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Multi-Platform Video Codec Seeks New Home

Posted by Cliff on from the foster-code-care dept.

Eric Smith asks: "I own a next-generation video codec development company, idea65 (covered on Slashdot as our previous incarnations Opencodex, and Flashingyellow). We have a finished product, but don't quite know what to do with it, and we're looking for someone (or some company) interested in taking it over." Here's the chance for some of you out there looking for a good cause, to contribute something. Loads of people (me, included) would love a good cross-platform video codec.

We started our journey as an open-source project contest in response to DivX, before DivX networks came into being. Due to a variety of issues (not the least of which was our main investor pulling out and funding having to come out of my own pocket), we mutated into a closed-source project that we intended to distribute ourselves through the help of a third party. We finished product development almost a year ago and have a really great portable video codec that runs on Linux, Mac OS, and Windows.

The problem we've run into is that with the economy being as it is, our candidates for distribution assistance have also all dried up. We've considered just GPL'ing it and seeing what the open-source community could do with it, but don't have anyone to oversee changes and official versions, not to mention from the looks of the DivX 4.0 project, there don't seem to be a lot of people interested in (or with the knowledge to) work on video codecs.

More or less, we've got a bunch of very well written CodeWarrior projects that need to find a new home as we don't really have the expertise or financing to sell it or even give it away. So, I'm interested in knowing if anyone has any suggestions for what to do with the project, or interest in taking it over (those with experience with this kind of thing)."

If seriously interested, you can contact Eric using the mailto link at the beginning of this article.

3 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Ogg Tarkin by Shrubbman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If you're codec is patent free, the people over at the ogg multimedia project would be bigtime interested. They've got the audio portion (vorbis) well along but they're still aways away from having their video portion (tarkin) completed. Head over here for more info

  2. quality? by crayz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Would it be possible to show us the quality of this codec somehow? Maybe start with uncompressed video, and have the DivX, VP3, etc. people all compress it down to a specific bitrate, and you do the same. Then once it's compressed down to that bitrate you could decompress it(since we don't have a decoder...), thus letting the general public see the quality of your codec.

    Would that work? Because there are a lot of codecs, and unless you can show that this one is better than the others, I really don't see why people would be interested.

  3. The only think that makes your CODEC worthwhile... by oddityfds · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Possibly, the only thing that makes your CODEC worthwhile is if it is patent free. The only CODEC to date that I know of that is free of software patents is the H.261.

    If we're going to use an algorithm encumbered by patents, we might as well use MPEG-4.

    However if your CODEC is not covered by any patents, then please consider releasing it under a BSD or GPL license.

    For information on why software patents are bad for free software, please visit The League for Programming Freedom