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VP3, Open Source Video at 200kbs
Honest Man
noted that intel is hyping VP3 as the first low bitrate open source video codec. 200kbs for VHS quality video sounds good to me, especially when I can apt-get it. But is DivX already to entrenched in this niche?
warning: not a troll, just an observation: Is this just a cheap ploy to sell P4's? This seems like Intel is just tooting their own horns about this technology, and claiming it's only for P4's.
I bet this is not "First Post."
Is DivX ;) entrenched in the market? Well, how many non-technical people have heard of it? How many PCs is it bundled with? It has a reputation for being primarily used for pirated video (regardless of the truth). So, the answer is a resounding "no, it isn't entrenched".
501 Not Implemented
Right, they'll sue Intel when hell freezes over. The last thing they would try is to sue anyone with the resources to defend themselves and the 'political' stature to laugh off the lies and slurs the MPAA might attempt.
There are patents on the technology, which means it is of no more use to the open source community than True Type font hinting and MP3.
:)
I hope that they address the patent issues, and not just brush them aside like the DivX guys have done.
There's a reason the Xiph.org project is trying to develop a video codec too
The real open source VP3 site
The VP3 open source license
The VP3 license claims to be MPL derived. Would be interesting to see if it still fits the open source criteria.
it may be open source, but it sure isn't cheap...
Intel's link takes you to on2.com's website where they have this to say:
With the VP3 for Windows codec, you can encode VP3 video and play it back through the Windows Media Player! The VP3 for Windows codec allows you to encode VP3 video using any Video for Windows compatible encoding application (such as Adobe Premiere and Virtual Dub) and play it back through the Windows Media Player. This version comes with limited email support. $395 USD"
The free open source versions can be found at www.vp3.com, but it looks like Intel is promoting them the big bucks version.
Consider this pice:
(e) Notwithstanding Sections 2.1 (a), (b), and (c) above, no license is granted to You, under any intellectual property rights including patent
rights, to modify the code in such a way as to create or accept data that is incompatible with data produced or accepted by the Original Code.
Yeah, that's real fucking useful -- we can view the code, but we can't improve it (incompatibly).
This is the problem with the "Open Source" movement -- it's become such a buzzword that morons like VP3 think they can make up licenses like these.
Where, pray tell, is the link to download the source?
I went to the VP3 site to watch some movie trailers they have. When I started playing the trailer, QuickTime Player told me I didn't have the VP3 codec and offered to install it for me. I clicked OK a few times and the trailer started playing. It couldn't have been easier. It even installed the encoder, so I can encode VP3 from any QuickTime app.
200kbit/sec for video? so what. double that if you want VHS quality sound along with it!
MP3 finally has a video counterpart - a file-compression algorithm that makes it possible to send large multimedia files over the Internet on demand. VP3 is the first open-source video codec to truly support VHS-quality video at bandwidths as low as 200 kbps.
isn't MP3 a patented, non-free algorithm? isn't that why Ogg Vorbis exists? so the only reason Intel is comparing VP3 to MP3 is marketing crap, right?
either that, or they are hoping people will compress millions of DVDs into VP3 and set up giant file-swapping services, that would be a video counterpart to MP3.
in other news, are there any side-by-side comparisons of VP3 and DivX? and how does Ogg Tarkin fit into all of this, now that there is an 'open source' codec?
-sam
burn the computers. go back to the abacus.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Lots of missed info for a project that whose source was released in early September. Good to see it finally got noticed by /.
-first source is available on vp3.com. You must register to download (hrm).
-Its license is MPL derived, with some restrictions on IP for their patents. Also derivatives must always be able to play VP3.
-Its streamable with QT hinting.
-only currently available for Win and Mac. Port to *nix should be easy since there is code for OS X.
-Apple and Real will be supporting it in their players
There was some discussion on the developer lists about getting them to allow us to release an OGG video stream using their codec. Right now, they're supposedly looking at re-working their license to make it where something like that might happen.
Otherwise, the best you can do with the current license is make a VP3 player/stream codec for Linux (Which wouldn't be a bad thing- I've seen the technology in action with RealPlayer 8 on Linux, playing some unbelievable streams from news.com.).
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
(yes, I suppose I should have spent a couple minutes searching on google before I posted my question).
I just found two comparisons:
Extreme Tech from June 18, 2001, compares Windows Media Video 3, 7 and 8, Real 8, MPEG-4, Sorenson MPEG-4, and QuickTime (Sorenson V3 and V2). Hard to get clear results, though it looks like they liked WMV and Real about the best.
Also, Digital Video.com (looks like it's from november) compares WMV8, Real 8, QT 5, Sorenson 3, H.263, VP3, and ZyGoVideo. Like many magazine articles, he declines to pick a "best", since it's so usage-dependant. He thought you needed to get to at least 800 kbps for VP3, didn't like ZyGo, liked Sorenson V3 better than H.263 (which he liked better than SV2), but thought WMV8 was better. Also RV8 wasn't as good, in his opinion, as WMV8.
Anyway, they might be worth a read...
And the results - for the same file, at 910 kbps, indistinguishable quality, both had minor artifacting, etc, but looked pretty good full screen, and looked great at default res. The big difference was time to encode - divx took 6 1/2 minutes to encode the clip I selected, VP3 took 11, and size - divx was 20.7 mb, vp3 was 29 mb. All other things were equal, I used Virtual Dub for both, same video clip, and the default encoding parameters for both (Medium for speed/quality in DivX 4.0, Fast Encode for VP3). My computer's a Celeron 566, 256mb RAM, running Windows 2000 SP2.
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