Slashdot Mirror
Good News On Two Open-Codec Fronts
davidu writes: "The Fraunhofer Institute in Germany (makers of the mp3 codec) licensed the divx ;-) video codec for future use. This is good for users because the codec is open source and is now on its way to becoming a standard. For those who don't know, this is unrelated to the failed Circuit City program, hence the smiley. ;-)" On the audio side of things, Mike Hicks writes: "Saw this on LWN's Daily Updates. Kenwood has come up with a car audio playing system that understands the Ogg Vorbis compression format, the Music Keg. Me want.. Time to start digging for spare change in the couch ..." Update: 02/05 03:24 GMT by T : Two clarifications below put a slight damper on each of these, though the overall news is still good.
Vince Busam from Phatnoise writes: "The author of the mp3newswire article goofed big time! Nowhere does it state that the Keg plays Ogg files, only the desktop software. Ogg will be supported when free ARM libraries are available. The author is further incorrect when he mentions the Kenwood X959 plays MPEG video files on the tiny OLE display. I have no idea where he got that idea." And reader Guspaz points out: "OpenDivX is indeed opensourced, but it is not the same as DivX 4, which was what was liscenced (And is what people download to use)."
Good news in a long time! I hope the "joe somebody" will use it too! No more wmv/mp3!!!
I guess this is as good a time as ever to ask: What was that screw-up concerning the openness of DivX4? All I seem to know at the moment is that they apparently were open at the beginning and then closed their stuff, basically screwing over all the contributors up to that point. Can anybody shine some light on this and tell whether that really happened?
If divx is open-source, what's the best encoder for linux? Right now I only know how to encode in MPEG-1 and it sucks.
How does the DivX compare to the first Ogg Tarkin ideas?
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
The page doesn't say much about the hard drive "cartridge" other then that it is 10GB and removable.
Can this be hacked, a 100Gig drive with uncompressed wavs for ultimate in quality.
I thought DivX ;-) was just a repackaged version of Microsoft's MPEG-4 codec. ("Version 3")
I seem to recall that some folks were writing a new codec and using that name (presumably to get free publicity, I mean, who will sue them?), and also making it open-source. ("Version 4")
So why does Fraunhofer need to license this new codec if it's open source? And why is it "patent pending"??
Free Mac Mini
Nowhere does the Kenwood Music Keg (PhatNoise PhatBox) claim to support Ogg. The author of the article must have mis-read some of the literature which clearly states that Ogg is only supported in the (Windows) desktop software. The author also overstates the capabilities of the Kenwood X959, which does NOT play mpeg files, just short animations which can be loaded into the head unit's memory via CD-Rs.
The Kenwood Music Keg runs Linux, and can be upgraded to support Ogg when free ARM decoding libraries are available. Also, there are Linux utilities for managing playlists on the Music Keg.
it does NOT play OGG. only the desktop software component of it supports playback and encoding of ogg files. the music keg currently only plays mp3, wma, and wav.
of course, this is a product of these guys and has been available for a while (and it does run linux!).
DivX ;)
-------
Pros:
- open source
- videos can compress (send video footage to relatives over email, read the napsterization of TV post comments to see what I mean)
Cons:
- piracy of movies over net is encouraged, etc.
- being licensed by a big corporation might lead them to become anal on us.. ie, charging fees?
Ogg Vorbis
Pros: Good quality/compression
Cons: Not a standard
just IMHO, and ramblins.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
For that matter, at some point I'm going to rip everything again to WAVs or some lossless compression format, and that's probably going to double or quadruple my space requirements.
So the question is - Is it hackable?
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Are you implying that Slashdot would post incorrect information? Unthinkable!
On another note, I didn't see anything on divx.com or divxnetworks.com about source availability. Besides, if divxnetworks is licensing patents that hardly sounds like technology that could be used in free software. Perhaps a double dose of misinformation?
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
The reason these guys don't support Ogg on the decoder end yet is that they're waiting for a free port of the Vorbis codec to the ARM7. Apparently, several ports exist but all are commercial and require a license fee, which Kenwood appears to be unwilling to pay.
The folks at PhatNoise worked a deal with Kenwood to get these out this month. Music Keg. Hmm. A big, heavy, potbellied, silver container that you tap for music? Well, I don't like this new name, but the PhatBox is very cool.
