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New MPEG 4-Based Open Source Codec
Jestyr writes: "Let me inform you about our new MPEG-4-based codec called 3IVX. You probably heard of DivX ;-) as a movie compression format. And indeed it's great.
But we (the whole 3ivx.com team... want to go a bit further. Our goal is to optimize compression so that the file size is smaller, of a higher quality and fully streamable. Moreover the codec will be supported on all platforms (Windows, Macintosh, BeOS, *nix (inlcuding Linux), Amiga ...). To accomplish this the code of the player will become an open source."" I'll believe it when its running on my desktop, but I'd love to see the world standardize on a high-quality video format that is open source. Damn Sorenson.
I have been looking at it and can't come up with anything that any normal sane person would say a few times a day.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
The term 'codec' is short for 'coder/decoder'. So for them to describe their product as a codec, which they do, it means the encoding portion of the software will be open sourced as well.
That is exactly what I was arguing (though had yet to reach the simple clarity you have no made me realise regarding the LGPL). I was not trying to suggest that the warfare was bad....I was saying it would be good. If something like this was GPL'd and then someone tried to fork the format into a GPL and non-GPL version, we could all enjoy the fight. If it was under a BSD style license and someone started an open and closed fork, it would be the rantings of Free Software campaigners (like me so don't say I'm flamebaiting) that would be calling for the end of the fork, and this would mean the fork would stay and that would be bad for everyone. MP3 is strong because (despite some IP idiots efforts) it is easy to get decoders and encoders and it is a format that provides something people want. No video format is strong yet because the IP idiots have control, once everyone has the opportunity to get a wide range of tools to play and create/edit in one format for all platforms, that format will be hard to shift unless its bitrate/quality is severly beaten to the benefit of the majority of users (and unfortunately windows alone can do that at the moment, but not for long).
Bottom line, if anyone here is working on any form of a video codec, please please please GPL it and start making your money from the work you can do around the codec and not from the language the codec entails.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
That link might be out of date; recently Stux has mentioned that patent royalties on the encoder might prevent it from being distributed gratis.
I hereby pledge $100.00, with God as my witness, to the group that promises to implement a free codec better than Microsoft's MPEG4 implementation. Set yourselves up on a website with your promise to implement the codec by a certain date, and I will contribute my money. If you don't do so by the date, I get my money back. If you can accomplish this, you will be wealthy.
What, you don't think $100.00 is very much? Don't understimate the power of numbers. Put the total amount that you want to be paid individually, the amount you will need to spend in a type of "open budget", and let people come and contribute the money. I know tons of companies, even the one where I work, that would certainly donate cold hard cash to see an excellent, open MPEG4 implementation. Help usher in the dawn of collaborative production!
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
If you were going to write a codec for Mac OS, why not use QuickTime?
Well DivX ;-) is hardly cross-platform. It's also only available as a Windows Codec, since it's just a binary-hack of an older Microsoft version.
Is it possible to have an open source project that uses patented technology? How would the patent holder be able to collect license fees from the users of the program?
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
<rant>
A new codec is great, especially if new nifty features are created, with one exception, that being when multiple different codecs that are very similar in end behaviour are created. One can look at similar products both having an unusual effect on the market in terms of Gnome and KDE, neither of which is a bad product, both doing roughly the same thing, with slightly different ways to achieve the same result. Unfortunately, neither one blows the other out of the water, so I as a user have to keep different sets of stuff on my computer to ensure compatibility.
In this new codec, it sounds nice, but I'm curious as to what features, features that will actually matter, will seperate it from DivX. If there really aren't any then wouldn't it just make sense to approach the DivX people and see if they are interested in revising the codec? I remember when QuickTime and Intel's AVI fought it out, and at the time I was using them the Quicktime codec seemed to blow chunks compared to the AVI, but the AVI format wouldn't play cross-platform. now, we have MP3 format, which is nice, cross platform, pretty good compression, no watermarking capabilities, etc, with the only drawback being the whole royalties thing. Microsoft introduced their proprietary format, which from what I've seen is not taking off. The lesser of evils here is clear.
I don't see how DivX and this new one really have major differences, in the end, that will affect me, but I'm not an expert. What I do see getting ready to develop is two formats fighting to be 'dominant', and neither one winning, instead fragmenting the users similar to how KDE and Gnome, vi and Emacs, etc have, and making people coding universal players stock up on asprin. If people are willing to rally behind a standard that is 'good enough', without settling for crap and staying with something actually worthwhile, it's okay if it's not "bleeding edge", after all, most people aren't there anyway...
