[Kazan]

due to the recent developement that Fraunhofer is charing USD 0.75 per mp3 decoder i think it's tie to user ogg

[penguin]

Originally posted by Stealth
who owns the trademark or copyright or whatever to "MP3"?  microsoft?

AFAIK, the copyright on the format is owned by the MPEG group, but the encoding is patented by Fraunhofer and you must have a license from them for any codecs.

Originally posted by EdrickV
Actually, there used to be some support for using MIDI files in the source code.

Probably goes back to the Descent days... still some snippets of code from that...


I now think Ogg is the way to go.  It's not as popular as MP3 (by a long shot) but this may change soon, thanks to this recent development.

From a legal point of view, it looks like individuals using MP3 codecs are not required to pay a $0.75 fee, but the distributers of software containing codecs are (that would mean us )  I don't think any of us (nor our hosting providers) want to be on the hook for this fee, not to mention the legal headaches.  

IANAL, etc.


Of course everyone who downloads fs2_open (if it had MP3 support) could tape 3 US quarters to a postcard and mail it to Fraunhofer... that might piss 'em off...

[EdrickV]

Originally posted by penguin
Probably goes back to the Descent days... still some snippets of code from that...

Actually I think it was an FS1 thing that was put in there reatively early in development. Probably as a place holder for the actual digital music system or maybe at the time they had intended to use MIDI music. Though they did get some code from Descent for computing some sort of checksum for something else.

[vyper]

Originally posted by Kazan
due to the recent developement that Fraunhofer is charing USD 0.75 per mp3 decoder i think it's tie to user ogg

Please tell me I'm reading this wrong! Oh man.... uh.... right I'm off to tell the world how we should all invent our own codec.

[Stealth]

i agree that would be nice!  it doens't have to be a widely known or used or supported format, if anything it should be one that's not well known

[Ryx]

I put my vote with OGG, as well.

[Kazan]

yeah Fraunhofer as being schweinen - i was directly quoting /.

[AqueousShadow]

BLAH!!! Never in my life have I used OGG format....

[penguin]

Originally posted by vyper
Please tell me I'm reading this wrong! Oh man.... uh.... right I'm off to tell the world how we should all invent our own codec.

There are many open-source Ogg codecs around, I doubt we'd be writing our own (just as we would not be writing our own MP3 codec)

There are many conversion tools WAV/MP3/OGG/whatever -- what difference does it make?  If you're distributing the sound files as part of a mod pack, who cares?  Especially since most media players (winamp, etc.) support it already...

Originally posted by AqueousShadow
BLAH!!! Never in my life have I used OGG format....

Yeah, and 4 years ago you had never used MP3, and 12 years ago you had never used WAV...


Just to reiterate: the legal onus on the developers and distributers makes it too risky to support MP3 at this time.  I don't like it either.

[Stealth]

Originally posted by penguin
Yeah, and 4 years ago you had never used MP3, and 12 years ago you had never used WAV...

12 years most of us didn't even have a computer for crying out loud

it's like saying:  "2 million years ago you'd never have heard of 'humans'"

[penguin]

Originally posted by Stealth


12 years most of us didn't even have a computer for crying out loud

it's like saying:  "2 million years ago you'd never have heard of 'humans'"

children  

I do remember when Windows 3.1 came out (in '91 or '92) -- you could have cool sounds when you received new mail (a phone would ring), etc.  We thought that was the coolest -- for a while... then it became annoying and everyone turned it off.  This was also before sound cards were standard equipment, so the only speaker was the ****ty one inside the PC, with no volume control.

Before that it was just beeps of various tones (and your system would freeze up when it was playing).

My point was: every "standard" is new at some point.

BTW I do not remember before there were humans.

[Inquisitor]

It's the distributors, people like fmod, that pay this fee I believe, though it is entirely unclear.

And the way fmods licensing works may change because of this, but for now, they have not changed their licensing (free to non-commercial games).

This is a royalty grab, since nobody is actually writing mp3 or ogg support at the moment, we can pretty safely take a comfy "wait and see" chair

[AqueousShadow]

Originally posted by penguin
children  

I do remember when Windows 3.1 came out (in '91 or '92) -- you could have cool sounds when you received new mail (a phone would ring), etc.  We thought that was the coolest -- for a while... then it became annoying and everyone turned it off.  This was also before sound cards were standard equipment, so the only speaker was the ****ty one inside the PC, with no volume control.

Before that it was just beeps of various tones (and your system would freeze up when it was playing).

My point was: every "standard" is new at some point.

BTW I do not remember before there were humans.

Well you're quick to judge. Ogg format isn't standard at all. It's been around for quite sometime, maybe several years now. I'm no "child" or "fool," so don't go around assuming.

[Inquisitor]

Not that we should turn this into a pissing match, but if you are gonna reply, at least look at the intervening posts. Looks like sarcasm to me, and a reply to Stealth for the most part, so relax, we're on the same team here...

[RandomTiger]

Originally posted by Inquisitor
Anyone looked at either SDK?

Random Tiger is making progress on the (admittedly windows only) movie player, maybe his code could be leveraged for a windows only MP3 player?

I still think fmod is the cleanest implementation for MP3.

Ogg of course is still an option.

After a very quick look through the SDK it seems directshow has some kind of support of mp3 but nothing in direct sound. I reckon using directshow in game would be more trouble than its worth.

I personally dont think much/any change in this area is needed, but if someones wants to change it I suggest doing it the easiest way to code.

[penguin]

Originally posted by AqueousShadow


Well you're quick to judge. Ogg format isn't standard at all. It's been around for quite sometime, maybe several years now. I'm no "child" or "fool," so don't go around assuming.

Right, no offense was meant (well, not much anyhow ) to anyone.  Stealth posted that few of us had computers twelve years ago, and that was my rebuttal to him...

Like I've said (at least twice so far), we need to think about the legal ramifications of what we release.  Since none of us are getting paid to do this, I don't think we are in any position to release something that may have financial liabilities.  I know it's not worth it to me, sorry.  And I'm sure that our hosting providers, by the grace of whom we can actually do this (HLP, Gamespy, and Warpcore), would agree.

Anyhow, as Inquisitor has pointed out, this is still on the drawing board, so why doesn't everyone take a deep breath, think happy thoughts, and wait for the dust to settle.

We can always continue to use WAV files for in-game effects and music, as RT mentioned; the movies/cutscenes are another topic altogether.

[WMCoolmon]

Originally posted by penguin
we need to think about the legal ramifications of what we release.

Anyhow, as Inquisitor has pointed out, this is still on the drawing board, so why doesn't everyone take a deep breath, think happy thoughts, and wait for the dust to settle.

We can always continue to use WAV files for in-game effects and music, as RT mentioned; the movies/cutscenes are another topic altogether.

[RandomTiger]

Ogg wins!

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=4628

[EdrickV]

Then again:
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news2.php3?ID=4655

[AqueousShadow]

YAY!!