Serious statements from the author of MediaCoder (Stanley posted on July 9th, 2009 )

Recently (actually since I posted an article introducing MediaCoder’s new CUDA support on the doom9 forum), a group of people, mainly those developing software similar to MediaCoder, began to pick holes in MediaCoder. Some of the same people, requested that the FFmepg group put MediaCoder on the FFmpeg shame list, accusing MediaCoder of abusing and modifying FFmpeg without publishing the patch. They also insinuated that MediaCoder contains virus and malwares, as well as tampering with the MediaCoder description on Wikipedia and changing the description as adware. I am very angry and shame on them. I hereby make the following statements:
Recently (actually since I posted an article introducing MediaCoder’s new CUDA support on the doom9 forum), a group of people, mainly those developing software similar to MediaCoder, began to pick holes in MediaCoder. Some of the same people, requested that the FFmepg group put MediaCoder on the FFmpeg shame list, accusing MediaCoder of abusing and modifying FFmpeg without publishing the patch. They also insinuated that MediaCoder contains virus and malwares, as well as tampering with the MediaCoder description on Wikipedia and changing the description as adware. I am very angry and shame on them. I hereby make the following statements:

  1. MediaCoder DOES NOT link against any GPL-ed libraries. It only invokes GPL-ed programs and use their outputs. MediaCoder does not violate GPL license.
  2. MediaCoder uses an unmodified build of FFmpeg (builds are obtained from here and here) and only invokes FFmpeg as a separate process instead of using its code directly. This does not conflict with FFmpeg’s license.
  3. MediaCoder uses patched builds of MPlayer and MEncoder. The patch (available here) adds pipe input/output support as well as a few additional features and command line options. It only invokes MPlayer or MEncoder as a separate process instead of using its code directly. This does not conflict with MPlayer’s license.
  4. I respect all the FFmpeg and MPlayer developers and respect the work they’ve done on the both projects. MediaCoder is standing on the shoulder of giants. I have also submitted patches in the MPlayer dev mail-list and would like to contribute to the projects whenever possible. MediaCoder itself does not contain any source code from any (L)GPLed software.
  5. MediaCoder (distributions from the offical download locations) does NOT contain any virus and malwares. The MediaCoder installer bundles OpenCandy, a software recommendation network. Users can choose whether to accept the recommendation during installation.
  6. MediaCoder is NOT an adware. There is no ads banner on the application GUI (not including the contents served on the web site). MediaCoder does NOT collect any personal information. It is a pure freeware. As for bundled OpenCandy in the installer, please refer to their privacy policy.
  7. The latest versions of MediaCoder do not contain encoder binaries those people are arguing about, including CT AAC+ encoder and Nero AAC encoder, though these encoders are supported and the binaries can be downloaded separately from its owner’s website. CT AAC+ encoder was removed from distribution since about 3 years ago. Nero AAC encoder was bundled until previous 0.7.0. I have already realized improper and removed it recently.
  8. Since version 0.7, MediaCoder is distributed under MediaCoder End User License Agreement and is no longer open-sourced. It is still and will be always totally free of charge.
  9. MediaCoder is now identified as a product of Broad Intelligence Technologies, which is a software company I started to run since early 2009. MediaCoder is not a commercial software though we are building some commercial solutions (like distributed transcoding cluster) around MediaCoder. While pursuing some deserved commercial interests by providing solutions and services, we make most of our efforts and breakthroughs (like recent new GPU/CUDA support) go into the free MediaCoder software and we will do our best to provide the community with the best free media transcoder.