</rant>
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
They say nothing about opening their codec, just the player. Moreover, they already have investors, IPO plans, and an NDA. They arent going to release their necoder if their investors are worried about a guaranteed profit angle.
Pretty much more of the same. Even if it works its not anything Free enough to displace WMP. Nothing to see here, move along everyone...
I've been waiting for the final release of this codec to do any actual work with it, but I'm really looking forward to this. Even if Windows Media 8 is only marginally better than Windows Media 7, it will still be the best codec around, hand down, in terms of quality and compression. Right now RealVideo and Quicktime are only holding on by their name-recognition... Microsoft has really created a formidable video system, and you don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money, like with some other companies.
Sure, open source it, but don't GPL it. Let companies like MS and Real etc. adopt aspects of the player into existing closed source programs. If you GPL the player they most likely won't adopt it, and if it isn't adopted then all of their efforts are for nothing. Best case if the code was GPL'd would be that they create their own player over time and by the time that happens something new will come out. Just a thought.
Good luck! Sounds like a nice toy! maybe we can get rid of Quicktime or RAM's..
...I had a dream!
- Xabbu
- Jimbob
3ivX is an implementation of MPEG-4, which is covered by more patents than you can shake a stick at.
Microsoft has really created a formidable video system, and you don't have to pay ridiculous amounts of money, like with some other companies.
Yeah right. You just have to be running Windows, which means you already have paid ridiculous amounts of money!
"And like that
If I create a great codec and sell it, I make money but Slashdot wants to condemn me to Hell. If I create a great codec and give it away I'm dirt poor but Slashdot wants to send me to Heaven.
I wonder what St. Peter thinks of all this.
Me personally, I seem to recall that at the beginning of all this, there was a certain other famous guy who's name also began with an S, and wanted to send people to Hell.
"Come", he said "eat of the CVS tree, and in the day that you eat therof, you will become an Open Source God". So the coders did eat, and their eyes were opened, and they received stock options...
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I've had mixed results from using the various binary hack MPEG4 codecs available. The best MPEG4 I've found so far (and I've tried a number) has been Microsoft's official Windows Media 7 MPEG4 format. It's truly excellent. The ISO standard implementation doesn't hold a candle to it... I hope these guy's have done some serious optimizations.
Why doesn't someone start duplicating the Quicktime API, so that its codecs can be used in other operating systems?
I have a positive modifier on Troll. When I mod someone Troll their karma should go UP!
AFAIK, the important parts of MPEG-4 are final.
A zillion companies have announced that they will be supporting it; the latest set is the Internet Streaming Media Alliance.
(as reported on the website itself, which won't do much good when it goes down)
Close but no cigar. The mouse is actually using HP patents, not Microsoft. The only thing I've seen come from MS is a talking paperclip in a word processor.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Will we get 6 different iterations of pentium 4 performance comparisons on toms hardware for this new technology?
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
I've considered a PS2 but I still will keep my Windows partition for the type of gaming I do. A PS2 doesn't do very good on UT/Q3/Etc. mods or custom maps for the strategy games I like to play.
I can do without winanything(winmodems, winprinter, etc.). Windows can keep those pieces of hardware.
StarOffice works fine for me too but it is a more resource hungry than I would like. I can see why people with less than top-of-line computers complain about it and I'm not a fan of the integrated desktop. Hopefully the open version will get leaner.
Freetype doesn't fix everything but helps a lot.
We will have to see if Intervideo will actually release LinDVD. They look like they might be closer but they have been taking a lot longer than people want to wait. They better have been chipset support than there current list because I don't have any of those video cards.
The Heroine Virtual MPEG library is MPEG-2, not MPEG-4, and the comment on their web page about MPEG-4 being basically a wrapper for MPEG-2 is BS.
I really doubt the claim that the Heroine MPEG-2 CODEC has been optimized to the point where it can achieve the same quality as Microsoft's MPEG-4 (i.e. DivX) at the same bitrate. I havn't checked out the exact same clip compressed both ways, but I've played the xmovie samples and a bunch of DivX's, and it seems that for the same quality DivX's are way smaller...
The buzz in the community for months has been that 3ivx (I pronounce it "three-vix") is going to be open source. Can't people read? Look at the web page. It clearly says the _player_ will be open source. As far as I can tell, 3ivx has never said anything about open sourcing the codec itself. Besides, did you look at the demo content they have posted? It sucks! The quality is nowhere near as good as DivX ;-) and it doesn't even play full speed.
No news no news no news. Lame.
Which way would you rather have it? A Winblows only, proprietary, guarded by 6 million attack dog lawyers format, or a format where the open source community already has half of the equation?
