[SPAM] Re: MSN Protocol documentation

[Youness Alaoui]

Hey guys! 
Billiob from the aMSN team just found this document : 
http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/B/E/0BE8BDD7-E5E8-422A-ABFD-4342ED7AD886/InkSerializedFormat(ISF)Specification.pdf
M$ finally released the file format specs for the ISF (hand written messages)!!! Although we already reversed it, we now have an official specs!
I added the link to the wiki.

Just letting you know...

KaKaRoTo

On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 11:58:56PM -0500, Youness Alaoui wrote:
> Hi,
> Thanks!
> There is actually an open source codec for both the ML20 video codec (libmimic thanks to Ole Andre) and for the Siren audio codec (libsiren 
> thanks to myself :p) The audio can work without problems using the siren codec, and the webcam feature (unidirectional) works just fine with 
> the ML20 codec.. the problem is with the bidirectional audio+video which uses WMV3.. libavcodec has an open source implementation of the WMV3 
> codec, but it only has the decoder, not the encoder. 
> Note that MSN has a lot of different v/v protocols.. 
> 1 - The 'old style' video call which uses a very old protocol and is still there only for interoperability with windows messenger (not WLM). 
> That protocol is compatible with gnomemeeting.
> 2 - The 'Video Call' feature which is bidirectional audio and video and uses the new MSNP2P protocol for the signaling, WMV3 video codec and 
> Siren audio codec
> 3 - The 'Computer Call' feature which is bidirectional audio and uses SIP/RTP and supports multiple different possible codecs (which are 
> x-msrta, Siren, G722.1 (clock rate of 16000), x-msrta, AAL2-G726-32, G723, PCMA and PCMU (clock rate of 8000)).
> 4 - The 'Webcam' feature which is unidirectional video only, using MSNP2P for signaling and the ML20 codec
> 5 - the 'Voice clips' feature which is unidirectional audio, in form of 'clips' of a maximum of 15 seconds in length, uses MSNP2P and the 
> Siren codec.
> 
> (This should probably go into the wiki :p)
> 
> So from all of these implementation, None of them worked for a long time, apart from the 'old style video call' which aMSN implemented 
> using a modified version of linphone in the early 2001. Then we dropped it because it became impossible to maintain. Then Ole Andre reverse 
> engineered the ML20 codec and made an open source library for it, then the webcam feature was added in some clients (like aMSN), then I 
> reverse engineered the Siren codec and made an open source library for it, then voice clips were added into aMSN, and now. I was also able to 
> get the 'Computer call' feature to work using SIP and PCMA as codec, but I never incorporated that into aMSN (because it depends on many libs 
> and MSNP13). And now finally, I'm working on the 'Video Call' feature. 
> 
> In short, yes, there is already a solution for MSN video using aMSN and it works great on Mac, and it's been there for almost 3 years now. 
> The Audio/Video codecs are open source, so you won't need mplayer or 'stolen' dlls...
> But you can't get a real-time audio conversation. For Audio, you can still use the 'voice clips', but that's annoying.. but hopefully, soon 
> we'll be able to ship a working audio AND video implementation.
> 
> Hope that helps!
> KaKaRoTo
> 
> On Mon, Feb 11, 2008 at 08:14:32PM -0700, Alan Humpherys wrote:
> > Great job on the WMV3 decoding!  The lack of an open source codec for the 
> > MSN voice/video protocol has been a serious impediment to getting MSN v/v 
> > working on the Mac.  (My understanding was that Linux previously only 
> > worked because mplayer used the windows media player DLL in compatibility 
> > mode.)
> >
> > Alan
> >
> >
> > On Feb 9, 2008, at 9:35 PM, Youness Alaoui wrote:
> >
> >> arghh.. not intentional.. I just hit 'r' and didn't notice it sent it in 
> >> private.. forwarding to the ML now, so guys, read the previous 2 mails
> >> before continuing...
> >>
> >> ok, I see about vv==av :p yes, a dedicated section is definitely 
> >> necessary, considering the amount of data we'll have to put in there..
> >>
> >> On a side note, I've just (5 minutes ago) been able to decode a WMV3 
> >> stream received from WLM in the audio/video conference thingy :D
> >> The audio is the problem now because of the stupid snack extension for tcl 
> >> opening/closing the audio device on every chunk of sound (every
> >> 50ms).. and now, I have to write a Tcl extension for libavcodec... apart 
> >> from that, the only remaining challenge is encoding WMV3 (no encoder
> >> exists in open source), but I'll try to send ML20 frames and see if WLM 
> >> uses the FCC in the header to decode, or if it uses the WMV3
> >> decoder hardcoded and skips the FCC field... if it works, then aMSN might 
> >> be the first open source solution with interop audio/video
> >> conversations :D
> >>
> >>
> >> KaKaRoTo
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