  1. MediaCoder DOES NOT link against any GPL-ed libraries. It only invokes GPL-ed programs and use their outputs. MediaCoder does not violate GPL license.
  2. MediaCoder uses an unmodified build of FFmpeg (builds are obtained from here and here) and only invokes FFmpeg as a separate process instead of using its code directly. This does not conflict with FFmpeg’s license.
  3. MediaCoder uses patched builds of MPlayer and MEncoder. The patch (available here) adds pipe input/output support as well as a few additional features and command line options. It only invokes MPlayer or MEncoder as a separate process instead of using its code directly. This does not conflict with MPlayer’s license.
  4. I respect all the FFmpeg and MPlayer developers and respect the work they’ve done on the both projects. MediaCoder is standing on the shoulder of giants. I have also submitted patches in the MPlayer dev mail-list and would like to contribute to the projects whenever possible. MediaCoder itself does not contain any source code from any (L)GPLed software.
  5. MediaCoder (distributions from the offical download locations) does NOT contain any virus and malwares. The MediaCoder installer bundles OpenCandy, a software recommendation network. Users can choose whether to accept the recommendation during installation.
  6. MediaCoder is NOT an adware. There is no ads banner on the application GUI (not including the contents served on the web site). MediaCoder does NOT collect any personal information. It is a pure freeware. As for bundled OpenCandy in the installer, please refer to their privacy policy.
  7. The latest versions of MediaCoder do not contain encoder binaries those people are arguing about, including CT AAC+ encoder and Nero AAC encoder, though these encoders are supported and the binaries can be downloaded separately from its owner’s website. CT AAC+ encoder was removed from distribution since about 3 years ago. Nero AAC encoder was bundled until previous 0.7.0. I have already realized improper and removed it recently.
  8. Since version 0.7, MediaCoder is distributed under MediaCoder End User License Agreement and is no longer open-sourced. It is still and will be always totally free of charge.
  9. MediaCoder is now identified as a product of Broad Intelligence Technologies, which is a software company I started to run since early 2009. MediaCoder is not a commercial software though we are building some commercial solutions (like distributed transcoding cluster) around MediaCoder. While pursuing some deserved commercial interests by providing solutions and services, we make most of our efforts and breakthroughs (like recent new GPU/CUDA support) go into the free MediaCoder software and we will do our best to provide the community with the best free media transcoder.

COMMENTS: 61 Comments »

61 Responses

  1. redar says:

    支持stanley,如果有可能,把一小部分开源更好,加油,校友redar

  2. shawhu says:

    one more thing, if you want to make money, try to target people who actually have money. those who buy expensive iphone…those paid thousands of dollers buy stupid iphone games, what they need…for example, can you make a version which can easily transcode stuff out of DV and make it a DVD or sth, by one click? that’s a sales point.

    person who own ipod and iphone and try to fill their ipod with stuff, they dont really have 99 for software. as least it is the current situatio at china. I sure you get to know that right now…

  3. Robert says:

    MediaCoder-0.7.2.4520.exe only downloads from Mirror 1, and the installation reads faulty, “Installer Integrity check has failed.” Will check back later.

    I primarily use the HDV edition evaluation copy and find it the best for working with HD files that have been encoded with audio streams that other programs won’t recognize. I like it better than the regular version. If you could bring the price down I would be very interested. Thanks for great product!

  4. Maj Obvious says:

    “Instead, it is dynamically downloaded from 3rd-party web site”

    That is still *included* with the project. If however you suggested users go and find for themselves the needed packages you would avoid the issue.

    As it stands you have a GPL/licence issue

  5. 阿杰 says:

    真的不盗版吗?

  6. The shame you had to close the source of the program because of such attacks. I still support your software (it the best free transcoder around in my opinion) but I hope you can get some real support from the open-source movement someday.

  7. 洋芋环 says:

    支持mediacoder,支持stanley。
    严重支持!

  8. johng says:

    I love Mediacoder. It is very powerful and easy to use. I do get an error message when I try to transcode from an AVI file. Transcoding from a Dvd works great.
    That said, Media coder may not contain viruses, etc. But it does try to change my search engine in IE without my knowledge and that it should not do. Also I want to run MediaCoder on a Video editing computer that does not have Internet access. I would even pay for a copy of Mediacoder if there is a version that does not access the web in order to run.

    Johng

  9. stanley says:

    MediaCoder definitely will not touch your IE search engine settings. By purchasing MediaCoder Premium, you can get a version which doesn’t access internet.

  10. johng says:

    At least that is what Webroot spyware/AV software is telling me.

  11. johng says:

    Hi, can you give the the web page and version to download that does not include Internet access. I want the iPad/64bit CUDA version. I didn’t know if the full package includes this version.

    Thanks,

    John Gerard