Yeah, it would be nice to have it both ways, but lets not get pissed off when stuff is handed to us!
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Gort! Klatu Barata Nikto!
1. 3ivx is not Open Source yet, but they hope to make the decoder OSS eventually.
;-) is probably illegal. Project Mayo is still vaporware.
;-) is unknown, we are lucky I suppose that microsoft hasn't done anything, but seing as how the cat is out of the bag, would it matter? Also, to be vaporware, doesn't a company have to promise a release date and break it. When does projectmayo plan on releasing? When have they said they are? There web site is a bit thin but I wouldn't call them vaporware quite so soon.
How do you know this? Do you have some sort of information that we don't?
2. DivX
The legality of DivX
In any case, I think it is down to 3ivx and projectmayo. Let the best codec win.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
Read my lips.....BULLSHIT
You must be are American and hence subjected to the most absurd legal system in the world (and to those who deny this I quote your Presidential Election AND Todays' lovely cryptography/seizure addition to the Medal of Honor bill....I don't need to mention teenage Swedes do I). I am Eurpoean and hence can happily write a DVD player, GPL it and then stick it onto any distribution system I want that is not corrupted by US law
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Xiphophorus
and
Fiasco!
The 3ivx codec/player has a lot of potential, but if you look closely, there's not much going for it yet.
;-). It would take some pushing around to change the standard, but I could see this happening...except that we've got MS Video 8 coming, Divx Duex, and who knows what else out there that just has a lot more potential.
First of all, it requires QuickTime. Not only that, but the player really isn't anything but a quicktime plugin. That right there is enough of a problem to make me shy of it.
Ok, now. Another problem is this. The encoder isn't even released yet (that I know of??). What good is the player if there isn't an encoder. Until this is released what good does it do us except let us "ooh" and "ahh" about what it could become.
Performance: All I've heard about 3ivx is how poor the performance is, unless you've got a P-III with about an 800mhz CPU. So much for all of us who aren't making 75 grand a year and have to stick with the same computer for a little while.
Look what else is out there: Right now the standard is Divx
My conclusion: It has potential, but it's gonna take some kicking and screaming to make everybody happy with this one...Good luck!
(the comments contained in this posting are simply my own opinions)
Ok, lets see here
1. What we want is a REAL open source codec. We don't want an open source player, API, or "framework" -- we want a true MPEG-4 open source codec.
2. The 3ivx website has released a closed source codec that integrates into quicktime but from what they have released so far, it doesn't compete with Windows Media Format or Sorenson AT ALL. I sure hope that they will release something of decent quality soon.
3. Of all the groups working on a nice MPEG-4 codec, we have seen many die, fizzle, or simply lie. OpenCodex.com is pretty much off the face of the planet and now their website is just some virtual hosting site. 3ivx has said they have a supperior product, and that it will be open source, so far both have been false. That leaves it to ProjectMayo -- the group started by the creator of DivX. They haven't released anything yet but they sure seem to be the most professional. Perhaps we can appeal to them to become open source.
No matter what happens, the community is ready for a REAL MPEG-4 codec that does not just have some open player, it needs to be fully open so that it can be ported to all OS's, optimized, and hacked to be even better than a small group of developers could imagine.
just my $.02,
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
One problem thatstill needs to be addressed is real time encoding. If content providers want to utilise the technology they'll want to be able to do this to live feeds such as newscasts and sports coverages which I suspect is not feasible yet or at least not at bitrates MS are quoting. Having said that the codec is very impressive regradless. MS is flexing their muscle again and only stupid or ignorant people (such as slashdot editors) would neglect such advancements.
Way to go slashdot. you guys rock.
Microsoft spends something like four billion dollars a year on research. Until now, the only useful thing I've really seen come out of that research was the Optical Intellimouse.
But I have to say that I've just tried the WM8 stuff, and it's pretty good. Actually, it's better than that--it's scary good. The audio compression blows away RealAudio, and although I've only listened to the few samples available, seems to be able to rival mp3 quality with a much better compression ratio. The video is pretty good (although I think that 'DVD quality' is a stretch--I easily noticed artifacts that I wouldn't tolerate on a DVD.)
I was not impressed. Why does it use QuickTime 4 player? Why is the video clip samples not impressive? Anyone else noticed this?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Geez, there's a lot of hot air and FUD going on here at the moment, so here's a few facts. Most of these can be gleaned from just looking through their website.
/. (or accepted) i dont know, as it's certainly nowhere near ready for release.
