DVR-MS in DGIndex

[Wilbert]

The issue is licensing. DGIndex is GPL, whereas ASF (which is what DVR-MS is) is proprietary.
No, the issue is one ASF patent. In the past, Microsoft forced phaeron to abandon ASF reading support in VDub, because of one ASF patent that Microsoft owns.

[zambelli]

No, the issue is one ASF patent. In the past, Microsoft forced phaeron to abandon ASF reading support in VDub, because of one ASF patent that Microsoft owns.
Inventive's summary is correct. The issue in implementing ASF directly in DGIndex is the potential clash of ASF EULA with DGIndex GPL. Using either DirectShow or WMFSDK would avoid the problem since they're free Windows APIs. Though I sincerely doubt anybody would really care even if a direct ASF implementation was done.

The patent is a non-issue as long as the ASF EULA is followed. That's why the specification exists.

And just for the record... MS didn't force Avery to remove ASF support from VDub.

[Wilbert]

@Zambelli and all,

Inventive's summary is correct. The issue in implementing ASF directly in DGIndex is the potential clash of ASF EULA with DGIndex GPL. Using either DirectShow or WMFSDK would avoid the problem since they're free Windows APIs. Though I sincerely doubt anybody would really care even if a direct ASF implementation was done.

The patent is a non-issue as long as the ASF EULA is followed. That's why the specification exists.

And just for the record... MS didn't force Avery to remove ASF support from VDub.
Also as a response to your post in the locked VC-1 H264 thread (which was your response at virus):
"In 2000, Microsoft forced a free sofware project to abandon support for its patented video streaming format ASF." (Clearly a reference to VirtualDub.)

"Forced"? Microsoft hardly forced Avery Lee to drop ASF support. No lawyers were ever involved, no threats were ever made, and it's doubtful that the patent claim was anything more than a rogue action of an individual. If you don't believe me, ask Avery about how exactly that whole thing went down. I'd take with a huge grain of salt any article that's based on hear-say.

I guess i need to make apology. I contacted Avery about this. Your statements that 'no lawyers were involved' and 'that there was no patent threat/claim' are true as Avery confirmed. Although he received a threat by phone though, saying asf support was illegal. Avery said the following to me:

No lawyer contacted me, nor was there direct talk of patents, but I did actually receive a thinly veiled threat by phone from a member of the Windows Media team who told me point blank that what I was doing was illegal. If I had been more legally savvy at the time I might have pressed the issue and probably gotten them to back down, but in the end it would have been futile: that code was based on VFW codec availability, which very quickly became moot after WMV7 appeared, which was only available in DirectShow form. It wasn't until much, much later that MSMPEG4v1-v3 was reverse engineered and WMV9VCM was released. So, in the end, it was partially a legal problem, and partially a technical problem.

neuron2, if you think this is off topic, please move it to a separate thread.

[zambelli]

I guess i need to make apology. I contacted Avery about this. Your statements that 'no lawyers were involved' and 'that there was no patent threat/claim' are true as Avery confirmed. Although he received a threat by phone though, saying asf support was illegal.
Thanks, Wilbert, I appreciate your dilligence. I always thought it was very unfortunate how that whole thing with ASF and VirtualDub played out. They were different times, I suppose, people at MS were a lot more guarded about OSS in general. Though some might argue differently, I do think the mentality at MS has changed a lot since (case in point, Microsoft now has its own OSS lab (http://port25.technet.com/), ASF spec is public, and WMV9 is a standard :) ). Considering how commonly and widely VirtualDub is used in the pro video industry and at Microsoft (the answer: a LOT!), I doubt anyone would dare to raise a stink about it again today.

[FreQi]

So it's been 6 months since this thread was touched last. I recently built a Vista MediaCenter and it would be really nice if I could make some better use of the recordings.

Is GraphEdit still the suggested method for processing the DVR-MS files or has there been some additions to DGIndex to support them?

[Guest]

No support in DGIndex. Did someone make a VirtualDub plugin yet?

[FreQi]

I haven't seen anything that'll directly open a DVRMS file in VirtualDub, but it looks like DVRMSToolbox is the popular way to deal with them.

http://babgvant.com/

I haven't had a chance to try it yet, but it looks like it'll make an mpeg from the DVR-MS. I haven't been able to determine if it's simply demuxing and remuxing (transmuxing? is that multiplexing?) or if it's actually re-encoding the streams. I'm pretty sure it's not re-encoding it.

Once it's in the mpeg, most guides are suggesting to use VirtualDub-MPEG2 (http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/stable/) but that doesn't appear to support AC3.

[buzzqw]

but that doesn't appear to support AC3.
just install AC3-ACM http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/AC3ACM/

BHH