BBC Wants Help With Dirac Codec

Number Ten Ox writes "According to The Register the BBC wants help to develop their open source video codec Dirac. '[Lead developer Dr. Thomas] Davies said the codec could live on anything from mobile phones to high-definition TVs but not before a lot of further work is completed. For one thing, Dirac doesn't currently work in real-time. Davies also reckons that the compression offered by the technology could be further optimised. The BBC is working on integrating the technology with its other systems, but the corporation would welcome more help in developing Dirac.' Sounds like something worth helping with."

Comments

redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it sounds like something not worth wasting time on. Don't we already have enough codecs, including open source ones?

Re:redundant

[Spad]

But none supported by an entity as large or influential as the BBC.

Codecs like Theora are great, but it's unlikely they'll enter the mainstream in the same way as something like DivX has - just as Vorbis is lagging behind other closed source audio codecs.

If the BBC started using Dirac for all its streaming video feeds, for example, then suddenly millions of users will have an excellent incentive to download the codec and if people already have it on their machines then others can produce Dirac based media without having to worry that people won't want to view it because it means downloading something extra.

Re:redundant

[FrostedWheat]

The only truly open video codec worth mentioning is Theora. XviD's source may be open, but the codec itself is a patent minefield. Theora is patent free, as is Dirac. Even if the BBC did take out some patents, the license Dirac uses means these patents would be harmless.

So yes, we do need this codec and others like it. Theora is nice but it dosen't hold up against any of the new generation of commercial codecs that are coming out now.

Re:redundant

[AstroDrabb]

Can you please list all of the Open and non patent encumbered codecs? I can only think of Theora. Of all the codecs out there just about every one is enbumbered by a patent or license fee or DRM which hinders thier usage for distribution of public content such as documentaries.

Re:redundant

[skids]

Don't we already have enough codecs, including open source ones?

While I agree strongly that there are a lot of reinvented wheels in OpenSource that add nothing new or unique, audio codecs are a wide open area for innovation. There is a lot of complex mathematical theory involved and while many very smart people have more than just scratched the surface, we could see considerable improvement with more development. Each project serves as a test case for the methods it uses.

Personally, I'm dissappointed that the idea of using genetic programming (or related technology) to develop or improve CODECs has not, at least to my knowlege, taken off. Hopefully the people with the expertise in both fields will at some point come together. That would be a worthy use for the resources we have at our disposal these days, IMO.

I used to think this would only be good for lossless CODEC developement, but perhaps automated fitness tests for lossy CODECs could also be practical.

Re:redundant

[Anonymous Coward]

Its worth having both in case a patent is found in either and some company tries to sue them out of existance. We can just fall back to the surviving codec.

Re:redundant

[YE]

Personally, I'm dissappointed that the idea of using genetic programming (or related technology) to develop or improve CODECs has not, at least to my knowlege, taken off. Hopefully the people with the expertise in both fields will at some point come together.

Translation: I have no frickin' idea about video codecs and/or genetic programming, but I have this warm fuzzy feeling that they must somehow go together. Hopefully somebody will work their ass off to prove me right, but I can't even be bothered to read enough about one or both of these fields to disrupt said warm, fuzzy feeling.

Re:redundant

[skids]

I have in fact bothered to read quite a bit. As you would have seen had you bothered to read the other replies, the surface-level pessimism that greets this idea is unjustified, and even if some of the problems faced in audio CODEC development turn out to be of a nature that does not lend itself to GA convergence, learning that fact in and of itself is experience gained. If GA's were proven useless for CODEC development, then I would have likely come across research to this effect when I was searching the web for it. If I missed such, please do elaborate.

I make it clear I do not have expertise because not doing so would be dishonest. If someone makes headway in this area, it is to their credit, not mine. The idea I posted is neither particularly original nor in any way groundbreaking, just a natural induction from what knowlege I gained while considering doing development in both areas. Anyone could arrive at exactly the same ideas. As such, I don't really care if I get proven right or wrong, I just want to know the idea has been given due diligence, and so far I have seen nothing that indicates that it has.

Re:redundant

[mconstable]

If the BBC started using Dirac for all its streaming video feeds, for example, then suddenly millions of users will have an excellent incentive to download the codec and if people already have it on their machines then others can produce Dirac based media without having to worry that people won't want to view it because it means downloading something extra.

But if the BBC started using Theora now then that would help Theora get off the ground for exactly the same reason you outline above. A move like this would give the open source movement confidence the BBC were serious and exposure to the concept of a government agency sponsoring truly open source video codecs. Then in a few years we would all have two excellent and (more) widely used open source video codecs. More power to them, and us. As long as they keep using Real and WMA they are not endearing open source developers. I use an AMD64 machine and can't be bothered setting up a dual 32-bit environment, so I can't use Real, therefor I don't get to view any BBC content at all. Not that this means anything other than I'm one extra open source zealot that can't view BBC video.

BBC rules!

[orangeguru]

Compared to many other broadcoasters the BBC has a long and excellent record of producing great programms AND embracing the web/technology.

Certainly a good 'partner' to support ... compared to companies like Real ...

Re:BBC rules!

[matt_wilts]

Don't be so sure - if that was the case, they'd be streaming their current content using MPG or perhaps OGG. As it stands, they use Real!!

Matt

Re:BBC rules!

[Mike McTernan]

I think the only reason that the use Real is that the streams are more proprietary and harder to rip (for the novice in anycase), and it probably makes some copyright holders happier to let the BBC re-webcast certain content.

See here:

"What's the problem with Windows Media Player?

When the BBC began publishing audio and video content Real Media was the most secure form of streaming. Unfortunately Microsoft no longer supports Real content. Consequently, many of the later versions of the Windows Media Player will not play our clips. This may change in the future. NB: Some World Service clips are also streamed for the Windows Player. "

Re:BBC rules!

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

What's wrong with the Real codec?

I've seen things compressed with RMVB which are on par with DivX and Xvid in terms of quality, but RMVB produces smaller filesizes.

Do not confuse the codec itself with the designated player. Real Alternative works too, without spyware, if that is what you're insinuating.

Re:BBC rules!

[junklight]

Indeed. In case you where wondering *why* they want to make a codec take a read of this:

http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php

The Creative Archive is a really exciting venture and one of the projects that gives me small hope that the British Government may yet get the hang of copyright and online content

Re:BBC rules!

[FlopEJoe]

But if Dirac is open source, wont it be super hackable. One could just add a hook in the code to write the stream to a file while playing. There wasn't any mention of DRM in the article but something doesn't map or I just don't get it.

Re:BBC rules!

[latroM]

What's wrong with the Real codec?

It is not free.

Re:BBC rules!

[LordK2002]

The Creative Archive is a really exciting venture and one of the projects that gives me small hope that the British Government may yet get the hang of copyright and online content.

The BBC almost certainly has got the hang of online content and copyright, but the BBC is not the British Government: it is an entirely independent organisation funded by the TV License (which is authorised and enforced by the government).

By contrast, the government is all too happy to jump onto Corporate America's IP bandwagon, with its Super-DMCA laws*, support for software patents and other such nonsense.

K

* In fact the Copyright and Regulated Relations Act 2002 passed in the UK makes it illegal to do anything that bypasses copy protection, not just traffic in "devices" as in the US. I guess marking a CD with a magic marker is now a criminal offense in the UK.

Re:BBC rules!

[junklight]

I work for another Establishment organisation and we and others are working on improving the situation. Having the BBC as a shining light really does help.

Re:BBC rules!

[Vroem]

QuickTime has been offering a codec on par with MPEG-4 ASP (or "DivX and Xvid" as you call it) since 1998, it's called Sorenson 2. And since 2001 they offer Sorenson 3 on par with MPEG-4 AVC (wich is still VERY new in the industry).

Sorenson has actually been "MPEG-4 avant la lettre" because it licensed MPEG-4 technologies for it's own commercial codec.

You can check the quality for yourself: http://apple.com/trailers/

Re:BBC rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe not in future once the government has forced the BBC to flog off its technology division to a Windows operation like Siemens.

Re:BBC rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Certainly a good 'partner' to support ... compared to companies like Real ...

Is there no end to British ass kissers ? Real already has their open-source player in https://player.helixcommunity.org/ for almost a year now, if not more. The stable version (realone player 1.0 for unix/linux) is already out. And all bbc has got is the promise of a codec that they themselves admit: "A lot remains to be done to convert our promising algorithm and experimental implementation into practical useable code. This includes optimization so that it can decode in real time. Algorithmic enhancements are needed to improve the compression performance still further. The resulting codec needs to be integrated with other parts of a compression system such as players, and interfaced using standard IO formats."

Dah... Move on.

Re:BBC rules!

[johansalk]

I did a comparison earlier this year and the real codec was quite clearly the better of them all. Best quality in smallest file sizes. The only reason I didn't implement it was because I didn't want to commit to a proprietary, closed format. Windows Media was quite bad in comparison.

Re:BBC rules!

[stephanruby]

Compared to many other broadcoasters the BBC has a long and excellent record of producing great programms AND embracing the web/technology. Certainly a good 'partner' to support ... compared to companies like Real ...

For the non-UK people may be, but £121 a year (or roughly $206 American dollars per year) That's a lot of money for a lot of people. When my mother staid in London, she didn't have a TV, but she still had some BBC hoodlum banging on her door and try to force his way in to make her pay the fee.

Re:BBC rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

£121 a year is £2.32 a week Thats nothing. I pay £20 a month for a hundred cable channels full of crap, a few good American shows (Three, at last count) and the only thing left to watch...are BBC repeats or Discovery/BBC co-productions.
br. £2.32 a week for the BBC is great value.

Re:BBC rules!

[ocelotbob]

Yeah, tools like playfair soo totally don't exist. I mean, obviously those opensource hippies are going to be the ones who have code that can be exploited.

Re:BBC rules!

[stephanruby]

£121 a year is £2.32 a week Thats nothing. I pay £20 a month for a hundred cable channels full of crap

Yeah, but at least you have a choice to pay for that crap. BBC doesn't give you that choice. You have a TV, you must pay the BBC license fee. And if you don't pay the TV license fee, then you must be lying because everyone has a TV.

Re:BBC rules!

[glesga_kiss]

Yeah, but with quicktime you can't view full screen without paying for the "Professional" version. And you can't use the codecs in any other player. The files don't play on my XBox Media Centre. Quicktime has no place in my home!!

Re:BBC rules!

[orangeguru]

Well, you have to pay for public tv in other countries too. So what?! You prefer crappy commercials every three minutes? Producing tv costs money and the bbc produces great stuff. If you watch HBO in the US (another great producer) you have to pay too.

Re:BBC rules!

[stephanruby]

Well, you have to pay for public tv in other countries too. So what?! You prefer crappy commercials every three minutes? Producing tv costs money and the bbc produces great stuff. If you watch HBO in the US (another great producer) you have to pay too.

In the US, PBS only gets a small fraction of its budget funded by the government and that small source of funding might completely dry up very soon.

Also on the topic of HBO, if you have a TV, noone forces to pay for HBO, it is a choice you're given.

What am I missing?

[cslarson]

If they want to make an open source video codec, why don't they just support and help further develop the ogg video codec? Would the two codecs be so different that they are both needed?

Re:What am I missing?

[Ikkyu]

The Theora codec is a discrete consine transform, while dirac codec is a wavelet based. They are completely diffent ways of looking at video data and wavelett coding is showing promise as having higher compression rates and better quality.

What we really need is something that is scales with bandwidth, the more you receive the better your quality.

Re:What am I missing?

[iabervon]

There's not all that much improvement that could be made to Theora, since it's a deployed standard. In order to improve Ogg, a separate codec needs to be developed. So, essentially, yes: Theora's advantage is that it is ready, while Dirac's advantage is that it will be better.

Note that there are probably a dozen video codecs for the MPEG container format in active use, and two audio codecs for Ogg, so multiple video codecs for Ogg makes sense.

The BBC is currently using a different container format than Ogg, but specifying Ogg Dirac when they're done wouldn't be particularly difficult.

Re:What am I missing?

[dvdeug]

two audio codecs for Ogg

Nitpick: three. Vorbis, Speex and Flac.

Re:What am I missing?

[static0verdrive]

This is EXACTLY what I came into this article to post. While I fully support open software (in both theory and practice) I sometimes feel that because there are a few too many options in certain areas, we lack either usability with other options or we lack other options at all in a given field.

