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)."
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
Tarkin is nowhere near complete and is not very usable yet.
:)
I have no clue where Tarkin is at but this was posted to Gnome's desktop-devel list today:
Subject: Cool news of the Day
From: Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller
Hi dudes,
I just wanted to let you all know that as of yesterday GStreamer has
support for encoding and decoding of Ogg Tarkin video. So now you can
convert all your DivX movies to Ogg Tarkin with the help of GStreamer.
I also think that makes the GStreamer mediaplayer the first mediaplayer
to support Ogg Tarkin
Christian
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
- They both have stupid names.
Why? I use the most recent LAME to encode CDs at 160 kbps VBR (audiocassettes are sampled and then encoded at 128 kbps VBR) and can't tell the difference when I play the resulting MP3s in either of the hardware MP3 players I have. If you're using a crummy MP3 encoder (like Xing) that needs a high bitrate to get decent sound quality, maybe you should replace your MP3 encoder.
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
Do you know if the processor used in the iPod supports floating point operations?
I have a website. It's about Macs.
No, It doesn't.
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.)
As a lead GStreamer developer, and someone very interested in Tarkin, I must point out that what was added was a plugin to "w3d", a candidate technology for Tarkin. There is no Tarkin codec, yet, and won't be for some time, as there is still heavy research into what the best type of codec is for this task. w3d is just one of many attempts to make something workable, albeit the most successful so far. Unfortunately, my hint that the plugin should be called "w3d" was ignored ;-(
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
...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
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.
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.
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)
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!
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.
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.
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
Hmmm. Is there a .dll/.avx/whatever on Windows that is the Sorenson codec?
I've been wondering if MPlayer (which recently added support for the QuickTime file format) might eventually be able to run Sorenson video through this file the way it now can through some of the other Windows codecs. (Only on ix86 linux, though...)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend