered codec to be used for movie video decoding. Use with "help" to see available video codecs. --rc Enables remote control (stdin|stdout). SHELL variables: WIN32_PATH - can be used to override library path /usr/lib/win32 which holds MS Windows binary dll codecs. AVIPLUGIN_PATH - can be used to override library path /usr/lib/avifile which holds avifile plugins. AVIPLAY_MUTE_AUDIO - if set shows just video track AVIPLAY_MUTE_VIDEO - if set plays just audio track AVIPLAY_NOSYNC - do not synchronize audio and video track HTTP_PROXY WRITE_ASF - write asf file received over the network to file (/tmp/*.asf) NOTE
Press the About button in aviplay's GUI for more details about the usage and configuation. Aviplay automaticaly searches for subtitle file with the same name as the original ".avi" file but with .sub, .SUB, .srt, .SRT, .txt, .TXT, .smi, .SMI suffix. For Debian users: After the discussion with the autor I have came to the conclusion that GSM codec is legaly distributed under GPL terms since this piece of code was donated to the project by the original author which was using it in the non-GPL project xanim. SEE ALSO
http://avifile.sourceforge.net for the original source and main CVS archive for binary codecs. http://mplayerhq.hu for mplayer - an excelent player with more options and supported formats AUTHORS
Original author: Eugene Kuznetsov <divx@euro.ru> Current developer: Zdenek Kabelac <kabi@users.sourceforge.net> Zdenek Kabelac 12 February 2003 aviplay(1)