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Interview With BBC Dirac Developer Thomas Davis
arclightfire writes "The subject of the BBC video codec Dirac has been here before, but we've managed to get an interview with Thomas Davies, Senior R&D Engineer at the BBC who devised the Dirac algorithm. Interesting to note that the codec should be with Mplayer soon; "As far as players go, we'll be submitting a patch to Mplayer to allow it to play Dirac pretty soon." And info about the tech developments in Dirac; "I used tried and techniques, like wavelets, which weren't in standards at the time, and tried to develop them. And that's what we'll continue to do as the algorithm develops. So we've tried to build on some pretty well-understood technology, and also tried to do some new things with it. We're patenting the new stuff, quite a bit of which hasn't got into the software yet. The license means that these patents are licensed for free within the Dirac software.""
Especially from a British developer ... I mean, he could've gone with something like "The Cybermen Codec" or "The Sontaran Codec" or at least "The Dalek Codec" ...
h.264 (now formally known as AVC, the video-equivalent of AAC) is maturing. Well, at least Ahead's Nero Digital implementation of h.264 is maturing. The marketing spin has it called Nero Digital, but it's fully h.264 compliant. And the results are impressive - beta testing shows comparable quality of XviD at half the bitrate.
H.264/AVC is open and extremely powerful. Why bother with another protocol?
From Apple Tiger h.264 page:
Not only is H.264/AVC very efficient, providing extremely high quality in smaller files, but H.264/AVC is also scalable, producing video for everything from 3G for mobile phones to High Definition (HD). H.264/AVC can create great-looking 3G mobile content at 50-160 Kbps, excellent Standard Definition (SD) video at 800-1500 Kbps, beautiful HD video (1280x720, 24p) at 5-7 Mbps and full HD video (1920x1080, 24p) at 7-9 Mbps. So at today's SD DVD data rates, H.264/AVC can deliver full HD. In fact, H.264/AVC was ratified by the DVD Forum for inclusion in the next-generation HD DVD format.
Having decode support in Mplayer is good. but it's not going to fly well if there's no support for encoding! How are you going to use it to it's full potential in Unix if you can't back up your DVD's with it?
It goes double for the Ogg Theora format.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
The license costs on H.264 are the most expensive on the planet (MPEG LA controls it with a hell of a lot of patented stuff from various companies). This is why it isn't being adopted rapidly. Even MS undercut it with cheaper licensing on Windows Media. This will kill it, a very nice technology. I am all for open source codecs. Perhaps BBC is on to something.
From what I've read it looks like the goal with Dirac is to get a royalty free codec. If this is correct then why did you decide against using/contributing to the open source/open standard ogg theora codec?
Some things are more important than an animated rat
"Life isn't about the number of breaths we take; it's about the moments that take our breath away. Like choking."
Sounds like those patents are licensed for free within the context of this project, but not if you take the technology out of the codec. Fine, great, except that's the same license Microsoft offered on their SPF stuff, and they got drilled for it.
the BBC working with software?
did they have anything to do with python?
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
Dang, now when they invent the FTL telephone they won't be able to call it the Dirac Communicator, 'cos everyone will think it's some kind of MP3 player!
Another SF classic (Cities in Flight) shot down by careless scientist types. Goldarn it!
Bullshit. Every MPEG standard implementor is -supposed- to pay royalties. But I don't see any projects which support mpeg video and audio- doing so. I also don't see anyone chasing them down for the royalties. The general consensus is that if you don't make money off it, nobody will chase you down for the royalties; they're happy with the revenue stream from commercial software.
Further, if you bothered to read up, you'd note that there's a reference implementation with downloadable source code, and documents on the (ahem) ISO standard.
Also, listening to someone complain about proprietary technology and "openness" being a hinderance is pretty funny in the context of Mplayer, considering that the developers distribute codec packs consisting of commercial software (specifically DLL files) they're -not allowed to distribute- from Microsoft, Real, Apple, Intel, and many others. Dozens of proprietary video and audio formats are included.
Please help metamoderate.
Does that mean the license does not extend to other usages (besides in Dirac)?