Here we have some developers that are looking to work on an open video codec, and then there's ogg's open video codec that IMHO just needs a few more developers to get the ball rolling quick enough to have people really take notice (I still have yet to see a vid file encoded with the ogg vid codec...). I think FOSS needs a little soliderity in terms of software support from developers.

Re:What am I missing?

[iabervon]

I suppose speech is, in fact, audio; I hadn't considered Speex as an audio codec for some reason.

dirac vs. theora?

[crayz]

Have there been any comparisons? Do we really need two fully scalable open-source video codecs?

Also - the BBC is funded by the British government. When did they get a mandate to spend money developing video codecs. I don't have a problem with government-funded "arts" but this seems a bit beyond the normal scope of things

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[gowen]

the BBC is funded by the British government

Well, by British TV owners actually, but I digress.

I don't have a problem with government-funded "arts" but this seems a bit beyond the normal scope of things

Really? Government sponsorship is one of the major sources of science research funding in many westernised countries. Who do you think pays for NASA, the Lawrence Livermore Labs, and a large proportion of science research in universities (not biotech, sure, but a lot of stuff in computing, high energy physics, astronomy, applied maths etc).

And, in the case of Britain's Natural and Environmental Research Council (NERC), me!

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[onion2k]

The BBC is funded by government, but thats where the relationship ends. The UK government has absolutely no say whatsoever in what the BBC spends its money on. If the BBC wants to develop video codecs then theres nothing the UK government can do about it. Thats one of the reasons the BBC news is able to remain impartial, and often reports on the UK government making a mess off things. See the Hutton report for details. :)

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[geomon]

When did they get a mandate to spend money developing video codecs.

Governments have deep pockets.

That issue aside, governments also have an interest in setting a base-level standard (as they have done for other transmission media) that all operators must incorporate into their devices. That "minimum functionality" mandate does not inhibit the ability of the manufacturer to propose, design, and implement their own protocols.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like a bit of a silly thing to say. The government funds the BBC, they don't really have much say in what they spend the £££ on as long as it within the scope of what the BBC does. What you're saying is nearly as silly as saying that, while it was nationalised, BT couldn't spend time developing new phone systems. Codecs are just another way of cramming tv programs down different mediums... Where's the difference?

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[91degrees]

The BBC is not funded by the government. It's funded by the public through the licence fee. The government never gets to see it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

No the BBC is NOT funded by the UK Government.
The BBC has tax (i.e. the TV Licence Fee) raising powers of it's own - and is entirely independent of funding from government.
If the BBC *was* funded by government it wouldn't be considered trustworthy. It wouldn't be the "gold standard" of news reporting world wide that it is.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[serviscope_minor]

Have there been any comparisons? Do we really need two fully scalable open-source video codecs?


Dirac is a next generation codec. It is also the only one using wavelets (like JPEG2000). Is there an argument for developing new codecs which compress better than current ones? Very much I'd say, unless you want all technological progress to stop here.

Also - the BBC is funded by the British government. When did they get a mandate to spend money developing video codecs.


They are a broadcasting organisation. Video codecs are very much part of broadcasting. They also did a lot of development on digital TV, which is soon going to replace all analogue TV by law in the UK. If they use this codec to put their archives up on the internet, then they certainly do have a good reason to do this development.

I don't have a problem with government-funded "arts" but this seems a bit beyond the normal scope of things

Is it? What about all that government funded science and tech research?

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[JohnGrahamCumming]

> Also - the BBC is funded by the British
> government. When did they get a mandate to spend
> money developing video codecs. I don't have a
> problem with government-funded "arts" but this
> seems a bit beyond the normal scope of things

Really? The BBC needs to stay up to date with technology in order to do the best job possible under its mandate. So that means that they are going to start out doing radio, spend money making television work the way they like it, then start promoting teletext (in the form of Ceefax), brand their own computer, and now they want to do the Internet their way (through an open codec).

It's worth reading their own history
for a perspective on just how much technical work the BBC has done since 1920. See also here.

John.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[martinthebrit]

The BBC has a long history of R&D, based at Kingswood Warren in Surrey. Many important developments were made, under the funding of the BBC charter and through private industry. I'm sure the BBC's development of an open source video codec can only be good.

N.B I used to work for a broadcast equipment manufacturer, Snell & Wilcox, alongside many ex BBC engineers, and they employ some very good people.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[gosand]

Have there been any comparisons? Do we really need two fully scalable open-source video codecs?

That is true. So why was theora created? From TFA, they have been working on it for 3 years. From what I gather, theora is 2 years old.

"The technology - first conceived more than three years ago - is scheduled to go into beta within the next 12 to 15 months. "

I thought that Open Source code was about choice. Because their codec work is funded and has been being under development for a while, it could actually be better. Why not lend a hand, which is all they are really asking.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[slaad]

The BBC is funded by government, but thats where the relationship ends. The UK government has absolutely no say whatsoever in what the BBC spends its money on

Unfortunetly, that's not how policts work. If the government is directly funding the BBC, then they have lots of say over what goes on. If they don't like what the money's being used for, all they have to do is take it away.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[provolt]

That has to be the funniest thing I've read in a long while. I think it's even funnier because it's moderated as "Informative".

For those who don't get the joke, read the wikipedia entry for the Hutton Report.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[magefile]

That's like saying that Medicare/Social Security aren't paid for by the government, but by US citizens. True in one sense, but pedantic and moronic, especially since the relationship is understood.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[pjt33]

On the other hand, it is constrained by its Charter, which talks about getting approval for some things from the appropriate Secretary of State.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[IWannaBeAnAC]

You are American, right?

There seems to be a cultural difference between the USA and the rest of the Western world, in that Americans are unable to conceive a government funded entity (directly funded or indirectly via 'license' fees) that is substantially free from Government influence. Possibly because there are apparantly no such entities in the USA. But in this matter, the USA is the exception rather than the rule, with respect to democratic governments.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[aldoman]

Er no, becuase the government _can't_ stop the BBC from doing anything. They obviously have limitations like what frequency they can broadcast on.

Every 9 years (IIRC) the government reviews the BBC's progress and what funding method it should have.

Basically what I'm saying is the .gov.uk can't censor, change or stop the BBC from doing anything directly. They do not go to the government to approve TV shows, nor do they go to the gov to approve technology research.

This is in direct contradiction to social security in the US where the government controls it and could (probably) stop paying out tomorrow.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[91degrees]

How is Medicare and social security funded? If it's from tax revenue, then it's paid for by the government. If there's some other sort of levy that Medicare and social security use, then it's funded by the people.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. O.k. as mentioned elsewhere the BBC is funded by our TV licence NOT the HM Govt.

2. I met these guys at the Olympia Linux expo earlier this year. As they (Dr Tim Borer) explained, the BBC charter includes a section requiring them to do R&D work within the realms of broadcasting. This is the justification for Dirac.

3. The motivation for this codec is that they don't want to keep paying Real for providing streaming content. Consider this point with the announcement earlier this year about the BBC making thier archives available over the internet then you can guess why.

(3.5 ...and I'd rather the BBC spend my licence fee on R&D on an open and enabling technology rather than on a closed and licensed one)

4. That is why we need to support these guys.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[slaad]

I can concieve of such a thing, I just have never seen it :) Really though, I could understand such a thing happening, but how do you ever really know? I mean, next year, there could be budget cuts or even just reduction in budget increases. It would be easy to pawn it off on any number or reasons, but it could really be because of this thing the fundee wasn't supposed to be doing. Saddly, this is just how the government (US) works. (to an extent this is how business works as well...) I'll admit that I'm too paranoid to just out and out believe what you're saying, but it's certainly something I'd like to believe. Maybe someday I'll take off my tinfoil hat.. ;)

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[4of12]

Americans are unable to conceive a government funded entity (directly funded or indirectly via 'license' fees) that is substantially free from Government influence.

Only Americans that don't listen to NPR are under that misconception.

There was a transition in public thinking in America from the 1960's to the 1980's (Reagan was a big force in this movement) that government could do good for the public to a belief that anything the government does could only do things badly (inefficient, red tape, bureaucracy, fraud-infested).

As usual, the truth is never so simple: government is capable of doing good or evil just as much as the people that comprise it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[mike260]

That's like saying that Medicare/Social Security aren't paid for by the government, but by US citizens. True in one sense, but pedantic and moronic, especially since the relationship is understood.

But not by you, evidently. Medicare and social security are paid for (and run by) the the US government. The BBC is paid for by a license fee which comes directly from TV owners.

If it was a government funded body then it might have thought twice about attacking the government over their made-up WMD/Iraq claims, so I reckon the distinction is quite significant. Does that make me a pedantic moron too?

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[gowen]

Only Americans that don't listen to NPR [npr.org] are under that misconception.

So, thats nearly all of them then :)

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[pasm]

The BBC is funded by their own license which everyone in Britain is obliged to pay if they own a TV or Radio. This is not the same as being funded by government, thank goodness!
That said I am pleased that they continue to push the frontiers of broadcasting technology. They, after all, have one of the best websites on the net and also provide it with a rich content that is no matched anywhere as far as I can see. They have a history of innovation and being the first to display new shiney things to the world.
That they are staying ahead and leading in new ways of distributing their media should, if anything, encourage those of us who believe in the cutting edge being pushed further forward helping if we are capable. Good luck to them and more power to them for it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a glimpse of how the BBC is funded and operates.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/thefuture/

"Unlike commercial broadcasters, the unique way it is paid for and governed means it is owned by the British people and accountable to them"

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[gowen]

Well hang about. The BBC said something about the government. The government got very upset about one specific allegation ("The 45 minute claim was inserted by govt spin doctors against the advice of the JIC") which Gilligan inserted off the cuff and which no-one believes to be true (even Gilligan admitted that was wrong).

The government then said "Will you retract that, as it isn't true". The BBC asked Gilligan, he stood by it. The BBC said we won't retract that.

Flash forward ... Hutton says: "The BBC's processes in checking Gilligan's story were woeful" (undeniably true; they asked Gilligan, then based their defense on the assumption he hadn't lied to them, which he had).

People think Hutton was a whitewash, because almost no-one's read it, and every newspaper in the country felt the need to stand up for their journalistic brother and pretend that the kerfuffle had been caused by something other than one specific lie in Gilligan's story.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[imroy]

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is government funded. It has specific rules about non-partisan bias, especially during election campaigns (like right now). Although its very position (non-commercial, etc...) tends to give it a slight bias towards the left, which the current right-wing coalition government has been whinging about on occasion. The youth-targeted Triple J radio regularly pays out commercial radio too.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[gowen]

No, it isn't. Medicare is paid for through general taxation. The BBC isn't, its entirely funded through a license fee, paid by people for the right to receive television broadcasts.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[minkwe]

Who is the government in the UK?

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[mrsev]

The lisence fee may come directly from the TV owners but it is collected by the government and the bbc is not the "direct" recipient. In other words the amount collected and the amount given are not usually the same!

Therefore it is like any other tax!

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Malc]

Furthermore, that 9 years is longer than one and normally two terms of government (a term being 0 - 5 years, IIRC). If the BBC pisses off a government, there's a high chance that they will not be able to do anything about it! The BBC seems to often take an anti-government stance too just for the sake of, or so it seems.

A system I don't like is the one on Canada where the CBC are completely at the mercy of the government. In the US, PBS is kept in its place by being poor and constantly having to go on begging sprees.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Samrobb]

There was a transition in public thinking in America from the 1960's to the 1980's (Reagan was a big force in this movement) that government could do good for the public to a belief that anything the government does could only do things badly (inefficient, red tape, bureaucracy, fraud-infested).

It's also a matter of scale, and ease of communication. Consider this: if 1 person out of a thousand has a problem with the way the government is doing something, that's almost 300,000 people. In other words - if 99.9% of the population thinks that some action taken by the government is a good thing, there will still be almost 300,000 people who may think it's a bad thing. For comparison, the NAACP - a fairly inflential force in US national, state and local politics - has around 500,000 members.

Thanks to modern communications - TV, radio, phone, fax, email, blogs - it's ridiculously easy for even a few thousand motivated individuals to 'get out a story'. So, you end up with no government program, action, or activity that can ever be viewed as "good" or "bad". There will always be a fraction of the populace that can, and will, make a case that opposes the majority view; and modern communciations more or less ensures them the opportunity that their point will be heard, even if it is disregarded by the majority.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[dpuu]

Almost right. The "World Service" of the BBC is actually funded from the foreign office budget -- which comes from tax payers. BBC America is an independent organisation, part of one of the big american networks (in a group with Discovery and TLC).

