Real Announce Helix Grant Program, Player

Rob Lanphier writes "RealNetworks made two announcements at LinuxWorld this week: we will be giving out up to $75,000 by the end of the year for development of open source projects based on the Helix multimedia platform. Also, we just formally launched the Helix Player project, which is a project to build a GTK+ based user interface for Linux, Solaris, and other UNIXy operating systems. Press releases for the grant program here and player project here"

Comments

$75K?

[CaseyB]

So, they'll be paying the equivalent of the salary of a single developer for a year. And this is impressive, why?

Re:Pffff... If only

[minus_273]

hey i got the beta version no faxing here.. just registered online but more than that i ask,, what does this thing do that xine 's gtk interface laready doesnt do? or Maplyer.. which is very cross platform and fast...

Re:Um...

[evilmonkey_666]

Ok so the whole thing's a project to create some sort of retarded new media player type thing that's cross-platform? Well great... If it wasn't launched by Real, the people who brought us the SINGLE MOST UTTERLY AWFUL video format.

There is nothing inherently wrong with the real video format the compression and error correction is actually quite good for low bitrate streaming... it is the bloated adware infested interface that is awful!

TRPlayer?!?

[thor]

TRPlayer

thor

first proprietary player for linux

[ramzak2k]

It is surprising to see the flak this news is receiving given that Real will be the first company to work towards a player(Helix player) on the linux platform. Now only if apple would follow suite, we wouldnt have to rely on cross over plugins to play these formats.

Re:Pffff... If only

[Senor_Pedo]

Why is this different from, or more importantly, better than mplayer or xine? Those are both media players that include the codecs and do quite a good job, if I do say so myself. Just wondering.

Development

[chunkwhite86]

While any commercial software that gets developed for Linux is a plus for everyone involved, I think their $75k would be better spend on a programmer for a year. This seems like an inexpensive way for them to generate "buzz" around their product in the OSS community - even though their product is not OSS.

Don't get me wrong - I think the REAL codecs are great, but this "offer" isn't.

If you don't want scalability

[benwaggoner]

While I love MPEG-4 for what it's good at, what it's good at doesn't include real-time streaming over the public internet. Darwin + MPEG-4 doesn't offer any good form of scalability. Thus, if you encode a file at 400 Kbps, and a user's connection is 350 Kbps for a few minutes, they'll get a horrible quality experience.

RealMedia supports SureStream, which lets you put up to eight pairs of video and audio into a single file, and the server and player communicate in real time to determine the optimum data rate for the transmission. It'll even raise and lower data rate as connection speed changes - very useful for cable modem and shared bandwidth from work.

This will come in MPEG-4 eventually, via Fine Grain Scalability (FGS), or some future scalable version of the AVC codec. But that's a couple years away from being in real consumer products I'd guess.

Oh, and I totally don't believe that you really regularly use MPEG4IP for volume compression. I mean, the TOOLS are there, but you have to go through like five different command line steps to make a file. It can produce fine results (it uses Xvid), but MPEG4IP is really like LAME - it's not meant as an end-use tool in and of itself. Well, the player is fine stand alone.

Re:If you don't want scalability

[Binary Boy]

Ben,

I use LAME excessively for production work... well not daily, as we don't produce audio that much, but at least monthly, and in the beginning of the project it was nonstop. LAME is an excellent tool for serious production work - shell scripting is certainly less aggravating than scripting Cleaner (as I'm sure you'll agree!). I haven't used MPEG4IP extensively, so I can't comment on the process... but I'd suspect a simple wrapper script and it would be as easy as anything (though of course it still doesn't mean it's fast, or an efficient encoder!).

PS, I thought I read that there were no current plans for scalability in AVC? I was a bit shocked by that. Maybe it was in your interview in the recent edition of DV?

Cheers,

Roger

Re:RTFA! Codecs included

[AKAImBatman]

I'll believe it when I see it. With the way things have worked to date, you'll probably need 3 click throughs for the player, then as a separate binary download, you'll need to either sign NDAs or download a package riddled with Spyware. To date, Real has shown *very* little openness in the process despite the supposed "open source" bent. If it's open source, WHY do I need to sign NDAs? It just doesn't add up!

Real is interoperable

[joaorf]

Real Video 9 is probably the best video codec nowadays (along with VP6).
And if you want interoperability, Real is still the way to go. There is no other format for streaming media where all the following applies:

1. Streaming server running on Linux
2. Encoder running on Linux
3. Players for Linux (including Alpha, PowerPC and IA32 architectures) and a few other Unix-type systems: Solaris, AIX, IRIX, Mac OS X.
4. Server and players capable of understanding SMIL

Plus, most of the server, encoder and player code is open-source (except the GUI). I have already compiled it, and it works great.

And people who really understand about streaming media know that MPEG4 is no alternative, yet.

Re:Real is interoperable

[evilviper]

And people who really understand about streaming media know that MPEG4 is no alternative, yet.

And what is the problem with MPEG4? Licensing is a serious problem, but I don't think you were talking about that.

The only other problem with MPEG-4 is that most people use an AVI container, but that's certainly not required. You could be streaming MPEG-4 in an Ogg container if you like (although icecast for Ogg isn't considered stable, it has been operating in the wild for some time), or you could stick it in a .MOV container which is recomended, and stream it with any of the normal tools.

An open standard is an open standard, and unless they are seriously lacking compared to the propritary alternatives, they nearly always win in the long run.

Re:Why?

[joaorf]

Like I wrote before, it's not a question of how many formats it supports. Helix is also capable of playing, encoding and serving proprietary formats like WM and Quicktime if just someone writes a plugin for it. And the plugin architecture of Helix is very clean: just drop the plugin file in a directory and use it.

Helix has got a much more advanced streaming technology. It can get/send streams by TCP, UDP and HTTP. It supports multi-bitrate streams (a single stream can be encoded in more than one bit rate). The player has better buffering. And it supports something than neither Xine or MPlayer have ever dreamed of: markup and scripting with SMIL, RealText and RealPix.

Re:An open letter

[vikman]

It's unfair to say Real hasn't committed resources or open sourced things of value. The technology and the source code that is available today is the product of years of hardwork.
Further, there IS a Linux Player team at Real. We (this team) is as passionate as you are about creating a media player that is of good value to the community - and todays announcement was our way of asking you to come participate in the process. It's not just our giving away freebies that wins the minds and hearts of a community - that's been already tried in the dotcom times. I hope the fervor shown in pointing out all that Real is yet to do can translate into participation and contribution to this fledgling project so that it would be a glowing example that the corporate folks would sit up and notice.
-V
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Vikram Dendi
Program Manager for Helix Player
RealNetworks