Dr Divx

Basically for windows XP , this doctor here makes it quite easy to create DivX (AVI) movies. With standalone DivX players becoming common, Dr DivX is an excellent tool to have.

Features
The interface is quite Intuitive and user friendly, with extreme dearth of menus and buttons you just can’t do it wrong! The doctor supports encoding options like ability to specify final size, cropping video, de-interlacing, etc. You can also prepare multiple files for batch processing.



But it doesn’t allow encoding parts of the movie.



With a very few buttons to play with, finding the right one isn’t any problem. Open the file you intend to encode by using the Open button in the Input File field.

Next you can set the quality/file size options. The DivX certified settings correspond to the following resolutions: High Definition- 1280 x 720 at 30 fps, Portable- 352 x 240 at 30 fps or 352 x 288 at 25 fps, Handheld: 176 x 144 at 15 fps. Quality settings impact on the method of compression and the algorithms used to achieve this. Constraining the output file to a fixed size frees you from further tweaks. You can save the settings you have made under a profile with the Save Settings button, and recall these to be used for the next job by using the Custom Profile option. If you are not interested in tweaking individual settings, you can click on the encode button and be on your way.

The Advanced tab allows further refinement of the encoding output. Under the Processing Tab, you can specify additional options like the cropping range, or choose automatic crop in which case the program will cut the black borders automatically. Doing this you can decrease file size without loosing any quality. You can also change resolution and aspect ratio here.

Noise Reduction is useful in cases where there are too many “grains” in the movie, especially in Home videos. Choose settings accordingly. Progressive output will ensure better results. If “Psycho visual Enhancements” are applied, the Doctor promises to increase the quality of the output by using advanced techniques to detect and improve those areas of the film which will be most noticed by the human eye. Better quality equals more encoding time. Once all the settings are done with, just click the encode button and the job gets sent to the queue, but the process doesn’t start immediately. After that you need to click on the start button to let the doctor operate.

This a recommended program for specially those who seek simplicity and effectiveness foremost.

Media Coder

Media Coder (MC) is a very capable but difficult to use encoder. This is a front end that uses Open Source Video Tools like FFmpeg and Mplayer in the background. Being in its infancy MC needs to be forgiven for the buggy interface it carries. The earlier version 0.3.9 seems to be better than the newer one v 0.5.

It can convert MPEG2/MPEG1/AVI (DivX, XviD)/3GP/MOV/Real Audio/etc., to MPEG2/MPEG1/AVI (DivX)/etc.

Features

MC can even convert into format used in portable viewers like PSP, Mobile phones, etc. Simple encoding from one format to another is quite easy. Use the Add file button to add the source. Set the required encoding options in the boxes at the bottom. Compression can be set depending on what final size you might need or what quality you want. It has even got options for tweaking the audio encoding.

Besides choosing the codec, the video can be further processed to remove noise (white dots that usually show up in amateur video shoots in poor lighting conditions), or to crop the video or resize it. And surely the additional processes will increase the processing time.

If you are just interested in a part of the movie, you can set the time range in milliseconds, here. Since MC does not have an easy way to mark out the ranges, you will need to view the file or another player to set the exact interval. Ensure you have done the math properly or you would end up cutting irrelevant parts.

After all this is done, just click on start button on the top to let the encoding begin.


So all I can say is, This Coder converts anything, like almost.

Video LAN Client (VLC) Media Player

Platforms: Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, etc.

It started off as a project to create a video streaming server and playback client. And originally had Video LAN server and Video LAN client for each of the task. But the crossplatform media player gained popularity and soon the server was reduced to a component of the Media player. It’s a highly capable media player and comes with a lot of features.

