Death to WMV :-(

[BOB567]

Hello

I'd like to ask something about the famous WMV video format.

I found out that most movies (both legal & illegal) on the Internet use
WMV

Code: Select all

1. WMV is closed source & excessively copyrighted & patented, correct ? 2. When playing WMV, VLC uses exceptionally the M$-internal codecs, while all other supported codecs are part of VLC, correct ? 3. The EU cartel office asked M$ to reveal some "internal" secrets - wasn't the WMV algorithm affected by this ? 4. Can a WMV movie be hidden in other file types, esp. AVI ? 5. What versions of WNV exist and how to identify them ? 6. How to transcode WMV movies into a better format ? 7. What is the preferred video fomat (open source, unpatented, good compression&quality, low CPU requirements) ?

[BigDAS]

"7. What is the preferred video fomat (open source, unpatented,
good compression&quality, low CPU requirements) ?"

I would suggest XVid MPEG-4 for the best quality at the highest compressability.

[fkuehne]

...or H.264. It features a really good video quality, but requires decent hardware... (both for encoding and decoding).

[BOB567]

No more ideas ?

[Chill]

VP5, VP6

[fkuehne]

VP5, VP6

Sorry, but both are really crap. Additionally, these are closed-source (-> proprietary) formats. No open-source app is able to play them.

[Flying Jack]

Look at this

http://nanocrew.net/2005/09/01/compiling-vlc/

[HyperHacker]

Agreed, WMV is crap. I don't understand why EVERYBODY uses it. When I try to play any WMV in VLC, I get sound but no video... don't suppose anyone knows a way to play them or convert them to a format that doesn't suck? FJ's link only seems to apply to Linux. <_<

[Guest]

All my wmv files play just fine here with Windows Media Player I guess you people just have to accept the facts and switch to Windows Media Player and stop being silly hmm-hmm.

[HyperHacker]

Well that's a great idea, but there's 3 problems with it:
1) I'd prefer having a tooth pulled to using WMP.
2) Even if I did want to use it, it refuses to run.
3) This a support forum for VLC Media Player. Would you consider it helpful if you took your car in for repairs and they said "try a different car"?

[Guest]

All my wmv files play just fine here with Windows Media Player I guess you people just have to accept the facts and switch to Windows Media Player and stop being silly hmm-hmm.

I smell a troll.

[d0d]

MPEG4 is patented and so is H264. Btw. ff_wmv9 does a great job on many wmv9 videos in the latest builds, however it doesn't play DRM files.

Legally VLC should be illegal in the USA in binary form if you don't pay fees to the MPEG Consortium, e.g. DivX does that and same goes for audio stuff like MPEG3 or AAC where e.g. any vendor of mp3 players need to pay fees.

Now, if VLC would implement a way cracking WMVs DRM to also play those files I see it getting blacklisted in many countries just for that.

Remember, not anything that has an open source implementation is unpatented.

[HyperHacker]

Well of course asking for VLC to be able to crack DRM would be rather ridiculous (how could it, anyway?) but I'm talking about ordinary WMV.

[Guest]

I wouldn't call WMV crap, especially WMVHD works fine at low bitrates and plays well for most ppl with 1080p res even even without special optimization by video cards. However it features mostly DRM protection for those, like the IMAX movies you can buy on WMVHD discs.

Well, MS got it as standard and under the label VC-1 now and it should be accepted as a proper standardized codec and isn't for commercial releasers less of a problem than MPEG4 can be, besides as most ppl uses windows they got at least one player able to play it out of the box. Most ppl don't care ...

As said, newest FFmpeg WMV9 implementation should work fine with most common encodes. Dunno if it's implemented in VLC, not using VLC much because of the crappy SSA/ASS and general subtitle support. (they generally look like plain --please stay polite--), but I tried it recently on some random WMV9 video I downloaded and it worked, and the mozilla plugin plays the video from my newssite properly, the stable release is ancient crap anyways so better try the 0.8.4-test releases.

[faenril]

My WMV did not work on VLC but does again after reinstalling WMP10

[DJ]

Hello

I'd like to ask something about the famous WMV video format.

I found out that most movies (both legal & illegal) on the Internet use
WMV

Code: Select all

1. WMV is closed source & excessively copyrighted & patented, correct ? 2. When playing WMV, VLC uses exceptionally the M$-internal codecs, while all other supported codecs are part of VLC, correct ? 3. The EU cartel office asked M$ to reveal some "internal" secrets - wasn't the WMV algorithm affected by this ? 4. Can a WMV movie be hidden in other file types, esp. AVI ? 5. What versions of WNV exist and how to identify them ? 6. How to transcode WMV movies into a better format ? 7. What is the preferred video fomat (open source, unpatented, good compression&quality, low CPU requirements) ?

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. The lawsuit revolves around what the EEC deems unfair competition in Media Players. IE Microsoft bundling Media Player 9 or 10 with Windows. This has nothing to do with Direct Show of which WMV is a part.

4. It is not hidden. It is a format in a container.

5. WMV 1, 2 & 3 Identifying them would require a utility like GSpot.

6. Better is like taste, what's good for some may not be good for others. IE depends on what you want or want to use it for.

7. There is no singular answer here. If the video is WMV 1 or 2 depending on the quality of the source would be one answer. WMV 3 again depending on the quality and speed of your machine would be another answer.

http://wiki.videolan.org/index.php/Transcode

There are many open source alternatives available for both formats and containers.

[HyperHacker]

I wouldn't call WMV crap, especially WMVHD works fine at low bitrates and plays well for most ppl with 1080p res even even without special optimization by video cards. However it features mostly DRM protection for those, like the IMAX movies you can buy on WMVHD discs.

If it supports DRM, requires a lot of processing power, and is proprietary and illegal for open-source programs to support it, I consider it crap. It may be a very nice format, but the idea that only MS's software can legally play it just bugs me. Especially when this software hogs up resources so badly.

One thing I want to ask, though, not WMV-related but copyright-related... I can record videos in ASF format using VLC. Opening these in VirtualDub, it says ASF is copyrighted and to support it would be illegal. How is VLC able to support it? Is the author of VirtualDub incorrect in assuming that all ASF-format videos fall under this copyright? Or is VLC just using some other format and giving it a .asf extension, or using the proprietary software like it does for WMV?