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DivX ;-) Deux Update
Epitaph writes "The author of the DivX ;-) codec (a high-quality MPEG4 codec used quite heavily by DVD pirates to recompress movies) has recently released more information about his next-generation codec: DivX ;-) Deux, or Project Mayo. MPEG4 is the future standard for internet video, and since DivX ;-) Deux is going to be free, this is a very interesting project to keep an eye on. There's now an 'Ask Gej' section where you can ask the author questions, or suggest new features for the future codec. He's also looking for coders, so help the guy out!"
I don't think they can, because from what I understand DivX ;-) is a hacked MS codec, and MS lawyers like eatting developers for breakfast, lunch, mid-day snack, dinner, and perhaps a midnight snack as well...them gluttons...err.ya
Anyways, ya, my guess is because it's a hacked codec they want to get away from any extra hassles that *might* appear
quoting from the WSJ...
;-) Deux will maintain the high quality of DivX ;-) while adding some kick ass features that are optimized to the way you use the technology. In other words, it will be wicked fast at doing the things you want it to do. Let us leave it at that.
;-) Deux that will flat out rock. We will announce our plans in due time. (muhahahAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA!)
Microsoft released the software last year, intending it only for software developers. But Jerome Rota, a 27-year-old French film buff and video engineer who goes by the Internet nickname of "Gej," worked with a German hacker named "Max Morice" to rewrite the software so that anyone can use it to create compact DivX movies
So ya bassicly it's Microsoft's MPEG4 codec.
from the projectmayo website..
DivX
More importantly, we are building some awesome technologies on top of DivX
these new "awesome technologies" I imagine will be performance related, and maybe a little quality related. But as you mentianed, they most likely don't even get deal with the actualy video compression side of it. judging from the muhahahaha part, i would think they are really trying to be the "cool" pirate video guys..
the Microsoft MPEG4 codec is about a year old now, they are now pushing Microsoft Video 7, which to my untrained eye does look smother and crisper. It's also comparable to Real Video 8, which is really pretty amazing. it's hard to belive MPEG4 ISO is actually outdated.
-Jon
this is my sig.
A TechWeb article from late July (Click 'about mayo', and then mayo in the news) states that the new version does not use any MSFT software. Not quite the same thing as saying that it's written from scratch, and it's not from the horse's mouth, but there it is.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Wait 'till they start using Unicode characters which you don't even understand or know how to type.
Like "ACME" (if your browser supports Unicode and you have the right fonts you should see a smiling face after "ACME"), or "Esterica" or "Fbar" whatever. (Not to mention that artist whose name used to be "Prince" and who changed it to some unspeakable hieroglyph.)
Then, with I-DNS they can even have domain names with their weird and untypable characters. Yuck.
DivX ;-) the codec was named as such (and with the smiley) deliberately to make fun of DivX the secure movie player. DivX (player) had encryption detection algorithms built in so that it could only play authorised movies. DivX codec deliberately avoids encryption, sort of.
More than anything, the name of the codec is a parody on the name of the technology, since they're in effect one-uping Circuit City...
There is too a way to convert AVI/DivX/MPG to VCD and SVCD!
However, I see little need for VCD anymore. If you really, really, really need to see your illegal bootleg screeners on your TV, why not just get a video out card? If you must balk at the cost of a video out card, then why do you have a computer? a burner? a DVD player? VCD will die whenever they start releasing DivX--or better yet, MicroDVD--capable hardware players.
In any event, for all this time and effort we spend on this, we could just go buy a hardware DVD player and buy the titles legally.
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I'm just a little confused. Is DivX software a pirated and hacked version of M$ software?
Or is it a pirated/hacked version of the MPEG group's softare? Or what?
ie, how "open" is it? How legal is it? (I mean the format/codec, etc. not the content that may be encoded)
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Here we go: All the sourcecode you need to write your own DivX :-)
And yes that includes the Microsoft sourcecode.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
People who put punctuation in their product names ("DivX ;-)", ":CueCat:", "!nnovation") should be shot.
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Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
Well, there's Video CD and Super Video CD.
Both are essentially just an MPEG on a CD.
Video CD uses a fixed bitrate so that it plays at the same speed as a standard audio CD. Hence, you can get 74 or 80 minutes per CD-R. I believe that it's MPEG-1. It's been around for a while, and is quite popular in the Far East.
Super Video CD uses a higher and variable bitrate, so you only get 35-45 minutes per CD. If you buy the 80-minute CD-Rs, then it should be fine for archiving TV shows (a one-hour episond minus comercials tends to run 42 or 43 minutes). Obviously, this is higher quality than standard Video CD, and I think it uses MPEG-2.
