Mpeg-2 licensing issues?

[Hein-Pieter van Braam]

Hey list,

Does anyone have any idea on what exactly requires an mpeg2 license for
distribution? Would it, for instance, be possible to promote the 'mplex'
tool to main? (it would have to be separated from the rest of the
mjpegtools package)

The thing is: I've got a little idea, and I did some digging around, and
it's pretty easy to do.

The idea is to add the capability to nautilus-cd-recorder to create
video DVD's. Basically, it should detect that there are only video files
on a disk, and offer to burn the files as DVD video disks, and convert
the files on the disk to dvdauthor compatible mpeg2, generate menus, and
burn the disk like normal.

This is rather trivial from a code point of view, but not so from a
licensing point of view. My idea is to use gstreamer for the actual
reencoding of the video and audio stream, and simply use available video
and audio codecs for it. So a 'virgin' ubuntu install won't actually be
able to encode to mpeg2, since I don't think you are allowed to ship
one, but, the tool could complain (in a sensible way) that it's not
available, and perhaps open up synaptic to install it from
universe/multiverse?

The thing is, to have it work at all, you need a good multiplexer, and,
currently, the only real solution to it is to use mplex from the
mjpegtools, as it is the only piece of code that manages to multiplex
the streams and not loose a/v sync. 

So I can either rip out the relevant peices of code from mplex (bad,
duplicated code) or try to promote mplex to main (better, provided it
isn't in some weird licensing mumbo jumbo) 

note that mplex doesn't have a whole lot of knowledge of the mpeg2
format, and it is most certainly not an encoder. 

anyway, what do you all think about the idea?

comments on both the licensing stuff and the overall idea of the
extension are welcome! :)

All the bits and pieces to do this are 'out there' and, I think it would
be a VERY nice addition to main, as it would be a great 'wow' feature
for dapper imho :)

- TMM
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/attachments/20051015/4da12d0f/attachment.pgp