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VP3.com: Future VP3 Releases To Be LGPL

Posted by timothy on from the like-a-carrot-on-a-stick dept.

sudog writes: "According to this vorbis-dev posting and The VP3 Homepage VP3 (QT5-type movie compression scheme) is now under the LGPL! What's not clear is whether they intend to offer it guaranteed royalty and patent free to the community. They're actively looking for help, too. Does this mean that we no longer need the OGG-Tarkin to save us from our movie-less, video-app-less emulating?" Of course, they don't say starting when, exactly.

112 comments

  1. QT is a metaformat.. by snillfisk · · Score: 5, Interesting

    After all, QT is a metaformat .. which isnt actually doing any compression or anything, but rather specifying which codecs to use. the biggest problem with getting an open source version that handles all QT-files nicely, is the patents and licensing on central codecs (especially the Sorenson Video codec).. more info can be found at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/specifications.html .

    --
    mats
    One man's ceiling is another man's floor.
    1. Re:QT is a metaformat.. by 56ker · · Score: 1

      Won't it be a little pointless to release it under the LGPL if the codecs are still closed source? Mind you - it's a move in the right direction.

      --


      Video Game cheats, hints a
  2. Patent protection - from Vorbis mailing list by SpinyNorman · · Score: 4, Informative

    ___ Dan Miller
    (++,) CTO and founder, On2 Technologies

    On Wed, 27 Mar 2002 volsung@asu.edu wrote:

    > On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Daniel B. Miller wrote:
    >
    > > Hi fellow Ogg-oids --
    > >
    > > I wanted to let everyone know that VP3, our open-source video codec that
    > > is commonly used with QT5, is being re-released under the LGPL. We are
    >
    > Really!?! All I can say is wow. What about the patent issues? Are you
    > granting royalty-free license to the required patents along with the license
    > to the code?

    That's a requirement of the LGPL, so, yes.

    1. Re:Patent protection - from Vorbis mailing list by AVee · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hey, stop it, that was my post. ;-)
      Well I'll post the link then...

    2. Re:Patent protection - from Vorbis mailing list by Rentar · · Score: 3, Informative

      Wow! I defintely think this is basically a good thing, but I got two objections (or rather questions, or ideas that got something to do with it, or ... whatever):

      • How do they stay in buisness? Re-licensing it for money? Support? If so: Good luck, you'll need it!
      • I hope this won't prevent the tarkin-folks from trying to come up with their own new-and-improved codec.
    3. Re:Patent protection - from Vorbis mailing list by AVee · · Score: 3, Informative

      How do they stay in buisness? Re-licensing it for money?
      Read this: The power of this codec has been validated by the fact that it has been licensed by both RealNetworks and Apple for their internet video players.

      They do license it right now. They might get in to trouble with this though, since they can't forbid anybody to use the LGPL'ed version or make them pay for it once it is released to the public. So they might get a lot of support from the OSS community, wich will improve their software, but likely not their income...

    4. Re:Patent protection - from Vorbis mailing list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      VP3 isn't their newest codec

      so you get
      1. the lgpl'd version or
      2. the closed sourced, expensive licensed but more powerful new version

  3. Speaking of quicktime... by xtermz · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...The latest issue of Linux Journal (remember that mag? ) has a good article on the various quicktime players available for Linux, and how to install/use them ...

    Check them here : Linux Journal

    --


    I lost my concept of community when my community lost all concept of me.
    1. Re:Speaking of quicktime... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How the hell is this offtopic ? Damn moderators are smoking crack again...

    2. Re:Speaking of quicktime... by Junta · · Score: 2

      Of course, the problem here is that the native players don't support Sorenson, and since that by and large is the format of quicktime on the interne,t it is a moot point. I'll stick with wine..

      --
      XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  4. I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by raahul_da_man · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another video codec sounds good, but after the nasty DivX ;) experience, I don't trust people who make their codecs open source, and then return to being proprietary.

    LGPL is a bastard license at best. GPL or nothing is the only way to go.

