Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
right now I have good quality with 3vix but it is 1 gig.
if this can get me to 700 MBs at the same quality (about 85 in the 3vix) that would rock!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Hopefully the BBC will use this instead of RAM, silly real player!
I spent ages trying to think of sig, but never did
Could this be related to the archive of video content they are purported to be setting up? Seems like a very unnessecary step to accomplish that, unless they have some sort of conflict with the legalaties of other codecs out there...
Their documentaries are so interesting that I often choose to watch them over other movies or shows I may have on my computer. Bravo BBC.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
It's wavelet based, so presumably it doesn't suffer from the block artifacts of MPEG-2 & MPRG-4.
Even more impressive than the codec itself, in my opinion, is that they managed to develop a new video codec without infringing any patents! And given that it's the BBC, I assume they could go to court to defend themselves in prior art.
:-)
Very cool. But then all the engineers in their R&D dept. are apparently very anti software patents, and have been doing their bit writing letters to that effect
Did you ever consider that they intend to use this for their plans to put their archives online?
The poster stated that "It has been further developed to optimise it for internet streaming resolutions" which is one way for such a thing to be distributed. Have a look here. The register states that "The BBC's new media director, Ashley Highfield, said that a P2P network will allow the BBC to handle the volume of traffic it expects when the Internet Media Player (IMP) goes live. The IMP will enable users to download or stream content to their PC, laptop or palmtop computer."
If this is the case then Aunty Beeb is well underway to providing the tools we will need for accessing their archives.
-- Enditallnow
I mean all the BBC's services in general. I think I know the answer in assuming that the British people pay for it in tax and TV license fees. That's something I'm grateful for as a New Zealander living in the US. The BBC is a refreshing change to the somewhat mind numbing American news sources.
/. I definitely want on of those beside my bed when it becomes available. It seems like its the ideal thing for BBC listeners. I wonder if its availbility will significantly increase the load on their servers, all costing real money of course.
My real question to Brits here is: How well is this burden accepted by the British people? Are the BBC TV and radio stations in the UK really non-commercial? I know the US government gives money to PBS and NPR but I don't know how it compares (especially per capita) to what the British government must spend on the BBC. It must cost a fortune and they are effectively supplying (IMHO) a good quality product for free to the rest of the world via internet and shortwave. I imagine some of the international motivation of the BBC stems back to the days of the old empire. It almost seems too good to be true.
I assume that NPR and others like it around the world pay to carry the program. Maybe that earns a lot.
This question came up in my mind the other day when the wi-fi radio was mentoned here on
I know that the BBC is somewhat of an enigma in broadcasting compared to what we're used to in North America (although some would argue networks like PBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation are somewhat similar)....but I can't help think how utterly cool it is the BBC does this sort of thing. Progressive (no pun intended) stuff like putting their achives online is also really damn cool...not to mention the fact they have *gobs* of content that a traditional broadcaster wouldn't have (I've been taking Welsh language lessons courtesy of the BBC!).
-psy
Let's say you compare
a) 640x360 vid at 1x bandwidth
b) 640x360 vid at 9x bandwidth
c) 1920x1080 vid at 9x bandwidth
a) and c), MPEG4 will win. b) will be much much closer. What you define as "low" bitrates really depends on resolution. The dual-layer DVDs coming now should be able to do full HDTV resolution with somewhat better quality than a 1CD DVDrip. Since 2CD rips typically use 3-400mb on AC3 track, actually not that far away from 2CD rip. But something like 8-10Mbit (aren't they usually 1Mbit today?) is hardly a low-bitrate stream in my opinion...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
They also said that while they had no objection to paying licensing fee's per se, and that they did pay MS and Real, these were so inflexible in their licencing that scaling up operations was problematic. Their expressed hope was that with such a codec widely adopted they could massively scale up operations such as streaming without being crippled with licencing costs, or having the administrative burden of unwieldy licensing schemes.
-he who laughs last, is a bit slow.
journal
A matter of disclaimer: I've done some work on Dirac, for BBC, over the last several months. Here's a bit of background on Dirac:
By nature, Dirac has many similarities to existing algorithms such and MPEG-2 and H.264/AVC -- however, Dirac is an original invention that uses wavelet transforms, arithmetic encoding, rate-distortion optimization, variable block-size motion compensation, and hierarchical motion estimation in some new and unique ways. Again, this is a research project, so there's much experimentation to be done!
As a research project, Dirac continues to be analyzed, optimized, and documented. What you're seeing now is very preliminary code; I suspect it will improve and evolve dramatically in the coming months, both in terms of clarity and functionality. The goal is to produce a universal codec, which is one reason behind the open source move.
The codec source code is licensed under dual MPL/GPL licenses.
Dirac is modular, and thus well-suited to implementation with an object-oriented programming language. The reference engine is written in ISO Standard C++, and has been tested under various forms of 32- and 64-bit Linux, as well as under Windows 2000/XP.
I'll try to answer questions here, to the best of my ability.
All about me