The domestic BBC has two sources of funding: the license fee and "commercial ventures". For example, they sell cheesy old series to PBS for american viewers. And, of course, they sell DVDs, etc.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Silburn_Luke]

Sort of, but its complicated. The BBC is an organ of the state, but it is not run by the executive arm.

First the BBC *is* actually responsible for collecting the licence fee. They farm the operation out to another entity, but its a statutory responsibility written in to their charter.

Second the BBC's grant-in-aid funding is paid from the the pot of licence fees but its level is set when the the BBC's charter is renewed every decade or so (of course the govt of the day has a large influence over that process when it occurs). So yes, the grant often diverges from what is in the common fund but the license fee which fills that fund is explicitly tied to this payment stream. And yes, the GotD has a big stick it can wave at the BBC - but a decade is a long time in politics and whilst theoretically, vide the Crown in parliament, the GotD can abolish the BBC (ie fail to renew its charter) if it gets uppity, the cost in goodwill would be horrendous. Even in her most eye-swivellingly megalomaniac stages, Thatcher never seriously considered doing that.

Addressing the way upthread post that started this off, the BBC is explicitly charged as part of its charter with conducting R&D into things like broadcast and storage technologies so this is exactly what they should be doing with the money they've been given. If they weren't, they'd be failing to fulfill their mandate. There's a lot of stuff out there that has come from the BBC Technology Divisions. Our gift to the rest of the world.

Regards
Luke

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[wrook]

If it was funded by the government it would be exactly like the CBC.

Where is my quality Canadian programming?????

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[biglig2]

Certainly there is no day to day operational control. But Hutton showed that a determined government can get rid of the Director General, and that means there is a degree of control.

Also, there are regular reviews of the license fee - one is due soon - at which the Govt can negotiate changes it wants.

For my money, their streaming services are one of the current things the BBC does superbly - along with their Radio and some of their new comissioning. If they conclude new technology is need to improve these services, I'm in favour of it.

I'm against their attempts to ape comercial TV - Eastenders sucks at the moment, why keep pushing it? Who needs another reality show, or game show?

But another Office, or Little Britain - unconventional TV comedy that commerical TV would consider too much of a risk - that's what I like.

I consider it to be no coincidence that all the British programs that really engage me at the moment come out of Channel 4 and the BBC - the state-owned TV stations. Except maybe Corrie, but it's formula pre-dates everything, so it's an exception.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was begining to question the value of the BBC myself recently. Then just last night I was flicking through cable and landed on BBC Three. They were showing a program called Flashmob: The Opera. Essentially, they were filming a modern Opera (Set to classical arias) filmed live in Padington Station. I kid you not. Not only that but is was one of the most entertaining hours I have spent in some time, and I have never watched or even contemplated watching an opera before.

The entire concept of Flashmob: The Opera is just so bizare and so off the wall that I do not believe for a second that any commercial broadcaster would have touched it with a twenty foot poll, yet it was pure entertainment and exposed me to an art form that I had never considered before. It completly and utterly restored my faith in the BBC after five minutes of watching it.

When anyone brings up that "The BBC should be commercial" argument in the future I think I'll just tell them about Flashmob: The Opera and ask if any commercial broadcaster has ever done anything quite like it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[TomV]

Also - the BBC is funded by the British government. When did they get a mandate to spend money developing video codecs.

Most recently, in 1996, when the Royal Charter was most recently renewed. To quote from Section 3 ("Objects of the Corporation") of the current Charter,

3: The objects of the corporation are as follows:

[snipped]

(e) To hold the existing and to construct or acquire or lease additional equipment and
apparatus for the transmission and reception and relaying of telecommunication signals over
telecommunication systems or by any other method whether now known or hereafter
invented or developed and whether or not over paths provided by any material substance in
Our United Kingdom, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, and to use the same for
purposes ancillary or related to the purposes aforesaid.

[more snipped]

(i) Subject to the prior approval of Our Secretary of State (or ar appropriate of Our Secretary
of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs) and to the acquisition (subject as hereinafter
provided) of any requisite licences, concessions, rights or privileges, to construct or acquire
or lease and establish, instal, equip and use stations for wireless telegraphy and apparatus
for wireless telegraphy and telecommunication systems and any other equipment for the
transmission of sound, visual images, messages or any combination thereof by any method
whether now known or hereafter invented or developed and whether or not over paths
provided by any material substance in countries or places without Our United Kingdom, the
Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, or in space, for the purpose of providing, within the
scope or ambit of any such approval for the time being in force, and as may be permitted
thereby or thereunder, such sound and television broadcasting services and sound and
television programmes of information education and entertainment as may in such approval
be specified, for reception in such countries or places as may in or under such approval be
designated; and for receiving such services and programmes by such methods and for such
purposes as may by or under such approval be permitted.

[more snipped]

(m) To establish and maintain libraries and archives containing material relevant to the
objects of the Corporation, and to make available to the public such libraries and archives with or without charge.

[more snipped]

(p) To carry out research and development work in relation to any technology relevant to the
objects of the Corporation and to acquire by operation of law, registration, purchase,
assignment, licence or otherwise copyright and design right in any matter whatsoever, and
any trademarks and trade names and any other intellectual, industrial and commercial
property rights, and to use, exercise, develop, grant licences in respect of, or otherwise turn
to account the same with a view to the furtherance of any of the objects of the Corporation and to apply for and obtain, purchase or otherwise acquire and turn to account in any manner that may be thought fit any Letters Patent or patent rights or any interest in any Letters Patent or patent rights, brevets d'invention, utility models, licences, concessions, and the like conferring any right or privilege, whether exclusive, non-exclusive or limited, to use any secret or other information as to any invention in relation to any device or machine serving or calculated to serve any useful purpose in connection with any of the objects of the Corporation.

Between then, these Objects Of The Corporation can be taken to pretty much oblige the BBC to continue its long and impressive history of R & D in broadcast technologies.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[mikeb]

Minor correction. I am 99% certain that the concept of a radio licence was abolished some years ago. The domestic BBC is funded from the TV licence.

The BBC World Service is, I believe, funded by the UK Foreign Office via a grant and is somewhat different.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[LazySlacker]

I have it on good authority that ALL the money collected goes to the BBC (no admin fee etc). Of course this is all taken into account when coming up with the fee.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[trewornan]

After an election the Queen sends for the leader of the political party with the most seats in Parliament and asks if he can maintain a majority in division (win parliamentary votes). If he says he can the Queen will ask him to form a government to exercise the powers of the Crown (i.e. run the country).

The Government, via the Civil Service, Courts, Police, Army, etc, exercise the powers of the Crown to do a wide variety of things, such as - raise taxes, enforce the law, and so on.

The logic is that only if a party can win parliamentary votes and thereby create new laws will it be able to effectively run the country.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Craig Davison]

It's on CBC Newsworld. Check out The Passionate Eye or any of their other programs.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[mike260]

Certainly looks like it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[mattyrobinson69]

the bbc is not funded by the government, it is payed for by anybody with a TV or radio (TV license)

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[seanyboy]

Greg Dyke may disgree with you on this.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Insipid Trunculance]

No,the BBC is FUNDED directly by LICENSE paying Britishers.Its got nothing to with our government.The only state body with any hold over it is the parliament which renews (till now) its charter upon its expiry.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is that party A must pay party B, but party B can bite the hand that feeds it?
Isn't this flawed logic?

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

The budget of the BBC can't be changed at the whim of the current government. The amount the BBC can charge in licence fee (and how that will increase/decrease each year) is decided when the charter is renewed every ten years. Its funding is therefore secure for the next ten year period, and the government cannot meddle with it.

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[glesga_kiss]

In Soviet America, the government is the media!! (Fox)

Re:dirac vs. theora?

[Secrity]

Research and Development is included in the BBC charter, and as required by that charter, the BBC has been carrying out R&D of broadcasting technology since 1927. In 1997 BBC R&D started supporting BBC Web services. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/milestones/

H-264?

[TiMac]

From mobile phones to HD, huh? Sounds a lot like the H-264/AVC codec that Apple is including as part of 10.4 Tiger that is an open standard that's been ratified.

What's the advantage to using Dirac over a standard?

Re:H-264?

[Xylaan]

That depends on if third party implementation of the codec would infringe any patents. One of the goals of Dirac was that it is not supposed to be patent encumbered.

Re:H-264?

[damiam]

H.264 is outrageously expensive to license. Dirac is an open, patent-unencumbered codec that can be freely used for whatever you want.

Re:H-264?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is also known as MPEG-4 Part 10. That is they are both standards, but H.264 is a more advanced coding scheme and far more bandwidth-efficient than MPEG-2 video. On the other hand it does require more compute to encode/decode so you might not be able to run it in today's mobile devices as per the article.

Re:H-264?

[Anonymous Coward]

The royalty costs for using H-264 are extremely high. Especially if you are trying to deliver to a large audience.

See http://www.mpegla.com/avc/ and http://www.vialicensing.com/developments/avc/licen se.terms.html

Re:H-264?

[geirt]

... outrageously expensive to license. Huh?

From: http://www.mpegla.com/news/n_03-11-17_avc.html

Royalties to be paid by end product manufacturers for an encoder, a decoder or both ("unit") begin at US $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units each year. There are no royalties on the first 100,000 units each year. Above 5 million units per year, the royalty is US $0.10 per unit.

I don't think it is "outrageously expensive to license". But I agree that there should not be any licensing costs at all for a video codec. Redhat refuses to add MPEG codecs to their linux distribution because of this.

In the great tradition of geek-dom, ...

[reporter]

99% of the files used to test the new Dirac CODEC will be pornopraphy. Most of it will be weighted towards luscious, blonde lesbians engaged sexual acts that almost defy gravity.

Re:In the great tradition of geek-dom, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most of it will be weighted towards luscious, blonde lesbians engaged sexual acts that almost defy gravity.

I'd rather see "Blond Lesbians in Space" ... though the mind boggles at the thought of some "liquids" floating around in perfect spherical drops in the cabin. Could be some freaky "35,000 mile high club" (what with Spaceship one and all that ?).

Btw, Pornography is what made Polariod popular, or the VHS or the internet ... why not a video codec ?.

Re:In the great tradition of geek-dom, ...

[mmkkbb]

you mean like this sort of gravity-defying?

Re:In the great tradition of geek-dom, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who likes spanking?

Someone explain

[stratjakt]

What the major difference with this codec is. Why is the BBC developing their own codec instead of, for instance, throwing a few bucks towards OGM or XVid, or $YOUR_FAVORITE_OSS_CODEC?

Re:Someone explain

[imsabbel]

Because OGM is only a package format (like avi) and XVid is everything but legal (thus those "only for learning uses" disclaimers) because they simply decided to ignore the patents ( and divx is adware because divx-networks pays the royalities)

Re:Someone explain

[tepples]

For one thing, existing codecs such as Theora (which I assume you mean by ogm), Xvid, and H.264 are just minor improvements on the cosine transform stack popularized by MPEG-1. Dirac, on the other hand, is an application of wavelets, which the codec can tune for localization in space and spatial frequency much better than DCT. This should help cover up the ringing and blocking characteristic of DCTs.

Re:Someone explain

[nileshbansal]

OGM is not a codec. Ogg and OGM are media container formats. Ogg Media Container is developed by Xiph as the framework of a larger initiative aimed at developing a set of components for the coding and decoding of multimedia content which are both freely available and freely re-implementable in software. OGM is kind of extension to Ogg to allow encoding DVDs to XviD+Vorbis.

Note that Xiph does not support OGM. The problem is that the OGM is an extension to the Ogg Multimedia Framework that lies outside of the Ogg specification and it is important to maintain control of the specification in these matters.

Main difference between the is the first header in each stream. OGM uses several standardised header formats, audio, video and text, in order to make identifying unknown codecs easier in directshow (and subsequently other frameworks). ie with those three headers you can use any audio or video format you choose without have to write custom header parsing routines for each codec in the demuxer. In other words ogmtools provides the standard du jeur for encapsulating various common-in-avi codecs in an Ogg bitstream, like 'divx', 'mp3' and so on.