    1. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by LL · · Score: 1

      I think people are (slowly) coming to realise the different strengths of different licenses. GPL are the electronic equivalent of public byways ... indefinite access and thus are suited towards long-term infrastucture type projects (public parklands) where you need the flexibility to adapt to different needs (e.g. GCC tool-chain). On the other hand BSD can be useful for consortium-style reference implementations (think public footpath) where you want broad consensus and a test case that can be used by the rest of the world for interoperability but you can optimise internally. I'm sure the big guys like Apple, Sun, IBM, MS, are plugging the digital equivalent of drive-ways to toll-roads.

      Let's not get carried away by dogmatic insistance on a particular license ... you might recall the lines "he who writes the code gets to choose the license". The GPL is good for keeping specific coding domains and public-interest areas open to the public, but it doesn't mean that there shouldn't be fences to deliminate private entities.

      LL

    2. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by JabberWokky · · Score: 4, Insightful
      DivX ;) has had a very bumpy and very forked road - primarily because it wasn't a file format so much as a hacked DLL that was a stolen Microsoft test codec, with the audio replaced with (originally) MP3. Since there was no formal definition of the file format, it's fragmented pretty heavily with different encoders producing output that works on some of the variants, and other encoders working on different variants. At least two efforts have been made to rewrite the whole thing from scratch, and at least two alternate sound codecs exist (thus the common cry of "there's no sound in that file!"). There are questions of patents being filed even now (since it was a "format" swiped from a corporation), and, all in all, the situation has been very tangled for a single, real standard to emerge.

      LGPL grants the same public use that the GPL does, except you can also combine it with commercial software (you have to release source only for the modifications done to that specific part of the code). It's not a "bastard license", but rather a compromise to allow commercial software to link to fundimental system libraries and run on a Free system. YMMV on what you think of that, but for things like file formats and reference code to file formats, IMO, the LGPL is the best license around - it keeps the whole thing open, including any changes that anybody makes to it, so the standard is open for the whole world no matter who uses it in any application.

      I'm personally of the opinion that an LGPL library to read a few types of XML documents (a word processor format, a spreadsheet format, a bitmap with annotations, a vector art format and a vector engineering format) should be made, and maintained by all major office suites, probably starting off with the various open source projects. Even if a company didn't use the exact code, it serves as reference code for compatability tests and extensions.

      --
      Evan

      --
      "$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
    3. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by sab39 · · Score: 2

      Do you see the contradiction in saying you never trust anyone except Ogg, and then insisting on GPL only? Hint: Ogg was originally LGPL, and is now X11 - even *less* GPL (and in Ogg's case, RMS agreed this was a good move, because of the network effect needed to get good Ogg adoption).

      I was never really involved in the DivX;) scene, but by my understanding the DivX license was never *really* open source. If it had been, they *couldn't* "take it proprietary", just take *future versions* proprietary (in which case a fork would take place and other interested coders could keep the open source version going). Since this didn't happen, I'm assuming that the license wasn't really open source.

      It should be noted that VP3 has been under an "allegedly" open source license for ages, but it was one of these SCSL- or BitKeeper-style things that requires you only use the code for developing codecs compatible with the VP3 spec. This made it not truly open source, and left me at least very unenthusiastic about it (at that point they *could* have made it proprietary, effectively, through messing with the "official" specs often enough to make following them impossible). Now it's under a truly free license (or at least once such a release is made) there's no reason to be dubious anymore.

      Stuart.

    4. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by raahul_da_man · · Score: 1

      The Ogg people have got a good track record. I trust them not to screw around with licenses and produce proprietary versions.

      For those who lack the this excellent record of past behaviour, where is the contradiction? I think VP5 will absorb some bug fixes and then suddenly go proprietary exactly like Divx ;) did. Stick with Ogg. It's the safer alternative.

    5. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by benwaggoner · · Score: 1

      Actually, the requirement in the old VP3 license was that you needed to maintain the ability to decode standard VP3 encoded files. It was perfectly kosher to add support for a new, enhanced/incompatible version, as long as the codec could still decode standard files.

      Not really a big deal.

      --

      My video compression blog
    6. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Informative

      VP5 is a very different beast than VP3 - there was a whole VP4 version between there. I doubt On2 is getting much in the way of benefit to VP5 from VP3 being open source. It's probably mainly a brand recognition thing to keep their name in the codec community while they prepare VP5 for launch.

