W. Wayne: >> What additional steps and downloads are required to use totem to play >> stream video (.wmv files, for example)? Thanks
On Solaris 10, Sun ships GStreamer 0.8 with no video plugins. So, on Solaris 10 GStreamer isn't very useful for video. In Nevada, Sun ships GStreamer 0.10 with the Ogg/Vorbis/Theora video plugin. One advantage of GStreamer 0.10 is that it works with the Fluendo plugins that you can purchase from http://shop.fluendo.com. They have WMA and WMV plugins that work fine on Solaris. Jerry Tan mentioned their MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 plugins and said they work for Solaris. This isn't true, actually. These two plugins only work on Linux currently. I am working with Fluendo about this issue and hope to help them provide these plugins on Solaris sometime in the not-too-distant future. For the curious, the issue is that their existing plugins depend on the IPP (Intel Performance Primitives) library which isn't available on Solaris. Also, in both Solaris 10 and Nevada, Sun ships RealPlayer which supports RealAudio and RealVideo formats, which is another streaming format that you might be interested in. Real also supports the Ogg/Vorbis/Theora formats. Unfortunately Sun doesn't own license to ship most popular media codecs. Currently Sun only ships an MP3 audio decoder plugin, since that is the only non-free media codec that Sun owns license to ship. (Not exactly true, but Sun's license to support old QuickTime 2.5 movies and earlier in Java Media Player is probably not worth mentioning). There are programs out there that you can download and install on your machine to play media formats. But since Sun doesn't pay license to ship this code, you may be breaking the law if you install or use such software on your machine. Keep in mind that many media codecs (such as those from MPEG, WindowsMedia, Real, Apple, etc.) have licensing terms. Intellectual property laws vary from country to country, but in most countries it is not legal to use licensed software without paying for it. I would recommend that people avoid breaking such laws, and to check with a lawyer if you have questions about how such laws apply in your country. Legal approaches like purchasing the plugins with license from Fluendo is an affordable, and worry-free way of supporting media when using OS's like Linux or Solaris. For example, they only charge 16 Euros for WindowsMedia audio and video decoding support. Supporting companies like Fluendo is helping to support bringing popular non-free media format support to free operating systems. Those of you who like to play MPEG, WindowsMedia, Real, etc. formats on your systems should appreciate this even though it might offend the free software purists out there a bit. Brian