.flac files in playlists soon and adding the
Ogg support is great, but what I was especially excited to hear was that one of the devs at phatnoise (Brendan) recently got flac working with the PhatBox/Music Keg:
> So the Phatbox now plays FLAC files. Although, it's not yet in the
> standard firmware download from the web page, and encoding is not yet
> included in the capabilities of the Phatnoise Music Manager software.
> (Although I hope to get the Windows software guys to include the
> ability
> to at least include
> player
> to the standard firmware distribution should be easy).
Now if we could just get a portable iPod-like device to work with flac....
Why did they have to screw a reasonably decent codec by calling it "divx ;-)"?
...
;-)"
;-) loses again.
I can see the proposals now
Engineer's email : "Well, we could use intel's I.263 codec or we could go with Divx
PHB Thought Process: "Divx-wink? That must be some sort of in-joke... hmmm , better go for I.263..... that sounds technical."
And Divx
Why? WHY?
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
1) Almost as good as anything WMP or Real does.
2) Plug-ins for Mozilla, Explorer and Netscape.
3) Easy conversion from base formats.
If yes to all, then they got a a chance.
It'd be nice to liberate web video from
proprietary formats. Hell, the stuff is almost
usable these days at 56kbps.
PS: We still need multicasting!!!
Its a great codec for providing near dvd quality at a much lower bitrate than an mpeg file of the same quality. But you lose out because it takes significntly more processing power to play. It also is a hog to encode. And since its not a streaming format, it rules itself out as a live broadcasting medium.
Ogg Tarkin might have some promise, but until there's something there to play with, its not going to do me much good.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
KHD-CX910
Kenwood Excelon Music Keg Digital Media Storage
AVAILABLE FEBRUARY 2002
The Kenwood Music Keg encodes, records, organizes, stores and plays up 10 gigs of MP3, WMA, and WAV digital music files in your car (works out to roughly 2500 MP3 songs).
It connects with all existing Kenwood head units with CD changer control, without the need for additional displays or buttons. Plus, the Music Keg fits easily into most CD changer locations.
Here's how it works... The Music Keg comes with the Keg itself, USB computer desktop cradle, storage cartridge, and user-friendly Kenwood PhatNoise Music Manager software. With the Music Manager software on your PC, you'll be able to create, manage and record playlists - you'll even be able to use the Music Manager to create and manage playlists that you burn to CDs. When you're ready to take your music out to your car, all you need to do is insert the Music Keg cartridge into the USB cradle and synchronize your music collection on your PC to the storage cartridge. Insert the recorded cartridge into the Music Keg installed in your car, and play and control music through your car head unit. Kenwood head units that have text display support will even display song names and playlist titles on the head unit.
Be among the first to find out when the Kenwood Music Keg hits authorized dealers. Sign up here.
KEY FEATURES
- Cartridge Stores 10GB (Roughly 2,500 Songs)
- Compatible with All 2001-2002 Kenwood Head Units with Changer Control and CD text Capability
- Records, Organizes, Stores and Plays Digital Music Files: MP3, WMA and WAV
- System Includes Car Unit, Music Storage Cartridge and Desktop Unit
CAR UNIT FEATURES
- Compatible with All 2001-2002 Kenwood Head Units with Changer Control and CD text Capability
- Digital-to-Analog Converter: 24-bit
- Displays MP3 File Names and ID3 Tags
- Mounts Like Standard Changers
MUSIC STORAGE CARTRIDGE FEATURES
- 10GB Storage Capacity (Roughly 2,500 Songs)
- Internal Shock-Absorbing Suspension
DESKTOP UNIT FEATURES
- Available as Accessory for Use with Multiple Computers
- USB Connection
MUSIC MANAGEMENT SOFTWARE FEATURES
- Downloads via Internet
- Encodes MP3, WMA and WAV File Formats
- Integrated Web Browser
- Multiple MP3/WMA Compression Rates: up to 320kbps (Selectable)
- Playlist Capability: up to 999 (with up to 999 Songs in each)
- Variable Bit-Rate Compatible
When I read the title, I thought the good news could be related to the Sorensen codec. :)
Gotta pay more attention next time, as it explicitly says OPEN-CODEC (well, we can always dream on the day Apple will set it free
They don't mention what interface the cradle uses, do you think it's USB? That would seem to be the most compatible right now, but the transfer speeds are not fast enough to make you want to transfer 10GB very often. I guess that most people's music collections will fit on the hard disc, but I hope the bundled software would be smart enough to synchronize someone's music collection with the disk without transferring the files that have already been copied over..