Features

Playback rate can be increased or decreased, but unlike Media Player Classic, the audio is disabled during altered rate of playback. Contrast, brightness, colour saturation, etc., of the video can be changed easily. Adding effects to the movie, like blurring, cloning, etc., is an easy task since the menu is easily accessible. VLC packs a streaming server which allows streaming any video from any source, like a tuner card or DVD, over the network. A wizard that makes setting this up easy is what keeps it cool. A stream capture client allows you to save any video streamed over a network, including the Net. An inbuilt video editor and transcoder allows saving part of a file in format of your choice. On the flip side, its menu system is bulkier than MPC, and the seek bar doesn’t work quite well either. It has the annoying tendency to skip predefined parts in a clip, and you have to carefully drag the slider to the desired position.

File > open Directory will add all the files in the directory to the Playlist, which can be accessed from View > Playlist. To alter display settings like contrast, brightness etc., got to Settings > Extended GUI > Video. Enable the settings for the changes to have and effect on the movie.

Under the Extended GUI window you can also find the Audio Equalizer. Here also the equalizer needs to be enabled for the alterations to have an effect. A slicker, but less functional, GUI can be used by switching interfaces from the Settings menu. For routine use, the skins2 GUI is recommended, but it doesn’t remember the setting, so you will need to apply it every time you start it.

VLC offers a lot more functionality than any other media player, that puts it in a class of its own. Its inbuilt video encoder lets you crop those parts of a movie that you like. To do this: while playing the file, go to Settings > Bookmarks option. Add bookmarks at the start and end points of the range you would like to save. You can create sets of start and points that you want to extract. Once all ranges have been identified, select each start and end bookmark pair and click on Extract.

This will cause the transcoding wizard to pop up. You can choose to compress the audio and video or keep the original format. Depending on the audio video codecs chosen, the container format options change. Finally select a location and a filename (an extension is not automatically appended) and then click on save.

The only way to know the progress of the transcoding is to look at the movie progress bar. And there is no pop up informing you that the process has ended, so once the progress bar stops, wait a few seconds more and then assume that the process has completed.

VLC includes a Wizard to ease the transcoding and streaming. The wizard can be opened from File > Wizard menu. In the streaming/transcoding Wizard dialog box that opens, select “Stream to network”, after selecting the relevant option, click on Next and choose the relevant video file.

Next, select the protocol to be use for the stream. RTP (Real Time Transport Protocol) can utilize bandwidth better than HTTP. Select the IP address of the machine you want to stream to. If you want to stream to more than one PC, use RTP Mulitcast and set the IP range accordingly. If you would rather people connect to your IP to see the stream, you can do that by choosing the HTTP protocol. In this case, the stream is available at http://your ip:8080 by default. The port number can be changed, if necessary, in the destination address box.

For streaming there is no need of modifying any other parameters, just click on “Next” till the Wizard finishes. Any person wanting to view the stream can use VLC for the purpose. Using File > Open Network Stream option, the stream can be viewed.

The wizard also helps in the transcoding process. After selecting a file to transcode, most of the steps are similar to the ones described before while transcoding a part of the file.

Media Player Classic

Platforms: All Windows Versions
Media Player Classic is not any normal Media Player bundled with the Windows but an Open Source Product for sure.
Features:
MPC comes with a stand alone executable. The interface unlike most other players is much simple. MPC’s menus are modular, so unwanted components can be hidden. The full screen mode can be configured to include or exclude aids like the control bar and seek bar. You can easily change different properties of the video such as contrast, brightness, colour saturation, etc., provided the video codec allows it. Playback rate can be altered (fast forward or rewind) and audio is supported upto 2x speed.

Playing a video source (file or disk) is easy. Just go to File > Quick Open and browse for the video file. If it is a DVD or VCD that you intend to play, choose File > Open DVD/VCD. The control bar allows you to increase or decrease the play rate. To capture images of the movie, use the File > Save Image option. The image will only be saved in the resolution of the movie and not the window. The File > Save Thumbnail option will give you a single file containing many screen grabs the size and lay out of which can be configured. To customize the interface, play around in the View menu. Enable or disable toolbars according to your choice. You can also use the preset styles under View > Presets. If the video appears too dim, increase its brightness using Play > Filters > MPEG 1 (or corresponding Video Codec) Video Renderer option. You can also increase contrast, colour and hue similarly.

