FFmpeg 0.6 Released With H.264, VP8 Love

[yotambien]

Ffmpeg has now a native VP8 decoder, apparently faster than Google's libvpx by a good margin (although meanwhile, a new version of the native decoder/encoder has been released with bug fixes and speed improvements). Jason Garret, the author of the famous VP8 review, is adding assembly optimisations to FFmpeg's decoder.

Good stuff.

[Kjella]

The studios don't care one way or the other. Anybody is free to create a licensed player for Linux. The fact that nobody has done it yet says nothing.

Except the license you have to get has a tons of requirements about the robustness of the decoding solution all the way from the disc to the output, it's even worse now with HDCP than for DVDs. It's a wonder you can hang out at Phoronix and not catch all the discussions about UVD in the AMD open source forum, and that's just if we can get permission to do hardware acceleration of unencrypted video. Legally it won't happen unless you got a binary blob player talking to a binary blob graphics driver. Probably with obfuscation too so you can't read out anything from memory with a debugger.

Even though it might not appear so, the closed source companies are in an intense battle with the studios to reseal AACS and BD+ again. Honestly, there's quite many more issues the open source community could take up (MPLS support, PGS subtitle support, decoding all the lossless audio signals, multi-threaded H.264 decoding, menu support etc. and for now leave the ripping to someone else, or to AnyDVD in a virtualbox - you don't need a physical machine with Windows to do it.

[yotambien]

I suspect this trend has been going on for at least a hundred years, which is even more frightening if you think about it

So I guess a hundred years ago peasants used to read Tolstoy in their spare time and factory workers enjoyed going to the opera on the weekends...

[V!NCENT]

That's seriously fscked up, but probably not far from the truth. It's like we are thrown back into the middle ages, like "You keep them dumb and than I will ensure that they will remain like that", with a very select few corrupt, company driven 'politicians' and a Slashdot-ish crowd that will complain to no end while not being able to do anything

I travel by bus a lot and trips take 1-1,5 hours sometimes and I want to do something to keep my mind from sleeping. So what do I do besides web browsing with my phone (whichsomehow seems to implie I'm a cool guy who gets lots of texts, which I hate)? I take the Atronomy magazine out of by bag and the first thing I notice is faces that read like "Huh WTF, is this guy reading about the galaxy? That's what nerds do, not him" and occaisonaly "Eeeeeeeelll, what is that?!" and I repley to Barby the braindead "Something your pathetic little brain is not capable of understanding, not even if you'd live to be a hundred years old". Her face turns into a gesture of "My thought train has just stopped... let's stare as if I'm frozen".

Pathetic...

[bridgman]

I suspect this trend has been going on for at least a hundred years, which is even more frightening if you think about it :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marching_Morons

I read quite a few of Kornbluth's stories when I was 11 or 12 years old and my thinking has probably been scarred for life as a result :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Merchants

[V!NCENT]

Some really good movies packed so many interesting details into scenes that you had to go back and watch again to pick up what you missed the first time, to get a deeper understanding of the story. Modern movies are written for today's short-attention-span audience; for them the fewer details the better because nobody is going to catch any of them anyway.

I remember re-reading the Lord of the Rings 3-4 times over the course of junior high school, and getting something new out of it each time, even though after the first time thru I already knew the story. Good literature bears re-reading, good movies bear re-watching. Current Hollywood output is neither.

Aint that the truth... The problem is that there's no way anyone with a limited budget can replace/combat it.

I remember reading a news paper in a bus (yes shoot me - dead tree media) in which a journalist wrote that there was a trend towards stupidity on the rise. Being smart was out of style. I shook my head from left to right and thought; "OK what the hell is this crap?".

And where are we now? It seems that where ever I go stupidity is all around me. People (but that will always remain), media, culture and yes... you guessed it! -> Apple iProducts everywhere.

If I would believe in God I would seriously pray for the day that this dissapears every single day... Too bad the world is in the hands of evil smartasses and stupid people supporting them and there's nothing you can do about it... >.<

[highlandsun]

How strange, expecting to actually get a quality product in exchange for your money. What kind of insane maniac are you?

Closed-source software houses whose shrink-wrap licenses disclaim all fitness for use of their products all deserve to go bankrupt, yesterday. If your software isn't even fit for any particular use, then it certainly wasn't fit for sale and you certainly don't deserve to get any money for it; "merchandise" has to be fit for sale. Shrinkwrap-licensed software is just garbage.

re: movie studios, blu-ray... I've paid to see a couple movies in theaters recently. But none that I need to ever watch again. Their storytelling just isn't that good.

Some really good movies packed so many interesting details into scenes that you had to go back and watch again to pick up what you missed the first time, to get a deeper understanding of the story. Modern movies are written for today's short-attention-span audience; for them the fewer details the better because nobody is going to catch any of them anyway.

I remember re-reading the Lord of the Rings 3-4 times over the course of junior high school, and getting something new out of it each time, even though after the first time thru I already knew the story. Good literature bears re-reading, good movies bear re-watching. Current Hollywood output is neither.

[V!NCENT]

@cynyr,

Sarcasm...

[cynyr]

Reasons for lack of paid software

And they were right. I mean, if you won't pay for software, why would you pay for media? The studios would rather just shut out the entire Linux platform and concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

Actually most of us will pay for software, Oracle, Autocad, RHEL, etc. There was 1 licensed DVD player for Linux, it wasn't very good much worse than mplayer or VLC. My issues with a paid for player, would be:

1. Updates, are they going to update as fast ffmpeg/mplayer/vlc? What about security, Adobe flash player doesn't have a good record even on Linux. I could find a few more examples of closed source software on Linux having issues if needed.
2. Integration, will it look good and oganised with the current desktop, GTK/QT with the same colors as the rest of the system. Chrome does this well.
3. Continued support, how long will my license work for? what if the company goes under? can I move it to a new computer if/when I get one?
4. Does it play well on a multiuser Linux system or is it expecting to keep it's only config data in one place shared for all users? (NWN is an example of that on linux)

All of the above would need to be addressed before I considered paying for the software. If it doesn't I might as well use the OSS stuff, at least then i have a shot to hack in the support I want, gtk gui, etc. In short I think Linux/OSS users are willing to pay for software, but in return we are expecting polished, well designed, secure software, since we are used to getting >80% of that for "free".

p.s. I hate to say that it is free, because a person or a group has spent a large amount of time writing it.

[Remco]

And they were right. I mean, if you won't pay for software, why would you pay for media? The studios would rather just shut out the entire Linux platform and concentrate their efforts elsewhere.

The studios don't care one way or the other. Anybody is free to create a licensed player for Linux. The fact that nobody has done it yet says nothing.