Bug#370599: ffmpeg: does not support AMR codec

[Andres Mejia]

On Tue, 06 Jun 2006, Ben Hutchings wrote:
>ffmpeg can be configured with support for the AMR codec created by
>3GPP and commonly used for recording audio on mobile phones.  It would
>be very useful to be able to transcode such recordings.
>
>The source code that ffmpeg can use to support AMR is available from
>3GPP, but the general licence used by 3GPP does not permit source
>redistribution (i.e. it is not DFSG-free).  However, they do appear to
>be open to requests for broader licences
><http://www.3gpp.org/faq/faq_2005_2.htm#A3.1> and it might be worth
>requesting permission to distribute this source.  debian-legal might
>be of help in formulating such a request.
>
>Ben.

In regards to AMR support in ffmpeg, ffmpeg currently has support for amr via 
external libraries libamr-nb and libamr-wb, both which uses source code found in 
the 3gpp website, located at [1] and [2]. Seems the licensing terms for this 
code or at least the main website has changed since this bug report was 
submitted.

The source may have had a license in the past, but there is no license now, from 
what I can see. The only legal notice can be found at [3].

It may be possible to get this source code released under a permissible license 
however, as what is stated in the Copyright Policy of the legal notice. It 
states:

 Reproduction in whole or part of any content on or distributed via this web
 site may be permitted only with the permission of ETSI. For printing and
 reproduction of 3GPP specifications standards for non-commercial purposes,
 requests may be addressed to the ETSI Legal Service.

On the other hand, there's work underway to get at least an amr-nb 
decoder/encoder written for ffmpeg, via this year's GSOC [4]. So perhaps we 
should just wait until this is fixed upstream, and this bug should be tagged 
'upstream'.

-- 
Regards,
Andres

1. http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/26104.htm
2. http://www.3gpp.org/ftp/Specs/html-info/26204.htm
3. http://www.3gpp.org/Legal-Notice
4. http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=FFmpeg_Summer_Of_Code#Finish_AMR-
NB_decoder_and_write_an_encoder

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