[Matroska-general] [Fwd: AW: CHIP Release - Listing of released software]

[Christian HJ Wiesner]

FYI

@ SirElivs : what you think of MKMerger as a name for your GUI ? Can we 
release it as an .exe, with mkvmerge statically linked somehow ( i am 
dreaming now ) ? Any chance its ready until 4th august ?

@ DaveEL : you have any ides about avs2mkv ? Can it be released ?

@ Gabest : MPC is GNU ? if not, you care sending a 'formless email' to 
Markus Mandau about including MPC ?

Thanks guys, comments welcome

Christian


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	AW: CHIP Release - Listing of released software
Date: 	Thu, 31 Jul 2003 12:08:41 +0200
From: 	Mandau, Markus <mmandau at chip.de>
To: 	'chris at matroska.org' <chris at matroska.org>



Great news.
Short guidance for publishing:
- Only Windows-Software, because over 90% of our readers using only this OS
- not CLI ( I think in case of mkvtoolnix/mkvmerge we can make an exception,
because it is well documented and really useful)
- What is under GPL, we can publish no problem. If it is not GNU we need the
permission of the programmer. In case of the matroska-tools, they are all
GNU I think. In case of the players like TCMP and MPC, I am not so sure (may
be you can contact them, that they send me a formless mail?).

My suggestion for the package:
-Basic library
-TCMP RC4
-MPC
-VirtualDubMod
-mkvtoolnix
-DirectShow parser/splitter filters
-Matroska Shell Extension
-MKMerger (if it is ready)
because with this tools you can make, edit and play Matroska

Will you build a special Setup-Routine for the matroska-package or should we
offer the tools separately on our CD (which is the easiest way, I think. If
we are allowed to include the players TCMP and MPC, I would like to do it
that way for them anyways)

Best regards
Markus

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Christian HJ Wiesner [mailto:chris at matroska.org]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 30. Juli 2003 23:18
An: Mandau, Markus; matroska-general at lists.matroska.org
Betreff: CHIP Release - Listing of released software



Hi Markus,

i am writing this email on my way to Russia where i will stay until 
Friday for a short bussiness trip. With some bad luck i wont be able to 
send it from there, so you'd receive it not before Friday morning and it 
is obsolete by then, as some other team members may have been in contact 
with you already, but i try to find a way to get it on your desk earlier.

With the 4th august coming closer and closer, we have some good news for 
you. Almost all the new features we wanted to add to our existing tools 
until the release date have been added successfully and we are in the 
process of alpha testing them now to get rid of the last remaining bugs. 
Only thing we couldnt implement in the short time we had was muxing of 
DVD subtitles ( basically RLE compressed bitmaps, often called 'vobsubs' 
), but all other things, like chapters and tagging are already working 
now. With this email i wanted to give you a first impression of what our 
plans are for this release, so you are prepared :

BASIC LIBRARY

We would like to include the main libs for matroska, libebml and 
libmatroska in 0.5.0 relase version tarballs ( tar.bz ) on the CD, 
mainly for Linux users because our CVS server has anonymous access 
b0rked still, but also for developers who wnated to have a look at the 
quality of the library.

WINDOWS

VirtualdubMod : This great tool is derived from Avery Lee's excellent 
AVI editing tool Virtualdub, is using GPL license also, and does support 
AVI/OGM/MKV creation and editing/muxing. Sources can also be AVI, OGM, 
and MKV, but also MPEG1, MPEG2, MP3, AC3, Ogg VORBIS ( only MKV and OGM 
), DTS and SRT. Main Authors are Julien 'Cyrius' Coloos and Tobias 
'Belgabor' Minnich. Homepage : http://virtualdubmod.sourceforge.net , 
Download Page : http://sourceforge.net/projects/virtualdubmod . The 
release version will be uploaded soon, but i will send all tools to you 
via email anyway, once i get them from the author, ready for release.

mkvtoolnix/mkvmerge : Originally made for Linux by Moritz 'Mosu' Bunkus, 
released here http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ ,  he could 
compile it using mingw and is offering win32 binaries from his homepage. 
This tool is CLI based, but there is a great HTML documentation in the 
mkvtoolnix ZIP package, so that even CLI haters like myself could use it 
successfully. mkvmerge's main advantage over VirtualdubMod is that it 
can be used to mux a couple of formats into MKV that are currently 
unsupported in VdubMod, such as AAC, AAC Plus, RealVideo ( RV9, etc. ), 
RealAudio ( Cook, SIPRO, RALF, ATRAC ), and SSA/ASS

