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Dirac: BBC Open Source Video Codec
NickFitz writes "Need To Know this week has a piece about Dirac, a BBC R&D project to produce a video codec, which has been released as an Open Source project. From BBCi: 'Dirac is a general-purpose video codec aimed at resolutions from QCIF (180x144) to HDTV (1920x1080) progressive or interlaced... Our algorithm seems to give a two-fold reduction in bit rate over MPEG-2 for high definition video (e.g. 1920x1080 pixels), its original target application. It has been further developed to optimise it for internet streaming resolutions.'"
The great thing about them is that there are so many to choose from and support.
BBC Open Source Video Codec
Finally a codec to convert all the dry witty intelligent British TV humor over to bland cliche' stale American TV humor!
Its British.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Looks good, but why are all the male American comedy leads now in drag???
You would use less space if you stopped renting DVDs at Blockbuster to rip them to your HD.
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
"What does this offer that those don't?"
Its British.
Its British what?
US codecs incorrectly drop a vowel from colour, so a British codec is bound to look better.
hey man
we were commissioned to be in charge of video archiving for our university and couldn't decide which codec to use to archive the student films and such for our school, let alone what software to use.
I heard some stuff about xvid, divx, etc, and based on a bit of word of mouth, thought about giving xvid a try. I read your post. I honestly can't believe I was actually about to use xvid for the job. thank god i came across this page. The part that influenced the decision mostly was the +1 informative moderation backing up your facts.
later man
I'm waiting for the Scottish version.
Same great compression, but when you encode video with it, all the actors end up wearing kilts, speaking with incomprehensible accents and getting into bar fights.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Well, I suppose we could use Microsoft's Windows MediGeneral Protection Fault: Access Violation 0xc0000005 in WMPLAYER.EXE, Rebooting Now ...
Bah, stupid Windows, let's try Real Player inst[BUFFERING......]ead, I hear it's mu[BUFFERING.........]ch better than it used to b[BUFFERING.........]e!
The great thing about standards is that there's so many to choose from.
You are so wrong I can only think you must be one of those Anglophile Americans who misguidedly spreads marmalade on Yorkshire Puddings and says Toodle pip instead of 'goodbye' thinking he's terribly cosmopolitan.
The Television Licence is so-called because it covers television, hence the name. Nobody needs a licence for radio or internet access. Do. You. Understand? Paying the licence means that some of our television channels do not contain advertising and make an effort to produce minority programming. We still get the joys of crass, multi channel commercialised crap as well, but from the other stations
By removing the superfluous "U" from "colour" and other words, American English has acheived a higher compression ratio than British English.
mbbac
Not to mention that it'd compress far more heavily to save the bandwidth pennies!
Do you have any information about how many Britons are languishing in prisons for not paying the license fee? I did not know it was that serious. As Amnesty International written a report on this?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This is known as lossy compression.
I'm waiting for the Scottish version.
Me too because as we all know "If its not Scottish its crap!"