My DVD player supports both formats, though most only support the original Video CDs, as that has been around much longer. (I have the Raite DVD/CD/MP3 player, purchased for $150-ish at Egghead.com.)
Now if I could get some good Super Video CD authoring software under Linux, I would be set!
Well, considering that the single biggest use for the "DivX ;-)" codec is video piracy, I'd say that slashdot is justified in making a statement like that.
Hell, I find it refreshing to see slashdot telling it like it is. You're being naive if you believe that the biggest single purpose of DivX is for piracy.
Well, I'm glad you couldn't think of any legitimate uses for it.
Maybe we should make it illegal to write or distribute CODECs without appropriate copy protection facilities?
In practice, this means cryptographically signed drivers, with the OS under the control of a single vendor who will honor the wishes of the MPAA/RIAA ... which is just what Microsoft does in W2K. "copy-protected" content can't be used with unsigned drivers.
Realistically, though, people are going to manage to get copy-protected content out somehow.
This means that it will also eventually be necessary to disallow drivers from displaying/rendering content that is not digitally signed by an approved content provider (who can presumably be trusted not to distribute pirated content).
With sufficient legal protection and penalties (e.g. making the use of operating environments that cannot effectively implement these protections illegal (e.g. Linux and any pure Open Source OS)), this will effectively eliminate most piracy.
Thank you, Slashdot, for providing one more implicit argument for such a world.
DNA just wants to be free...
A CODEC is just a tool.
So what if it can be used to illegally distribute video?
I can just as easily use it to compress and distribute content *I* created.
If I smack a trick with my crowbar because he beat up
one of my ho's, did the crowbar manufacturer assualt the trick? No. I did.
Likewise, if Bobby W4r3z D00d rips his parent's DVDs,
and uses DivX to encode them, did the DivX people violate copyright? No. Bobby did.
--K
I better get an extra karma point for the pimp analogy.
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That all applies equally well for MPEG-2, but that hasn't stopped that "open source" libraries and players such as libmpeg3 and xmovie.
4 .htm
It seems that the MPEG video patents are currently (in paractice) being treated as "pay for commercial use, free for individual use".
I don't really understand the point of an "open source" MPEG-4 implementation, since there used to be a freely available implementation from the MPEG-4 industry forum, also at first glance that appears to have been removed. Althought the imlpementation was free of any licencing, you'd still have to liceence the patents to be able to *use* it, as would be the case for any other implementation (since the patents are believed to be broad enough to cover ANY implementation).
http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/standards/mpeg-4/mpeg-
http://www.m4if.org/
Has anybody else noticed that the alleged Latest Linux software link on the DiVX;^) page is a 404?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Have you ever hacked out an encryption algorhythm? It can be inordinately complex. DES with 8-bits (my version that I call sDES -- simple DES) works with 4 S-boxes to manipulate the bits. Regular 64-bit DES works with something close to 32. That's 32 matrices of code that needs to be computed exactly correct -- one typo and the thing falls apart.
I have released my code (as I do with all my programs). An 8-bit code amounts to a single letter of encryption: it's essentially a substitution cipher.
The point of releasing it, however, is academic. My code is modularized so that if you wanted to release something with stronger encryption all you would have to do is hack out those matricies. As it stands right now, sDES can be broken quickly but also encrypts things extremely fast. I was able to encrypt all of /bin/local in a little under 2 seconds -- on a Pentium 100 (my laptop). It's not amazing security, but it gets the job done for simple tasks.
If this were a battle between the artists who create great movies and the pirates who would deprive them of their source of payment, I would side with the artists. But it is not about payment; it is about control. And it's not even about control by the artists; it's about control by the large movie studios.
See, but there's a flaw in your thinking. By pirating movies you hurt not only the studios but the artists themselves -- you take away money from both.
It's akin to laying down a smart bomb that kills not only the military of the enemy, but also several thousand ordinary citizens.
Unless you can find a way for artists to be compensated -- and I mean all artists in a motion picture; cast, crew, scriptwriters, stuntpeople, catering, etc -- then your idea fails.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Most of what you describe could be done with Linux. The only problem is the real-time MPEG compression of the video-in stream. Here the issue is that the hardware MPEG encoders use propreitary APIs, and they haven't released the specs.
Perhaps they can't release the specs because their hardware also handles CSS or something like that. Perhaps they're just being paranoid about their intelectual property.
What compression ratio is need to convert an Idaho baking potato into a Yukon Gold?