      --

      My video compression blog
    7. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by Dwonis · · Score: 1, Offtopic
      Hint: Ogg was originally LGPL, and is now X11 - even *less* GPL (and in Ogg's case, RMS agreed this was a good move, because of the network effect needed to get good Ogg adoption).

      This is what annoys me about the RMS-is-an-irrational-zealot trolls. RMS has proved time and time again to be a reasonable person, but people keep on trolling.

    8. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by Dwonis · · Score: 2

      Sigh. The open-source community can always fork VP3 and compete with VP5 if they do that. That's the nature of the *GPL.

    9. Re:I'd never trust anyone except Ogg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Stick with Ogg. It's the safer alternative."

      Except there is no such thing as Ogg video. There's a mailing list, but thats a long way away from from a competitive, royalty-free codec.

      But since it's obvious you aren't actually working with video, by all means you should stick with your invisible Ogg codec.

  5. Future? by O2n · · Score: 5, Funny

    Future versions of VP3 will be released under the LGPL [...] Stay tuned!

    In other news, future versions of Windows will be released under the LGPL; stay tuned and don't forget to tell your children to tell their children to tell...

    :)

    1. Re:Future? by FreeMath · · Score: 2

      According to the VP3 homepage the source is already available.

      --
      This sig intentionally left blank.
    2. Re:Future? by volsung · · Score: 2

      The source has been available for a long time, but the source license has been non-free (and had some restrictions I personally considered unacceptable). The news here is that the source is now LGPL as opposed to the weird license that made it unusable before.

  6. Looks like a good thing to me. by noser · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I have never heard of this codec, but it seems to me that this is more or less what the LGPL is intended for. Take a quick look at the LGPL and note this section:

    For example, on rare occasions, there may be a special need to encourage the widest possible use of a certain library, so that it becomes a de-facto standard. To achieve this, non-free programs must be allowed to use the library. A more frequent case is that a free library does the same job as widely used non-free libraries. In this case, there is little to gain by limiting the free library to free software only, so we use the Lesser General Public License.

    (Emphasis mine)

    Seems to me that the people at VP3 would like as many people as possible to start working with their codec, allowing it to gain ascendancy over other codecs so that someday they will be able to make money selling their own "enhanced" version. Not a bad deal for GNU, because we get something badly needed. I hope that we start to hear more about this codec being used in some interesting projects in the future now that it has become more available.

  7. What's with XviD? by nutshell42 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    http://www.xvid.org

    XviD is based on the old OpenDivX-Codec but afaik doesn't use any of its code any longer and is completely GPled.

    the codec improves at an amazing speed and already beats the shit out of VP3:
    http://www.doom9.org/codecs.htm

    --
    Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
    1. Re:What's with XviD? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's covered by patents.

    2. Re:What's with XviD? by rsborg · · Score: 3, Insightful
      XviD falls prey to the problems inherent with MPEG4, as previously discussed here. Fix that, and I'm all up for it. (personally, I don't see any way around the issues)

      In the interim, there's Ogg Tarkin, but it looks like they're too busy with Vorbis right now.

      --
      Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
  8. XVID, a GPL video codec by BoBInO · · Score: 4, Informative

    For those bitter about Divx, have a look at XVID (www.xvid.org). This a GPL video codec based on the source of OpenDivx.
    This codec give me excellent results compared to Divx 3.11Alpha and Divx5...

    With XVID video and OGG sound all in a OGM file (OGg Media) i get fully legal DVD-Rip !!! :)

    1. Re:XVID, a GPL video codec by Skuto · · Score: 3, Informative

      >With XVID video and OGG sound all in a OGM file
      >(OGg Media) i get fully legal DVD-Rip !!! :)

      That's assuming XviD doesn't rely on any external MPEG4 patents, and as far as I know, it does.

      It's in a similar situation as LAME. The code is GPL, but not legal to use in most countries due to patents. This is why the binaries are usually found on a Russian or Brazialian server.