Capturing Video

First select the device, by the File > Open Device option. Next use the View > Capture menu (it will remain greyed till the device is selected) to choose the location and the name of the resulting video file. You can also set the compression options here. When all is set then just click on “Record” and then stop it when you are done.

Streaming Video

MPC allows you to create a streaming video site, since it bundles an HTTP server.
Enable the Web interface under View > Options > Web interface. Here enable the “listen to port” option and add a port number. If you want to prevent others from seeing the results let the “Allow Access from Local host only” option remain enabled. This will only accept requests from the PC you are on. Once you are satisfied with the results you can disable this option, so that others from the network can also watch it.

Now you can play a video or view your webcam in MPC and any person can watch it by connecting on to

http://yourip:<portno>

to watch it.

Converting to DSM (Direct Show Media) Format

You can convert any file that MPC can play into DSM format. For this access the File > Utils menu. Right-click on the DSM converter window and add the file you want to convert. Then click on save as to provide a location and name to the converted file. To start encoding, click on start.

Advantages: An excellent video player which can play anything as long as the relevant codec is installed. Being able to hear audio while altering the movie play rate is also a nice thing. Having add-ons like built in capturing capability and HTTP server set it apart from other free media players.

Disadvantages: In the attempt to reduce the size consumption MPC did away with a very important thing- The help file. Though still for routine use the intuitive interface is easy to handle. If in need the user manual can easily be downloaded from their home page.

Even with all that its still a must have and it automatically gets installed while installing the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.

The Basics

First things first so just get these basics in….

FPS: for Frames per second. The number of movie frames displayed per second.
Resolution: The number of horizontal and vertical dots that make up the display.
Codec: Algorithm that is used to compress and decompress a video/audio stream. Needless to say, a stream compressed using a codec needs the same codec to decompress it. Open source codec examples: Mpeg1, Xvid, X264, etc. Other popular codecs include MOV, DivX, WMV, WMA, QT, RM.
Container Format: The file used to pack data. Data (Audio, Video, Text) can be compressed using any codec but should be packed in one of the many container formats. This would explain why it is possible to hear the audio even when the video codec is unavailable. Some containers are not compatible with certain codecs. Open source container formats: Matroska, Ogg, etc.
Aspect Ratio: The ratio of the width and height of a display. Most monitors use a 4:3 aspect ratio, whereas widescreen displays use the 16:9 aspect ratio.
AVI: Stands for Audio Video Interleave. So called because Audio and Video data are alternately arranged in the data stream. AVI is a container format.
DVD: Digital Versatile Disk. For the purpose of this article all DVD refers to Video DVD only. By default uses MPEG2 for video compression and offers resolution of 720x576 (PAL) and 720x480 (NTSC). Audio can be compressed using other codecs.
MPEG: Motion Picture Expert Group. Default compression format for VCD. Resolution of 352x288 (PAL), 352x240 (NTSC)
MPEG2: Motion Picture Expert Group 2. Default compression for Video DVD. Allows significantly more features than MPEG1 in the form of menus, customizable angles, customizable audio output, customizable subtitles and languages.
PAL: Phase Alternation Line, a format of Video display used in India. This is made up of 600 lines refreshed at 25fps.
NTSC: National Televisions Standards Committee, a format of video display mostly used in US. This is made up of 525 lines refreshed at 29.97fps. Since most DVD player available at present can play PAL and NTSC DVDs the distinction between these formats is not significant.
VOB: Files used to store data on DVD movies. VOB files use MPEG2 compression.
DAT: Video CDs use DAT files store data. These are normal MPEG1 files with additional information.
Interlaced VS Progressive: These relate to how information is displayed on a screen. Progressive display shows the entire screen in one o. Interlaced display causes data to be divided into two fields- odd and even, each one consisting of the alternate lines on the display.