Thanks in advance,
Juan Epstein
IIRC, one of the big reasons for MPEG-4's great performance is the fact that it uses wavelet compression.
I could be wrong, tho.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Slashdot is right. Even if DivX isn't there yet, something will eventually come along that makes DVD piracy feasible. It is totally inevitable. 50 years from now, people will laugh at you when you say that you had enough time to go to the fridge to get a beer in the time that it took 100 GB to download.
I think the whole DVD-piracy-is-not-feasible arguement was introduced by pro-MPAA people in order to get pro-DeCSS people to rely on an extremely weak strawman argument. Piracy is feasible or soon will be. The real question is this: does the feasibility of piracy mean that everyone who wants to exercise their fair use rights is going to commit piracy? I bet I could commit an untracable murder and get away with it, but that doesn't mean I'm a murderer. Touretzky was preaching to the people who think can==will. Those people aren't worth preaching to.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The "Divx Deux" codec is a new M$ free codec. It is in the works and in testing now. Keep checking the site for more updates. If you are a MPEG4 codec buff, get involved!
From the site:
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
You couldn't feel good about it. But developing video codecs doesn't entail copyright infringement. It is something with many uses, copyright infringement being only one of them.
I write business software for a living. It is pretty much a sure thing that someone, somewhere, has cashed a check that was printed by my software, and then used the money to commit some crime. That doesn't mean I lose sleep at night over it, any more than the maker of wrenches loses sleep that someone might use his wrench to sabotage someone else's brakes.
It kinda all goes back to the "guns don't kill people; people kill people" argument.
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As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Perhaps it will evolve in the way another package did in regard to strong encryption. (sorry, it's been a while so I don't recall exactly which one. Maybe Eudora.)
The "Package" you are thinking of is the export version of Netscape, to which strong encryption can be patched by downloading and running the internationally developed (and availabel) Fortify program.
Ob DivX Deux: I have no intention of using it for illegal purposes. I want to record episodes of my favorite TV shows (Babylon 5, Sliders, etc.) and store them in a high quality compressed format using my CDR and cheap CDR blanks. I want to do the same for home videos I have made, and a couple of small movie projects I'm working on.
All of this is legal, legitimate, and exactly what the DVD Forum and the MPAA wish to prevent.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
My computer isn't in the same room as my home-cinema equipment
I don't want to hear my computer when watching movies
My DVD-player produces a _lot_ better picture and sound quality than cheap TV-out cards (and even more expensive ones)
it's in my head
'course there is a way to combine wavelets and motion compensation.
My understanding of how video codecs work is that there is basically a two step process: 1) you try to simplify each frame by extracting information out of it that refers to historical data, 2) you compress the rest as graphics. The intent being that compressing the difference will be more efficient than compressing each frame anew. Makes sense, no?
so 1) is where motion compensation comes in
and 2) is where wavelets come in.
A very simple codec might be to simply subtract each frame from the preceeding one (which means that unchanging areas are black) and compress the results with jpg. More advanced systems might split the frame up into segments and do a transformation (== motion compensation / rotation) on each segment before subtraction and compression.
Now for my question: the segmentation can be very hard to get right - exhaustive search being time consuming and all that. Is anyone doing it in the time domain as well, so that not only is the previous frame searched for a good match, but perhaps the last 30 or so. If the video is very flashy (think mtv), this might work quite well.
discuss.
My point is that one of these things (encryption) is really designed to enhance people's privacy while the other (the codec, at least at this point) is designed to take away intellectual property.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
The german research institute MediaTransfer (http://b2b.mediatransfer.com) released a study regarding potential and user acceptance of DivX. Some results can be found under: http://www.welt.de/daten/2000/09/26/0926hw193055.h tx
its in german, so ask the babelfish...
I've already got a 17" TV by adding a $50
Hauppage card to my computer. Give me the right
video compression codec, and for no extra charge
my CD-R is now a digital VCR. As someone who's
had a dozen VHS tapes wear out on him (and who no longer has a VHS recorder), I think that's a good thing, and it's certainly legal.
Well, it's a great way to distribute Fansubbed Anime (the kind that you are not allowed to sell, but rather distribute freely). With Divx you avoid all of the hassles of mailing videotapes from here to kingdom come, and you avoid the generation lossage that plagues the fansubber community (just try to watch a fourth of fifth generation VHS tape).
Of course fansubbing has always been kind of a legal grey area, so it is quite possible that even that is breaking the law. Of course it's basically impossible to get any sort of entertainment anymore without breaking the law or sticking to the very expensive, no talent, bring-me-your-money sheep mass media.
