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Nancy Goes Head-to-Head With MPEG-4

Posted by Hemos on from the battle-head-to-head dept.

Justin Rossi writes: "EE Times has an article about Nancy, 'the lightest video codec' which is taking Asia by storm and finally bringing streaming Video to handheld devices. What I wonder is how it shall fare against MPEG-4, Ogg Tarkin, and MC-10."

8 of 176 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmmm by Corporate+Troll · · Score: 3, Informative
    I still don't get this hype about "video-on-cell-phone". Now correct me if I'm wrong but standalone "videophones" were "to be the future", they never catched on. Why would it be different for cell-phones even if you have the bandwith?

    I just can say: cool a new codec, which will perhaps allow me to watch some extra pr0n on this slow computer....but then I'm running Linux and this thing is proprietary, so implementation probability is about 10%. However the chinese got their hands in it, so not all is lost.

  2. Re:If it's as good as they say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative
    If the video codec really is all it's cracked up to be, then it looks like WE HAEV A WINNAR. I doubt that MPEG-4 can hold up for very long against something which achieves similar results in a tiny fraction of the memory and CPU power without serious push from a monopoly or oligopoly.

    Well every 6 months or so, someone announces a "NEW! REVOLUTIONARY! FAST! ULTRA-COMPRESSING!" video codec. Until now they failed to deliver their promises.

  3. Re:What a strange name for a video codec by woodstok · · Score: 2, Informative

    It wouldnt surprise me a bit if it was named after someones girlfriend. However I dont see that as a bad thing. Just look at Debian, it was partly named after Ian's girlfriend Deborah and it turned out the be the best linux distribution ever.

  4. This codec is on a Sharp PDA here in Japan by Western+Light · · Score: 2, Informative
    The link is here.

    The machine sounds like a great gadget, but notice all the extras you need to purchase to make it fully functional -- such as the $200 recording card, another digital camera card ($200), video camera software ($40), another flash card to use the gadget as a phone, modem cards, LAN cards, PC link cables, PC link kits...
    which sounds a bit much

    The device itself goes for about $450 I believe.

    By the way, the web site (with an English section) for NOA, the creators of Nancy is here.

  5. Not MPEG4 killer... by dserpell · · Score: 5, Informative
    Reading the article:
    MPEG-4 uses discrete-cosine-transform and motion-estimation technologies. By contrast, Nancy uses only the four fundamental processes of arithmetic (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division), along with comparison and bit-shift operation. This keeps its operation light, said Koichi Kato, chief technology officer at Office Noa.
    This is nosense... DCT is also only addition and multiplications (no divisions, so it have to be faster...) Also:
    The codec will run "even if CPU power is not high," said Kato. "A 50-Mips CPU can compress and decompress video at 30 frames per second with QCIF [176 x 144-pixel] resolution [using Nancy]. There is no other video codec in a software form that can encode and decode." The program for real-time video compression and decompression takes 30 to 40 kbytes of memory, "and consumes about one-tenth of the power compared with MPEG-4 operation," he added
    He shoud take a look at ffmpeg's libavcodec. In 240kbytes you have coder and decoder for: Video MPEG1/2/4, MSMPEG4, MJPEG, H263, RealVideo, AC3, Audio MPEG-Layer3... And with assembler routines for x86 and arm cpu's. Getting 30fps of QCIF at 50mips isn't as difficult...
  6. To eliminate Mach banding, go to 24/32-bit by yerricde · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the DVD/Mpeg2 it is a rather dark scene, but on the highest Mpeg4 setting it is dark & "muddy" and gets rather pixellated. I've noticed that while you can't see the "grid", there are still "striations/gradation/banding" (one of those words).

    What you're seeing is Mach banding (Java demo; explanation) caused by the interaction between color quantization and the eye's high-pass edge detection filter. It kills the quality of anything played back at 15/16-bit high color. DVDs don't show this because the hardware decoder uses 24-bit or higher color, which eliminates most Mach banding.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  7. I cant wait for this! by +junis_al_barek_ash_ · · Score: 2, Informative

    I am running a C64 - this would be a "god"send for watching movies from the Internet for me!!!! I am anxiously awaiting the porting kings to release this for c64!!!!Internet is great!!! junis

    --
    Internet is Great!!! junis
  8. Hrumf by xiphmont · · Score: 3, Informative

    >I've been waiting for the 1.0 release of Ogg >Vorbis for a few years now

    Really? Development only began in 1998, and nothing was even announced to the world until 2000 (right here in slashdot, a few months before we'd have liked word to leak out). No one has even known about it 'for a few years'. :-)

    >Yes, it's a nice CODEC, but the development >timeline has been less than ideal for commercial >adoption.

    MPEG required ~10 years. Our code has been production grade since beta1, and every bitstream make since May 8th, 2000 will work forever. That's less than two years from beginning to frozen. The '1.0' label is just waiting on a paper list of features that has grown over time.

    Hrumf. We should have just called 'rc1' 1.0 and no one would have known the difference.

    > Ogg Tarkin is still in
    > extremely early development,

    very true.

    > without even alpha code to show for the effort.

    Running Tarkin code exists; we actually have three competing implementations, two in CVS, and the 'w3d' module at cvs.xiph.org is the current frontrunner (and the one we're actively developing).

    But this is not release grade code.

    Monty