      --
      GCP

    2. Re:XVID, a GPL video codec by BoBInO · · Score: 1

      You're right, but as long as they continue to publish their source code as "for educational purpose only" (mostly like LAME did as you said), they shouldn't have any problems...

      But starting a video codec without implementing any tech developped by the MPEG consortium is a hell of a job!!! And a minefield too...

      Until OGG Tarkin comes out (if it does), i think that XVID is the best solution for now: in a legal and in a video quality point of view...

    3. Re:XVID, a GPL video codec by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've always wondered what was the point in this hype over XviD, the ffmpeg project has had divx 'support' for quite some while, in addition to a few other codecs.

      ffmpeg

  9. Excellent move by AirLace · · Score: 4, Interesting
    VP3 is a really powerful codec. It's like a next-generation DivX -- similarly to DivX the only thing holding back from widespread use were its worrying licensing terms. Now that it's free I'm looking forward to seeing this adopted fully by the community.

    This means that streaming video embedded in webpages for the Linux / Free Software clan is now a reality, but perhaps more importantly, VP3 makes it possible to eliminate adware/spyware like RealVideo and the equally obnoxious and platform-specific Windows Media. Cheers for all the great work, On2 Technologies! This is, in my opinion, one of the most important things to happen on the open source scene for quite some time.

  10. This doesn't obsolete Tarkin BTW :) by Skuto · · Score: 3, Insightful


    Tarkin is currently working on bringing new technologies such as wavelets and 3-d transforms into video coding. It's not finished yet, but it offers more possibilities for really new technology and further development.

    While this is great news, it by no means means that Ogg Tarkin suddenly is obsoleted :) VP3 is available now though, and Tarkin isn't.

    --
    GCP

    1. Re:This doesn't obsolete Tarkin BTW :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually really good methods of 3D wavelet coding are being patented right and left at the moment. Its an area of intensifying research, I doubt Tarkin will be able to come up with any competetive methods using 3D transforms which someone else did not come up before them and patented.

      Whats left is uncompetetive methods, which noone is really waiting for.

  11. A couple of points clarified by AirLace · · Score: 4, Informative
    • But the code is still patented? No! A post from Dan Miller, CEO of On2 Technologies on vorbis-dev:

      > Really!?! All I can say is wow. What about the patent issues? Are you
      > granting royalty-free license to the required patents along with the license
      > to the code?
      That's a requirement of the LGPL, so, yes
    • But what about VP4? It's a better codec, and it's proprietary. VP3 is old news. This is in fact the business model taken by some of the leading self-sustaining free software projects like GhostScript, which releases a non-commercial-with-source version and a GPL'd version of GhostScript that's about a year old. Thus, the GPL'd version comes with Linux distributions, non-commercial entities can make use of the latest GhostScript, the company makes money selling licenses to perpetuate the development of the Free Software version, and everyone's happy.
    1. Re:A couple of points clarified by AVee · · Score: 1

      But what about VP4? It's a better codec, and it's proprietary. VP3 is old news.

      Worse, even VP4 is almost old news, the first (alpha) version of VP5 is allready there. My bet is we will get vp4 under LGPL by the time vp6 arrives...

  12. ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    i took a look at how they do things and it doesnt look good.

    3d wavelets are useless without motion compensation, they have no motion compensation yet.
    even with motion compensation they are gonna have a hard time stitching it together so no artifacts are left over.

    tarkin is around since 2000, all they have is some obscure 3d wavelet transform and a huffman backend that leads to good quality at 800kbyte/sec but.. no.. something striped moves by one pixel and everything breaks. yes, its a research codec but comeon.. they have been talking on the mailing list of adapting several other codecs (like vp3) and go on and on over different motion compensation aproaches like meshes and stuff without writing any test code.
    so.. as long as no one comes by and drop them a pretty done codec tarkin wont get done.
    well ok.. its better then indeo 5 in some cases though.
    now that vp3 is lgpld theyll probably just write an ogg header and its done.

    1. Re:ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by jonathan_ingram · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tarkin is not dead.

      Tarkin is in the same state that Vorbis was 3 years ago. No-one sensible thinks that it should be competing with MPEG-4/Sorensen/VP* at the moment. No-one connected with the project (only a couple of people, working in their spare time) has been promoting this project as competitive -- only some losers who hype every piece of open source software, no matter how far along in development the software it.