What BBC is developing is a codec or a video compression algorithm like Theora and Xvid. Ogg Can be used to package Dirac and Vorbis for some media file.

BBC + Codec = Not Free

[L3on]

I'm sure this codec is a great idea, but I'm also sure there is a free equivlent to it that makes alot more sense. The BBC, just like any other rational business, is out to make money off of this while the rest of the world could benifit greatly from it. Then again, the current codec situation isn't that peachy. Divx, one of the more popular codecs is packaged with spyware up the wazoo and has been for sometime.

Furthermore, if and when the BBC has a working codec will they be held responsible for copywrited material translated into it? I'd like to see the outcome from a lawsuit between the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the BBC reguarding thier codec being used as a good way to view movies.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

"The BBC, just like any other rational business, is out to make money off of this"

But the BBC isn't a business. It's a state service. THEY DONT'T MAKE MONEY.

"if and when the BBC has a working codec will they be held responsible for copywrited material translated into it?"

No.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC isn't a business, and isn't trying to make money. It's a state-funded channel, and is paid for by a license fee. I think it is actually a violation of their charter to get money from anywhere else: I know they're not allowed to run commercial advertisements.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[stratjakt]

American's don't get the concept of a Crown corporation. They don't act like any other "rational business". They don't really have to make a profit, and the way most are run, making a profit is a secondary objective.

I remember the sucking money hole that was Air Canada before the government chopped it up and sold it off. All of a sudden it's a profitable business, turns out they didn't need to be sending 737s to Beaversnatch, Alberta thrice a day.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[oneandoneis2]

The BBC, just like any other rational business, is out to make money off of this

Uh.. the BBC isn't a business.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Air Canada was so profitable it went bankrupt!! :-)

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[onion2k]

The BBC, just like any other rational business, is out to make money off of this while the rest of the world could benifit greatly from it.

Nope. The BBC need the codec in order to save themselves a bucketload of cash in the future when they make their digital program archive available over the internet (something they have to do according to their Charter). They're not intending to make pots of money from the codec, they just want it to exist so they can use it themselves.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC is undertaking Dirac to ensure that it does not have to pay per viewer for the right to use a codec the way it does currently for Real (but not of course the terrestial broadcast TV codec PAL).
So this is about economics all right - the BBC needs to have a codec that does not get more expensive to
run the more popular it gets.
As for copyright the BBC has a huge archive of material to which it owns the copyright....

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC, just like any other rational business, is out to make money off of this

They're not a business.

Furthermore, if and when the BBC has a working codec will they be held responsible for copywrited material translated into it?

Nope. There are already many codecs used for encoding copyrighted material. They have "substantial non-infringing use".

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

They are allowed to sell their programmes (e.g. The Office) and programme formats (e.g. The Weakest Link) to other broadcasters (either just on its own, or through a joint venture such as BBC America), as well as DVDs etc. This is done through a separate company called BBC Worldwide.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Naikrovek]

mod parent up please. +5 Fact

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[AstroDrabb]

I think enough people answered your post about the BBC being "out to make money". So I will address this one.

Furthermore, if and when the BBC has a working codec will they be held responsible for copywrited material translated into it? I'd like to see the outcome from a lawsuit between the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the BBC reguarding thier codec being used as a good way to view movies.

Think about your question. Could the MPAA sue MS because someone violates a movie copyright and just happens to use MS's video codec? Of course not, that would be silly. It is no different with the BBC. If I distribute a movie encoded in Dirac and I do not have the rights to do so, then I am the one that would be liable for copyright violation, not the BBC.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Rude Turnip]

"American's don't get the concept of a Crown corporation. They don't act like any other "rational business"."

The US Postal Service is akin to a crown corporation. It is a nationally-mandated corporation that runs on its own funding (except when things get really bad).

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

It competes with other broadcasters. It accepts advertising dollars

Yes, it competes with other broadcasters. But no, it doesn't accept advertising dollars (or pounds). All the BBC radio and TV channels are ad-free. I bet you want one now :-)

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

1) It's pounds, not dollars. UK, remember? We have GBP over here.

2) The Government doesn't run it. It's state-sponsored, but has it's own independant board of governers.

3) They have no share-holders: therefore no profit motive. Any money they might make goes back into making new programs etc.

4) They aren't trying to become self-sufficient: they're quite happy being given the license fee and maybe making some money by selling program formats (as somebody pointed out to me earlier)

5) It doesn't accept advertising money. They are banned from doing so. A while ago there was trouble because they happened to mention that Coca-Cola sponsors the UK music charts on the BBC's Top of the Pops (the chart show).

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Blitzenn]

The broadcasts are free of advertising, but that is all. They do accept dollars from other companies to allow production of their shows. Just watch the credits. It's just advertising done in a different way. Companies fall over each other to 'give' things to the BBC at times to get their names in the credits. It all amounts to the same thing. It still quacks like a duck.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[isorox]

The BBC need the codec in order to save themselves a bucketload of cash in the future

Yet ironically we're moving some DHCP servers from linux to windows, plan to move the central image server from Linux/SGI to Windows/SGI and then finally Windows/Windows, have just implemented a multi million pound project, in java, but put in windows servers for most of it, refuse to consider Open Office, refuse to have Mozilla as part of the standard desktop (and you have to jump through hoops to "legally" install it), and have half an intranet that's unavailable to the (few) Mac, Linux and Mozilla users, and the entire of Research and Development.

The BBC is a large company, some sectors are run my MCSEs living up Bill Gates' ass, others are at the forefront of technology.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

You havent actually seen any BBC programmes have you?

Product placement is still a very big no-no with the Beeb.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

1) UK is in the EU but doesnt have the euro as its currency

2) As for the rest of....

3) your rant....

4) The lack of grammar.....

5) and formatting.....

6) Shows you've lost your temper as you been proved utterly wrong on every snide little point you've tried to make.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[dbIII]

Yet ironically we're moving some DHCP servers from linux to windows, plan to move the central image server from Linux/SGI to Windows/SGI and then finally Windows/Windows

Management can often be a decade or more behind reality. They've simply realised that you can get things off big unix iron onto little commodity boxes made in Taiwan that run a cheaper operating system called MSDOS. The fact that things have changed since 1994 has escaped them, but expect to see Redhat 7.0 turn up on a PDA near you in 2014.

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Anonymous Coward]

Companies fall over each other to 'give' things to the BBC at times to get their names in the credits.

You appear to be cross-posting from a parallel dimenension in space. In this universe even saying the name of a product on the BBC is a Very Bad Thing. The BBC fall over themselves, almost to comical proportions, to obscure the name of a product. They invent generic names for products to avoid using the commercial names; Blue Peter for instance use the term "Sticky tape" even though we all know they mean "Sellotape". They have a similiar generic name for "BluTac".

So who's the President in your universe anyway?

Re:BBC + Codec = Not Free

[Viol8]

The problem with most management isn't that they want to be seen to be doing something well, they simply want to be seen to be doing SOMETHING. So even if their predecessors set up a perfectly working system that can't be improved they'll go and bugger about with it anyway simply to justify their own position. If it makes it worse , well , theres plenty of excuses and people to blame in IT (except themselves of course)

I say help

[AKAImBatman]

AKAIK, it's the only high compression video codec to not be encumbered by patents. (Although I've heard whispers from the OGG/Vorbis team.) That right there makes it worth development. Once the codec reaches a stable version, it can be integrated into free player solutions like HelixPlayer and VLC.

Cheaper patent licenses

[tepples]

Unlike licenses for MPEG standards, some licenses for the Dirac codec will be available royalty-free.

Re:Cheaper patent licenses

[Anonymous Coward]

some licenses for the Dirac codec will be available royalty-free

"some" ?

Please define "some" for us, before I consider working on it.

Re:Cheaper patent licenses

[tepples]

Dirac is available under "some licenses," namely the Mozilla.org tri-license of MPL+GPL+LGPL. The applicable patent licenses are granted royalty-free to any copyright licensee of the code.

Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Power Everywhere]

• Release Dirac for QuickTime.
• Optimize compression algorithms for individual CPUs. Is Dirac running on a Pentium 4? HyperThread it. Is it running on a PowerPC G4/G5? Optimize for AltiVec. Same applies for Sun's VMX, MIPS' MME, etc.
• Release the codec under an Open Source license but one that will disallow forking or total appropriation (re: Not BSD or GPL).
• Start a web community/forum and accompanying mailing list for it.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[stratjakt]

If the license disallowed forking then it wouldn't be an OSS license. It would be more like MSFT's "shared source".

Whats the use of source code you can't modify, and what would that accomplish?

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Neophytus]

Modification can still occur, for personal use. Forking a video standard is asinine.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[stratjakt]

Any more asinine than forking any other major OSS projects or standards like XFree? There might be a good reason to fork in the future, maybe British/BBC politics will become a problem. What if the Free Open video standard includes something to make sure only the BBC can encode.

Even if it is asinine, why shouldn't people have the right to do it if they want to?

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

Release the codec under an Open Source license but one that will disallow forking or total appropriation (re: Not BSD or GPL).

They're triple-licensing MPL 1.1 / GPL / LGPL.

Start a web community/forum and accompanying mailing list for it.

Dirac project on Sourceforge.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Dirac running on a Pentium 4? HyperThread it.

That comment sure shows you know what HT is.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Punto]

missing:

Release some content for it.

On a good day, a popular tv show (for example yesterday's 'Lost') will get no more than 50000 downloads.. This is nothing compared to the viewers they from broadcasting (wich are measured in millons). If done right (put up torrents of their interesting shows in at least NTSC (or PAL ;) quality), it will get a lot of eyeballs on their codec.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[AstroDrabb]

Release the codec under an Open Source license but one that will disallow forking or total appropriation (re: Not BSD or GPL).

Forking is very important with OSS. Not allowing forking would accomplish nothing. Imagine if Mozilla did not allow forking. We would be without Firefox, the best browser out there IMO.

Something close to what you are saying yet still allowing forking would be a license like the LGPL. You can fork and use it in proprietary work. However, the code to Dirac would always be Open and Free since the LGPL requires that. The GPL would be too restrictive IMO for a codec like Dirac and BSD would be too loose IMO and would not require changes made to the codec to be returned to the community. I think the LGPL would be perfect for Dirac. You can fork it, create proprietary works that use it, the only obligation would be changes to Dirac itself must be returned to the community.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for being a complete faggot. I bet the ladies love you.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[0x0d0a]

* Release Dirac for QuickTime.

Why would you wrap Dirac in QuickTime when there are good, non-proprietary wrappers like .ogg?

Optimize compression algorithms for individual CPUs. Is Dirac running on a Pentium 4? HyperThread it. Is it running on a PowerPC G4/G5? Optimize for AltiVec. Same applies for Sun's VMX, MIPS' MME, etc.

That's the last thing you do. Least performance gain, hardest to recode.

Release the codec under an Open Source license but one that will disallow forking or total appropriation (re: Not BSD or GPL).

Why would you do that? What's wrong with BSD/GPL?

(Though I *do* think that GPL is inappropriate -- LGPL or BSD should be used, since there's a lot of closed source software that needs to use this, and fighting closed source with file format incompatibility smacks of Microsoft's tactics).

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

The license has already been decided upon.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/documentati on/dirac-handout-lude-04-2004.pdf
"What is the license?
Dirac is released under the open source Mozilla Public License 1.1.
The license states that it can be relicensed under the GPL or LGPL
license; so Dirac can be incorporated in GPL or LGPL
licensed software."

At least read the basic info.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[gbjbaanb]

Well they released it under MPL, which allows you to reissue it under a different licence, one of which is GPL. They did this solely so that certain other projects could use it without any of the kerfuffle that other projects (eg some Apache ones) have suffered from recently.

I think they thought about the licencing issues and have come up with the best they could to ensure Dirac gets used in as many places as possible.

Of course, my opinion is that the OSS licencing issue has become a monster, if to get something widely accepted you have to allow it to be relicened under the GPL...