Open Video

Nothing consumes as much space on you hard disk as videos. While there are many free proprietary tools available for viewing videos, there are hardly any free proprietary video converters and editors. The most capable of these tools are from the Open Source domain.

Before I start with the review all those players, editors etc. I suggest you guys to install all the codecs from any of the codec packs like K-Lite Mega codec pack etc.

dyne:bolic

This is actually an entire Linux distro that’s targeted at the multimedia enthusiast. You will soon see why this distro has a mention of its own.

“ dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, FireWire, USB and more; all using only free software!”

Basically, it’s a Live CD of a distro that bundles in a lot of open source multimedia software. The reason for not mentioning any Linux based audio software thus far is solely because of dyne:bolic.

The good news for those of you who did not want to switch operating systems, just to use the “Linux Only” open source audio packages that are freely available, is that you no longer need to do so. All you have to do is to download the ISO for this distro, burn it to a CD, and then get started using you favourite open source audio (video, image and 3D as well) software.

So here’s a look on all the audio softwares bundled with the distro (as published on their site).

PLAY AUDIO

Xmms: An audio player with a minimal and intuitive playlist manager that can play
Internet streams and local files and can be skinned or customised with plugins.

Amarok: A fully featured personal jukebox that can handle your audio collection,
automatically download labels and lyrics, search your collections by keywords,
remember your preferences, automatically create favourite playlists, and more.

Timidity: A midi synthesizer that uses GUS patches to render your MIDI files into audio
files, as well as make you listen to MIDI partitures.

PERFORM

Hydrogen: A drum-machine that lets you load sample kits of instruments and compose a
partiture for them to play on a specific rhythm. You can download more drum kits for it
from http://www.hydrogen-music.org/

Jamin: The Jack audio mastering interface can perform professional audio mastering of
any stereo input stream, equalizing signals with an intuitive and advanced interface to
shape all the frequencies in real-time.

Jack Rack: A powerful effect rack that can apply chains of audio plugins (LADSPA) on the sound currently being played by other programs. Using Jack, you can interface it with all other performance tools and add one of the more that 200 effects available in dyne:bolic.

Free Wheeling: A funky application that lets you record and play multiple samples in real-time, so that they loop, and can be overlayed one after the other. You can manipulate, sum and create recorded sounds, but make sure you read the manual before you start using it, because it’s all controlled via keyboard (or midi).

EDITING

Ardour: The fully-featured multi-track studio that offers the most advanced interface for you music recording studio. Combined with other applications (such as Jack), it can resolve all your needs for audio mastering and music production.

Audacity: Read my earlier posts for any knowledge about audacity.

Rezound: A sample editor that lets you manipulate (with precision) your music samples, record, loop and apply effects using an intuitive and complete interface.

Time Machine: A simple tool for recording audio, requiring Jack as a sound engine. It is, quite simply, a big red button: press it, and it starts recording from 10 seconds ago! This is so that you can record what you find interesting in an audio input, just by listening, without needing to rewind to start recording again.

STREAM

MuSE: A software that lets you stream audio on the Internet over various servers (Icecast, Darwin, and SHOUTcast) in MP3 or OGG format, so that listeners will be able to listen to you voice and music using the most commonly available sound player around.
Visit http://muse.dyne.org/ , or http://flossmanuals.org/muse for a lot more documentation on how to use the cool software.



Here’s a list of other bundeled apps:

- MP4Live lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on a Darwin server.
- HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth.
- TermionatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio.
- Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips.
- GIMP, the GNU image manipulation program.
- Blender, a powerful 3D modeling and rendering tools.
- ABiWord and Ted, to read, edit, and save any kind of word file.
- GCombust, to easily burn data on CDs.

And much more, including email clients, games, html editors, etc….Can’t enlist every feature or bundled app. as it’s, you know an entire Linux Distro/OS.

Audacity

Audacity is yet the most popular free music editor, and the fact that its open source means that there’s a ton of support available in the form of forums and developers.