      Come back in 2/3 years, and Tarkin will be looking much better.

      --
      -- Help Digitise the Public Domain at DP.
    2. Re:ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by mrscorpio · · Score: 1

      Question is, will it matter by then? I guess only time will tell.

      Chris

    3. Re:ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by Skuto · · Score: 2, Interesting

      >Question is, will it matter by then? I guess only
      >time will tell.

      Of course. People will still be encoding video in 3 years. Tarkin technology is angled more towards future development than most formats nowadays which are all more or less based on the level of technology MPEG4 is based on. That doesn't mean it's the last word.

      For example, 3 years ago we had MP3. That didn't cause Vorbis 'not to matter'. It is better technology. It is free.

      --
      GCP

    4. Re:ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by benwaggoner · · Score: 1

      Of course, in 2-3 years Tarkin will be competing against formats like H.26L, which is designed to be a use-fee-free international standard.

      The target for H.26L is transparent compression of film content (read DVD) at 800 Kbps.

      And of course, H.26L has been in development for several years, and has working code. It's much further along. Tarkin isn't even close to the point where we can start to guess what a real-world version's performance would even look like.

      --

      My video compression blog
    5. Re:ogg tarkin is somewhat dead. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Use fee free is still not free.

  13. hopes up by llamalicious · · Score: 3, Funny

    and here I thought we were talking about virtual pool 3.
    don't do that to me so early in the morning, I had sudden visions of making a FFA 8-ball tournament. or 9-ball CTF.

    ugh. back to my coffee.

  14. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Failing website? Kuro5hin's star continues to rise, while Slashdot continues to stagnate. K5 gives its users complete control over the submissions queue, whereas Slashdot sits on an important VP3 story for days and posts stuff about foam-rubber computer cases instead (LOL!) The Slashdot crew isn't made up of bad people, but they're yesterday's news. Kuro5hin.org is where it's at.

  15. [OT] They dont really have to license the patents by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The funny thing about GPL/LGPL is that license holders are not bound by it because they dont need a license to distribute, they can release patent encumbered code under the GPL/LGPL all they want. It will be utterly useless because the GPL/LGPL will give you no rights to the code in the presence of patents.

    Its a very sleazy thing to do ... but its being done, check out Lizardtech's "GPL" code. Stallman should really get some trademark protection for GPL/LGPL so he can prevent stuff like that.

  16. BSD is better how? (Ogg uses BSD) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    BSD is arguably a license granting more freedom, but it does nothing to guarantuee results staying open source to a greater extent than LGPL. Actually its the reverse.

    1. Re:BSD is better how? (Ogg uses BSD) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BSD is arguably a license granting more freedom, but it does nothing to guarantuee results staying open source to a greater extent than LGPL. Actually its the reverse.

      BSD forces the code to be closed? I guess that's why Apache and XFree are proprietary now.

    2. Re:BSD is better how? (Ogg uses BSD) by sab39 · · Score: 2

      I'm citing RMS's stated opinion on this, but it happens to be one I agree with (actually I don't usually really care about what license anything's under so long as it's truly Free/OpenSource according to the respective definitions).

      In the case of Ogg, this is a file format we are talking about. The value of a file format isn't proportional to the quality of the format, but to the amount of content available in it. The amount of content available will be determined by how many people use it.

      Freedom to view content in a file format that nobody uses is not much use, so in this kind of situation insisting on preserving freedom to the detriment of wide usage doesn't gain anything. Therefore, in this situation it's better to take the hit of getting our (that is, the free software community's) code used in evil proprietary software than to insist on complete freedom and have many corps not use the format.

      RMS is dogmatic about many things, but he is willing to be pragmatic in certain cases. Generally his rule seems to be that he'll make pragmatic decisions if they (1) don't compromize his ethics, and (2) result in a *net gain* of freedom for software users.

      Stuart.

    3. Re:BSD is better how? (Ogg uses BSD) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The question was asked in the context of the assertion that keeping the source open was important though, and in that respect BSD is no better.