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[mike260]

They've explicitly allow relicensing under the LGPL too.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[tepples]

How would multithreading not apply to a video codec? Any pipeline involving multiple passes over several data sets, such as 1. bitstream decoding 2. motion reconstruction 3. inverse wavelet transform 4. luma/chroma reconstruction, can be multithreaded by running the last steps of one frame in one thread and the first steps of the next frame in another thread. Decode audio in yet another thread, and you can take advantage of multicore chips as well.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[snol]

except it doesn't work in real time yet. that's kind of a barrier for releasing content that they want people to be able to actually watch.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[THEbwana]

...err like .. perhaps the entire archives about to be published? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_ra dio/3836941.stm

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[dvdeug]

Forking a video standard is asinine.

Right. Look at that damn HDTV, forking the NTSC standard. That's just so evil.

If you want to produce a better standard, then forking an existing standard is sometimes the way to go. 99 times out of a hundred, nobody is going to care. No license can stop you from putting out a new video format of your own design out there, anyway. The only people who can make people care about a new video standard--Microsoft and Apple--have their own standards already, and they'll do their own thing no matter what you do.

In any case, forks are rare, but an essential part of free software. What happens if the BBC stops supporting it--should no one else be able to even apply patches to make it portable to new architectures? Should no one else be able to improve on it? They're so essential, they're part of the definition of free software.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

"Multithreading" as you put it is nothing what so ever to do with the Intel Pentium IV HyperThreading. You don't know this because you do not know how threads work, what SMP is and what HyperThreading really is.

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[tepples]

you do not know how threads work, what SMP is and what HyperThreading really is.

I'll bite for the benefit of those reading at home. A process is defined here as well as elsewhere. Symmetric multiprocessing refers to running one process on one core and another process on another core, dividing kernel tasks roughly evenly among processors; multicore refers to SMP within one PGA package, especially on one die. Threads are like processes that share their code, globals, and heap. Simultaneous multithreading, such as Intel's Hyper-Threading technology, inserts one thread's instructions into another thread's idle functional units. Cache capacity makes a processor using SMT run faster when it runs processes that share memory; this is true of multicore as well in implementations that share cache. Which did I get wrong?

Re:Suggestions for Team Dirac:

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would you wrap Dirac in QuickTime
Perhaps because 95% of the world has QuickTime already installed.

Disreguard the first section of my Comment.

[L3on]

I'm tired and wasn't paying much attention to the article, didn't notice the big words OPEN SOURCE, so yeah, sleep... Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if the BBC tried to liscense and/or sell this codec much in the same way that Red Hat sells linux.

Re:Disreguard the first section of my Comment.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're still a moron. The BBC isn't a for-profit company.

Re:Disreguard the first section of my Comment.

[trewornan]

No but they would be remiss if they didn't take obvious measures to increase their revenue stream. They can spend the extra money.

Maybe They Should....

[mlauzon]

GPL the thing, but how will this compete with the Ogg Theora codec?!?!

theres one difference between the off video codec

[imsabbel]

and dirac.
And that is: Dirac exists.
(or do you mean that bastard child of a vp codec derivate?)

Because Dirac is a next gen codec...

[Phil John]

...whereas H-264 is rooted in older technology, DCT and the like.

The BBC guys are doing some really neat stuff that is going to be pushing the boundaries of video compression for some time to come.

Links to sourceforge and BBC's homepage

[Anonymous Coward]

Sourceforge project
BBC's Dirac homepage

They already have...

[Phil John]

Check the sourceforge project

Re:They already have...

[mlauzon]

I did a quick scan of the article, guess I missed that...oh well; sh*t happens!

Why Open Source Codes are essential

[alistair]

Anyone wondering why we need more Open Source Codecs should read the excellent companion article on today's register, a long OP Ed piece on Steve Ballmer entitled Love DRM or my family starves: why Steve Ballmer doesn't Get It.

In it Steve explains why the Digital Home has to come from Microsoft and specifically Microsoft's committment to DRM everywhere. A facinating, if biased piece.

Re:Why Open Source Codes are essential

[Gopal.V]

> a long OP Ed piece on Steve Ballmer entitled "Love DRM or my family starves: why Steve Ballmer doesn't Get It".

I'd read that as more of a "Love DRM or Steve Ballmer gets it" ...

Re:Why Open Source Codes are essential

[desdemona]

Or even Love DRM and get it from Steve Ballmer...

oh the humanity

Reasons Dirac is Not Redundant

[TheRealFoxFire]

1. Not patent encumbered (compare to H.264 and MPEG2/4 including "open source" codecs like XviD)
2. Next generation coding techniques (wavelets vs traditional DCT coding) (compare to Theora/MPEG 4)
3. Capable of scaling down as well as up (compare to MPEG2)

Re:Reasons Dirac is Not Redundant

[Peter La Casse]

1. Not patent encumbered (compare to H.264 and MPEG2/4 including "open source" codecs like XviD)
2. Next generation coding techniques (wavelets vs traditional DCT coding) (compare to Theora/MPEG 4)

Aren't wavelets heavily patented? Or is it that only some wavelet-using techniques for encoding video are patented, and this method doesn't use those?

You're missing a lot

[Crosma]

Dirac is a wavelet codec. The technology is far more advanced than Theora's. In fact, until On2 came along, Ogg were working on a video wavelet codec called Ogg Tarkin. They want with open sourcing VP3 because it would be quicker and easier, nothing more. As the BBC are demonstrating, putting together a competent wavelet-based video codec is non-trivial to say the least.

Put simply, Ogg Theora is already outdated. The source material (On2's VP3 codec) does not match any decent MPEG-4 codec. The BBC would be wasting their time by messing around with dated tech.

That said, Theora is usable and just about the only decent patent unencumbered video codec in existance. Until Dirac is finished, Theora will remain the sane choice for those who want to stay legal without paying through the teeth.

If and when Dirac is ready, it will blow everything else away. It will be worth the wait.

Re:You're missing a lot

[bullitB]

Dirac is a wavelet codec. The technology is far more advanced than Theora's. In fact, until On2 came along, Ogg were working on a video wavelet codec called Ogg Tarkin. They want with open sourcing VP3 because it would be quicker and easier, nothing more.

This isn't really true. Wavelet codecs are not necessarily better than non-wavelet codecs. This is especially true in the case of video, because, as of yet, no one has figured out a way to efficiently peform motion estimation in the context of a wavelet codec. While wavelets in the context of still images have done very well (see JPEG2000), most attempts in video have not been so successful (see Indeo 5 or...Tarkin).

I think it should say a lot that after briefly experimenting with wavelets in MPEG-4 "texture" compression, the smart people behind AVC (aka H.26L/H.264) decided to completely forget about wavelets in their next codec. In fact, AVC doesn't even use a classic DCT, it uses an "integer transform," which is generally considered of even worse quality than the DCT used in MPEG-1/2/4SP.

The most likely reason Xiph started video work on Tarkin with wavelets first is that wavlets are completely patent free. When On2 granted them rights to use their DCT-related patents from VP3, that no longer became an issue.

Put simply, Ogg Theora is already outdated. The source material (On2's VP3 codec) does not match any decent MPEG-4 codec.

This is a real oversimplification of matters. The Theora guys can tune their codec (a lot), and there is a lot of stuff a VP3/Theora encoder could do that an MPEG-4 encoder couldn't. There was a time when Vorbis was not even up to the level of MP3. A few years of tuning later, and now it's beating everyone.

If and when Dirac is ready, it will blow everything else away. It will be worth the wait.

I've heard this one before.
Video compression is around 15 years old now. For maybe the last 10, "wavelets" has been a hot keyword that gets people thinking "Ooo, that'll change everything!" The confusion got even worse with JPEG-2000, since now everyone seems to think that the gains in efficiency from JPEG to JPEG-2000 will be directly applicable to video (ignoring the facts that a lot of that comes from JP2's arithmetic coder and improved predictor, both of which are already being used in video codecs). Point is, I'd look at Dirac with a lot of skepticism. The fact that it is currently unable to decode video in a meaning manner at normal speed concerns me greatly. This suggests that it's already 10-100x times slower than current generation video codecs. Frankly, I think making something 100x faster (needed for Dirac) is probably going to be harder than making it perform 50% better (needed for Theora),

Re:You're missing a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah. Use Curvelets. The BBC shows lots of animation and sports, so curvelets would be extra-good. Wavelets have been done.

Re:You're missing a lot

[BillNyeTheScienceGuy]

We are probably reaching the limits of compression technology. It doesn't matter what space (DCT or Wavelet) you do your compression in, after a certain point you just can't throw out any more information without seeing visual artifacts.

With the jump from MPEG2 to MPEG4 type codecs we can see a compression gain of about 5-10 times the compression effiency. But basically MPEG4 came out of the "lesson" of MPEG2 and as such you should expect that it does some things better and some things worse. MPEG2 was the first major leap and MPEG4 was able to jump off even further because MPEG2 was so immature. MPEG4 is both highly developed and optimized and non likely to get much better. H.264 is supposed to be the next big thing, but it turns out that it is only incrementally better in terms of quality (and not in all cases!), but is far more complex and less attractive to chip manufacturers.

Essentially we are reaching the hairy edge of compression and more advanced codecs will be orders of magnitude more complex and the incremental gains will be very small. It is unlikely that we will see any more revolutionary video codecs that are "the greatest thing since sliced bread."

It is starting to reach a point where the surrounding features are the selling points. For example the DivX certified program ensures that your certified DVD player can play your DivX movies. You can't do that with real, wmv, or even Xvid. Our marketing department loves to say this, but DivX is the MP3 of video. Most codecs simply focus on compression, but it really is more than that! Video is the entire experience starting with the encode and ending at all the places you can watch the movie.

The bottom line is "Content is King." Even if you are 5% behind the best video codec, studios are going to look to the codec with the widest consumer base. PSNR be dammned, how many people can watch the movie is a far more powerful business case.

I am glad that the BBC is out there looking at this stuff as it is a breath of fresh air to have a studio actually understand how video compression works! However, I don't know that they will be able to "add value" in a way that will encourage people to use their codec.

Keep on encoding, people!

(NB- I have a slightly biased opinion as I am a codec developer at DivX... ;p )

Re:You're missing a lot

[Spy der Mann]

Just to inform you, in this article some guy applied the subband coefficient encoding algorithm used in wavelet image compression, to simple DCT coefficients (JPEG). The results: 16pixel-block DCT transform outperformed the wavelet image coding.

I'm sure that with a little research, much could be done with BBC's codec.

Re:You're missing a lot

[Bloater]

> The fact that it is currently unable to decode video in a meaning manner at normal speed concerns me greatly. This suggests that it's already 10-100x times slower than current generation video codecs.

Until recent optimisations, I haven't been able to decode broadcast resolution video realtime with any theora players. The issue is C/C++ vs vector assembler (ie, SSE/3dNOW) for the main transform.

The DCT has many fast implementations, the Mallet transform doesn't - lifting is one part of that, but the wavelet filters (along with the lifting algorithm) need implementing in assembler.

Re:You're missing a lot

[bullitB]

Right, but the whole point is that we *know* all about how to optimize Theora; the rules that apply to MPEG codecs mostly apply to Theora, too. VP3 was reasonably speedy itself before most of the optimizations were ripped out to make Theora cleaner.

I'm not saying that making Dirac fast will be impossible, just that it will take a lot of work, and I'm not sure that the time it takes to make Dirac usably fast wouldn't be better spent making Theora more efficient.

Dalek

[Anonymous Coward]

Rename it Dalek and you'll get lots of help!

What about high quality profiles for a change?

[Anonymous Coward]

The world already has N variants of MPEG4 for low-bitrate video. How many of these codecs support super ultra high quality video? American HDTV uses MPEG2, and at its current spec it looks like crap. A near-real-time encoding of a football game just looks abominable on ATSC's MPEG2. Can we start striving for an open-source codec with lossless or near lossless quality? How about 10-bit component, 4:2:2 color or better?

The studio-quality version of NTSC-res DV is 50 megabit per second, but that also includes no interframe dependency. I'm confident if you started with that and gave it P frames or B frames you could get it down to 25-30 megabit easily, which is not that much more than ATSC bitrate and a crapload better quality.

Re:What about high quality profiles for a change?

[DaHat]

If you are seeing ATSC video that looks like crap, I'd be careful what you blame. It could be the MPEG-2 video, but it's more likely a low bitrate encode.

ATSC gives each RF channel 19.392658 megabits/second... very few broadcasters use all of that, in fact the majority tend to stay under 10 even with multiple programs in their broadcast.

Sporting events, like high motion/action movies often need more bandwidth to look good than a soap opera or day time talk show, it's likely that someone either was lazy and didn't up the rate for the game or they just don't do that ever.

Take a look at DirecTV sometime, you'll notice that many of the movie and tv channels are pretty low bitrate, but for major sporting events (ie super bowl, boxing, etc) they up it very high to ensure a pristine signal and picture.

Re:What about high quality profiles for a change?

[Malc]

Too bad they don't do it for the soccer and rugby. The compression is so high it looks like they're playing on a piece of ironed green serge.

Re:What about high quality profiles for a change?

[Gldm]

The world already has N variants of MPEG4 for low-bitrate video. How many of these codecs support super ultra high quality video? American HDTV uses MPEG2, and at its current spec it looks like crap. A near-real-time encoding of a football game just looks abominable on ATSC's MPEG2. Can we start striving for an open-source codec with lossless or near lossless quality? How about 10-bit component, 4:2:2 color or better?

I thought of this when I was designing my codec actually.

How about lossless mode? That high enough quality? I've just about got it working now in my code.

How about unlimited resolution? (well maybe limited by unsigned 64bit max) How about independant per channel resolution with no restriction on odd sizes?

How about support for any depth per pixel and unlimited channels? Want do do a VR setup with Y, U, V, alpha, a mask, x2 for seperate interlacing fields, x2 again for stereo vision with 32bits per sample per channel? No problem, just expect alot of memory use on that one. But the code's there and working now.

Just about the only images I can't support in my project right now are true holographic modes, because I've been too lazy to write the 20 lines of code or so to support them without any real need yet. But if you want I could get you holographic support whenever I have an hour or two free.

Things would go alot faster if I could get some help debugging API issues like VFW. Anyone wanting to help out let me know.

realtime lords

[Doc Ruby]

I will trade codec engineering time for TARDIS technology. In fact, that's where I got my TARDIS from!

Re:realtime lords

[AndroidCat]

I thought they wanted help with "Dalek Coding", oops.

Re:realtime lords

[MrNemesis]

I wish they had called the thing TARDIS in a way; they're aiming on fitting an awful lot of stuff into a very small space ;)

Re:Coders like to be in charge of code

[Smuttley]

If you knew anything about the way the BBC runs and operates you'd realise how dumb a comment that was.

Re:theres one difference between the off video cod

[magefile]

Wrong. Theora is nearly there, whereas Dirac isn't even working in realtime (RTFS). And, it lets them stay with one paradigm (I can't believe I just used that word) because Theora has an audio analogue (ogg) whereas Dirac doesn't.

And that's ignoring the benefit of being involved with an OSS project that, while rough around the edges, has a large development community already (both Theora devs and the potential pool of Ogg devs who could be enticed to work on Theora), rather than starting a new OSS project.

outsourced

[0xbeefcake]

I'm wary of the fact that this "call for help" comes just days after over 1400 BBC technology staff were out sourced to Siemens

Re:outsourced

[Blitzenn]

Apparently the managers feel that they can get their work done for nothing now with all this open source stuff going on. Are we putting ourselves out of work?

Re:outsourced

[k98sven]

It wasn't an outsourcing. It was a sale. A privatization.

And how is this relevant to Dirac? It's a different department.
That was the Technology Division, whereas Dirac is being developed by the BBC Research and Development department.

I don't think it's quite fair to assume that there is a connection here. The Beeb has around 30,000 employees.. it's one of the worlds largest broadcasters. (if not the largest)

Re:outsourced

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't people been warning of this very thing for years now?

Re:outsourced

[oneiron]

Are we putting ourselves out of work?

Possibly? Which one is more important to you, your career in software development or the good of mankind being at the core of software development? Which do you think is more important to the rest of the open-source community? Can you have it both ways?

Tough questions... Is it even worth bothering to guess at answers?

Re:outsourced

[isorox]

BBC Technology (RIP) have nothing to do with Research and Design. BBCT has been a seperate (wholey owned) company, making a profit, for years. They're concerned with a lot of things, from boring PC, email, SAP maintenence, to Big Ass Satelite Dish control and signal routing.

Broadcast Equipment, (at least in News, and I think elsewhere), is looked after by a division that's still the BBC. For now.

R&D are basically a seperate department that noone else in the corporation has anything to do with. We throw money to Kingswood waren each year, and every so often they come out with a box that does some amazing things. They all play croquet too.

Re:outsourced

[Anonymous Coward]

Broadcast Equipment, (at least in News, and I think elsewhere), is looked after by a division that's still the BBC. For now.

Nu-uh. Central apparatus room (CAR,) International control room (ICR,) London Fibre Network, Satellite Operations (satops) and Broadcasting Infrastructure were all sold. (aka all the BBC's video, audio and data contribution and distribution networks)

Re:outsourced

[olau]

We throw money to Kingswood waren each year, and every so often they come out with a box that does some amazing things. They all play croquet too.

Croquet? Really? Sounds like a nice bunch of fellows!

Re:outsourced

[isorox]

They didn't get SCAR, or us news engineers, and I heard rumours that studio engineers (and equipment?) are part of resources. Selling off CCA was diabolical, but I get the feeling that TPTB didn't realise what they were doing until it was too late. I thought transmission was Crown Castle and BBC Broadcast.

The only people in Stage 6 that have moved are the server and network team. They tried to get some IT guys, but they realised Jupiter means evey PC on the news network is "broadcast equipment", and news don't want to sell that off (at least, until BH in 4 years)

Re:outsourced

[Anonymous Coward]

BH is a BBCT (RIP) managed project, but the CAA, CCR, LTA, for both BH and the resiliance in WH, will be owned and managed by BBC (in house) engineers.

Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[Spoing]

Dirac project - No mention of OGG media files or Theora video.

Theora project (OGG video) - A couple passing references to Dirac, one in relation to the OGG media container and combining OGG vorbis and Dirac.

The Theora and Dirac projects have similar goals, so even if they both go it alone I would think that discussions would spur new ideas in both. Wouldn't it be a good idea for these folks to talk together -- if only so that Dirac files are by default packaged in OGG media containers?

Re:Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dirac project - No mention of OGG media files or Theora video.

Actually they have a FAQ entry "What about Ogg Theora?"

Re:Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[Midnight Thunder]

How about joining their mailing lists and adding your 5c? I'm sure that they would be open to suggestions. Note, that at the same time it would make more sense to make it packaging independent and then simply have a package of preference. Until all of the major (what you average user knows about) media players supports the ogg envelope it may prove better to use something like avi, mov or mpeg 4 (I believe it too is an envelope). I would like ogg to be used, but then you need almost universal support for the format - something open source needs to work on in the audio/video realm.

Re:Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[Spoing]

1. How about joining their mailing lists and adding your 5c?

I'm already on a dozen lists...and should drop about 1/2 of them. Only so many hours in the day.

Re:Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[Spoing]

1. Actually they have a FAQ entry "What about Ogg Theora?"?

Thanks for the link.

I find that what people are currently discussing is most important, with FAQs and other documentation being less important; those documents don't change or express what people are thinking and considering right now.

Re:Theora and Dirac mailing lists and forums...

[LizardKing]

How about joining their mailing lists and adding your 5c?

I think you'll find that's three pence in real money.

codec modules?

[Doc Ruby]

Codecs are modules that fit into apps. Consistent with the three-tier architecture, they have APIs called by apps, and data access to the streams on which they operate, both of which are fairly generic (and ought to be completely standard). Their cores are different, depending on their transformation, their source/destination data formats, and their transformation technique, as well as metadata produced/consumed.

New codecs come along infrequently, and are usually too little, too late. There's a lot of duplicated effort across these projects. It seems a better strategy for everyone to share a skeleton that gets populated with codec core "plugins". An easy install mechanism might even let new datatypes deliver the smaller cores for codec'ing on the fly.

Re:codec modules?

[iso]

It seems a better strategy for everyone to share a skeleton that gets populated with codec core "plugins".

That's a great idea, and that's why it's been done. It's called QuickTime, and was even the container used in the MP4 standard.

Re:codec modules?

[Doc Ruby]

Where's the Linux source to this container, and docs for its inner APIs? Thanks for wading through the MP4 standard specs, and keeping Apple's tech available for the rest of us :).

Re:codec modules?

[PCM2]

Ahh, if it's Linux source you want, then I believe the project you're looking for is Ogg, an open source container format along the lines of QuickTime. You may have heard of it.

Re:codec modules?

[radish]

Or indeed AVI.

Re:codec modules?

[Doc Ruby]

Has anyone written an Ogg MP3 codec? Why not? According to that model, the data ought to come out of a server as MP3, playable by any MP3 player (reverse for encoding).

Re:codec modules?

[PCM2]

The bitstream itself is encoded as Ogg. So to decode it and turn it into music, any "client" device would need to understand both the Ogg container format and the MP3 audio format. Pretty much nothing out there does that (particularly standalone/hardware players). You could write some software with both components, no doubt, and that would be a "valid" use of Ogg -- but probably not a legal one, if you haven't licensed the Fraunhofer patents. Sort of the whole point of Ogg/Vorbis is to avoid that mess; that's why nobody's done any work with Ogg and MP3 (since there are plenty of other container formats -- MPEG4 provides one, for example, which was derived from QuickTime).

Sounds good

[ImaLamer]

Where do I sign up?

My contribution

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't help with the codec, but my top compression tip is to use gifs or pngs in the documentation rather than jpegs:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/doc umentati on/algorithm/wlt_transform.htm

Look at FFMpeg's snow codec

[physicist]

It's a superior wavelet based codec.
With ideas from Dirac.

license?

[ambrosius27]

Ok, but first a couple questions:

1) what license will the Dirac codec be released under? (GPL, GPL w/ linking exception, LGPL, MPL, BSD, MIT X11 license, non-open source license?)

2) where is the code repository?

(The Register link froze on me; so, I apologize if these questions are answered in the linked article.)

Re:license?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) what license will the Dirac codec be released under? (GPL, GPL w/ linking exception, LGPL, MPL, BSD, MIT X11 license, non-open source license?)

Triple license: MPL 1.1 / GPL / LGPL.

2) where is the code repository?

Sourceforge.

Re:license?

[Anonymous Coward]

1) GPL/LGPL/MPL

2) http://sourceforge.net/projects/dirac

Re:license?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah El Reg would have major trouble dealing with a slashdotting......

Lazy and a coward.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC isnt a company in the traditional sense.

its basically a nonprofit

This CODEC is a good thing!

[francisew]

I'm going to work on this if I have free time.

It seems interesting to me for several reasons:

• Open source.
• Higher compression level than current methods.
• Interesting technology.
• Project has a financial base and centralized development point.
• Project already has large exposure.

To those who don't think it worthwhile: they aren't forcing you to join in, and they aren't excluding you from the eventual benefits.

The wavelet technology they are using is IMHO a very good idea. I'd like to see Neural Network based compression operating to further compress the data stream (I'm not sure if it would be able to compress much more after the wavelet algorithm has already compressed the stream).

At the very least, by reading the code, lots of open source developers will be exposed to wavelet compression algorithms, and learn a bit about video representation. Doesn't seem like a losing prospect for anyone.

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[Blitzenn]

When you spend your free time working on this, take an extra moment to think about the BBC IT staff that was just laid off. Think about the meals you are taking out of those children's mouths becaue the BBC felt they didn't need the staff when they could get the work done for free. Just try to remember that people are really being hurt by allowing the BBC to make use of your free time instead of paying their own staff to do the work. Maybe you will offer to spend an hour a week cleaning their offices too? I am sure they would like to cut that staff as well.

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[k98sven]

1) Nobody has been laid off, moron. They are just employed by Siemens now instead of the BBC.

2) None of those people were working on Dirac. It's a completely different department.

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[Blitzenn]

Tell that to the people on the black list. YOU would have to ba a moron to not recognize what is going to happen there.

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[k98sven]

Do you read what you reference? It says that that project was canned.

And what, exactly, does this now-deprecated document have to do with the Dirac codec?

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[francisew]

I'd think that the argument someone made in an early post about the BBC not being a software development company applies. It only makes sense for the BBC to be involved in media distribution development to a very limited extent. Hiring a single person (or a few people) to coordinate the CODEC development makes sense. Hiring a full blown programming team wouldn't. They will need a continual progression of work over a long-term. They will also not be licensing the technology or getting a revenue for it. So why would they hire anybody to develop it?

