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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."
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.
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Unlike licenses for MPEG standards, some licenses for the Dirac codec will be available royalty-free.
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.
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. :)
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"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.
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.
Sourceforge project
BBC's Dirac homepage
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)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
Check the sourceforge project
I am NaN
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
--
make install -not war
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:-- Mike
Dirac project - No mention of OGG media files or Theora video.
Actually they have a FAQ entry "What about Ogg Theora?"
Er no, becuase the government _can't_ stop the BBC from doing anything. They obviously have limitations like what frequency they can broadcast on.
.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.
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
This is in direct contradiction to social security in the US where the government controls it and could (probably) stop paying out tomorrow.
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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 >:(
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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
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.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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.
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?
It's named after a Paul Dirac, a British scientist who worked on quantum mechanics.
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).
... 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).
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
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.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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.
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.
May we never see th
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
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.
Opinions my own, statements of fact may contain errors
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
#include witty_one_liner.h
...err like .. perhaps the entire archives about to be published?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/tv_and_ra dio/3836941.stm
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.