[Theora] Encoding: theora legalities

[Sime Mardesic]

Hi, 

 

I am having trouble understanding the legalities of the whole encoding
issue. Here is what I am trying to do:

 

Problem: We get 17GB's worth of 12 second long mpeg2 video clips from a
capture card. We want some way of compressing these clips so that we can
save space and bandwidth. These clips are used in an activity that
generates income (nothing sinister).

Proposed solution: Use some sort of encoder to encode the clips thus
saving space etc. Currently we are looking at using VirtualDub in its
command line form and just plugging in an encoder. 

 

I have to support old NT machines so I can't use a DirectShow filter
solution. 

1) Can I use theora with VirtualDub?

2) Is there a better solution? Ffmpeg2theora does the job nicely but is
it legal (if yes it makes my life easy)?

3) If all is ok is it just a case of distributing the codecs with our
software and ensuring that people run the codec install, thus reading
the GPL and having a readme that alerts them to the location of the
source code?

4) What are the pitfalls of any of the proposed solutions?

5) Am I just better of paying for a commercial encoder to avoid any
potential trouble?

 

 

Thanks in advance for any help that you are able to provide.

 

 

 

Sime Mardesic 

 

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