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• Proprietary codecs on Linux. What is legal ?

  17 octobre 2016, par George Eco

  So, assuming we got a distribution without proprietary codecs installed.
  Let’s take Linux Mint for example. I want to store and playback wav and ogg format sounds, either by using my own software, or by using another developer’s software. So far so good right ?

  Imagine now that we have the following scenario. For some reason, I wanna playback a file that is either an mp4 or mp3 or mpeg or any other format, made by proprietary codecs. Instantly, I will need a codec for these formats.

  I read somewhere that Fluendo sells solutions for "legal codec usage" for linux distros.
  URL of fluendo : http://www.fluendo.com/en/

  So here comes the questions :

  Using VLC and ffmpeg is enough for me to convert a file to an ogg or ogv so I can playback a song or a video using an open format. You can also playback playback files made by proprietary formats. But are VLC and ffmpeg legal to use, to playback such files made by proprietary codecs ? For example, ss VLC codecs okay to be used without paying anyone for mp4 playback ? Is it okay to convert a file from mp4 to ogv ?
  If not, are there any legal and open source and free (as in freedom) codecs around that can solve the issue, or does someone have to pay a product, to be ethically correct, to the developers of the proprietaty codecs ?

  Note that I do not ask for Windows, since codec licenses are included to the price of the operating system. I ask exclusively for a free linux distribution.

• Internecine Legal Threats

  1er juin 2011, par Multimedia Mike — Legal/Ethical

  FFmpeg and associated open source multimedia projects such as xine, MPlayer, and VLC have long had a rebel mystique about them ; a bunch of hackers playing fast and loose with IP law in order to give the world the free multimedia experience it deserved. We figured out the algorithms using any tools available, including the feared technique of binary reverse engineering. When I gave a presentation about FFmpeg at Linuxtag in 2007, I created this image illustrating said mystique :

  
  
  

  It garnered laughs. But I made the point that we multimedia hackers just press on, doing our thing while ignoring legal threats. The policy has historically worked out famously for us– to date, I seem to be the only person on the receiving end of a sort-of legal threat from the outside world.

  Who would have thought that the most credible legal threat to an open source multimedia project would emanate from a fork of that very project ? Because that’s exactly what has transpired :

  
  
  Click for full threat
  

  So it came to pass that Michael Niedermayer — the leader of the FFmpeg project — received a bona fide legal nastygram from Mans Rullgard, a representative of the FFmpeg-forked Libav project. The subject of dispute is a scorched-earth matter involving the somewhat iconic FFmpeg zigzag logo :

  Original 2D logo		enhanced 3D logo

  To think of all those years we spent worrying about legal threats from organizations outside the community. I’m reminded of that time-honored horror trope/urban legend staple : Get out ! The legal threats are coming from inside the house !

  I’m interested to see how this all plays out, particularly regarding jurisdiction, as we have a U.K. resident engaging an Italian lawyer outfit to deliver a legal threat to an Austrian citizen regarding an image hosted on a server in Hungary. I suspect I know why that law firm was chosen, but it’s still a curious jurisdictional setup.

  People often used to ask me if we multimedia hackers would get sued to death for doing what we do. My response was always, “There’s only one way to know for sure,” by which I meant that we would just have to engage in said shady activities and determine empirically if lawsuits resulted. So I’m a strong advocate for experimentation to push the limits. Kudos to Michael and Mans for volunteering to push the legal limits.

• Is it legal to have inconsistent frame rate in an mp4 (h.264/avc) video

  30 janvier 2016, par Dmitry Fink

  I am constructing a video from a content that doesn’t change at a constant rate (phone screen virtual display), in fact I receive frame only when there is such a change. Is it legal according to the standards to have inconsistent frame rate in a video ? For example have frames with PTS of 0s, 0.066s, 0.1333s, 0.2s and then the next frame at 20s, etc ?

  It seems some players (Chrome) are struggling playing it back correctly, when encountering such a time gap, it sometimes start showing frames from the beginning of the video instead. Should I replicate the last frame myself to maintain a constant frame rate ? Is there a way to instruct a codec (ffmpeg) to inject "skip frames" at a constant rate when such gaps are detected.

  Thanks