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2002/Jan0 2/01-07CarStereoPR.asp
Last time we checked the DivX site, it said there were licensing fees due if we used DivX commercially.
The original version of divx [ divx ;-) ] was a hacked version of the MS MPEG-4 codec with data-rate and play time restrictions removed.
;-) content. Aside from being perfectly legal, it also adds goodies such as VBR and multi-pass encoding.
The project mayo codec (Divx 4.x) was a complete re-write from scratch based on the MPEG-4 specification...fully backwards compatable with divx
The article, though desribed poorly on slashdot, is stating that DivxNetworks (The people now behind project mayo) have licensed their divx 4.x codec to Fraunhofer Germany, not the other way around.
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Oh, I mean, open source and freedom of information.
I'd like to see that "Organic Electro Luminescent display." So OLEDs are here?
Divx ;-) with the smiley is version 3.* and is a hack of a microsoft codec. what we are talking about here is DivX4 by DivXNetworks http://www.divx.com/ it is completely different, it is incompatible, and is not a hack of any other codec. the similarities are that they both have similar names and both are based on mpeg4 technology.
I'll be able to play all my Divx movies on a set box dvd player afterall?
Just 5 years ago, MP3 was for the most part, in the same position that DivX ;-) seems to be right now. Then, hardware MP3 decoder chipsets were pretty rare, and weren't in use with consumer protables and such. People only played MP3 files on thier PCs. Now people have MP3 CD players and Rio-like devices. Perhaps when DivX ;-) becomes more standardized, hardware companies will want to manufacture hardware DivX ;-) decoders in order to alleviate this bottleneck. I remember how much my Pentium 100 machine flew once I bought an MPEGI/II decoder card. It certainly would kick ass to have set-top DivX ;-) players, doncha think?
- They both have stupid names.
I understood that this kenwood device runs a version of Linux, so surely it should be possible to just compile the widely available ogg library under arm/linux ? i have ogg vorbis files playing nicely on my linux machine here, and i`m sure the player is open source...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The problem is that ARM does not support floating point and the standard, free ogg implementation is heavily reliant on floating point. There is, apparently, a non-free implementation of ogg that is integer only. But, being non-free it isn't freely available.
This lack of an integer Ogg codec is a major problem because the vast majority of dedicated mp3 devices are ARM based. Until integer Ogg is freely available, we aren't going to see much support for Ogg beyond our computers.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Well... DivX is an implementation of Fraunhofer's MPEG4 spec anyway, it's logical they'd take notice ;) Now, DivX + AAC, drool.
I was watching a presentation on MS's fancy new media condec called Corona, and they state "DVD quality in just half the size", whoopy doo, WMA is just a hacked version of VQF, their video technology is equally as dire, standards scare MS.
Lets face it, MPEG2 decoders are found in every DVD and DTV box in the world, MP3 in every portable player and MP2 in Digital Radio. MS can't compete with standards unless they've cornered the market, and coming up with a better production is out of the question.
Do you know if the processor used in the iPod supports floating point operations?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
DivX may be somewhat popular now as a MPEG-4 "based" codec, but I don't see it holding up against real, standard MPEG-4. If it isn't an open codec (as suggested by the need to license it), DivX will have no real advantage. At least MPEG-4 on it's own is a standard, with encoders and players being developed by several different parties, which should (in theory) be compatible with each other. I'm tired of hunting for codecs every time I DL a video in some crazy format.
You'll still have to buy a license for MPEG-4 if you try to make a profit from M4V content, but for non-profit uses it won't cost anything to distribute. Why settle for half-baked imitations?
"Leave the strategizing to those of us with planet-sized brains." -Tycho
No, It doesn't.
On the topic of making open codecs more popular, I'm wondering if people know of good sites that have sample files for open audio file formats and codecs. Thanks to this I know where various codecs host their sites but I really need sample files as I may not be able to use GPL'd code.
