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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.
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.
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...
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.
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.