Avifile is a library that supports compressed AVI files on x86 Linux. It provides efficient file compression and decompression, enabling smooth playback and editing of AVI videos.
This software project is designed to provide multiple multimedia-related utilities for x86 Linux systems. Initially created in May 2000, the primary goal of this project was to develop video capture and recompression applications that would be compatible with the most popular AVI file format. It also aimed to support the latest data compression methods such as Indeo Video and various MPEG-4 variations for image compression, and MPEG Layer-3/Windows Media Audio for sound. To achieve this goal, this project utilized Win32 dynamic-link libraries in a Linux environment.
Over time, the project gained popularity due to its side product, an AVI movie player that could play DivX ;-) movies in Linux with reasonable performance and stability. This led to most of the work being focused on this aspect, resulting in a wide range of codecs being supported, including DivX ;-), Indeo Video, I263, among others. Additionally, the software can show subtitles and perform video output using YUV overlays when necessary support from hardware and operating system is available. It can also play most files in ASF format, with current development CVS code capable of streaming ASF media over HTTP.
It should be noted that this project is not intended to provide a universal media framework for Linux or do much more than what it currently does. It is mostly a proof-of-concept work that has introduced the idea of using Windows DLLs and a limited (~50 Kbytes of code) subset of Win32 API for audio/video (de)compression in *nix environments. This idea has already been reused in several other - more general - software projects. This project also extends that idea to the usage of DirectShow audio/video decoders for the same purpose by emulating DirectShow/DCOM environment from decoder point of view. It is the only project that includes a player for files in the Advanced Streaming Format. All these features are essential for the complete modern multimedia environment and will hopefully become available in near future in such perspective architectures as Arts (KDE) or GStreamer (Gnome).
Aside from reusing the ideas, the project is used as is in a few media players for Linux, such as XMMS, XTheater, or LAMP. It is distributed under General Public License version 2, which means that users can do anything they want with the code. However, if they want to redistribute it or any of its derivatives, they have to do it under GPL and make the source code available. For more details on this, visit the site of Free Software Foundation.
Legal issues covering Win32 DLLs which accompany source code are a bit more complicated. These DLLs are freely available on the internet, and for those DLLs which come with a license, their copyright owners allow using them at no cost if they are not disassembled, reverse-engineered, etc. Some DLLs (Indeo Video) explicitly allow their inclusion into other projects under mentioned restrictions. Many DLLs are available without having to accept any license agreement at all (DivX ;-), all DirectShow codecs), meaning that any kind of activity with them is acceptable.
Finally, it is important to remember that there is no warranty about the quality of this project. It is written mostly by one former university student with a background in the area of Applied Physics in his spare time. Therefore, it cannot be guaranteed that it compiles properly on your system because the resources to test it on all existing distributions of Linux and flavors of Unix do not exist. However
Over time, the project gained popularity due to its side product, an AVI movie player that could play DivX ;-) movies in Linux with reasonable performance and stability. This led to most of the work being focused on this aspect, resulting in a wide range of codecs being supported, including DivX ;-), Indeo Video, I263, among others. Additionally, the software can show subtitles and perform video output using YUV overlays when necessary support from hardware and operating system is available. It can also play most files in ASF format, with current development CVS code capable of streaming ASF media over HTTP.
It should be noted that this project is not intended to provide a universal media framework for Linux or do much more than what it currently does. It is mostly a proof-of-concept work that has introduced the idea of using Windows DLLs and a limited (~50 Kbytes of code) subset of Win32 API for audio/video (de)compression in *nix environments. This idea has already been reused in several other - more general - software projects. This project also extends that idea to the usage of DirectShow audio/video decoders for the same purpose by emulating DirectShow/DCOM environment from decoder point of view. It is the only project that includes a player for files in the Advanced Streaming Format. All these features are essential for the complete modern multimedia environment and will hopefully become available in near future in such perspective architectures as Arts (KDE) or GStreamer (Gnome).
Aside from reusing the ideas, the project is used as is in a few media players for Linux, such as XMMS, XTheater, or LAMP. It is distributed under General Public License version 2, which means that users can do anything they want with the code. However, if they want to redistribute it or any of its derivatives, they have to do it under GPL and make the source code available. For more details on this, visit the site of Free Software Foundation.
Legal issues covering Win32 DLLs which accompany source code are a bit more complicated. These DLLs are freely available on the internet, and for those DLLs which come with a license, their copyright owners allow using them at no cost if they are not disassembled, reverse-engineered, etc. Some DLLs (Indeo Video) explicitly allow their inclusion into other projects under mentioned restrictions. Many DLLs are available without having to accept any license agreement at all (DivX ;-), all DirectShow codecs), meaning that any kind of activity with them is acceptable.
Finally, it is important to remember that there is no warranty about the quality of this project. It is written mostly by one former university student with a background in the area of Applied Physics in his spare time. Therefore, it cannot be guaranteed that it compiles properly on your system because the resources to test it on all existing distributions of Linux and flavors of Unix do not exist. However
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Version 0.7.43: N/A