Helix DNA was a project to produce

computer software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

that can play audio and video media in various formats and aid in creating such media. It was intended as a largely

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

digital media framework compatible with numerous

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s and processors (including mobile phones) and it was started by

RealNetworks RealNetworks LLC is an American technology company and provider of Internet streaming media delivery software and services based in Seattle, Washington. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile enter ...

, which contributed much of the code. The Helix Community was an open collaborative effort to develop and extend the Helix DNA platform. The Helix Project has been discontinued. Helix DNA Client is a software package for multi-platform, multi-format media playback. Helix Player is a media player compatible with

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, Solaris,

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

, and

FreeBSD FreeBSD is a free-software Unix-like operating system descended from the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). The first version was released in 1993 developed from 386BSD, one of the first fully functional and free Unix clones on affordable ...

and uses the Helix DNA Client. The Helix DNA Producer application aids in producing media files, and Helix DNA Server can

stream A stream is a continuous body of water, body of surface water Current (stream), flowing within the stream bed, bed and bank (geography), banks of a channel (geography), channel. Depending on its location or certain characteristics, a strea ...

media files over a network.

Licenses

The code is released in binary and source code form under various licenses, notably the proprietary RealNetworks Community Source License and the free and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software RealNetworks Public Source License. Additionally, the Helix DNA Client and the Helix Player are licensed under the popular

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

(GPL) free and open source license. Use of the RDT, the default proprietary Real data transport, and of the

RealVideo RealVideo, also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary format, proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks — the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 15. RealV ...

and RealAudio

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

s requires binary components distributed under the Helix DNA Technology Binary Research Use License.

Helix DNA Client

Helix DNA Client powers many digital media applications, including

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimed ...

for MS Windows, Mac OS and Linux (since version 10), RealPlayer Mobile, and Helix Player. It is used on

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

Motorola Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 and had been named Motorola since 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been ...

Samsung Samsung Group (; stylised as SΛMSUNG) is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational manufacturing Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in the Samsung Town office complex in Seoul. The group consists of numerous a ...

and

Sony Ericsson Sony Mobile Communications Inc., originally Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB, was a Multinational corporation, multinational consumer electronics and telecommunications company, best known for its Mobile phones, mobile phone products. The ...

mobile phones. 800 million mobile phones with the Helix client have been shipped since 2004. It is also being used in embedded devices like the Internet Tablet OS from

, which is found on the Nokia 770, N800 and N810 Internet Tablets. Cingular Video is also based on the framework. Other projects that use the Helix framework include RealNetwork's Rhapsody online music service, the

Banshee A banshee ( ; Irish language, Modern Irish , from , "woman of the Tumulus#Ireland, fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish folklore who heralds the death of a family member, usually by screaming, wailing, shrieking, or kee ...

and Amarok music players, and MediaReady 4000. Helix DNA also manifests itself as the RealPlayer on Mobile Internet Devices (MID) and on Netbooks. Developers from the Open Source Lab announced in 2007 they would use Helix technologies for content creation applications and collaboration in the One Laptop Per Child project. Helix DNA client contains support for the following media formats: * Audio formats:

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

, AAC, AAC+, M4A, MP3, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, RealAudio, WMA, a-law, u-law and audio containers AIFF, WAV, AU * Video formats:

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

, WMV, H.263, H.264,

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

, H.261,

MJPEG Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image. Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPE ...

and container formats RealMedia file format, 3GP, 3G2, AVI, ASF * Description formats: SMIL, SDP * Image formats:

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

, PNG * Protocols: RTSP, RTP,

HTTP HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, wher ...

Multicast In computer networking, multicast is a type of group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast differs from ph ...

, RDT

Helix DNA Client for Android

Helix DNA Client for Android provides an HLS, MPEG-DASH, Verimatrix DRM and Microsoft PlayReady DRM media player for Android 2.2 to latest devices. Supporting H.264 and AAC codecs with Adaptive Bit Rate support (H.264 / AAC) including audio only. Armv7 and Armv6 supported using Stagefright media platform. Helix SDK is supplied as a library which is included within Android Java applications for over the air installation. Helix DNA client contains support for the following media formats: * Audio formats: AAC, RealAudio * Video formats: H.264,

and container formats RealMedia file format, 3GP * Protocols: HLS (Version 4),

MPEG-DASH Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP (DASH), also known as MPEG-DASH, is an adaptive bitrate streaming technique that enables high quality streaming of media content over the Internet delivered from conventional HTTP web servers. Similar to Appl ...

( ISO BMFF MP4)

Helix DNA Server

The Helix DNA Server, first released on 22 January 2003, supports streaming of following formats: * RealVideo, RealAudio (.rm, .ra, .rv) * MP3 It supports streaming to any device or application that supports

, RTSP/ RTP, TCP, UDP unicast and UDP

multicast In computer networking, multicast is a type of group communication where data transmission is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously. Multicast can be one-to-many or many-to-many distribution. Multicast differs from ph ...

streaming protocols. There is also a commercial version called Helix Server, which has more features and supports more media formats. It was originally called the Helix Universal Server when it was announced in or before 2002.

Helix Player

It is based on the Helix DNA Client. It is available for Linux, Solaris, Symbian and FreeBSD. Users of

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and Mac OS X can use RealPlayer, which has similar capabilities.

Helix DNA Producer

It is a media encoding engine for creating streaming broadcasts, on-demand streaming content, and downloadable audio video files. The Helix DNA Producer runs on MS Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The Helix DNA Producer contains output support for the following data types: * RealAudio 10, 8, G2 * RealVideo 10, 9, 8, 7, G2 *

Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most common ...

Developers who want MP3 encoding can license the code from RealNetworks for a fee. There is also an add-on package for Helix DNA Producer SDK with AAC or aacPlus encoding support. Helix DNA Producer was also available in a commercial, closed-source version RealProducer Plus for MS Windows and Linux.

References

External links

* {{Compression software Free media players Linux media players Multimedia frameworks Symbian software RealNetworks