...emphasis their own. The purpose is to get this product 100% MPEG-4 compatible and stable, and then to speed it up.
;-) (which in terms of piracy is the format of choice, which says a lot about its quality), and beats waiting around for MS to port WMP to Linux. Ha!
:)
- 3ivX is/will be a codec for encoding audio and video, based on MPEG-4. Hopefully it will be better than most other MPEG-4 codecs out there, the player, at least, will be open source.
- it is still VERY much in development! all the stuff out there on 3ivx.com is *test*. it is certainly not ready for public scrutiny or evaluation. Why this got posted to
- to quote from their site:
As explained in the previous report, we would like to remind you that the code contains absolutely no optimization. Nothing is assumed about the hardware - and this is to facilitate the ports to other platforms.
- In terms of multiplatformability, 3ivx runs under Quicktime, but also runs under XAnim. So now you know.
- One of the performance targets of 3ivx is to get fast encoding, as well as decoding. So far, it has encoded up to almost 3 times as fast as the Sorenson encoder. And this is still in development, with no optimisations.
- i dont know what planet people are on who are saying the codec is poor quality. Screenshots on the 3ivx site show it positively kicking Sorenson's ass at the same bitrates.
- the support page lists all sorts of other technology bits going into 3ivx, so check it out.
So there you have it. It's a free, multiplatform open source and hopefully high quality audio/video codec. It looks to be good, especially if it can be better than Div X
Though given everyone whining about the lack of a good codec for Linux for the past year or two, I'm surprised why everyone has suddenly attacked it without doing some research beyond reading the first line of the article. Get involved.
Fross
The encoder is free. Unfortunately, it doesn't encode to AVI's, but to WMV's, which are not readable by every application. Regardless, if you don't mind using Windows Media Player (which I don't), you can download the Encoder for free and convert your existing AVIs. The quality is exceptional.
MPEG is the Motion Pictures Expert Group. They sit around and think of newer, better ways to present movies.
MPEG-4 is a standard for compression of movies, much in the same way MPEG-2 is used for DVD and MPEG-1 was used for VideoCD. It supports less resolutions, but a much lower bitrate and is a much more lossy format. It was designed for video streaming.
DivX is a binary hack of an unreleased Microsoft 'MPEG-4' codec. I have that in quotes because it isn't exactly MPEG-4; Hard to conform to a standard that doesn't really exist, so they made a bit of it up as they went. There are other hack codecs, such as the Angelpotion codec, as well.
Microsoft has since released a 'MPEG-4' version (Again, quotes) from the same heritage as the DivX codec, but with additional tweaks, mainly to make it stream better. A newer, better version is expected to be released with Media Player 8.
Well, at least that's how I understand it, but I may be wrong.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Some info on the patents on MPEG4 is here: http://www.m4if.org/
o/~ Join us now and share the software
What's the value of an open source decoder, without a similarly open sourced encoder? I checked the website, and can't find any mention of the encoder and its source code.
This company just wants unpaid help to port their player around in the hopes of gaining market share...
I can't wait for the day when all pr0n is viewable on my linux boxen...
Midwatch Industries
They are NOT the same thing... It's an entirely new beast...
"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
So much hype, so little news.
;-) even.
First, there is only a 3ivx decoder which in fact
is a Quicktime 4 plugin. The de-facto standard
these days is a AVI-encoding enabled (i.e.patched)
version of Microsoft's MPEG4 V3 DirectShow filter
and that DS code alone is worth three months of
writing and debugging. But then, to make a codec
you need an encoder as well and this is also still
missing. But that is not the most difficult part.
Microsoft has spent a huge amount of work on
improvements for the original, specified MPEG4V1
written-down-on-paper standard for film encoding.
Which means they already have quite an edge
because if you look at the output of their V1 and
their V3 codecs, you will notice how much better
V3 deals with low (800-- kbit/s) bitrates. These
movies of course are ~512 Pixels (and up) in X
resolution, for 1.85:1 you see 224 pixels in Y
direction, pirated movies have around ~640x288
pixels in case you never seen one. Compare that
to the unplayable 12.5 fps stamp-sized demos on
3ivx' webpage, there's a difference isn't it.
As for Windows Media Encoder 8, while their AAC
implementation now cuts off at 16khz and still
stinks at anything above 64kbit/s compared to
MP3@128 (wme7 cuts off at 20 but lacks sound
transparency just like wme8), the new WME8
codec is now slightly better than DiVX
The visible-macroblock plague from V3 is very
well hidden now without smearing the picture,
which is quite a stunt at 500 kbit.