This is a main hurdle towards widespread use of Ogg Vorbis, support on a wide variety of non-computer platforms. There are CD-MP3 players made by most all manufacturers [read: DVD players that also play MP3 CDs] and portable CD-MP3/Nomad players also don't support Ogg. When it is supported by major manufacturers on hardware devices, Ogg will have a much more legitimate stand in the future of music.
That, and when major MP3 releasing groups [pirate groups] start offering their rips in Ogg format, the kids will begin using it and demanding it in their portable players.
--adam
I metamod as I see fit!
Q: Is the OpenDivX(TM) codec the same as the DivX(TM) codec?
A: Yes and no. Yes, they are both versions of DivX compression technology. The OpenDivX codec was launched as an open-source project on Project Mayo in January 2001. Today, the project continues as a collaborative, educational development effort, focusing more on improving visual quality than optimizing performance. The latest generation of the DivX codec (version 4.x) was released in July 2001. The new DivX codec is technically completely different from OpenDivX, and is built from a different codebase. It has been optimized for greater performance and visual quality and has more features than OpenDivX. It's important to note that the two codecs produce compatible formats, meaning content encoded with OpenDivX can be played back with DivX, and vice versa. The DivX codec will from now on be the version with the most new features and widest compatibility across platforms, so this is the version we recommend you use.
Q: Is DivX(TM) video technology a hack of Microsoft code?
A: Absolutely not. A lot of people seem to think we're not making ourselves clear here, so pay attention: the DivX(TM) codec is a patent-pending (as in, patents owned by DivXNetworks) technology created from scratch (as in blank screen, blinking cursor) by DARC (the DivX Advanced Research Center) and the team at DivXNetworks. We hope this puts that issue to rest.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
(Whether MPEG-4 audio/video contains any technology that should have been patentable is another question.)
Won`t gcc compile integer-only code on such a cpu, only with somewhat of a performance hit... I never had problems compiling for m68k cpu`s without inbuilt ftp`s, tho if i set the target processor to a 68040 with fpu, the performance did noticeably go up.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
unix.phatnoise.com
...the entire article posted on slashdot is false.
How quaint.
"And like that
I was hoping someone someone would point this out. I'm sick of people outing the DivX codec because they think it is a hack of a legitimate one. The DivX 4 one isn't, and it's superior to the hacked one in countless ways.
>it is completely different, it is incompatible,
Well, sort of. If you install the DivX 4 codec, you can *play* DivX 3.x media.
The DivX ;-) people getting involved with Fahnhofer can only mean patent cross-licensing and competitive positioning. Didn't you people read the prior article about MPEG4 licensing? It's not a good situation.
College kid gets into WMV Scene, starts hacking Releases 'DivX ;-)' which is two seperate version of WMV the older one 'Slow motion' and the newer one 'fast motion' and removes some other things M$ put in WMV to make it not good for High res movies.
;-) is really different from the one who started project Mayo. I don't see how they could be the same person though, Microsoft has more Sharks than Seaworld.
College kid gets a lot of press, and gets sued out of existance. Domain host sells domain to a 'smarter' college kid who starts ProjectMayo and levereges all the hype to start 'OpenDivX.' Since he's not a coder, he goes out and takes an open source MPEG-4 implementation and credits it's author as per the licence agreement but violates the licence agreement in that he releases it under the "OpenDivx License" which allows him to Close Source it once people on the internet have made changes to improve it.
In the meantime he's found venture capital and even gotten good press, now he can hire programmers. He uses the "OpenDivx" license to make "DivX" a closed source Patent Pending Mpeg-4 implementation. To avoid legal problems he claims this was written from scratch -- but noone can prove that because it's closed source. This play was invented by Microsoft when they bought QDOS and used it to 'write from scratch' DOS 1.0. So the kid isn't stupid--at least he's learned from the best.
Kid needs more funding finds a friend in the creators of the mp3 codec.
The only thing I'm not 100% sure about is that the kid who got sued for DivX
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
Somebody please mod the parent up. This is useful information.
Bother Sorenson if you want it open-sourced.
Sorenson's video codec is not Sorenson's to give it away as a result of the exclusive license to Apple.
Bother Sorenson and Apple legal representatives in a conference call if you want it open-sourced.
Will I retire or break 10K?
While integrating the Phatbox with a Kenwood display is a sweet user interface improvement, the Phatbox is still severely lacking in the area of song navigation. If you have 2,000 songs on the player, how do you find a particular song that you want to listen to? Unless you have an incredibly well organized playlist setup, it is almost impossible.