It can be used to record audio from any input source, edit MP3/WMA/Ogg Vorbis, split and splice audio clips together, change the speed or pitch of audio, mix tracks, record multi-channel (up to 16 channels- with of course the right hardware), normalize and edit loudness, and much more.

You can undo/redo your changes an unlimited amount of steps; it’s fast, low on system resources, and has a very easy to use interface. Effects include pitch changing without altering the tempo, or changing tempo without changing the pitch, static removal, bass boost, equalizers, echo, Wahwah, Phasers and more.

It’s so much feature packed that no one but only the professionals would find that they need to do something more that audacity can’t do, but for most of us it’s more than enough. We are not going to look for more Open Source Audio editors as none of them are even half as good as Audacity!!

Open Audio EDITORS..

Not a lot of us need to edit audio, but those of us that are in need to would really appreciate the open source ones…
So here Goes...

.......

So that was all about the players. I will soon be back with the open audio editors....
Till then keep checking for more....

VLC Media Player

VLC media player (Earlier called VideoLAN Client) is one of the most popular open source media players. Though more popular for its video playing capabilities, it’s also a very good audio player, with tons of options and features. It natively supports MPEG1 and 2, MP3, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, FLAC, Real Audio (RA), Speex, Quicktime and more.

Apart from playlists and other standard features it also offers a whole range of additional audio features and options. It’s an essential tool that everyone should have.

Zinf

Zinf is an open source audio player that is built for both Linux and Windows. It has a good looking interface and is really easy to use. It was a project based on FreeAMP, the open source answer to Winamp. You can get a whole range of themes for the player. It also supports SHOUTcast or Icecast streaming audio, Ogg Vorbis, Mp3, WAV, Audio CDs, PLS or M3U playlists, a skinnable interface, and more. I does not support or play video but.

One of its best features is that it can save the streaming SHOUTcast/Icecast to your hard disk. Of course you need to take care that you aren’t breaking any law, but you can surely save the free streams with no license limitations.

One drawback is that it doesn’t have any equalizer. But overall if you are looking for a plain audio player which uses little system resources and gives the basic functionality then this is surely your best bet.

It runs easily on Windows 95/98/NT/200/XP
Linux 2.x, Pentium 100 MHz, 32 MB RAM

MPlayer

From the site: “MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems. It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NupelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies.”

I think that pretty much says it all about the MPlayer capabilities..
To have an actual experience just download the Beta GUI version from the site, unless you just want to be GEEKY and use the command line version!!

You can also get the various skins for the Player.

Open Audio Players

Hey everybody I am back with the audio players……
Though many of us are happy with our usual players such as Winamp or Windows Media Player, still there are some of us who prefer the flexibility they get through the use of Open source Players….
These open source players are actually a lot customizable and improvable if you know the programming.
So now comes…

My MYLOT

Check out people here is a preview of my MyLot....
myLot User Profile
Or else Click here http://mylot.com/raphael_volts

AHmmmm.....

So these were some open audio formats for now. Next time I will come back with the Players….
Keep Checking.

Speex

Speex is another product from Xiph.org, it is sort of the Ogg Vorbis answer to speech compression. As unlike music, speech is a lot simpler, and requires much lower bitrates to be aurally readable. As a result, it requires much lower bitrates and a different algorithm.

Speex is open source, and can be added to ogg container. It uses VBR (Variable Bitrate Encoding) process to provide the best combination with the best compression ratio. Its was mainly developed for VoIP, and uses a unique loss concealment technology that masks dropped UDP packets, to prevent crackling and breaking of voice data.

LAME

Lame is perhaps one of the most popular of audio codecs. It is used with MP3 container and is what the majority of software applications use for ripping CDs. It uses a lossy algorithm to compress audio, mainly for streaming purposes and portable music players.

As far as its comparison with Ogg Vorbis, WMA and AAC goes it seriously is lacking. However, because of the popularity of the MP3 format, and the wide acceptance with majority of audio players people gladly overlook the compromise on quality and file sizes.