Thinking three years ahead, if you should be able
to once buy&download movies in MPEG4, you can
certain that MS will be supplying the codec,
because (once again) piracy has bought MS a huge
marketshare. Some russian chap even ported the
codec to Linux by emulating DirectShow DLL calls
(ouch). Combine this with a P3-Nvidia-5.1-Dolby
Digital-whizzbang X-Box and you can get a glimpse
what your kids may want for x-mas 2002 B).
Merry Christmas
from Germany.
...and if you ask Apple, you get exactly the opposite. It's the classic "point fingers everywhere but here".
DivX is just a warez collection of hacks to the Microsoft MPEG4 video codec, WMA audio codec, and the FhG MP3 codec. Gej and Max pretend it's theirs so they can gain street cred and hopefully $$$. Anyways, when you're comparing the WMA v8 codec to DivX, you're either comparing it to FhG's MP3 codec or to WMA v1 (IIRC). People just cloud the codec field by claiming "DivX" is a new codec. (And likewise, WMV v8 vs. "DivX" is just WMV v8 vs MS MPEG4 v3.)
Doesn't look like it's going to be open source, but it could definitely cause some troubles for 3ivx if it competes.
The way patents work, you can't be sure that any project is free of patents. Unfortunately, most of the people starting these "patent free" projects think that patents are like copyrights and trade secrets -- if you don't copy, you're alright. Patents don't work that way.
A safe rule of thumb would be to assume that anything is likely covered by an issued or pending patent filed by someone -- hopefull it is someone who isn't a vulture. Even when standards organizations make their members agree to license their patents on reasonable terms, they have no control over the companies who are not members. The number of software patents are growing so quickly you can never be sure a particular concept is not patented (even if you could look through all of the hundreds of thousands of issued software patents, you have no insight at all into the hundreds of thousands that have been in the application phase for a few years and are almost ready to issue).
It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but no one can claim to know that a paticular project is patent-free.
-Steve
Democracy is a poor substitute for liberty.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with the DVD comment.
While the artifiacts are clearly visible it's still excellent. Nevertheless, that 750k stream is the best looking stream of realtime video I've ever seen over my 1.5mbps cablemodem, and that includes some 1mpbs MP7 streams. They must have used a very high quality source for that sample.
The audio is excellent too.
But it would be really good if they could use some open and unencumbered standards. DIVX;-) was really cheap, just ripping off Microsoft's binaries and putting some cracks on them. I don't think they could have made a truly free implementation because of all the patents involved, so I think it's time to move beyond MPEG4 and get a totally new and free standard, like Ogg Vorbis is doing.
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
3ivx = 3-iv-x = 3-4-10 = ealo
Sorry for the lowercase roman numerals, bloody lameness filter rejected it with all uppercase :P
Slashdot: Proof that a million monkeys at a million typewriters can create a masterpiece
You may not be able to create any video codec without infringing on some patents, but as I understand it, if you try to implement something non-trivial that is MPEG4-compliant, you will be infringing.
QuickTime 4 is a format encoding. The part of MPEG4 people actually care about is the codec. There is no "QuickTime4" codec, but most people tend to use sorensen. Sorensen was not developed by apple.
I'd be interested in some real studies comparing the Sorensen codec to the MPEG4 codec.
Don't bother at the moment ... Sorenson 3 is coming out with QT 5 and it should be *dramatically* improved over current generation codecs. Which MSFT's still is, just a very good one.
For those of you who want to see some truly amazing advancements in Microsoft's utilization of the Mpeg4 codec, go check out this page:
n /c ompare/video.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/e
If you have a high bandwidth connection the 750k stream looks quite impressive. Almost DVD quality. The audio demo is quite good as well, sounding much better than mp3 encoding at the same data rate.
There's a beta version of the encoder available from MS if anyone wants to fool around with it.
One thing I don't get with all the MPEG-4 and the Windows Media Player and DivX ;) and all is who owns what.
For example, I heard DivX was adapted from some leaked Microsoft source code. Does that mean that DivX is not fully free? I'm sure M$ didn't GPL that code.. so what's up with that?
Similarly, is the MPEG-4 codec itself free? Is it like MP3 where some institute somewhere owns it? I know it's been in development for a long time, so are there relevent patents involved?
And now 3ivX....apparently also a derivitave of someone else's work (MPEG-4)... How "legit" is the whole thing in terms of free-as-in-speech-ness? Will 3ivX-in-hardware players conceivably be legally available someday Can anyone use the 3ivX standards without paying a royalty?
Sorry, just kinda confused. I appreciate the technological acheivements here, but I'm curious about the licensing/other issues.
W
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