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More On The BBC's Codec 'Dirac'
TioHoltzman writes "El Reg is reporting about a new codec that is built on top of wavelet technology and seems to offer performance that is "roughly in line with the Video Codec 9" from Microsoft. The project has been released as open source on SourceForge. This looks like it might be really interesting." (Previously mentioned a few weeks back.)
The Sourceforge page says that Dirac uses arithmetic coding. Aren't there patents on arithmetic coding? I thought that was the problem with using JBIG for bilevel images, and why most free compressors use Huffman coding or the like.
Everyone should read Stallman's essay The Right to Read. When I first saw it, I thought it was so implausible that there was no need to worry about it. But since then I've observed much of the groundwork for this dystopia being laid. It is absolutely vital that consumers be educated to reject commercial technologies that take away their rights (including fair use), and instead prefer free and open technologies such as Dirac (assuming that it doesn't run into patent problems).
BBC to Put Entire Radio & TV Archive Online
Spam Vikings await.
The potential for profit may well go down. The BBC is paid for by a license fee, and is not-for-profit. No ad breaks, notice the lack of advertising on www.bbc.co.uk .
Apparently the BBC is planning on allowing people to watch TV shows after thay are broadcast form the website. This codec development could be related to this.
Hey! What pretty widgets?
Regardless of patents etc. it doesn't matter that there is something as good as a Microsoft codec. Unless there is a perceived advantage, unfortunately it isn't going to become widely adopted because the huge mass marketing machine that is Microsoft is pushing its technology and making it the easy to use default.
You only have to look at Mozilla/Firebird which have finally matured into reasonably solid stable products. Netscape innovated, then lost market share and IE got a foothold. Now it doesn't matter to most companies that there is once again a good alternative in Mozilla because it only has a small marketshare. In the case of MP3, it took more of a foothold earlier on but we're already seeing movement towards proprietary formats.
The only way that the open source community is going to do well here is to provide a single coherent product without branches that is trivial to install and use for the average non-technical computer user. Unfortunately the very nature of open source and free software makes this difficult, because you have to reach a consensus amongst a diverse range of very intelligent people with very different politcal agendas. Choosing a single united front is a huge challenge.
Forget the codec for a moment. If I want to install the latest client operating system from Microsoft there is only 1. (This is the ideal - I know we've had Me/98/XP running concurrently but that's still only 3). How many Linux distributions exist - each version with its quirks and styles. It may be fantastic from the point of view of evolution of the software. Its not going to get users switching over.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
There are lots of great or just good enough codecs out there. Having an open source codec would be great, but the biggest problem today is not getting the best/freest codec but instead is making it available from the average browser. From a practical point of view, it might be more worthwhile resigning oneself and exerting effort to make common formats (Windows, Quicktime) work well from a Linux computer (from my understanding the Mplayer plugin won't stream Windows/Quicktime).
Not that this type of research should be discontinued, of course, but from the numerous projects I've been involved in that used streaming media, common availability was the biggest problem... we often had to produce video for Windows, Quicktime and Real. There are some environments (technophobes, corporations, and government) where you can't install a new plugin.
In fact I think a Java based media streaming applet might be a great solution, since Java has pretty good saturation (although *sigh* there is no entirely free software or open source Java implementation at this moment).
(This is an excerpt from the book 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!' and is for everyone here who has, or hasn't, heard of Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac, the namesake of this new codec. It also conveniently fits in with the two articles about Japan that made their way onto Slashdot today.)
..."
While in Kyoto I tried to learn Japanese with a vengeance. I worked much harder at it, and got to a point where I could go around in taxis and do things. I took lessons from a Japanese man every day for an hour.
One day he was teaching me the word for "see." "All right," he said. "You want to say, 'May I see your garden?' What do you say?"
I made up a sentence with the word that I had just learned.
"No, no!" he said. "When you say to someone, 'Would you like to see my garden?' you use the first 'see.' But when you want to see someone else's garden, you must use another 'see,' which is more polite."
"Would you like to glance at my lousy garden?" is essentially what you're saying in the first case, but when you want to look at the other fella's garden, you have to say something like "May I observe your gorgeous garden?" So there's two different words you have to use.
Then he gave me another one: "You go to a temple and you want to look at the gardens
I made up a sentence, this time with the polite "see."
"No, no!" he said. "In the temple, the gardens are much more elegant. So you have to say something that would be equivalent to 'May I hang my eyes on your most exquisite gardens?'"
Three or four different words for one idea, because when I'm doing it, it's miserable; when you're doing it, it's elegant.
I was learning Japanese mainly for technical things, so I decided to check if this same problem existed among the scientists.
At the institute the next day, I said to the guys in the office, "How would I say in Japanese, 'I solve the Dirac equation'?"
They said such-and-so.
"OK. Now I want to say, 'Would you solve the Dirac equation?' -- how do I say that?"
"Well, you have to use a different word for 'solve,'" they say.
"Why?" I protested. "When I solve it, I do the same damn thing as when you solve it!"
"Well, yes, but it's a different word -- it's more polite."
I gave up. I decided that wasn't the language for me, and stopped learning Japanese.
It needed some improvements (more searching), and had some faults: around when it came out, it took a 600MHz Alpha (The fastest processor at that time, or darn near it) 24hours for a 30-sec clip, because it used brute force, and the quality was good, and compared to other compression types they all were much larger, and some looked worse. The problem is the difficulty in finding the fractals that will work. Recreating the image is relatively easy.
There are lots of great or just good enough codecs out there. Having an open source codec would be great, but the biggest problem today is not getting the best/freest codec but instead is making it available from the average browser.
Yes, and why are so few codecs available? Two reasons: (1) most codecs out there are a software engineering mess and hence hard to integrate into anything, and (2) most of them are heavily covered by patents and copyrights so people can't just write a plug-in and distribute it.
Something like Dirac holds the promise of letting people create simple, self-contained, freely distributable players that either play stand-alone or can be easily plugged into browsers. Furthermore, the same is true for encoders, allowing people to create content more easily.
And, unlike MPEG encoders, which have lots of weird parameters and flags, Dirac looks like it is simple enough that making high-quality encodings does not require a Ph.D.
In fact I think a Java based media streaming applet might be a great solution, since Java has pretty good saturation (although *sigh* there is no entirely free software or open source Java implementation at this moment).
Well, even there, a simpler format can help: something like Dirac is probably a whole lot easier to re-implement in Java than something like MPEG4.