At the beginning of 2008, we announced our intention to use GStreamer as our main media core. This was no small feat but we were determined to provide Songbird users with a robust, extensible, open media pipeline.
Since GStreamer was mainly a Linux project it required us to port it to OS X and Windows, which we got working in late March. By July, we had GStreamer integrated in both Mac and Windows nightlies, albeit only supporting limited formats. In December, we’ve made our 1.0 release available which uses GStreamer as our main media playback system, across all platforms.
Because of its open plugin architecture, we were able to assemble the necessary codecs to legally support playback of MP3, FLAC, and Vorbis on all platforms; WMA and WMA DRM on Windows; and AAC and Fairplay on Windows and Mac (protected closed formats such as WMA DRM and Fairplay are still supported with additional cores).
On Linux, we are happy to announce that we’ve licensed the Fluendo mp3 decoder. Fluendo is a company that specializes in delivering multimedia products. They are also well known for their support of the development of the GStreamer multimedia framework. Fluendo also provides other GStreamer plugins to allow playback of format such as WMA on Linux for instance. You can purchase those through their online shop directly.
The community will benefit from all the hard work that went into this since we now have the foundation work in place to develop additional audio features such as normalization, cross fading and EQ. See our roadmap for more details.
13 Comments
Subscribethis feels a little too much like a compromise of the freedom of songbird
Not really nivi.. There are unofficial MP3 codecs available for linux too..
Actually, Gstreamer is a big win for open source I feel. Because I’m guessing that it would make it easier to make Songbird run on platforms such as Solaris too.
I think its good they are licencing the codecs. If you don’t want to use them, you can either use any unofficial Gstreamer MP3/whatever codec for linux, or change to windows probably.
I don’t think songbird should let themselves run the risk of having to pay licencing fees…
Yup…I think we should boycott mp3 and switchover to ogg
SOmething that Firefox has done for video. There are although less takers for theora and ogg but still when major browser like FF supports it, it will eventually find good takers. I saw some demo on how one can use javascript to modify vide stuff…ITS AWESOME. I think same way if SB goes after more on codec side it will find good takers. Although you don’t have to ditch Fluendo but support open formats. All The best…:)
How long until the mp3 patents expire? I thought it was already expired in the US and that the rest of the world had 3 years to go.
FYI Birders: The “Nivi” that made the first comment is not the real Nivi. There is only one Nivi. The real Nivi. Made with organic ingredients. Available exclusively at Venture Hacks and other fine establishments.
yay for EQ and Cross-Fadind
i want visualisatins too. that small ones that flicker on the faceplate or media-bar.
yes i want them =B
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3 Apparently the patent expiration is as long as 2017 in the states (and most likely many other countries too).
I dont think boycotting has ever worked well (when GIF was boycotted, everyone ignored the boycott and continued using it). We simply need formats which offer genuine benefits. This is one reason why FLAC took off so well. Everyone was screwing around with a proprietary lossless format, and nobody supported the others. FLAC slipped through the gaps and worked everywhere, so quickly dominated the lossless market. Its benefit was that it that it worked almost everywhere (except maybe iTunes, but Apple has led many of those users to live in their own little world world anyway, because either way, not many people use Apple lossless).
With Ogg, this wont work because:
1) everyone has already standardised around MP3.
2) Ogg and MP3 aren’t lossless, so people cannot convert between the formats cleanly
3) Mp3 support is mostly guarenteed everywhere. Ogg in some cases still isn’t supported.
4) Featurewise, ogg and mp3 are almost the same. Nobody cares to swap format when there is no noticeable difference to them.
Instead, we need to pursue innovative features, and plugins for ogg’s (or Ogg v2) which give them a genuine advantage over the other languages. Some features they could add are:
1) Multiple tracks. Similar to Midi’s, allow the vocal track to be split away from the instrumental recordings. This way artists could offer music for download, as a single file which allows users to turn it into a karaoke if they wish. The music player should rejoin them again, yet, artists are not required to provide multiple tracks per song.
2) Add lossless support to ogg… A hybrid lossless/lossy format would possibly makes things easier for developers, and end users.
3) One benefit of multiple tracks is that you could allow multi-language audio files. Movies allow multiple languages for the audio, so why shouldn’t audio be able to. If I was in a band which spoke 3 different languages, I’d love to be able to offer music (which is slightly larger), which had the songs in 3 different languages.
4) An ogg extension mechanism, so that new features could be added to the stream later. So, an application could define “TRACK1 is extension http://oggextensions.oggy.com/visualisation-hints, and its optional” in the ogg file. Ogg is just a container, similar to Jabber. So why not? If OpenGL and Songbird didn’t support extensions, think about where they would be today? This would also allow customised transformations to be applied to tracks too.
Features such as this in an open audio format I believe could give artists a significant reason to switch to ogg. Artists such as NiN/Trent Reznor are always trying to push the envelope, and features such as these would give them a good reason to do so.
To get ahead, we have to stop treating songs as simply songs, and allow them to do stuff like suggest to visualisations how to build up the effects well, or offer many languages.
At least in my opinion
the Real Nivi is probably aware that there are far too many nivis on this internet
in my case, it’s my real name upside down so i feel somewhat entitled
and also: i was referring to the Fluendo thing, not the GStreamer thing
The Gstreamer implementation is a great thing, no doubt! But to be honest I am quite disappointed that the Songbird developers decided to add video support to Songbird as it only increases development time and prolongs release dates. There are already many good (and bad) video players out there so why make another one using the same decoders?
Hi
When is AAC-support coming to the linux-version? (out of the box-support for AAC on all three platforms is a must IMO)
Magnus
Maybe someone could help explain this one to me. I have Asus 701 and 901 eeePCs with Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex installed and SB v1.0. Both builds will play AAC files but only the 701s will play an AAC stream from:
http://www.radioparadise.com/musiclinks/rp_128aac-1.m3u
‘ve chkd the gstreamer pkgs and all seems consistent.
Ideas would be welcome
@Jigar Shah “Yup…I think we should boycott mp3 and switchover to ogg
SOmething that Firefox has done for video.”
The tag introduced in html5 is being supported by Firefox to specification. HTML5 cannot put additional formats such as mov/wmv in the spec since they are licensed codecs. Once html5 becomes more widely adopted and available, you’ll see browser support and plugins for this just as there is now.
Is it possible to set up Songbird somehow to play WMA files? I have a lot of my music library in WMA..