Cannot listen to sound files provided by websites

Comodo Dragon - CD Help - CD
1

Hi,

I have problem with playing sound samples on this website:

https://www.pianoteq.com/listen_by_instrument

It can be any other website. I have just provided an example. How can I fix this?

Thanks

2

That site uses mp3, which is not supported by Dragon and Chromodo.

Just like Chromium, Dragon and Chromodo support only free formats, listed here: Audio/Video

3

It’s confusing. The provided by you website states MP3 format seems to be supported in codec/decodec group as well as in file extension group. It’s not clear to me what you mean by free formats. I though MP3 is free, or is there another mp3 format that website uses?

It is not a problem with this website only. I have found this issue also visiting other websites.

BTW. It is only your product that makes the links to sound file grey and non-clickable. Every other web browser: Firefox, Opera, IE, even Google Chrome can do it. I don’t know what it is but it looks strange.

Thanks

4

mp3 is listed under When building Google Chrome, the following codecs/containers are also included. Dragon and Chromodo support what Chromium supports:

Chromium supports the following:
Vorbis audio codec Theora video codec Opus audio codec VP8 video codec VP9 video codec PCM 8-bit unsigned integer PCM 16-bit signed integer little endian PCM 32-bit float little endian Ogg container format WebM container format WAV container format

Free means free from patents and licensing fees, free to implement and use. The formats listed above are free. mp3 is not free, and neither is AAC.

Can you explain or give an example of “links to sound file grey and non-clickable”?

5

I meant by this that links rendered as media boxes to sound files are grayed out and inactive. Links as text do not work. Plenty of examples are on the website I have provided the link to. One of them is just at the top of this website. This only happens when I visit the website using Dragon.

I understand now. It’s a shame because it’s a little bit inconvenient. it would useful to have it.

Thanks

6

Comodo is actually working on it: https://forums.comodo.com/-t113775.0.html;msg824105#msg824105

Media formats on the web is a mess that needs a proper fix, and that fix would be to move to free/open formats only. That wont happen any time soon, but there is hope: https://forums.comodo.com/-t112637.0.html;msg819377#msg819377

7

Thanks for the links. I hope that when the “issue is sorted”, CD won’t rely on codecs installed in the system but rather use its own internal libraries. I am not sure if it’s the case with VLC but I would guess VLC does not need anything else but itself to play audios/videos. If not, I think it is very close to this ideal option.

8

Actually Chromium includes FFmpeg’s libavcodec, just like VLC. libavcodec supports proprietary (not free) formats, which can be enabled when building a Chromium-browser from the source code. See Audio/Video

If Comodo would do that when building Dragon and Chromodo, they would have to pay licensing fees. So why doesn’t VideoLAN have to pay for including support for proprietary formats in VLC? Because VideoLAN is a French organisation:

Patents and codec licenses Neither French law nor European conventions recognize software as patentable (see French section below). Therefore, software patents licenses do not apply on VideoLAN software.
https://www.videolan.org/legal.html

More on software patents and jurisdictions: Software patent - Wikipedia