What would be fantastic is an Empeg/riocar style remote control, where you can spell out the name of the song you want to hear (the same way you might spell something out on a telephone keypad). Also, you don't have to triple-click to get exact letters like you do on a cell phone, because the software automatically narrows down all possbile song names on the fly. Usually you only have to hit the first three or four letter to get your song. It's very sweet, especially if you're like me and often get the urge to listen to completly random songs when you're driving.
-Adam
I was under the impression that to change the license, say, from an open to closed, that they would have to have permission of all contributors up to that point or throw their work out... if this is so, I don't see how they all got screwed... they might have gone along with it.
"The only source of knowledge is experience" -A. Einstein
Or in the name of proctecting someone's valuable content from villainous pirates (or any filth who actually believes in fair use) some company (like Microsoft) sells out big time, and even creates a fee structure for everyone, like some damn tariff. (See: Windows Media Player)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Wow, anyone with a brain could have seen that the article about Fraunhoffer licensing an Open Source DivX implementation was false.
If it was open source, they wouldn't need to license it...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
It was once open source, but Project Mayo killed it and turned it into closed source.
So DivX4 is not OpenDivX.
So MP3 is superior to Vorbis just because more people use it?
NO! No matter how widely MP3 is supported, Vorbis is clearly technologically superior.
If MP3 doesn't compress better than Vorbis, then I don't call it superior.
If MP3 isn't as flexible as Vorbis, I don't call it superior.
Sight, when will we learn?
OpenDivX is open source (though strictly speaking, even OpenDivX isn't open source, because of the OpenDivX license which isn't approved by the OSI).
However, DivX 4 is NOT OpenDivX!
Project Mayo started the OpenDivX project.
But when it progressed nicely and produced nice video quality, they killed the project and used that code to create DivX 4 (they claim that DivX 4 is a rewrite, but that's false).
They just deceived all those developers yet nobody seem to care.
Please, somebody, tell timothy and the Slashdot community about this, because I'm just a little voice in hundreds of comments.
"soso" quality at 1:10 compression and thats it.
Apple has always been a supporter of MPEG4 and will switch to it once they have a decent codec.
The Dixv codec was licensed by Fraunhofer IGD (here in Darmstadt, next building) which has little to do with the Fraunhofer IIS (in Erlangen) the co-inventors of MP3. So, yes it has been licensed but nothing to "drool" about :-)
(appended to the end of comments I post, 120 chars)
Software floating point emulation would add WAY to much overhead.
Even written in 100 % fixed point math with some funky ARM assembler optimisations, the mp3 decoder 'MAD' requires something like 50 MHz of cpu bandwidth on an ARM7. (As Ogg is more complex than mp3, it would require even more processing power).
If you add on an order of magnitude or more performance drop for SW Floating Point emulation, it just isn't going to run on any ARM platform currently available.
I'm not sure, but even if it does, FPU emulation sucks HARD. Very, very slow. And, as the parent post mentioned, the vorbis codec uses a shitload of FP operations. It may be possible to compile it to work on a non-fpu ARM chip, but I wouldn't expect it to be able to decode in real time.
Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
As I sit here in my house coat, cold in the winter:
A 100+1 disc player. More than 100 I don't care. It must be software upgradable [we have come to that point right?]. It plays any codec which is ported, and you slip in a burned or payed-for-subscription CD. It's upgraded to the latest codecs.
I can play 100 MP3, OGG, playlists etc. Let me simply browse by playlist [maybe I make playlists for my CD's which I convert to OGG] or by song. Let me randomly play by folder, disc, and complete CD catalog.
I'm hooked
Isn't this what everyone wants? Let us burn CD's to 'upgrade' or 'update' the machine, er component. If you can't, $5 per year for 'updates'. Did I mention... it must be able to output to at least RCA cables so that I can use it with my stereo.
Is it that hard? They've got 100, 200 and 500 disc players. Just give us this... please! It's a hardware hack. Please?
Get your Unix fortune now!
Hi,
;-)
the Fraunhofer Institute that licensed the
DIVX Coces (IGD) is not the same Institute
that developed mp3 (IIS).
All Fraunhofer Institutes are under one
umbrella, but they are _very_ independent, some
like each other, some not.