I would be surprised to find any BBC worker who was laid off from a BBC 'software CODEC programming job' because of OS development. If anything, it will boost the productivity of employees working on the CODEC, by allowing them to develop the CODEC more quickly and robustly. This is a matter of asking the community to help develop a tool that it would like to use, without footing the full bill.

Besides that, why shouldn't I be allowed to give my own time? I can volunteer in a hospital, a shelter or as a tutor, why shouldn't I be able to volunteer my high-tech skills for a cause I believe to be worthwhile. Isn't it worthwhile to reduce the cost of disseminating the 'free press'?

"BEGIN TROLL FILTER" The US & britain are bombing other countries in the hopes of bringing them freedom. Why not support a better dissemination of information to them, to help distribute a picture of what is going on in the rest of the world. Change can be voluntary instead. "END TROLL FILTER"

Should a large portion of the BBC IT staff be paid to develop CODECs? I believe not, it's not the BBC's task to develop distribution media. However, you are raising a completely extraneous point, since I'm in no way replacing in-house IT staff. But if I felt that I could volunteer time for replacing IT staff, why should I feel bad about it?

I'm not quite sure what upsets you about this whole issue, but please feel free to explain to me how developing a useful, novel open-source CODEC puts IT staff out of work.

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[16K Ram Pack]

I'd love to help with this because I'd love to see open codecs.

Here's my problems:-

I don't really know C++ very well.

I can't get my head around the papers that explain the maths.

Are there any "tea boy" jobs that can be done (like promotion, documentation, admin) that can be done?

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[Blitzenn]

YOU didn't read it. It was canned by the BBC and then sold to Seimens after teh agreed to transfer. If Seimens had no intention of using it, why would they buy it?

Re:This CODEC is a good thing!

[francisew]

I just began to read the project code myself, but it seems that they have pretty clearly laid out formatting issues and other points for keeping the project well organized and cleanly coded. I'd guess that anyone who would want to review code to check for formatting would be welcome.

Besides that, I'm not too sure. I used to be really keen on the idea of everything being coded in C++. Then I learned more about *NIX (read Art of Unix Programming, Eric S. Raymond), and now I'm more in favor of standard C. After reading a bit of the actual DIRAC code, this project seems like it'll take a while to get comfortable with (due to C++ notation that makes things slightly less legible), but quite interesting. Does anyone else find that C++'s 'good' features are designed in such a way that although they are really useful, are also very hard to read?

Why not contact the BBC DIRAC team, and ask them the same questions? I think they will appreciate the response.

Good ol' tax-funded science at work

[Cryofan]

This is what you get when you pay taxes--REAL SCIENCE. The BBC is of course funded by tax dollars.

As opposed to the so-called free market vaporware hype science that is the main focus in America.

Now tell me about all the great accomplishments coming out of American media....

Don't let the free market, neoliberal, laissez faire scammers hoax you, my fellow Americans. Real accomplishments were made in the past with tax funded research. And when we go back to Keynesianism and protectionism, just like what is being done in Europe, we will get America back on track.

Re:Good ol' tax-funded science at work

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly is the point of this? America has quite a lot of publically funded research and devlopment going on. Quite alot of privately funded ones too, and it works. America leads the world in research and scientific achievement.

The free market doesn't always work and neither does your idea of neo-communist collectivism either. To simply throw away the obvious advances of what America has done under its current system is just being outright ignorant.

I tend to think that the BBC is as great as it is due to it being very well managed and structured, not by the fact that it is taxpayer funded. The mere fact that taxpayers pay for it does not guarantee success.

Re:Good ol' tax-funded science at work

[Triskele]

I tend to think that the BBC is as great as it is due to it being very well managed and structured, not by the fact that it is taxpayer funded. The mere fact that taxpayers pay for it does not guarantee success.

Well if it was commercially owned I think it would guarantee failure. The BBC's culture is quite unique and probably not particularly understandable unless you're a Brit as they're a hangover from the days of the Establishment - a belief (however pompous and misguided) in public service for the good of the nation (and who's good has always been hotly contested).

Re:Good ol' tax-funded science at work

[mike260]

I agree with you in general terms, but the fact is that if the BBC was a for-profit business then Dirac would not be GPLd. They'd be working on a closed, DRMd movie player in order to help them securely sell access to their archive online. Instead they're developing a free-as-in-beer, free-as-in-money codec in order to facilitate free public access to their archive.

I have to say, I'm pretty happy with how they spend my TV license fee generally.

saw them yesterday

[t_allardyce]

I saw them at the Linux expo at Olympia yesterday, it looked pretty decent and its still alpha, they said they sometimes get people helping and pointing out bugs, its pretty rockin that they're getting funding considering the direction the BBC is going, definately better than suns java desktop, but damnit they wernt giving away any penguins or anything >:(

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Technonotice_Dom]

I don't normally feed trolls... but what the hell.

a) the BBC isn't just a "company" - it's the highest quality broadcaster in the world. They always have done research and been at the forefront of new technology throughout their history. This is a project that anybody can help contribute to - as it'll benefit the community as a whole when it's complete.
b) they have put effort into it already - they've put out quite a few releases already (SF page) and have been working on it for a couple of years
c) although they want it to improve their online streaming services (currently done using Real technology), an open standard, no encumbrance from patents, with technology that other codecs at present don't use, is a very important project for not only the BBC, but for all of the computing community

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Blitzenn]

They are a business like any other competeing for eyballs. It doesn't matter where the money comes from or if the bottom line comes out even at the end of the year, (definition of not for profit). It is still dollars that they would have spent hiring staff to do this work. Those people are current out of work. See the article for yourself on how they just laid off 1400 IT workers. Coincidence? Not!

See Sourceforge

[Midnight Thunder]

Look at Dirac's Sourceforge project pagefor more information the project, including license info, mailing lists, public forums, news and current source.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Blitzenn]

The BBC IS a company. Just because they are government run doesn't give them some special waver. They still hire workers to do work, they still make product, they still pay bills and buy material to make their product. They still need money coming in the door, regardless of the source to keep the wheels turning. How does this not define them as a business. Stop letting other people define things for you and use your head on this one. They would have had to spend the money to do the work for themselves. Now they are trying to get it done for free. You try to convince the 1400 recently laid off BBC IT staff workers that they couldn't have done this. Tell their children that they can't eat lunch anymore because you are willing to do it for free instead. Shame!

The BBC can't be seen to bow to govt. pressure....

[tribes]

Sir Humphrey: "Well, we can always try to persuade them [the BBC] to withdraw programs voluntarily, once they realize that transmission is not in the public interest."

Jim Hacker: "Well, it is not in my interest. And I represent the public, so it is not in the public interest."

Sir Humphrey: "That's a novel argument. We haven't tried that on them before."

Blondes are good and all

[wikdwarlock]

... but I say throw in some variety. Maybe a redhead, a brunette, and a sky blue haired girl in a threesome?

BBC soylent green

[wombatmobile]

the BBC is funded by the British government

I think you mean the British people.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Technonotice_Dom]

Er... re-read my post slowly this time. I didn't say they weren't a company. I said they weren't just a company. And a waiver for what exactly? Asking people in the community to help on an OSS project? I didn't think you needed a waiver for that - I haven't heard you complain about Zend (creators of PHP), MySQL AB and all of the rest.

At the moment they're paying through the nose for the rights to use the Real software. An open video codec of this nature doesn't exist at the moment - they *are* spending money developing it, but they're asking for contributions from the community. Which is entirely acceptable in my books as they're going to donate a totally patent free, next generation, first of its kind video codec back to the community. They're not selling it - they're donating it for anybody to use, just like they've worked on technology in the past.

If you don't want to help, nobody's forcing you to. If somebody does want to help, it'll just move things along a little faster.

And on a side note, weren't the 1400 workers transferred to Siemens and not totally laid off?

Evolving a codec is not going to work.

[Jim McCoy]

Personally, I'm dissappointed that the idea of using genetic programming (or related technology) to develop or improve CODECs has not, at least to my knowlege, taken off.

The problem is that the evaluation loop is too expensive. It is _trivial_ to develop a system that attempts to eveolve various mechanisms to encode data, but to iterate each generation you need some sort of way to determine the winners and the losers. If you could figure out a way to use a program to determine which was the better of two video encoding mechanisms it would be worthy of a PhD or two. The simple way to think about this is that if you could perform this evaluation with a computer you would have figured out a practical mechanism for general-application computer vision.

One possibility is to corral ten thousand or so friends and get them to view three encoded clips (the original source and the versions produced by the two population members you are testing) but keeping this up long enough to end up with a decent encoder is an unlikely proposition. Making this harder is that once your population of encoding algorithms weeds out the obviously broken solutions you need evaluators who can determine things like which codec produced the fewest artifacts and other details that would shrink your potential pool of human evaluators.

The hard part about using evolutionary computing techniques is not the evolution engine, it is all about figuring out how to test the population members your engine generates. If you do not already have a well-defined target that is easy to describe mathematically (or a test environment in which you can pit two population members against each other) you are basically screwed.

Re:Evolving a codec is not going to work.

[skids]

It is _trivial_ to develop a system that attempts to eveolve various mechanisms to encode data, but to iterate each generation you need some sort of way to determine the winners and the losers.

I am not so naive as to be suggesting human evaluation here, give me some credit willya? :-)

First off, as a side point, for lossless encoding evaluation is trivial.

Secondly, there has indeed been much work towards automated performance evaluation of lossy codecs. Not too much on video yet, but a lot on audio, right down to the level of modeling the resulting neural impulses generated by a waveform in the human ear. By using existing research which involved human viewing and listening surveys (Other people's PHd's), developing fitness tests is not as hard as you make it out to be.

Finally, while evolving a whole CODEC is probably not practical with today's CPU power, there are a lot of subsystems which could be optimized through GA/GP to improve their efficiency. Many times in an algorithm you have a subsystem who's functionality is well defined, but who's optimal implementation or parameters are not known.

For example, many algorithms use lookup tables, and I'm sure a clever mathemetician could come up with a family of symmetrical transform functions that vary across a set of coefficients. Those are probably the cases which GA should tackle first, because the search space is much smaller and represents a constant, a "coefficient" to use the term very loosly, of an algorithm rather than a whole algorithm.

The general idea here is not to magically create the best looking/sounding CODEC ever out of thin air. It is to take the goals which we suspect will result in good CODECs and find new algorithms to acheive them. Once we find optimal solutions to those, we either dissect them for insight, which improves our base of theory, or at that point we submit them for side-by-side human comparison with existing CODECs.

dirac

[xmp_phrack]

It's named after a Paul Dirac, a British scientist who worked on quantum mechanics.

Re:dirac

[Tim the Gecko]

Dirac was renowned for being taciturn (the joke was that a "dirac" was the quantum of speech) so perhaps this was the inspiration for using his name in the context of compression technology.

Biography here and here

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[mmkkbb]

You try to convince the 1400 recently laid off BBC IT staff workers that they couldn't have done this. Tell their children that they can't eat lunch anymore because you are willing to do it for free instead. Shame!

Learn to read, buddy. From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/bbc_techno logy/:

"However, workers have won a number of guarantees which it's hoped will smooth the transition, including a promise that their employment terms and conditions will remain unchanged for three years and no compulsory redundancies for 12 months."

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Blitzenn]

Sure they were 'transferred'. Right along with the black list as to who to fire when they get there. Isn't that the same thing as being laid off or should I pick on semantics more?

Secondly, I don't have anyproblem with open source. None at all. It simply bothers me to see a company take advantage of the system we are using to support ourselves to save themselves from having to pay for it. Apathy seems to run deep on this subject and that really bothers me. No one wants to see or admit what is happening until it happens to them.

Open source products like MySQL have enabled me as a coder and system developer to work on my own and develop starts to projects on my time with my own resources to get work without having to pay thousands of dollars for software licenses. I didn't spend the money on the licenses before and the work didn't get done before either. My employers are happier too, they still pay for the product and the licensing in the end. They can not see what they are going to buy before they agree to it is all. I use this stuff as it was intended. To enable us to provide a better product in the end. Not cut jobs like mine out of the picture.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Blitzenn]

OOPS I meant to say "They can now see what they are going to buy.."

BBC needs help?

