The Ambulant FAQ List

Why did Ambulant switch from GPL to LGPL licensing?

This was done at the request of various Ambulant users. The feeling was that LGPL licensing could make it easier for third parties to integrate Ambulant in their environments. The Ambulant legal team felt that there was sufficient room in the exclusions that accompanied our GPL license to allow this, but third party legal experts felt that a switch to LGPL would make this flexibility more apparant to more people. Note that no user action is required with regard to this change.

What's new in Ambulant 2.0?

Lots of things. The following items have been changed for the Ambulant 2.0.0 release:

Full support for SMIL 3.0: inline text through smilText, variables and extended customization through SMIL State, pan and zoom to display partial images or video, transparency, many more.
Windows CE support (specifically Windows Mobile 5) has been revived, and is now complete.
Audio and video support have been enhanced. All platforms can now render through open source components (ffmpeg, sdl, live555), unifying available media types and access methods across platforms. All platforms support rtsp playback, http playback and all common media formats. Performance should also have increased significantly.
Redraw has been optimized, especially on Windows. This should give much smoother presentations.
The Firefox plugin (allowing playback of SMIL within web pages) has been revived and for the Mac a Safari plugin is also available. The Safari plugin can be extended in Python, allowing rich interaction between SMIL and HTML.
Support for extending Ambulant through Python, or embedding Ambulant rendering in Python programs has been enhanced.

Why does RealMedia (TM) content not get rendered?

The AMBULANT player only has built-in support for open source codecs or for codecs available from open source packages. The RealMedia codecs do not fall in this category. It isn't that we don't like RealMedia, it is simply that the Real license and the LGPL license (used by Ambulant) are not compatible.

I'm getting very strange behavior in AMBULANT/2.0. What's up?

The initial release of AMBULANT/2.0 is intended to give a taste of SMIL 3.0's new features. The player has also integrated a year's worth of development upgrades. We've decided to release AMBULANT/2.0 with the announcement of SMIL 3.0, to provide initial access to interested parties. We are aware that some things may have become broken in the process, but these will be fixed in an AMBULANT/2.1 release within 6 weeks. You can help us by sending a bug report

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Is the Ambulant Player supported software?

As stated in the Ambulant license, the Ambulant player is unsupported software. In the interest of providing a starting point for new users, however, this FAQ page will be used to assemble answers to common Ambulant questions.

How can I keep in touch with Ambulant developments?

If you REALLY want to know what's going on, keep in touch with the project through the Source Forge repository.

Active Ambulant Player users should subscribe to the Ambulant Users mailing list.

For occasional updates to project developments, subscribe to the Ambulant Announcements mailing list. (Don't worry about being overwhelmed: this is a low-volume list!)

If you simply want to pose a one-time question or contact the development staff, you can always send us a feebdack message.

Where can I obtain Ambulant Player documentation?

Comprehensive design and integration documentation is available via our Source Forge Link.

Is it possible to license the player for redistribution?

In general, all uses that are consistent with the Ambulant License are allowed. If you have any questions, please contact the Ambulant project leader.

What is the difference between the Ambulant Player and the GRiNS SMIL/2 Player?

The Ambulant Player is a new SMIL player that is developed using a clean SMIL implementation. The GRiNS Player is a commercial niche market player that is used in speciality commercial applications. Although the development teams for both players are (largely) the same, the code base and licensing restrictions for both players are totally different.

As a convenience to GRiNS Editor users, the Ambulant Player accepts .grins files as well as .smil files.