Everything I like is either illegal, immoral, or fattening. -- I can't remember who said this.
I read the internet for the articles.
And 3D wavelet transforms are what the codec supposedly uses. It's promising, but they're trying to put the polish on Vorbis before moving to doing serious Tarkin development.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
I don't want to come off as chicken little here, but....
Be sure of one thing: the MPAA is in bed with Congress and the Federal Government on the issue of preserving a near monopoly on the dissemination of copyrighted works in this country (US). Anyone who visibly participates in a movement or project that threatens this plutocratic dominance will be under severe scrutiny at all levels. Martin Luther King Jr, Albert Einstein, and John Lennon had entire reams of paper in their FBI files. What makes you think Linus Torvalds doesn't? And what makes you think that if you're the next Linus Torvalds, that you won't either?
Be very careful when pissing off people with power. The modern State exists for the purpose of inflicting deliberate pain upon a select minority whose very existence runs contrary to the governing principles of the majority. Are you willing to be that martyr?
The rough purpose of the fair use law is to limit the copyright privileges to having a monopoly and control of the commercial exploitation of the work. Congress didn't want to take away our right to make copies of music and video; they only chose to restrict our selling or other commercial exploitation of the works.
This kind of massive file sharing that napster makes possible, and hopefully this codec and faster connections will make possible with video, is actually legal as long as you don't receive any compensation.
You don't have to trust me on this. If you are smart enough to read slashdot, then you are smart enough to go here and download Title 17 of the US code and read it for yourself. It's kind of thick. I printed my copy out and left it in the bathroom, and read a few pages everytime I took a shit. I read it carefully and marked all over it the interesting parts, but I never found where it said that non-commercial uncompensated duplication and distribution of music or video was illegal.
You see, Congress wanted to make very sure that copyright was not an ability to control how people used things. They didn't want the copyright holders to be able to sell one copy for listening in the car and another copy for listening in the house and special copy for listening on weekends. (Which is exactly what the MPAA, the RIAA, and other big copyright holders dream of.) If Congress had wanted to do that, they could have written it into the law; where is it ?
Of course, this same principle of non-money-making copies being normal use of the medium you purchased also extends to software. Holy Shit! you say. Can I make a copy of that windows NT disk at work and install it on my machine at home ? As long as you are not using that machine to do consulting, work from home, or anything beyound home "hobbiest" type use, yes. (I'd advise against it. There are much better hobbiest OSs.)
But the big copyright holders of programs had a massively successful campaign to convince the average slashbot that this was illegal. Remember all those ads in magazines and posters in school computer clusters in the '80s ? They managed to shame huge numbers of people into buying things they didn't need to. The 700 club, usenet get rich yesterday schemes, Scientology, Albanian pyramid schemes, the Russian bailout . . . it all pales in compairison to the anti-piracy campaign.
The RIAA and MPAA are going for a repeat move on their copyright material. Ironically, inspite of the Jon Katzian "the world will change because small people have a voice on slashdot" theory, all you automatons just help them out by parroting Hollywood's false legal propaganda.
It just goes to show that you can give everybody a voice on the internet, and they'll still just repeat what they hear in TV commercials.
Among all the penis bird postings, perhaps one
;) is free beer, if the nextgen is supposed to be free speech, why not open DivX ;) right now?
can ask a serious question:
Where does it state that it will be free?
And is it free speech or free beer?
I can find some references to them asking for people experienced with OSS to join them, but it does not say explicitly that it is to be OS-software.
DivX
I love efforts like this. My ambition is to build a TiVo-like unit one day, except with some of the features that TiVo isn't ever going to have (at least, that's what TiVo CEO Mike Ramsay says in this article on Salon.com), like commercial-skip. A good compression scheme will be an important part of the job.
That's a DVD-RAM, not DVD-R (they are different check out http://www.mpeglabs.com/dvd/dvdrecord/dvd-r.htm). And while you can do MPEG-2 editing, and even save a MPEG-2 file, actually authoring a DVD is another story (check out https://www.proh.com/order-secure.shtml for some idea of what the drives and authoring software cost). You're right, though, that at this point, it's not such a bad deal, other than DVD-authoring -- MPEG2 is still great for archiving, as long as you have a MPEG2 decoder to output the video to tape/monitor. DVD-RAM disks are kind of expensive, but so were CD-R's.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
The reason why DivX got so popular is that it was the right thing at the right time. There was no technical wizardry involved, relative to projects such as LAME or Ogg Vorbis. I doubt Maxmorice or Gej can even explain the whole MPEG4 spec.
