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.'"

Comments

Re:Xvid?

[Jameth]

This is total crap. Xvid can be interleaved with audio just fine and is enormously better than just a series of JPEGs.

The parent is completely full of crap.

Chauvinistic comments aside...

[curious.corn]

... on which I refuse to argue, just mention. This is fantastic news folks! A publicly owned company, devoted to the production of Common Goods contributed to worldwide society an open, free (perhaps even performant) platform for the storage and distribution of the Commons' Intellectual Property. Socialist? Yeah, you betcha! (I'm sorry, I can't resist) Come on, quit whining and splitting hairs; you can't appreciate this stuff because it simply flies in the face of "american individualism":there's no Project Lead success icon to identify with, no blessed marketplace competition for the consumer's best interest, no visionary research successfully spinned off; just a bland, subsidized (sin!) government agency chewing on a political choice and actually delivering something concrete... oh, the horror! I expect to be modded into Flamebait oblivion but heck, aren't we always yapping about choice, information freedom and accessibility? If you don't like all this and rather shill for WMP or QT you only have to swipe your credit card at the cashier... grrr... if you feel for your pet open source codec, don't... this one is another tool in the fight agains the information mongers, how can that bother you is beyond me...