And yes, i know a lot about them, 'cause
i worked at Fraunhofer IIS
Bye,
Jürgen
Well, that's pretty stupid. All the world's not an x86. Makes me glad my music's encoded with LAME, not Ogg.
It's running faster than DivX 3.11 on all CPU's, and only lags DivX 4.x on a P4, though not for long. It also produces smaller bitstreams than either of them.
Anyone interested in MPEG4 video coding should check it out.
Okay. I know this will be slashdotted, but please read this guide: http://www.doom9.org/codecs.htm
;-) (=v4.0)is just compatible with this old format.
THIS IS TRUE
1. DivX
2. DivX is NOT open source.
3. OpenDivX is open source, but it sucks nowadays.
4. The http://www.xvid.org is the best open-source video. And actually it's no need to licence Divx.com since xvid is free.
DivX is about $500 standard licensing for the encoder...
OpenDivX is free for non-commercial use, but I cannot find OpenDivX's license anywhere (there is a link referred to that is broken...)
As for me, I am using the mpg4c32.dll (MS MPEG4 encoder) - until all this licensing crap falls out -- 'cause it comes with windoze 2000 and it works with Avifile under Linux...
Plus if the MPEG4 group has its way, we will be forced ito some stupid pay-for-play even if we master our own source.
I'm in the market for a new player at the moment, I have a few tens of gigs of MP3 files[1] that I'd happily convert to Vorbis *if* there was a decent[1] handheld Vorbis player.
[1] Ripped from my own CD collection.
[2] Good sound quality, high capacity[3], reliable and easy to use.
[3] >>64Mb.
Deleted
The difference between a streaming video format and a non-streaming one is just in the semantics. MPlayer can play partialy downloaded DivX files while they are still being downloaded, and it continues to play frames as they are recieved. So you could say that MPlayer can "stream" DivX just fine.
The article essentially says "big business boost open source" and the corrections say "big business pisses on open source's grave before dancing a jig".
Sure, OpenDivX is open, but that's dead. Seems that they opened DivX for a while, milked open source for all they felt they could, and then losed and is taking it further commercially, trying to get a patent and probably getting together with Fraunhoffer because they lack the resources to take it further.
It would be one thing if it was a good, closed from the beginning project. However, they essentially exploited open source developers whose work may soon be packaged for sale with no compensation whatsoever...
Of course, XVid (http://www.videocoding.de/) has branched the OpenDivx code since its death, but if the "creators" of OpenDivx get the patent, XVid could be shut out through this. In a sane world they couldn't possibly get a patent on this (since they really didn't build the codec themselves), but in this world...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
How many of us are going to keep our porn collection in .DIX files?
who gives a shit? Apple probably waved a fucking huge wad of cash in sorenson's face. Sorenson is a business in case you haven't noticed yet. apple's going to be using mpeg-4 any time soon anyway.
- Divx;-) (versions 3.xx) are a hacked Microsoft mpeg4 codec. Before Divx 4.xx it was the standard codec for DVD-based online copyright-infringement.
- OpenDivx (aka ProjectMayo) was an open-source project to make a video codec to replace divx3. This was never really able to compete with divx3 in its capabilities.
- Divx 4.xx came from OpenDivx code but is no longer open source. It is written by DivxNetworks and it is this that Fraunhofer is licensing. Despite not being open source it is now widely used; most say it is a better codec than divx 3.11 though it lacks one very slick tool - nandub - which some still claim is the method to use for the best encodes between the two codecs. Also, they don't use the smiley in the name as far as I know.
- XviD deserves a plug here. It's a new open-source mpeg4-compliant (though possibly not completely mpeg4-legal) codec based on opendivx which (developers promise) will be GPL'd as soon as the last few hundred lines of GPL-incompatible code are replaced. Despite being very new and "alpha," it's already competing with divx 4 in terms of quality of encodes. Source can be obtained at the above site; binaries (VfW) are here and elsewhere.
Anyway, so yeah, the submission was wrong on a few points, but we've got everything straight now, don't we?
Pros: Good quality/compression
Cons: Not a standard
Well, as someone else posted, not a de facto standard, anyway.
