Hello - New to the list - Opening Questions

Hi,

My name is Alejandro Imass and I am working in a project for
the
Venezuela Ministry of Culture. The project is to catalog
some two
thousand "creators" in different areas such as
Humanities and Arts,
Sports, Basic Sciences and such. Each "creator" or
author will have the
opportunity to share things about his life and his works in
several
media, including audio, video, photos and other documents of
their works
the wish to share with the public.

For audio and video streaming we are evaluating different
options and we
have come to the conclusion that perhaps the Helix Platform
is probably
our best option. As a side note, we are obliged by
presidential decree
to use free and open source software and standards and all
of our portal
is built using free software tools such as the Debian OS,
Catalyst and
PostgreSql. 

As stated above we have evaluated several options and we
have decided to
stick with the ISO MPEG standards 3 and 4 for audio and
video
respectively. We have also chosen the Real player as our
standard
because of it's support for web page embedding and scripting
capabilities and it's support for the three main OSs used
here in
Venezuela namely: Windows, Linux and Mac. The complete
support for Linux
was really the primary reason.

For the server our first option was Icecast but because it
cannot stream
mp4 we are now looking into Helix for both audio and video.
The main
concern now are, of course, legal.

Our basic questions are: 

-Can we legally use the Helix server freely (in an ample
context of the
word) to stream mp3 and mp4 audio and video for this NPO
project?

-To serve/stream MP3 and/or MP4 content would we need to
license and
special software component or patent licenses? if so, what
would be the
procedures to so?

-Is there a possibility for NPOs to use the encoders for
free? if so,
what type of agreements must be signed and what are the
procedures?

-Are we asking in the right place? is there a specific
contact or list
at Helix and/or Real to ask these questions?

We ask these questions because we have researched different
places like
slashdot and others and some of the licensing issues are not
very clear
to many people out there, even in recent threads of
discussion.

Thanks beforehand for any help and direction we can get from
the people
here, and sorry beforehand if these questions are OT to this
list (if
such is the case).


Best regards,
Alejandro Imass













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On 11/15/06, Alejandro Imass <aitp2ee.org> wrote:
> The complete support for Linux
> was really the primary reason.

Really?  Most Linux distributions do NOT ship with MP3/4
support by default.

> For the server our first option was Icecast but because
it cannot stream
> mp4 we are now looking into Helix for both audio and
video. The main
> concern now are, of course, legal.

I believe Helix can stream Theora as well.  You should look
into that.

> -Can we legally use the Helix server freely (in an
ample context of the
> word) to stream mp3 and mp4 audio and video for this
NPO project?

You can use Helix.  Streaming MP3 and 4 are a different
question, though.

> -To serve/stream MP3 and/or MP4 content would we need
to license and
> special software component or patent licenses? if so,
what would be the
> procedures to so?

//mp3licensing.com

> -Is there a possibility for NPOs to use the encoders
for free? if so,
> what type of agreements must be signed and what are the
procedures?

I believe there's no such option.


If you really want some advice, at least from me, use Ogg
Vorbis for
audio.  You may check Wikipedia, as well as a huge number of
other
websites for information on this topic.

I believe both Helix and Icecast work pretty well with
Vorbis.

You could also look into Speex if your NPO's interest is
more towards
speech than raw audio.

Hope that helps,
Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves
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n Wed, 2006-11-15 at 15:53 +0000, Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves
wrote:
> On 11/15/06, Alejandro Imass <aitp2ee.org> wrote:
> > The complete support for Linux
> > was really the primary reason.
> 
> Really?  Most Linux distributions do NOT ship with
MP3/4 support by
default.
> 

I meant the Real Player's Firefox/Linux plugin support was
our main
decision for choosing the Real Player to develop. XINE does
not support
web-page embedding and that was a major design
consideration.


> I believe Helix can stream Theora as well.  You should
look into that.
> 

For Theora and Vorbis we would stick with Icecast.

> > -Can we legally use the Helix server freely (in an
ample context of
the
> > word) to stream mp3 and mp4 audio and video for
this NPO project?
> 
> You can use Helix.  Streaming MP3 and 4 are a different
question,
though.
> 

Yes we are aware of _some_ but not all of the issues. Truth
be told, all
this streaming media stuff is very new for me.



> If you really want some advice, at least from me, use
Ogg Vorbis for
> audio.  You may check Wikipedia, as well as a huge
number of other
> websites for information on this topic.
> 

Yes I am aware but we are concerned with Real Player's
ability to
reproduce Ogg Vorbis and it's compatibility with Icecast
streaming. 

> I believe both Helix and Icecast work pretty well with
Vorbis.
> 

We have the same impression from our research but as I told
you we are
obviously not experts. If we can stream Vorbis and play well
in an
embedded/scripted Real Player in Firefox, IE and Safari it
would be
sufficient for us.

> You could also look into Speex if your NPO's interest
is more towards
> speech than raw audio.
> 

There is musc audio from some authors but there is a lot of
speech as
well. There are also video clips and movie trailers from
local authors
that they want to publish in our site.

> Hope that helps,
> Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves

Thanks!




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