    4. Re:BSD is better how? (Ogg uses BSD) by macshit · · Score: 1

      So what you're saying is that RMS is pragmatic about being dogmatic. :-)

      --
      We live, as we dream -- alone....
  17. XviD is patent encumbered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In a huge way, if On2 are true to their words VP3 wont be.

  18. My take (C) Eugenia :) by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >> How do they stay in buisness? Re-licensing it for money? Support? If so: Good luck, you'll need it!

    Hi, I don't wanna be nitpicky here -- and you seem to be honest, not a troll... Anyway, They stay in business doing exactly that, moving to (L)GPL. A better question might be "How they turn a profit?" Well, maybe from licencing, as already answered. My guess is, though: this doesn't make any difference -- when you set to compete with MS, they "cut your air supply", so you won't have any profit, really.

    Maybe this is the beautiful thing about Linux, after all... they cut our air supply and, to their horror, they realize we have gills... ;)

    >> I hope this won't prevent the tarkin-folks from trying to come up with their own new-and-improved codec.

    My, you don't need to fear this. Not at all. And this won't prevent the many, many, many others who will create codecs after tarkin... This is the bless (and curse) of GPL software.

  19. actually it did happen by paule9984673 · · Score: 2, Informative
    Actually it did happen. Divx networks forked the opendivx code they developed with lots of help from the community, into their proprietary divx4 code.

    But some people picked up the opendivx code and kept developping it.

    I'd say xvid is about up to par with divx5 now. (Save b-frame support, which is still divx5 only.)

    1. Re:actually it did happen by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and it still is mpeg4 with all its patents (bondage) and licenses (strings) attaches

      maybe it's just me but I'm not so happy with b&s ;)

  20. Re:[OT] They dont really have to license the paten by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I should have said it gives you no right in the presence of patents without completely unrestricted royaltee-free licensing (thats the problem with Lizardtech's code, its license only covers use in the application they released ... thats not a valid license as far as the GPL/LGPL is concerned).

  21. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Kuro5hins star continues to shine? What, after VA dropped them and they have no ad revenue? How are they going to pay for those servers & bandwidth? I don't know any ISPs or colos that accept bubblegum wrappers and buttons in payment...

  22. VP3 is overrated. by inquis · · Score: 4, Informative

    Doom9's site is the premiere site on the web for video encoding. Doom9 actively tries to get his hands on the newest encoding tools, and periodically he tests them to see which codecs give the best results.

    It used to be that along with the lastest versions of DivX, he tested WMV and VP3; he doesn't anymore: WMV and VP3 consistently lost and lost badly to div3 sbc, div4, and xvid. You can't say that VP3 is "the next DivX" when it's can't outperform the ancient div3, much less div4 or the newly released div5 / xvid.

    [shameless plug]

    I really, really, /really/ like xvid. It's an open source reimplementation of Project Mayo, the project that led to the development of div4. Development is fast; I have realized significant gains in quality and usability in even the past two weeks. The codec is fast; on my crappy windows machine it crunches frames faster than div4 and div5 and its playback filter (w/postprocessing!) uses fewer CPU cycles than div4 or div5's.

    If you want to play around with xvid, the easiest way to start is to go to the xvid forums at doom9.org and read about what the codec can do for you.

    [/shameless plug]

    -inq

  23. Next generation is NOT under LGPL/GPL. by Svartalf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They're selling the VP4 codec and have a VP5 that's in testing right now. They plan on selling that- if they get an open sourced version of the prior generation out there that can be supported by their newer codecs, that's a win for most people (So long as they provide the decoder for the latest format for free, that is... :-) I'll be posing that question to them on the list. It's great and all, but unless we've got decoders for VP4 and VP5, it's not as good as it could be.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  24. Re:Well by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Have you been to Kuro5hin.org lately? They have more users, bandwidth, and processing power than they ever did under OSDN. They've got several paid sponsors, as well as an innovative text ad system where users can submit their own ads which are displayed non-intrusively on the front page. People have been having a lot of fun with it, submitting joke ads, etc. And it all helps the site out.

    Factor that in with an open submissions queue, a journal/diary system that actually works, a fair and equitable moderation system, and a virtually troll-free environment, and one wonders why Slashdot should even be read. For all practical purposes, Slashdot is dying.

