[Asterisk-Dev] G729 in non-realtime mode - way forward for Asterisk?

[Benjamin on Asterisk Mailing Lists]

On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 11:14:53 +0100, Kevin Walsh <kevin at cursor.biz> wrote:

> If this usage of G.729 was royalty-free then it would have been
> implemented in sox (and various other sound processing utilities)
> by now.  I don't know the actual status, but I'd be surprised if the
> monopolists had willingly given up one of their revenue streams in this
> way.

That's what I was thinking, too, but it nevertheless seems worthwhile
digging for more information to know for sure.

Perhaps the reason why nobody has implemented an free open source G729
batch converter yet simply because it was difficult to get hold of the
information and so everybody just assumed there is no way around the
status quo.

Perhaps the royalty-free use is limited to only this Windoze based
converter that was mentioned and the monopolists thought that such a
Windoze based tool would not have the potential to harm them.

Now, even if it turns out that royalty-free use is limited to using
this Windoze converter in a non-realtime fashion, then still we should
be able to take advantage of that. It was mentioned that the utility
should be capable of running in the WINE environment. So, one could
set up a G729 batch conversion server that takes all files dumped into
a networked directory and converts them. Even if it takes a few
minutes before a voicemail message shows up converted in the target
directory for Asterisk to pick up, then that would still be reasonable
bypass solution in my view.

Then again, even if the restrictions on this Windoze based converter
are such that we cannot take advantage of it, it would still seem to
make sense to look into batch conversion of voice messages as a viable
alternative. This way one could do with just a single license per
Asterisk server since the batch would only process one message at a
time. This would seem still better than the status quo, although it
doesn't get around the hassle that is involved in the license
management.


In any event, I think the prospect of getting around paying the
royalties or drastically cutting down on licenses would seem to me
worthwhile making an effort to find out what exactly the situation is
with those non-realtime uses.

rgds
benjk

-- 
Sunrise Telephone Systems, 9F Shibuya Daikyo Bldg., 1-13-5 Shibuya,
Tokyo, Japan.

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