[Air-conditioned cowh]

I'm a little concerned that the BBC are spending so little resources on this codec. I would really like to see it succeed. Unfortunately I'm not a competent codec hacker :-(

Given the amount of cash it must take to make TV and radio programs, the expensive equipment, exotic locations, high-paid celebrities etc, surely they can properly fund this project with the change?

Employing enough hackers to do the whole job themselves can't possibly cost much compared to the other stuff they do. Obviously I am happy that it _is_ an open source project and it would be better if they could build a community around it, but it seems to be an under-the-desk project for one or two really keen engineers right now.

Re:BBC needs help?

[16K Ram Pack]

What? When you could produce an episode of Celebrity Pet Makeover Challenges from Hell instead?

Dr

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess Dr's can't produce anything themselvs, they need hackers to actually develop the thing. The question, then, what do they need this Dr for?

Re:The BBC can't be seen to bow to govt. pressure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sir Humphrey: "Bernard, Ministers should never know more than they need to know. Then they can't tell anyone. Like secret agents, they could be captured and tortured."
Bernard: "You mean by terrorists?"
Sir Humphrey: "By the BBC, Bernard."

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

a way for johnny foreigner and all you colonials to repay us for the hitch hiker's guide.

A donation towards my license fee would be an acceptable alternative

Re:*** NEWSFLASH! ***

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes we do. This one will be vetted and confirmed patent free. This is an open codec, backed by the BBC (one of the largest broadcasters in the world, mind you), and you're shooting it down?

Sex hurts compression

[0x0d0a]

Remember that the famous Lena image, which was cut from a Playboy magazine, was a *major* still image compression benchmark for a long time. It was a pretty bad choice -- it has a duplicate line at the top, it doesn't necessarily have the ideal color range, and worst of all, it was copyrighted.

The urge to benchmark with smut is strong, but should be resisted.

Re:Sex hurts compression

[rreyelts]

Heh... I worked with images of Lenna in my DSP classes while working on my CmpE at Georgia Tech many moons ago. This article seems to disagree with you about the image being a good benchmark.

Re:Sex hurts compression

[Bloater]

Smut is the most prolific content, it should be compressed well.

The Dirac codebook:

1 pink
01 blonde
001 white and sticky
00000001 blue
00000010 green
00000011 yellow
.
.
.

How does dirac compare to MPEG-4?

[Anonymous Coward]

How does dirac compare to MPEG-4 when it comes to compression? And how about performance?

oh, we see it

[zogger]

I can think of several common ones immediately. Our gasoline taxes go to highways, that's a fee or license of sorts, as you need both a license for you and a license (registration and insurance) for your vehicle, and pay a fee for them, plus the day to day gasoline. If you hunt or fish here (very popular and not limited to private land"lords" and rich people), a large part of your license fees go for conservation issues, wildlife management, stocking programs, keeping land in the public commons and in good shape, etc,etc. Our postal system is still the best in the world, no where else can you ship letters so far for so cheap, and it does go through, despite some glitches, and it's supported from the stamps, still cheap, a license fee of sorts. The US is a LARGE country, and everyone pays the same fee for the postal service, whether heavy urban close distances or someone living back in the bush someplace.

There's room for improvement, but I wouldn't say it's totally bad or there's no equivalent type generic public good that is fee or license supported.

I'm the first one to rank on my government when it does bad,do it all the time, but when it does good, it stands for itself, you (we here inside the US) can see it.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[be-fan]

Dude. It's not our job to keep them employed. Both the UK and the United States are free countries. I can do what I want in my free time. If that's bad for them, well, though luck, that's how free markets work.

Wavelets patent-free? I think not!

[TimoT]

The most likely reason Xiph started video work on Tarkin with wavelets first is that wavlets are completely patent free.

Hehe. ROTFLMAO. I have done data compression research and there are very few mathematical ideas as patent encumbered as wavelets. A quick naive search of USPTO patents with wavelet and data compression brings up about 250 patents and just wavelets about 10x as much and that's not even looking very closely.

TimoT

Re:Wavelets patent-free? I think not!

[bullitB]

I have done data compression research and there are very few mathematical ideas as patent encumbered as wavelets.

True, my statement "wavlets are completely patent free" is errant. (And not just because I spelled wavelets incorrectly. Ouch.)

Wavelets are, however less patent encumbered in the context in which they are used in Tarkin and Dirac, which is...why they're being used in Tarkin and Dirac.

the government can

[Anonymous Coward]

The BBC had a very different director a few months back, Greg Dyke. He public about his stance on the Iraq War and the political implications of following certain storys. He was essentiall pushed out and a more "friendly" one put in place.

The government can stop the BBC if it wants. Especially at a time when they are deciding the funding of the BBC, another tax called the TV licence.

Re:the government can

[trewornan]

The BBC is overseen by a "Board of Governors" who are subject to political influence (or possibly can simply be bought) like any other group of individuals (*cough*ongress). That does not mean that the UK Government control the BBC in the way you suggest . . . although, admittedly, it would be naive to believe that an organisation with the power and resouces of a major government could not exert considerable influence if it wanted to (and in the case of Greg Dyke the UK Gov'nt most certainly did).

Breaking the law, breaking the law

[tepples]

Do not confuse the codec itself with the designated player.

Unless the copyrights and patents in the codec itself are licensed only in conjunction with the designated player.

Re:Breaking the law, breaking the law

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Whether or not this is the case, the codec itself can be taken on its own merit. That is all I was suggesting.

Re:Breaking the law, breaking the law

[PCM2]

But we live in the real world, so the codec and the intellectual property laws and assertions that surround it are inseparable. A theoretical codec that's prohibitive to actually implement is valueless.

Trademarks can solve that problem

[tepples]

Then it's not a DIRAC(tm) codec. If you want your code to get branded as a DIRAC(tm) codec, it will have to produce and/or decode conforming bitstreams. Otherwise rename it.

NIH

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have thrown their resources behind an existing codec like Theora rather than inventing yet another one!

NO ADVERTS ON BBC

[jollyhockysticks]

Please, while we're bigging-up Auntie Beeb for embracing and contriibuting to OSS,( and explaining about the TV License we pay in this country for it and how thats not the same as government funding) - lets also mention that that license fee has an extra and to me fabulous side effect -

NO ADVERTS ! thats right folks, no commercials every 2 minutes ruining your attention span, not even in between shows, they'll tell you whats coming on later in the week or whatever in the gaps between but they won't be pushing hamburgers on your kids or whatever

Re:NO ADVERTS ON BBC

[KontinMonet]

Amen brother! Mind-numbingly repetitive fatuous presentations for people who clearly have problems cleaning, cooking, washing and generally making informed decisions as to what products would be most suitable... Bricks have to be banned from our TV room otherwise we would never be able to watch commercial TV for more than 20 minutes without serious damage occurring.

BBC & Technology

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a broadcasting organisation. Video codecs are very much part of broadcasting. They also did a lot of development on digital TV, which is soon going to replace all analogue TV by law in the UK.

Not to mention NICAM stereo broadcasts which were developed by the BBC.

The quote doesn't support what you are saying.

[francisew]

The quote you have chosen seems to indicate that their choice has nothing to do with DRM, but rather browser support.

It comes down to whether or not they need to supply multiple clip formats due to platform dependant licensing issues.

They seem to be having trouble with using formats that are platform dependant and programs that aren't freely distributable. They are having to provide technical support for closed-source programs.

Suggestions are not needed

[Anonymous Coward]

These suggestions and dozens more have already been made. The Dirac team needs programmers, not wish lists.

Re:theres one difference between the off video cod

[Enucite]

So what you're saying (in a few more words) is, "[I] mean that bastard child of a vp codec derivate".

NB re: Advertisements

[lxt]

It should be pointed out, the BBC isn't allowed to run commercials in the UK. It's global stations (BBC America, BBC World) do run ads, because they're not in the UK. It's worth noting only some of their global stations do run ads (BBC World Service Radio doesn't). There is a commercial arm of the BBC, called "BBC Enterprises". It produces magazines and the like, and is also a record label for BBC artists (mainly kids stuff). There's currently some suggestion that the commercial side might be sold off...

Re:"Sex hurts compression"

[r3m0t]

"Sex hurts compression"

I thought you were talking about something else.

Depending on the aircraft

[csmacd]

They may actually be weightless! Zero-G aircraft, private spaceflights....the possibilites are endless!

Technological progress

[LordK2002]

Very much I'd say, unless you want all technological progress to stop here.

I think the USPTO / UKPO / EPO will manage that for us, whether we want it or not.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Anonymous Coward]

They weren't "laid off". The entire company (BBC Technology), which was a daughter company of the Beeb, was sold to Siemens Business Services.

Re:"Sex hurts compression"

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia - Sex compression hurts

The only wavelet based open source codec?

[Gldm]

Hmm, funny thing is, I've been working on an open source wavelet based video codec for the last four years or so. And even funnier is that I believe if you check over at Doom9, there's yet another one going around there too.

Re:The only wavelet based open source codec?

[trewornan]

Man hours are irrelevant - DRM will never work because at some point they've got to give you the key . . . if you can't watch it you won't buy it.

Re:The only wavelet based open source codec?

[Gldm]

That's the point, going from encrypted content + key to generalized decryption system is only a matter of time and effort. The more people interested in decrypting the content, the sooner it'll happen. The only possible response for DRM authors is to make new DRM schemes, which will then also be cracked. Since it's impractical for a DRM develpment team to develop new encryption standards and change the market over to them faster than people crack the DRM, it'll never work.

Parrallel CPU Video Compression for codecs

[John Sokol]

At my Enumera Project We used a 100 CPU Beowulf like Cluster to compress Video in realtime using a several different codec technologies including wavelet.

The idea is that TV stations think nothing on spending $100,000 on hardware, but people streaming web video keep trying to use a cheap > $2000 PC. We tried the other approch. The more CPU power a compression algorythem uses the more efficient the compression. This is almost a rule, not counting optimization(this is equal to adding CPU power). There is a limit to this, and the code needs to be able to use this.

We were able to compress 1080i HDTV with H.263l in real time.,Looked decent at 1Mbps. I'm sure doing this with the Dirac codec with this would also work.

Fitness functions...

[Goonie]

Further to this, one thing I *do* know about GA's is that you need a fitness function to evaluate the output. With codecs, the ultimate fitness function is somebody watching the video and judging how good it looks, and that can't be automated (because the whole point is how the video is perceived by a human). Hence, I would be very dubious that GA's are much use in creating a video codec.

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[idlemachine]

Sure they were 'transferred'. Right along with the black list as to who to fire when they get there. Isn't that the same thing as being laid off or should I pick on semantics more?

Unless there were 1400 names on that 'black list' then yes, you do need to "pick on semantics" some more. If you're going to make ridiculous "but what about the children?!"-type posts, you'd better have something other than rhetoric to defend it.

Please learn how to make links.

[Anonymous Coward]

Please learn how to make links.

<a href="http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php">ta ke a read of this</a>

(without any spaces put there by Slashdot) yields: take a read of this

If that's too much typing for you,

<URL:http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php& g t;

(with the "&; g t;" put there by Slashdot replaced by the ">" that I typed in originally) yields: http://eff.org/IP/BBC_CMSC_testimony.php

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Anonymous Coward]

They are a business like any other competeing for eyballs.

You just keep going with that idiotic nonsense don't you? Are those eyeballs of yours connected to your brain at all?

it's NOT A BBC LICENCE FEE

[RMH101]

it's a licence to RECEIVE. period. all terrestrial TV, radio (of which the BBC provides an amazing array of services). At £2.32 a week it's a bargain.
Oh, and you don't get "BBC Hoodlums".

Re:it's NOT A BBC LICENCE FEE

[stephanruby]

Yeah, but the other channels, the ones that get ten times the viewership, don't get any of that money, and BBC does get that money. That's why I call it the BBC license fee.

The BBC is a coercive organization which does philanthropic ventures. In that sense, it's no better than the mafia.

Re:NO ADVERTS ON BBC - BULLCRAP!!

[Anonymous Coward]

That is a major lie!!

The BBC self promotes other BBC shows and channels. Just because they aren't showing Peanut Butter commercials doesn't mean they don't have adverts!

container and free codecs API? there are

[Anonymous Coward]

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.multimedia.matros ka.devel

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.comp.multimedia.gstrea mer.devel

Re:Lets stop paying for all software

[Blitzenn]

So you obviously have a number in mind that is OK to layoff in place of Free labor. Will it still be ok when it's you?