What I've been wondering is if the Ogg file format might get more use if someone implemented a readily available multiplexor/demultiplexor to allow video into it. I understand the Ogg Tarkin project is supposed to be the Free video codec for Ogg, but Tarkin is still some way off - at the moment, they're discussing whether or not to use Quicktime as the development framework for Tarkin, so even an alpha version of an Ogg Tarkin/Vorbis video format seems quite some time away yet. When I mentioned this question in a previous thread, someone mentioned a Window-only "DirectShow" project of some sort for this. Recently, mention of an Ogg-format video with Vorbis sound (and Divx;-) video, presumably) popped up on the MPlayer mailing list...
I just wonder if Ogg will get more acceptance if/when it starts being used for both audio AND video (sort of like .asf?)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
as impressed as i am by what ive read & heard of ogg vorbis (that'll be very)... one thing prevents me from getting over excited
see i have all my music in mp3... yet the majority of it is either downloaded or ripped form friends collections - hey im a student without a job, live with it =P
and of course that means i'm not going to gain anything except a few megs of storage space when i decide the time is right to convert my collection. as clever as the ogg compression is... it cant magically generate quality. which is a shame.
also there lies the problem of what to do with my current mp3 player... hopefully a software update will appear once ogg goes final though
so... until i get broadband (and a job) and re-download all my music i dont see life changing much. perhaps the streaming will be cool though. or rather would be on the aforementioned broadband.
anyway this is all just random thoughts... not that im complaining about ogg or anything. so yeah... stuff.
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www.markwheeler.net
I just want to address the (unfortunately) widespread wisdom that contributors were "screwed" when DivX was released until a closed source license. I work for DXN, and no one has brought up the explanation that we have published from the beginning: DivX is built from a different codebase than OpenDivX. Ergo, the license that governs OpenDivX is not the same as the one that governs DivX.
Now, that's not to say that there's no overlap between the two codebases, but the overlap that exists is code that was written _by_us_. And since we are the authors and copyright holders, we can license that code however we want, even if it has been previously released under an open license.
There were a handful of instances where code contributed by third parties was included in the DivX source code, but in each of these cases, we contacted the contributors directly, got permission to use their code, and compensated them for their work.
We've offered numerous times in public forums to deal directly with any contributors who feel they were "screwed" when we released DivX under a closed license. I'll make that offer again: anyone who contributed code and feels that their code was included in the DivX source is free to contact us to resolve the issue. So far, we haven't had any takers. A lot of people are complaining, but to our knowledge _everyone_ that wrote code that was included in the DivX source code has been individually contacted and compensated.
Cheers.
When a CD containing .avi DivX uhm.. backups get slightly scratched, it seems to fsck up the entire movie. Is there anything else I can use that is less delicate?
Hello all, .wav, I would have the original loss (from the first compresion .wav->.mp3). Now, if I take the decompressed file, and compress it again (with Ogg/MP3/WMA/etc.), I will gain a new generation of loss. This means I'm compounding the losses, making the fidelity of the file even less than if I had left it as an MP3.
I'm not sure another format will catch on once the token format is released. Here's (in my rationale) why.
I take, as an example, Microsoft's new audio/video formats. They boast exceptional quality at a tiny bitrate, all in a small filesize. Sounds GREAT, right? Wrong. MP3 is already in widespread use in nearly every device thinkable (handhelds, PCs, etc.). This means people have already spent the time and storage required to convert CD-Audio into MP3s. I doubt they will ever do it again, which basically locks MP3s in for the long haul. But there's more to it than just time.
Video and audio CODECs rely on tricks to make files smaller. For instance, the human ear can not distinguish two seperate sounds being played at exactly the same instant. Nor can the human hear above and/or below certain frequencies. In addition to these rules, the ear has trouble picking up on other additional frequencies. Using this information, you can "safely" remove these sounds from an audio file, thus reducing its size (this is the basis for MP3, etc.) This is called lossy compression...this is what we use. Now, when I regenerate the sounds (playback) contained in the audio file, I will get noises that _sound_ like the original, but are nowhere near it. Again...this is done by tricking the ear. If I were to decode an MP3 into a
The same rules apply for video data. If I recompress it, I will compound the losses in the formats. This _forces_ me to compress a file in the new format from the original source (which goes back to my previous point). Additionally, this means I need to still own the original source, or an exact copy. I seriously doubt many people have kept a HUGE collection of CDs, or have made copies before getting rid of them.
Anyway, that's just my thought...I could be wrong.