[MPlayer-users] Free audio codec for .AVI files ?

[Matthew W. Miller]

On Sun, Jan 25, 2004 at 01:58:07PM +0100, MrBlue wrote:
>On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 23:07, D Richard Felker III wrote:
>> On Sat, Jan 24, 2004 at 09:29:09PM +0100, MrBlue wrote:
>> > On Sat, 2004-01-24 at 01:40, Jan Knutar wrote:
>> > > > i am wondering if there is a free audio codec for .AVI files
>> > > > like ogg. It should be "free" in the meaning that i don?t have
>> > > > to pay licensing fees if i sell movies encoded with it. Of
>> > > > course, it should be supported by MENCODER.
>> > > Hm, what video codec are you going to use? :-)
>> > Xvid
>> Xvid is most certainly not patent-free. And it's lower quality than
>> libavcodec's mpeg4 encoder.
>No,it?s not patent-free. But MPEG4 licences cost only 1cent/30
>minutes.. so selling 1000 hours of video for a 10$ fee sounds
>reasonable for me, as long as nobody tells me a better way.

Yeah so why are you using a lower-quality MPEG-4 codec if you're already 
willing to cough up the licence fees?

For what it's worth, here are all the codecs which libavcodec classifies
as "risky", for patent or other reasons.  This is not legal advice, of
course, but it's something of a guide:

"RISKY" ENCODERS:
mpeg2video h263 h263p flv rv10 mpeg4 msmpeg4v1 msmpeg4v2 msmpeg4v3 wmv1
wmv2
"RISKY" DECODERS:
h263 mpeg4 msmpeg4v1 msmpeg4v2 msmpeg4v3 wmv1 wmv2 h263i flv rv10 rv20
svq1 svq3 wmav1 wmav2 indeo3 aac mpeg4aac


For comparison, here are codecs which libavcodec *does not* classify as 
"risky".  Keep in mind that some are not classified as "risky" because 
they have to be enabled at configure time.  This is almost certainly the 
case for mp3lame, for example.

"NOT RISKY" ENCODERS:
ac3 mp2 mp3lame oggvorbis faac mpeg1video mjpeg ljpeg huffyuv asv1 asv2
ffv1 rawvideo

"NOT RISKY" DECODERS:
oggvorbis rawvideo mpeg1video mpeg2video mpegvideo mpeg_xvmc dvvideo
mjpeg mjpegb sp5x mp2 mp3 mace3 mace6 huffyuv ffv1 cyuv h264 vp3 theora
asv1 asv2 vcr1 cljr fourxm mdec roq interplay_video xan_wc3 rpza cinepak
msrle msvideo1 vqa idcin eightbps smc flic truemotion1 ac3 ra_144 ra_288
roq_dpcm interplay_dpcm xan_dpcm
-- 
Matthew W. Miller <mwmiller at columbus.rr.com> "You shouldn't trust _any_
software. Software is _at best_ a faithful but bumbling zombie servant
that ineptly performs your bidding. At worst, it's an evil zombie that
wants to kill you and eat your brain." --Mr Bad, on Trusted Computing