But due to the push from Microsoft for its own Windows Media Format (WMA/WMV), has resulted in a lot of devices being both WMA and MP3 compatible. WMA though is free from patent woes still isn’t open source like LAME.
Also Check MP3Dev

FLAC

FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, is another open source audio codec, but unlike MP3, Vorbis or others, it’s lossless compression. This means that you can rip the audio CD without loosing any data or quality whatsoever.

To explain lossless, just take the example of wizip. When you zip files up in wizip it decreases the size and saves space but when you unzip them everything is back to normal shape and usability without any loss. Similarly, when you use lossless codecs such as FLAC, none of the digital data is lost –It’s like zipping a CD audio file and then unzipping it during playback.

FLAC can be found at sourceforge and can be used to compress audio, and used with the ogg container to give Ogg FLAC –or FLAC encoded Ogg files.

Advantage:
-Its quite fast, both when encoding or decoding
-Its natively seekable and streamable (so you don’t really need containers like Ogg unless you have to play it in your ogg enabled or ogg supporting portable music player)
Overall, FLAC is good for audiophiles who want CD-quality data on the go.

Ogg Vorbis

It is perhaps the most popular audio container and has .ogg as extension. Its very common with media players now but if your player does not support it then don’t just worry cause all the needed plugins are easily available online.

Unlike other patented formats like MP3, AAC etc. ogg is completely free. It was developed by Xiph.org and Vorbis is the compression algorithm. Ogg is still maintained by the original developers Xiph.org (Xiph here is pronounced as zif).

Ogg vorbis is generally considered a much better compression format than MP# and is comparable to WMA and AAC (if not better in some cases). Files compressed using Vorbis is smaller than their MP3 counterparts of comparable audio quality. Also as it is completely open source and free, artists who use it to distribute their music have to pay no extra charges or royalties to anybody for using the format.

Also as people say and somewhat I have also felt that the audio quality of a ogg vorbis file encoded at 128 kbps is comparable or even better than 192 Kbps MP3.

OPEN AUDIO Formats

This is to give a brief description of the open source audio formats which are generally in use. Some of the most popular a re Ogg vorbis(.ogg), FLAC, LAME and Speex. I will deal with the players later so just keep checking.

Project Maintenance and Services at SourceForge

SourceForge provides an assortment of very useful services to the users using its site for project development and some of them are listed below.

1. Compile Farm
The Compile Farm gives developers access to a number of different hosts that may be used for the compiling and testing of the code. These hosts all use different platforms for testing the softwares. Currently there are 12 hosts running 6 different operating systems and 5 different hardware profiles. For more information just check http://sourceforge.net/docs/compile_farm

2. CVS (Concurrent Versioning System)
It also provides with CVS while allowing you to centrally store your code. You are also provided with your own CVS space called Repository.

3. Publicity
Another huge advantage of hosting your projects at this site is publicity and loads of exposure that it is bound to get.

And yet a lot of services that I didn’t mention are there to help you out so just go on and try it out.

SourceForge??

You must be wondering what SourceForge is…
For all those who are new to the Open Source Movement SourceForge http://www.sourceforge.net is one of the largest open source development site on the net. It claims to host more than 100,000 projects and has over 1,000,000 users registered with it. This in itself is a testament of the growing popularity of the Open Source Movement, which the site itself carries forward the definition by providing an open, collaborative environment. So here every body can share their efforts and technologies. This way we can share a useful and bug free code.

This site is basically owned by the OSTG (the Open Source Technology Group), Inc which also owns popular sites like linux.com, ThinkGeek and DevChannel.

If you feel like registering your account with it, then to tell its just a little bit complicated so just write in back if you need any help.

Changing My Path

I know its getting pretty boring with all those facts…. So I am now turning all the attentions towards the Open Source Softwares… In case any of you need more knowledge on OSS please contact me and I will post for you. Till then here goes….

Differentiation Contd.