  25. What license was opendivx under? by Svartalf · · Score: 2

    I can't remember...

    If it was the LGPL, Divx Networks may be in trouble as they have to honor the license grant given to them for the submitted code (LGPL)- it means that they could be sued bu the submitters for Copyright infringement. If it was under a BSD-ish or X11 license, they would be perfectly fine to do what they did. (Legally, that is- right and wrong doesn't even enter into this at this point...)

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
    1. Re:What license was opendivx under? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      opendivx was licenced under the "OpenDivX Licence" (version 2.0, or something?)

      imaginative name, eh? :-)

  26. VP3 can be improved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    With royaltee free no strings attached licenses for all the necessary IP you have a very good stepping stone for a competetive video codec without patent hassles.

    Being competetive with MPEG-4 shouldnt be very hard in fact, given how close all the standards are to eachother.

    Some H26L variant however will likely very soon become the new DivX ... and for DCT based coders that will be a tougher nut to crack.

  27. Not so... by Svartalf · · Score: 4, Informative

    Yes, it may not perform as well as xvid, but xvid has a severe drawback, that you should be giving consideration to- patent licenses.

    There is not an aspect of MPEG4 (which is what xvid is a codec for...) that is not covered by patents that need to be licensed. Nobody has a royalty free license to any MPEG4 patents for free software implementations so distribution of the codec is violating the patent rights of several companies.

    You may not care now, but they're stepping up enforcement efforts of all this stuff and you may well find yourself without a codec or in trouble because you're violating the rights too.

    --
    I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
  28. OT language tip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I got two objections (or rather questions, or ideas that got something to do with it, or ... whatever):

    The word you're searching for is "concerns." You have two concerns.

  29. Reading comprehension by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The roles of BSD and LGPL are reversed (in the extent to which they guarantuee results staying open source) from the previous part of the sentence, not the actual guarantuee.

  30. Acronyms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How long before entire articles are nothing but acronyms? We get closer every day.

  31. XviD as alternative, Ogg Tarkin in the future by tangent3 · · Score: 2, Informative

    The problem with Ogg Tarkin it is still pretty much an experiment, using techniques which is way ahead of its time. 3d wavelets haven't been heard of in any other standard which are under development.

    XviD, however, exists today. It is a fully GPL'ed MPEG4 codec. However, it cannot exist legally in any form other than an experiment because the MPEG4 license still has to be paid for in order to use XviD. XviD, like LAME, will mostly exist as CVS sourcecodes under guise as an experiment, with many rogue sites around the world providing binaries (usually with automated daily compiling).

    Personally, I wouldn't count on the quality of VP4 being anything earthshattering. Tests of VP3 quite clearly shows that it is behind DivX3, DivX4 and XviD in terms of quality, so something has to really shape up. This might probably be due to a lack of 2-pass VBR encoding feature in VP3. Meanwhile I will just continue to encode my rips in XviD, encode the audio with Vorbis and mux them together into an Ogg container. If VP4 or VP5 really turns out to be good enough, I would probably try to find a way to mux that video stream into the Ogg container too.

    1. Re:XviD as alternative, Ogg Tarkin in the future by JoeBuck · · Score: 2

      The only way that Tarkin can hope to be patent-free is either by doing something completely different or by using approaches that were known 20 years ago; all the standard approaches are covered by patents.

    2. Re:XviD as alternative, Ogg Tarkin in the future by Pathwalker · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I wouldn't have much faith in the tests you link to. I looked at the settings that the tester used, and it looks to me like they deliberately crippled vp3.

      To quote the article:
      "In VP3 I set the bitrate, keyframe interval to 9999 seconds, auto keyframe turned on as well as quick compression"

      In my experience VP3 only gets noticibly blocky (the tester's major complaint) when it is prevented from creating a keyframe when it wants to. Here, they pretty much prevented vp3 from generating keyframes at all. The keyframe interval should have been left BLANK not set to a stupidly high number.