DirectShow parser/splitter filters : We are in the happy situation that 
we can basically offer two full featured filters here, the official 
'mkxds.dll' which is based on the main libraries, and Gabest's 
matroskasplitter Filter which he coded without our library in less than 
3 days, mainly to train his fingers he said. We will test both filters 
internally until 4th august and liked to have the better one included 
then, maybe with a NSIS installer as a so-called 'playback pack', but 
without CoreAAC for licensing reasons ( It will contain CoreVorbis, 
matrix mixer filter for 5.1 downmixing,  timestamp manager by DaveEL, 
DVobSub for subtitles display and Gabest's Real wrapper filter, all with 
auto-detection of the OS so the right versions will be installed ).

TCMP ( The Core Media Player ) RC4 : I guess you know this player 
already, made by Ludovic 'Blacksun' Vialle and Christophe ' Toff' Paris, 
i saw you were mailing with Dan 'Betaboy' Marlin already. RC4 will come 
with a LOT of bugfixes compared to RC3, and also introduce a new feature 
with a powerful media library. The matroska CDL was greatly improved by 
Jory Stone, and so TCMP is the first player that can make full use of 
the matroska tagging system, as well as supporting the matroska Aspect 
Ratio handling ( width/height, any combination of integers allowed ) 
independent from the codec that was used.

MediaPlayer Classic : Written in C++ by Gabest, this player is not 
really feature packed, but working fast and stable, and has perfect 
Realmedia and matroska support built in. Homepage is 
http://sf.net/projects/guliverkli , and it can also capture into 
matroska format, using a DirectShow graph and matroskamuxer filter.

Matroska Shell Extension :  From the same author as the CDL for TCMP, 
Jory 'jcsston' Stone was creating a great tool for Windows Explorer, so 
that matroska users can read/write tags in MKV files, and also find out 
about the number of tracks, the codec IDs used, picture resolution, 
etc., just with a right click on the file in Explorer.

? avs2mkv : I dont know if DaveEL can finish and test the tool until 
release date, and it can only be used by very advanced user who know how 
to handle avisynth scripts, but its definitely the first tool ever to 
create 'native' MPEG4 MKV files, using xvid.dll staically linked ( 
license problem for CHIP ? ), and in future we are going to enforce 
native files whereever we can, to underline our x-platform approach.

? MKMerger : The GUI version of Mosu's mkvmerge, we are not 100% sure if 
Florian 'SirElvis' Wagner, the new dev Team member, gets it to work 
until 4th august, but the first test versions loooked very promising.

? VirtualVCR : A great DShow based capturing tool, there is a modified 
version using Gabest' matroska muxer filter, sdome people say its 
wroking great and better than built in AVI, others say they have problems.


LINUX :

mkvtoolnix/mkvmerge : http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/ as 
written above, this tool is incredibly important for the complete 
project, and for Linux users its the one and only

mplayer : http://mplayerhq.hu ,  i have no clue how we could precompile 
mplayer with matroska support, maybe some MKV freaks could create RPMs 
for SuSE ( most used Linux distro in Germany ) and Debian, and we 
include them on the CD  ?

Gstreamer-plugin : I'd like to hear your opinion here markus, Ronald 
'BBB' Bultje has invested a lot of his private time to get this plugin 
working, and Gstreamer is the official multimedia platform for GNOME now 
.. should we include the plugin also ?

? GENTOO ? Is this of any interest ? I am convinced i could organize a 
GENTOO version with MKV support, if this is wanted by CHIP.


BeOS/MacOSX :

Only playback for now AFAIK, again we had to search for a way to include 
mplayer binaries for those OS, so the users can at least play MKV fiiles 
fine, although i heard VLC is working for those OS also, with built in 
MKV support.

Tell me what you think Markus ...is this too much ?? Or is anything 
important missing ? Can we include all of them ? will matroska be 
introduced well with all these tools ?

Thanks and best regards

Christian