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Please check the status of this specification in Launchpad before editing it. If it is Approved, contact the Assignee or another knowledgeable person before making changes.

• Launchpad entry: none yet

• Packages affected:

Summary

Ubuntu Media Center should provide a huge codec support in order to be able to play most (all!) of the existing media formats.

Implementation

Ubuntu Feisty will come with a package called ubuntu-restricted-extras which installs main non-free codecs (multiverse repository). This package should be included by default in Ubuntu Media Center.

Codecs

The following table shows the audio and video codecs that are expected to be supported by the UMC.

It is based upon the assumption that the UMC will rely upon the Elisa software, so will be using the gstreamer framework.

• Audio Codecs
  Codec name	Free	Proprietary	[https://shop.fluendo.com/ Commercial]
  Xiph/Ogg Flac	X (flacdec)
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_Vorbis Xiph/Ogg Vorbis]	X (vorbisdec)
  MPEG-1 Layer 2 (DVD/DVB/MP2)	X (?)		X
  MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3)	X (?)		X (gst-fluendo-mp3)
  [http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Audio_Coding MPEG-4/AAC (MP4)]	X (?)		X
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital Dolby Digital] AC3	X (a52dec/ac3parse)		X (gst-fluendo-ac3dec)
  Microsoft WMA	X (ffdec_wmav1,2)		X (gst-fluendo-wmadec)
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musepack Musepack MPC]	X (?)
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey%27s_Audio Monkey Audio]	(1)
  AIF	?
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lossless Apple Loseless] (m4a)	?
  Sony [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Transform_Acoustic_Coding ATRAC] 3	?
  RealAudio (2)	?		X (gst-fluendo-realdec)

1 : [http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/modules/gst-monkeysaudio.html Gstreamer MonkeyAudio plugin] has never been ported to 0.10

2 : RealAudio codecs are a mess with at least 9 variants : (dnet, atrc, raac and racp are the only 'standard' ones)

• Code	Name	Minimum Version
  lpcJ	IS-54 VSELP	1
  28_8	G.728 LD-CELP	2
  dnet	Dolby AC3	3
  sipr	Sipro Lab Telecom ACELP-NET	4/5
  cook	G2/Cook Codec	6
  atrc	Sony ATRAC3	8
  raac	MPEG-4 LC-AAC	9
  racp	MPEG-4 HE-AAC	10
  ralf	RealAudio Lossless Format	10

  Video Codecs
  Codec name	Free	Proprietary	[https://shop.fluendo.com/ Commercial]
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora Xiph/Ogg Theora]	X (theoradec)
  [http://dirac.sourceforge.net Xiph/Ogg Dirac]	(3)
  Microsoft WMV	X (ffdec_wmv1,2,3)		X (gst-fluendo-wmvdec)
  MPEG2	X (?)		X (gst-fluendo-mpeg2video)
  MPEG4-ASP (DivX/Xvid)	X (?)		X
  MPEG4-AVC/H264 (MP4)	X (?)		X

3 : [http://schrodinger.sourceforge.net/ Dirac plugin] is still in the works

• Container formats (Demuxers)
  Container	Free	Proprietary	[https://shop.fluendo.com/ Commercial]
  Microsoft RIFF (WAV/AVI)	X (avidemux/wavparse)
  Microsoft ASF (WMA/WMV)	X (asfdemux)		X (gst-fluendo-asf)
  MPEG ES/Elementary Stream	X
  MPEG SS/System Stream	X
  MPEG2 PS/Program Stream	X		X (gst-fluendo-mpegdemux)
  MPEG2 TS/Transport Stream	?		X (gst-fluendo-mpegdemux)
  MPEG4-ISO/QT/MOV/3GP/MP4	X (qtdemux)		X (gst-fluendo-isofile)
  Xiph/Ogg	X (oggdemux)
  Ogm	X (ogm_audio/video/text_parse)
  Matroska (MKV)	X (matroskademux)
  Real Media (RM/RMA/RMVB)	X (rmdemux)
  DivX Media Format (DMF)	?

  Network protocols
  Protocol	Free	Proprietary	[https://shop.fluendo.com/ Commercial]
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Media_Services Microsoft MMS]	X (mmssrc)
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_time_control_protocol RTCP]+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_transport_protocol RTP]
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Streaming_Protocol RTSP]+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_transport_protocol RTP]	X (rtspsrc/rtpdec)
  [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Streaming_Protocol RTSP]+[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDT_stream_transport RDT] (Real Data Transport)	X (rtspsrc/rdtdepay)

Packages

Here is the list of packages providing codecs:

• free: gst-plugins-base-0.10, gstreamer0.10-plugins-good, gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad(-multiverse), gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly(-multiverse), gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
• proprietary:

• [https://shop.fluendo.com/ commercial] :

  (De)muxers	gst-fluendo-mpegdemux (4), gst-fluendo-mpegmux (4), gst-fluendo-isofile, gst-fluendo-asf, gst-fluendo-asfmux
  Audio Codecs	gst-fluendo-mp3 (4), gst-fluendo-ac3dec, gst-fluendo-wmadec/enc, gst-fluendo-realdec, gst-fluendo-alsaspdif
  Video Codecs	gst-fluendo-wmvdec, gst-fluendo-mpeg2video

4 : available in Ubuntu repositories. Others could be bought from Fluendo site or builded from [https://core.fluendo.com/gstreamer/svn/trunk/ their source repository].

CategorySpec UbuntuMediaCenterTeam