      Additionaly, there is another menu of keyframing options (the one he should have used to set the adaptive keyframe rate rather than locking it) of which he writes nothing. Here, I probably would have set the minimum time to about 1/4-1/2 second, and set the maximum time to the highest supported number.

      Furthermore, There is an image quality control which controls the tradeoff between image quality, and the risk of dropping the frame rate. No mention was made of the setting of this control, but the complaints about low detail make me wonder what it was set to.

      Finally, turning quick compress on does lower quality. For a test which did not involve encoding speed, I have to wonder why the tester chose to turn that option on, as it trades off quality for faster encoding!


      I use vp3 to encode DV streams (in Quicktime) for viewing over the web. Vp3 is a very good quality codec, superior in many cases (unless you are streaming from a QTSS, or the source was shot under unusual light conditions) to the free version of Sorenson. It is excellent under these conditions.
  32. XviD *NO good*! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As others have pointed out. XviD has serious patent problems.

  33. Not really streaming, but progressive download by benwaggoner · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A nitpicky point - VP3 as implemented in AVI and QuickTime files is designed for progressive download, not true, real-time streaming. Thus, you get the classic movie trailer wait-awhile-and-play experience, but without the ability to do random access over long files and that kind of groovy stuff.

    Good support for real-time streaming would require a native packetizer to build a hint track that the (open source) Darwin Streaming Server uses to determine packetization of the stream, and which helps loss recovery and other good stuff.

    Adding a native packetizer for VP3 would be an excellent open source project for the codec.

    --

    My video compression blog
  34. Would you pay $0.25 for open source MPEG-4? by benwaggoner · · Score: 1

    This brings up an interesting question for the free/open source community. Under MPEG-4, it's perfectly acceptable to make an encoder or decoder than is open source. However, the patent license is $0.25 each per encoder and decoder, with a cap of $1M/each per company per year.

    So, would folks be willing to cough up a quarter for this codec, if it remained open source?

    Is there time for a new license: free speech, but not free beer?

    --

    My video compression blog
  35. XviD is GPL in name only by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the copyright owner does not include the necessary geographical restrictions to patent encumbered code then the extra rights provided by the GPL do not apply. So really XviD is not GPL in a meaningfull way.

  36. Another nitpick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Darwin Streaming Server is not Open Source. It's under a license that's termed proprietary-with-source, similar to Microsoft's Shared Source scheme.

    1. Re:Another nitpick by Wesley+Felter · · Score: 2

      Wrong; the APSL is listed as an open source license at opensource.org. Or were you talking about some other kind of open source?

    2. Re:Another nitpick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      f the opensource orgy. they can suck gnu cock

  37. Huh? by SpinyNorman · · Score: 2

    The doom9 site only tested VP3, not VP4 nor the latest VP5 -- they're 2 whole CODEC generations behind.....

  38. VP3 tweaks by benwaggoner · · Score: 1

    This is a little geeky.

    QuickTime provides is own "keyframe every" option. In VP3's codec-specific dialog, it provides its own, more advanced implementation (which lets you set a minimum number of frames between keyframes, not just a maximum). Thus, most folks turn off QuickTime's keyframe insertion and let VP3's do it. I believe this is what the tester did, based on the description.

    Leaving the keyframe interval blank may, depending on the tool, force EVERY frame to be a keyframe. Definitely not what you want.

    The "Allow Dropped Frames" command actually controls the interplay of data rate versus frame rate, not image quality. When dropped frames are allowed, the codec will reduce frame rate in order to hit the target data rate.

    One objection you didn't mention is the use of the "Fast Compression" mode. The tester may have gotten better quality (and much slower encoding) if that had been on.

    --

    My video compression blog
  39. Re:fp .. yeah. by Rob+Malda+(editor) · · Score: 0

    Suck it Trebeck! Suck it long, and suck it hard!

  40. Re:fp .. yeah. by Rob+Malda+(editor) · · Score: 0

    No it's not him. And it's Mouth not Malph you stupid shit encrusted pig dick!

  41. WRONG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/apsl.html

    Basically, I'll consider it Open Source when I can apt-get it. Until then, it's proprietary-with-source.

  42. One for the week-end by forged · · Score: 1
    You guys are quite entertaining, really!

    :)