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Open MPEG-4 Codec Contest

Posted by Hemos on from the must-have-open-standards dept.

chrizzzz wrote to us about the opencodex.com contest to write a Open MPEG-4 Codec. They've got an industrial sponser now, so the first team/person to do it wins 50,000$US. The contest page has speifics about the project.

9 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nevermind MPEG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3

    You're not supposed to be a serious platform for graphics and content. You're supposed to be a server. Now get me some soup, bitch.

  2. Re:How long till this spreads? by substrate · · Score: 3
    By and large most projects will still be done by people to fill their own personal needs, ala the linux kernel and Linus. There are some areas that are otherwise neglected where the enticement of a financial reward could really help in getting an Open Source alternative out there. I think of this a bit more like contract programming where the fruits of the labour are given to the community.

    Video codecs probably are not good targets for bounty driven programming though. First of all to really develop a codec takes a very substantial amount of knowledge of signal processing theory, human perception, code optimization and numeric methods - at least if you want a USEFUL codec to be the result. In this case maybe things are a bit easier, the target, MPEG4, is already a documented algorithm. For a from-scratch codec I'd expect that Open Source proponents would call the project vapour-wear before the research phase was even close to completion.

    I'd be glad to be proven wrong, but I've yet to see a good quality codec come out as Open Source. Calling it a good codec because it's open isn't good enough in this case.

  3. Wrappers versus Codecs by Nailer · · Score: 3

    When most people talk about Quicktime, they mean the Sorecnsor codec. It's actually possible to create and play Quicktime movies on Linux right now - as long as they're not using Sorenson, which 98% of Quicktime films do.

    Likewise AVI can be a wrapper for a number of film formats, from MPEG1 thru VOB thru DivX ;-).
    MPEG 1 AVIs work right now under aKtion, the KDE medis player.

  4. Re:This is *so* getting claimed... by Snocone · · Score: 3

    once the codec is created, how can acceptance be encouraged?

    Provide the content, and people will download your codec to watch it, trust me here.

    How many Windows users installed QuickTime just to watch {Phantom Menace | X-Men | LOTR | etc.} trailers?

    Correct answer: "A fucking whack."

  5. Re:Quicktime plug-in? Yuck by Snocone · · Score: 3

    That sucks. I don't think I'm alone in saying that the Quicktime player really, really sucks (this subject came up before, and I was definitely not alone). It's bug-ridden, and the interface blows.

    Erm, the standard player relates to QuickTime in approximately the same way that WinAMP relates to the MP3 specification. It's just an app that calls the movie-playing APIs. Don't like it? Write your own.

    No, I'm not being sarcastic. I did exactly that for QDesign last summer.

  6. LAMP! by mholve · · Score: 4
    There's a great player out there called "LAMP" for "Linux Animation and Movie Player."

    It uses Windows DLLs for CODECs and can play AVI, MPEG2, MPEG3, SMPEG, QT...

  7. Nevermind MPEG! by mholve · · Score: 4
    (RANT) I'd like a simple, UNIX-based application that could just once and for all, play AVI, Quicktime and other formats that xanim won't do.

    How are we supposed to be a serious platform for graphics and content if we can't even play the stupidest movie clips? (/RANT)

  8. Patents? Project Mayo? by harmonica · · Score: 5

    The codec should utilize MPEG-4v.2 video motion compressors or something of equal quality, source code available on this site.
    If it's not only something similar in quality to MPEG-4 but uses MPEG-4 itself, what about all the patents? From earlier /. discussions I remember that there are quite a few... I think it's not in the interest of those who want to create an open codec that this codec will be 'illegal' like DivX ;-).

    On a similar note, can anybody say what the guys at Project Mayo are doing? Sounds very mysterious, but the line Our members include the creators of DivX ;-) seems to make it a promising project.

    It would be great to have a codec that is cross-platform, free, open-source, and performs well. And please don't put it into QuickTime -- I know that it's only a 'wrapper format' for all kinds of content, but I don't want to be forced to use that stupid QuickTime player anymore. Design the codec as a library in a way that you can make a QuickTime plugin from it if you want to. Give it a file extension of its own, so that all .xyz files will always play, everywhere! Create a small cross-platform player (maybe based on GTK) for people to download.

  9. For such a big prize.. by g_mcbay · · Score: 5
    This contest doesn't seem that well thought out.

    As another person mentioned, they plan on releasing this code under the GPL (not LGPL) which will be violated when the program is run through the QuickTime interface that is a requirement of winning!

    Also, by not forcing people to be MPEG4 compliant (according to the rules your code must be MPEG4, or something with 'better quality'), the resulting codec may not be open standards compliant, which in many ways nullifies its existence...Do we really want open platforms like Linux to still have their own different set of codecs? I guess having a 'different' codec beats having obsolete ones... but most web sites (etc) will use something more standard, regardless of quality. Unless the codec is SUPER COOL and ported to many platforms, in which case the author could likely make much more than $50k off of it by other means.

    Lastly, I looked through the site and didn't find any information on how this will be judged. Image quality alone? Or code quality? Or time to code? Anyone?