3. Portability
Its easy for OSS to be ported to other devices and platforms with relevant expertise from contributors as they make necessary modifications.
Whereas the PS vendor has expertise only in the current platform or device they are dealing in. They generally don’t give any thought to increase the portability until its heavily profitable for themselves.

4. Compatibility
As he contributory nature of OSS requires that the standards and specifications be kept open so that additions and/or modifications can easily be done.
On the other hand a business sense dictates that products from different PS be incompatible to each other and hence increasing the cost of trading into other PS and acting as an artificial competition barrier.

5. Impact of Negative Business Practices
OSS products can be supported by users having expertise in the required field whereas the PS can only be supported by the vendor hence giving it the power to perform negative strategies. Example, they can give the PS for free or very low cost in the beginning to ward off competition and then increase the cost later.

6. Response Time
Only a PS vendor can modify its PS code in case of any attack or to add any new feature in response to the public demand. Whereas OSS having a decentralized nature of development is continuously upgrade with new incremental features. Users can also upgrade and customize the software as per their requirements, themselves or with help of any knowledgeable person.

A look on both types of softwares

1. Longevity
OSS, as allows modifications by any one, can survive in its current form for quite a long time. Users need not worry about lack of vendor support or feel compelled to upgrade.
On the other hand a PS is supported and maintained totally and only by the vendor . So in that case is total life is straight linked to the life of the vendor or the company, or what they chose for it.

2. Quality
As OSS is open to all hence can be reviewed by anybody and hence there are lot more chances of the bugs getting discovered and healed. As more people see the code and check it out and implement different things to it(mean additional codes) more the functionality(errors/error freeness) will be discovered.
Whereas PS are given to only a specific group of people to be reviewed and hence doesn’t have a peer review(rigorous review).
Example:
Experts and now as you also know that Linux has fewer bugs than windows and is much more stable. (http://news.com.com/Security+research+suggests+Linux+has+fewer+flaws/2100-1002_3-5489804)

HI!!

Hi everybody I am back with the OSS....
Actually was quite busy with the house chores since Easter is here already.
And also to tell you what I saw 300 and It was a damn nice movie with stunning visuals man.

Now to continue....

For whom and why?

Open source software as you have already read refers to software that has a open source code for everybody who wants to see it and append to it.
It’s also for the people who are falling low on money and want software for cheap and also as they are free from the monetary hassles of Proprietary Software(PS)- I mean free from any legal implications over using it or distributing it. And also most of the times they are free of cost!!

Its also better for developing countries with low computer penetration and users not in mood or incapable of buying costly softwares as these can be easily modified as per the users demand with some local expertise. It can also be made available in some local languages as per the needs.

Open Source Software

So now I am starting it up with open source software. Here are some common terms that we will be using:

Paid Software: A software that is bought under a fee and has limited support
according to the
fee.
Free Software: Software that is available for free without any kind of
fee.
Source Code: The human readable text that is written in the syntax of
the programming language and consists of the logic and commands of the
program.
Compiler: A program that prepares a source code and converts it into
machine readable form.
Binary/Executable: This is created from the source
code by compiling it. In this form, the program cannot be read by
humans.
Open Source: Software whose source code is available.
Closed Source: Software whose source code is not available to general users for
editing.
Proprietary Software: This means that the software as a proprietor.
But this term is generally used for paid, closed source software. We shall
continue in the same vein. The opposite would be FOSS(Free Open Source
Software).
Commercial Software: Commercial software means software used in
commercial enterprises. But the term is also used for closed source software or
paid software. A non commercial software usually applies to software that is
used for non profit purposes and only for personal use.
Vendor: Vendor refers
to a software creator/owner and seller.

Me, Myself

About Me!
Hi there I am Raphael from India and am starting this blog trying to make it a place of knowledge and information about one or the other topics related to computers and softwares. Might be boring for a few but sure do check in for some special entries in which I will also be giving some wonderful tweaks and other things and sometimes some game reviews that I get from some technology magazines and also some reviews on some wonderful gizmos.
Keep Checking!!