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View Full Version : Do you/can you use free tools professionally?

absinthe
14th July 2005, 22:23
As a hobbyist, I was wondering whether it's common for video professionals to use free tools of the nature we embrace here at doom9 in their work. Specifically, I'm wondering about its legality.

I guess I'm asking because my wife keeps trying to get me to start up a business of transferring personal "home videos" to DVD. I started to look over the GPL but it's rather lengthy :).

But seriously, I can't imagine anyone out there who works with video and doesn't use AviSynth.

-abs
Sirber
15th July 2005, 16:32
You would have to pay at least MPEG2 licenses IMO to sell DVD legaly.
Doobie
15th July 2005, 18:03
Free tools are free for anyone to use. The GPL does not prohibit commercial use of software. Some free software, not GPL, is restricted to non-commerical use and the software authors have commercial versions. Some free software may be illegal to use (e.g. DVD rippers, older Xvid, LAME) privately or commercially. MPEG2, used by DVDs, is not free.

To be legal, if you want to sell DVDs, buy a DVD authoring program.
Doom9
15th July 2005, 18:54
Some free software may be illegal to use (e.g. DVD rippers, older Xvid, LAME) privately or commercially. MPEG2, used by DVDs, is not free.
Please do not perpetuate the MPAA's lies. This site wouldn't exist if DVD ripping tools were as illegal as they'd like to believe.

And why would XviD or Lame be illegal? If you pay the appropriate MPEG licensing fees, nobody will bother you ever. And at least in case of MPEG-4, there's a considerable number of encoded pieces that you can get away with until you have to pay licensing fees.
absinthe
15th July 2005, 19:23
Exactly to whom does one pay an "MPEG2 license fee?"

-abs
Prodater64
15th July 2005, 19:42
Anyway, DVD standard also accepts mpeg1.
mpucoder
15th July 2005, 20:58
Exactly to whom does one pay an "MPEG2 license fee?"

-abs
MpegLA
Doobie
15th July 2005, 21:23
Exactly to whom does one pay an "MPEG2 license fee?"

-abs

Just buy some software that encodes MPEG2.
absinthe
15th July 2005, 22:24
So, we can program our own MPEG2 encoders, but we can't sell the MPEG2 they output??

So basically, with TMPGEnc Plus I'm set?

-abs