[BTP]

This is just a question had popped up in my head while reading/posting in another forum.

(Please take into account that I know comparatively little about programming.)

Why is it that apps can be made, like OpenOffice and Fire that can speak to the proprietary formats of MS, Yahoo, AOL, ICQ, etc., and there is no plugin/all in one app/QT add on for Real Player and WIndows Media Player?

Maybe it is hard to program, maybe there are legal issues, but I am curious in knowing. I might be in a minority, but I would love to have the ability to add support for playing Real and WMP in QuickTime. Maybe that would marginalize QuickTime? (that could be a debateable point)

I figure you people would be the ones to ask.

[edit - fixing up a few things.]

[ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: BTP ]

[SoClose]

If you look at how RealPlayer and WiMP are packaged for Mac OS, it appears that most of their actual video playing functionality is in a series of share libraries. You might be able to open the libraries in something like PEFViewer and figure out what the system calls are. I don't think that Real or MS have a public API on the Mac OS for embedding their players within other host apps.

Hopefully, as both of these critical developers move their code to Mac OS X, they'll start taking advantage of the Core Foundation CFPlugin APIs so that they can package their code for use by other developers. Since the event handling issue of Mac OS 9 WaitNextEvent is solved with Carbon Events and CFRunLoops on Mac OS X, it should be much easier for application developers to utilize plug-in code that needs to handle events on a regular basis. Since there's no easy-to-use (pun intended) API on the Mac like ActiveX, package components for this type of use still has a way to go. Hopefully CFPlugin will be the answer.

Sorry for the long-winded non-answer. I guess I like hearing myself speak on this Friday afternoon...

[BTP]

Well, thanks for the answer, but truthfully, I only kind of understand. I get the gist, though.

I asked this as I have seen a lot of development for OS X, and I'd really like to see the Mac OS out-flank other operating systems, at least in the minds of the average consumer. I know and believe OS X to be one of the best OS's we have, but often it is the most basic things that drive the thought processes of the basic computer consumer/user.

If Real Player works like it did in 9, then we have little to look forward to. I guess I need to rethink my idea about out-flanking. I wonder if QT by itself or by an add-on were able to play other formats would erode or build support for Quicktime.

Another question, if this can be done, why hasn't someone done it already? And would making it work on OS X allow easier porting to Linux (possibly an even greater demand?).

[benh57]

Originally posted by BTP:
<STRONG>Well, thanks for the answer, but truthfully, I only kind of understand. I get the gist, though.</STRONG>

SC's answer was a bit more technical than you were looking for I think.

Basically a QT plugin for WMA and RP could be done, but reverse engineering the proprietary WMA and RealAudio formats would take a LOT of work, and noone has the time, reason and/or money to do it. And they could destroy all your work with a format change in 2 weeks. I'd do some net searches though, i would not be surprised if the linux folks have tried.

Don't worry though, both WMP and RealPlayer are coming to OS X.

[Angus_D]

Well, also note that it's much easier to say, reverse engineer the file format of a Word document (although it's still not terribly easy) than a WMP file, because the WMP files also probably use proprietary compression/encoding formats.

For example, Linux has been wanting QuickTime for a very long time. Several people have reverse engineered the QuickTime .mov FILE format, but most movies out there use proprietary codecs like Sorenson, which they have no idea how to decrypt. This means that they can't play most movies.

Also, you can't do the shared library thing until they bring out Carbonized versions (you can't link against both InterfaceLib and CarbonLib at the same time), which would probably defeat the point.

[amonitzer]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
<STRONG>Well, also note that it's much easier to say, reverse engineer the file format of a Word document</STRONG>

Well, the Word document format has been officially documented by Microsoft. The main reason that there are only a few readers/writers is that it's built around the Windows OLE-system (Object Linking and Embedding). You'd have to recreate parts of the Windows API to read it, which is too much work for most programmers.

Additionally, there are patents that prevent Linux people from decoding Sorenson and other codecs. You'll have to wait until that patent expires (just like RC4 did).

[sadie]

Your're all missing the point slightly. Real could easily create a public library to let everybody use their format... but they don't want to. They want to make MONEY out of it instead - either with advertising or directly selling.

That's why each format is so hard to decode, that's why they have their own codecs, and that's why things like Sorenson are patented.

The answer: don't encode in RealPlayer. It's not the best thing for the job anyway. Use a public form of MPEG, and then eveybody will be able to use it. Once people get round to this, the importance of Real, WMP, Quicktime etc will all drop.

[Millennium]

The real problem is not the file formats, but the codecs.

The file formats, truth be told, have already been figured out for the most part. The same FFMpeg library from which the DivOSX codec is based can also do some work with some of these, like .rm, .asf, .wmv, and others.

The video codecs, though, are another matter. These are generally extremely difficult to reverse-engineer, and even if you manage to do it, the companies that make them will sue you to kingdom come. Someone actually managed to reverse-engineer the old RealVideo codec (not G2, but the one before it); this, too, is in FFMpeg. But again, this won't work with anything that was encoded in G2 format or higher; keep in mind that G2 was introduced in Version 6.0 (several years ago).