p2pnet - rss feed: WMA/WMV - MPEG2/MPEG4
p2pnet.net post - Opinions Wanted:- A UK IT columnist saw goldenpi’s p2pnet article from last year centering on the dangers of WMA/WMV.
“I understand that Msoft has submitted WMV (and WMA?) to the SMPTE and now, I’m told it’s, ‘as open a standard as MPEG2 / MPEG4′ (whatever that might actually mean),” the journalist says in an email, going on:
“Does anyone have any views or further info on this? And in any case, on what ‘Open’ might actually mean in this context? Really open standards like Ogg and/or Matroska - do they stand a chance of getting sufficiently widely adopted to challenge WMV?
“I notice that some users are putting out, eg, Matroska files where the contained streams are still proprietary (eg WMA). Do we understand enough about ‘openness’? What’s a reasonable practical test of openness?
“While we’re on the subject, does anyone have any thoughts on the wobbliness of AVI as a container for VBR audio? I notice that VDubMod carries dire warnings about this.”
If you’re into this and you want to share your thoughts with the world, do a comment post here and/or get in touch with us (email top right) and we’ll pass you on to the IT writer.
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See:-
goldenpi’s - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, p2pnet
better performance - Review: AMD Athlon 64 FX55, PC Advisor, October 22, 2004
October 22nd, 2004 at 8:44 pm
A common misuse of the term “open” that means “with source code available” of either of the protocol, encoding or the implementations.
What you really want to know about is the “Freedom” of using these formats.
By now you might be going “if the format of the file is available to all who could dictate what I do with it?”.
Enter software patents.
If Microsoft has patents over the format (and it usually does)
then in the contries that have software patents it can prevent you from using these formats unless you pay them a license.
Yes, software patents are a great evil since they allow interdiction
of things that aren’t real, like concepts, ideas and algorithms.
What constitutes free as in freedom software?
According to the Free Software Foundation:
“Free software is a matter of freedom: people should be free to use software in all the ways that are socially useful. Software differs from material objects–such as chairs, sandwiches, and gasoline–in that it can be copied and changed much more easily. These possibilities make software as useful as it is; we believe software users should be able to make use of them.”
see: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/philosophy.html
So is WMV any good?
Well, can you use it for anything without having to request permission from Microsoft?
Can you distribute software using it without having your users agree to an agreement forced upon them by MS?
Are you free to make modifications to WMV without having to ask permission to MS?
Can you even create an implementation of WMV without having to ask MS?
To answer these questions you need to examine the licensing terms as well as patent licensing (if any) that Microsoft allows for it.
You should do that anyway so go check it out.
Feel free to use google.
http://www.google.com
October 26th, 2004 at 4:23 am
First of all, Goldenpi needs to calm down. Some of his claims about WM files are mostly either wildly inaccurate or downright incorrect. I might not have the time to go through them all, but here are a few issues:
WM is NOT the same as DRM:
WM files are DRMmed ONLY if their creator chooses to make them so. In other words, the WM format is NOT intrinsically protected.
MS has also made their media format easier to deal with. Users who have mistakenly DRMmed their own files can fix this via a web interface that is absolutely brainless. WMP (since version 10) no longer rips audio to secure WMA by default - as a matter of fact it now supports ripping these at up to 320 kbps in the MP3 format.
WM can be easily converted to MP3:
Has Goldenpi ever heard of dBpowerAMP? It does the above quite easily. So does Winamp. Get a clue, man.
If open source formats want to have a chance, they had better be easier to use:
OGG and related formats and containers are nice to talk about and work well, but require a whole lot of figuring out to work properly. This is especially true for video files. Compare the ease of encoding a video file using Dr DivX (commercial, but sooooo easy) or Windows Media Encoder 9 (free, but proprietary and harder to use) to attempting the same using Gordian Knot and associated open source programs. Dr. DivX simply figures out everything for you, while Gordian Knot and other open source programs give migraines. Enough said there.
Windows Media Player 10 has a fantastically intuitive interface, and manages everything from pictures to audio and video. If the open source community can come up with something that can do the same, I’d be happy. But so far, WMP10 is the best I’ve seen.
Oh yeah, and did I mention the poorly constructed sentences, almost indecipherable jargon and the like found on most of the homepages of these GPL projects? The GPL community needs to get away from the idea that “support” consists of a user forum and a two sentence description of the program. Not everyone has time for that. I’ve gone through the trouble, but I’m not very happy about it and the majority of users don’t have my patience.
Open source formats and media players need much better interfaces and easily used features to have a chance. I use WMP10 and Dr. DivX a lot because they’re relatively easy and fast.
In other words, for a format to gain support, there most be more behind it than mere anti-MS sentiment.
Sync problems with AVI files?
What sync problems? Dr. DivX creates perfectly synced AVI files if you give it the right source. If you’re having problems, you’re probably using the wrong software.
In conclusion, open source programs DO work well and produce good output, sometimes better than proprietary ones. But the user experience literally blows. If you want to go that route, prepare for grief and lack of sleep (I’ve been through it). This doesn’t mean I don’t like open source programs - I like them and use them too, but I hate the learning curve and difficulty.
The future will NOT be open source. But it won’t be a closed future either. It will be hybrid, similar to how it is now. There are good programs from both domains - there really is no reason to choose one or the other exclusively.