It's almost akin to someone telling you that they hacked a Palm V to have 8mb instead of 2mb, and now they have decided to make their own PDA. Hmm?
My question is - given that "An early version of DivX ;-) Deux is complete," did they hack another MS-MPEG4 codec, or are they coding something from scratch? It's been only a short time period since they announced the project, so I hope it's not just another hack (which brings to another question - how can they expect investors to put money in a company that illegally binary hacks some other companies' software?)
Why is anyone interested in something based on MPEG-4? There are so many software patents on MPEG that anyone using this will be at risk of being sued by dozens of different corporations.
At best, an "open source" MPEG-4 implementation may be available for download in some other country without software patents. People in the US may compile it and play with it at home, but no commercial or noncommercial entity will be able to use it publicly. That means that there will be no legitimate uses for it, since no legitimate user would be willing to risk a lawsuit. The end result is that this program seems destined for illegal uses only.
I'm sure the DivX CODEC offers a lot to legitimate uses. Perhapse Ferverent's point is that DivX developers and their supporters should stress these bennifits rather than illegal use.
I think naming the new technology after a defunct one qualifies as a hanging offense. When I first heard of DivX I went looking for more info on it, and all I could locate at the time was stuff pertaining to the failed digital video distribution scheme that was the original DivX. Arrgh. At least with a smiley added it's clear that it's the new one.
Before you moderate this down as a troll post, please read it.
a high-quality MPEG4 codec used quite heavily by DVD pirates to recompress movies
Nice to see the truth come out. Tom's Hardware even knows this.
This is why the MPAA won the first round. This is what DeCSS.exe (Yes, the Win32 program, not the LiViD player) is being used for. It is certainly possible to transfer enough of a DVD to a 650 MB CD-ROM using this technology.
Yes I know about making backups, about control over media, etc etc but you have to admit this does make pirating movies easier (much easier than image-copying DVDs with CSS in tact).
There, now please moderate this down so it doesn't cause a flame war.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
What I would want (and pay good money for) is a DVD player that plays this format using regular CD-R's. Kind of like the MP3 CD players, but for video. Like those little discman-sized DVD players (or the VCD players in Asia). Unfortunately, I can imagine the MPAA, DVD-CCA and who knows who else making a fuss over something like that. A guy can dream, though...
I do amateur video (no, not *THAT* kind) for fun, and I know that low-rent videographers like me have been drooling over the thought of being able to make DVD's. You get durability (right now I use a tape drive for archiving video; with DVD I could master right from my archive format), pure digital format, high quality, and portability (you can play on standard home video equipment). The only problem is the high cost of DVD-R drives, media, and DVD authoring software that puts it out of reach. If you can use a standard CD-R recording a standard ISO disc (no new hardware, software, or media), all you would need is a standalone player.
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The truth is out th- oh, wait, here it is...
I'm all for new algorhytms. Programming new crypto algorhythms can actually be quite enjoyable. But if my work entailed illegal copyright infringement, how could I feel good about it?
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
a lot of work has been done.
Naive motion compensation introduces a lot of hard edges. The MPEG4 standards supports wavelets for static image (texture) coding, but chooses 8*8 DCT for coding the residual error... I have read about lots of interesting ways to apply wavelets in video coding, for instance hierarchical motion estimation with complex discrete wavelet transforms, but its not going to be as easy as just taking out the DCT and pluggin in wavelets IMO.
As for 3D wavelet transforms, they encode the relation ship in time between corresponding pixels... people have claimed quite good compression with this (about the same quality at the same bitrate as broadcast quality MPEG-2) but it still lacks motion compensation.
And what kind of moron expects everyone to take such a product seriously?
Whilst I'll admit that, had I written the product, I wouldn't use the smiley, People will take the product seriously because it whips teh ass of every other codec I've ever seen.
Take a look at 405: The Movie for an example of what you can do with this codec; 7.8MB for a supprisingly good (if rather short) movie. It scales up to my 1024x768 17-inch screen amazingly for such a small file.
If I wanted to compress a movie, this is the codec I would use.
Michael Tandy
...another comment from Michael Tandy.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Perhaps it will evolve in the way another package did in regard to strong encryption. (sorry, it's been a while so I don't recall exactly which one. Maybe Eudora.) You bought the main app, installed it, then the strong encryption was installed to it via the net from another country. It was designed that way to get around the U.S. restrictions on export of strong crypto, and allowed the package to be exported without violating U.S. laws. I can see the same sort of scheme evolving here.
"If I have seen further than other men, it is by stepping on their glasses." - Michael Swaine