This could be problematic to include in Mplayer, as Mplayer is licensed under the GPL, and IIRC, there's a patent clause (clause #4?) in the GPL saying something along the lines of "if you license your patent for use in a GPL software, the license extends to all software derived from the first one, not only that first one".
Is this a correct reading of the situation?
Yeah... a Real strong commitment.
There's a list of excuses for their audio streams here. (No, you may not: cue / rewind / download the stuff the license payers paid to produce.)
Hopefully they'll sort out their copyright / rights management issues and delivery by the time dirac comes out. Frankly, it couldn't make things worse.
Yeah, it's all fine for now. But building free software on a proprietary base will bite you in the ass in the long run (which is why we have the Debian project, but that's a topic for another time). Eventually someone will make a program that the MPEG people don't like (such as an easy converter to Dirac), and they will get sued into next week. Or, if the open-source codecs are sucessful and become the de-facto standard for multimedia, THEN they'll start being pricks about the royalties. The MPEG consortium can come in at any time they like and destroy any open-source project using their standards, or leech off their hard work by charging everybody royalties. I wouldn't work on a project that had that hanging over its head, even if the MPEG people have been okay so far.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
The BBC has an R&D department that builds video codecs. In the states, we've got PBS which makes a new muppet every 10 years, and ABCNNBCBS, which came up with projecting a yellow bar across the football scrimmage line in the 40 years since introducing color TV. That's why America is leading the media revolution!
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make install -not war
Good point. One for you: Do you think the BBC will have to pay royalties if they use H.264?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Because in the future they will be using it (or something like it) and if the BBC don't sort something out right now - in ten years time we'll all be needing Microsoft's permission to view what their PR department doesn't object to.
Who cares about mplayer support?
/me boggles.
Those of us who prefer our keyboard to our mouse. And other folks.
It's bloated. On both linux and MacOS X, it consumes considerable CPU resources- and that's with the fancy interpolation it supposedly does turned off. My Powerbook G4, for example- mplayer consumes about 60% CPU, enough to bake my lap and turn on the fan after a while. VLC, on the other hand- needs about 20%, keeping my lap happy.
You misconfigured it. This is, admittedly, not hard to do, but mplayer is the fastest of movie players if used correctly.
Try using the following command: mplayer -vo xv -fs=yes moviename.
Hmm, upon checking the manual, perhaps if Mac OS X lacks support for xv you should be using -vo quartz.
Mplayer has been under "development" for several years. It hasn't seen any major or even minor feature additions.
You've got to be joking. What about the latest ChangeLog?
The user interface sucks, especially on OS X.
Actually, mplayer has some kind of bitmapped interface, which I always compile out. I hate all of those damned bitmapped interfaces, the pseudo-VCR things. It has a CLI interface which is exactly the same on OS X as on the other platforms.
May we never see th
Sorry for the double post, but it needs to be formatted properly
:-p )
Dirac + ogg in an mkv container could save your soul
I assume you mean Dirac + Vorbis in Matroska... Ogg is a container format like matroska... (what you said was akin to DivX + AVI in ASF
On a related topic, Matroska is an unfortunate format to use. It is very inefficient, both in CPU time, and in overhead. My computer can play a 640x480 divx in an avi, but can't play a 512x384 divx in matroska. Additionally, matroska has a higher file overhead than asf or quicktime.
Ogg is a good, basic format. It could be seen as a sturdy replacement for AVI. Matroska doesn't do anything beyond even the Quicktime format... and quicktime is vastly more efficient.
Anyway, moving on from that rant. I agree strongly with your other points. If you have a choice between two, largely equivalent codecs, one is unencumbered by laws and one is, why would you choose to use the one that is. Sure you might not get sued straight away, or even for a year or two, but why bother with that risk at all?
I am not particularly bothered with pirating certain commercial software, but if there is a free program that does everything I need, I will use that over a pirated of a commercial program. Why take the risk when there is another option?
It's all part of the BBC's remit. It was the BBC that developed NICAM, for instance. The BBC took it upon themselves to encourage the takeup of home computing by coming up with the spec for their own machine and recruiting Acorn to make it. Their Internet presence has been a major factor in getting the British population online - the BBC's websites are now among the most popular in the world. And they're currently at the forefront of the push to get digital TV into every home in the country through their Freeview set-top boxes.