I am making a website (in a commercial context) where users can upload videos to our server
naturally that causes problems with browser compatibility. the solution would be to transcode them using FFmpeg on the server.
the problem is i have been reading on FFmpeg and it's license and i am very confused, does the use of FFmpeg on the server count as distribution ? and that is before talking about patented code.
if it is not possible to do it without risking the entire company in legal disputes. are there any alternatives that can be used ?
thank you very much
does the use of FFmpeg on the server count as distribution ?
No. "use" and "distribution" are specifically different things in a legal context. The FFmpeg license (LGPL) only limits distribution rights; it gives you the "freedom to run" (this is freedom 0) which means you can use it in any you want. That freedom is explicit and intentional.
and that is before talking about patented code.
As for patents: ask a lawyer.
are there any alternatives that can be used
Not really, most alternatives end up using FFmpeg internally.
Related
How to check (programmatically) if a video/audio file has DRM protection? Can FFmpeg do this?
As noted in the comments, this heavily depends on the file format. However, since the most common format is likely to be ISOBMFF, that will likely be the case where you most often need to detect it.
For ISOBMFF, it's quite easy, you can simply loop through the "atoms" in the file, and look for a pssh atom.
Tools like mp4dump will be able to dump the whole structure for you. Alternatively i built a small tool that will find the pssh box, and tell you which DRM systems it signals.
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.
Since #LordNeckbeard pointed me to the FAQ of FFmpeg, that I really can't believe I missed, it became clear to me that there is a problem in using proprietary codecs, thus there are some file formats that could be avoided to keep ourselves safe. Otherwise if someone can afford a license to use them too, that would be perfectly fine.
So mp3, mp4, mpeg and some more patented formats are to be avoided, if not licensed.
ffmpeg can be built so it can exclude support for such formats and if you need to use sound or video to your software ogg and ogv are nice and efficient formats as we all know.
Digging a little deeper Ι found that too.
https://www.fsf.org/resources/playogg_radiostation.pdf
I've been recently investigating different multimedia frameworks for adding audio and video capabilities to my applications.
I've been looking at phonon, gstreamer, ffmpeg, libvlc/vlc.
However, I cannot find a good resource that answers some of my general questions.
Are these interchangeable?
Do they work in the same level?
Do you have any experience using some and can give feedback of why did you chose one over the other?
Thanks
Are these interchangeable?
generally not. Phonon is a high level api that wraps actual multimedia frameworks, which allows you to change the backend, but on the other hand limits what you can do.
Do they work in the same level?
no. some of the ones you mentioned are high level, some are low level.
Do you have any experience using some and can give feedback of why did you chose one over the other?
You should really tell what you want to do. Then people can advise what framework might be suitable. Lower level frameworks such as gstreamer cover quite a large variety of use cases.
There is a 'GStreamer SDK' for windows and OS/X which should get you started easily on those platforms (on Linux you can just install your distro's -dev packages). The SDK ships with snappy, which is a small media player using clutter, but you can easily build your own player using some other toolkit or API of course.
In one of the project that we have undertaken we are looking for a video capture & recording library. Our groundwork (based on google search) shows that vlc (libvlc), ffmpeg (libavcodec) and gstreamer are the three popular free and open source libraries / multimedia frameworks available for the same. How do these libraries compare on the following parameters:
Licensing policy to allow use within a commercial product without the need to open source any of the components of the product that is using the library
Ability to be used effectively in a multi-threaded environment (library should be inherently thread-safe)
Easy to use and maintain
Documentation: API should be well documented...this is relative...:)
Our primary intention is to be able to capture RTSP video streams (H.264/MPEG-2/MJPEG encoded), convert these streams to raw video / frames so that it can be used for analysis / processing and later on compress these frames and store it on the disk in the form of an MP4 file (using MPEG2 / H.264 encoding).
P.S. We understand that FFmpeg is also one of the components of vlc since vlc uses libavcodec library. Is the same true for gstreamer as well? Does it have any ffmpeg dependency?
Awaiting your responses.
Regards,
Saurabh Gandhi
I suggest you to use Gstreamer.
Gstremer is multimedia framework and it has so many plug-in for various task. Plugin are one type of library. And for Capturing rtsp , converting raw video , and muxing in mp4 all have i think you will easily find out the best plug-in in Gstermer. yOU just need to write one application for this.
1. Licensing policy to allow use within a commercial product without
the need to open source any of the components of the product that is
using the library
i dont know much about this
2. Ability to be used effectively in a multi-threaded environment
(library should be inherently thread-safe)
yea Gstremer internally take care for all threading.
3. Easy to use and maintain
yea Gstremer is easy to use and maintain
4. Documentation: API should be well documented...this is relative...:)
yea Gstremer has verry well managed documented API
No Gstermer framework has no dependency on ffmpeg.but Actualy gstremer has some plugin which are based on ffmpeg. that is gst-ffmpeg
Environment: Windows XP/Vista, VS2008, C#/.NET 2.0, VideoGrabber.
Hi All,
I'm writing an app which captures cameras input and encodes them into a movie file (including sound).
My client suggests I encode the movie using the DivX codec. But it's not installed by default and it's not redistributable: Users would have to download, install and configure it themselves.
Is there a Codec available in default Windows (XP+) installations that I could use to encode video and sound? It must support compression. Ideally, I should be able to programmatically set basic configuration.
Note: I read this question but it doesn't actually address my needs.
TIA,
Is there a Codec available in default Windows (XP+) installations that I could use to encode video and sound?
About the best you can hope for is WMV2 (WMV v8). You may be able to encode it using qasf.dll.
The codecs you get for AVI in XP are all woeful efforts from the early days of ‘Multimedia PCs’: things like Cinepak and RLE, which are of zero use for modern full colour/resolution video, and Intel 4:2:0, which is only chroma subsampling, not really actual video compression.
If you need better than that you'll have to start embedding your own codecs, eg. from ffmpeg.
But it's not installed by default and it's not redistributable: Users would have to download, install and configure it themselves.
That's best anyway. Silently installing codecs onto a system is rather antisocial as there are often clashes between them and you could end up messing up other DirectShow applications. For example there are (at least) three different common DirectShow codecs that can handle “DivX” (which is really nothing more than MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile video plus MP3 audio in an AVI container): DivX, Xvid and ffdshow. Having more than one installed can be a recipe for bugs.
Not sure how useful this is to you, but I was trying to answer that very question just recently. This article suggests DIB, I420, or IYUV are supported on all platforms... at least in OpenCV. I had the least trouble with I420.