[Commons-l] FYU : Democracy Player

Sun Dec 3 15:51:20 UTC 2006

On 12/3/06, Magnus Manske <magnusmanske at googlemail.com> wrote:
> There is a software called "Democracy Player" [1] which is open source
> (XUL-based, like Firefox/Thunderbird), plays lots'o'video formats
> (including OGM), and can handle video streams.
>
> This might be the answer to the commons video dispute. The page also
> explains how to turn web-based videos into streams that then can be
> viewed via Democracy Player.

I wasn't aware that there was an ongoing 'dispute'.

How does this change our position from what we've had before? (VLC and
VLC plugin)

I wouldn't expect much, because the windows version of it is based on VLC.

Also,
"In terms of open-source, patent-unencumbered codecs like Theora, our
goal is to support them as soon as we can, and -- once open-source
media players and publishing tools get a bit more solid and
commonplace -- to nudge publishers to use them."

Implies that even though it's based on VLC, it lacks Theora support.
(Perhaps only on mac where it's  based on QT? ..  nope, No theora
support in the linux port, which seems to be based on xinelib, even
with theora support in xinelib.. In fact, without stealing the Windows
dlls xinelib is unable to play all the formats democracy player claims
to play, ... so much for cross platform! )

Hopefully, people will remember this the next time they want to clame
that OGM is a good extension for Ogg/Theora.

I'm not seeing what this would offer us over VLC and perhaps the VLC
browser plugin. I guess the control widgets are nice.