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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."
Compared to many other broadcoasters the BBC has a long and excellent record of producing great programms AND embracing the web/technology.
... compared to companies like Real ...
Certainly a good 'partner' to support
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?
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
What's the advantage to using Dirac over a standard?
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?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Unlike licenses for MPEG standards, some licenses for the Dirac codec will be available royalty-free.
BLING BLING. Meet the architecture that's changing everything.
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.
and dirac.
And that is: Dirac exists.
(or do you mean that bastard child of a vp codec derivate?)
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
"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.
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.
...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.
I am NaN
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.
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.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Uh.. the BBC isn't a business.
So.. it has come to this
Sourceforge project
BBC's Dirac homepage
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.
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.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
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.
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.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
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.
I will trade codec engineering time for TARDIS technology. In fact, that's where I got my TARDIS from!
--
make install -not war
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.
Someone had to do it.
mod parent up please. +5 Fact
If you knew anything about the way the BBC runs and operates you'd realise how dumb a comment that was.
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.
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
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?
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
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
Where do I sign up?
Get your Unix fortune now!
It's a superior wavelet based codec.
With ideas from Dirac.
Why postpone until tomorrow what you can postpone indefinitely
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.)
~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
"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).
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I'm going to work on this if I have free time.
It seems interesting to me for several reasons:
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.
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 >:(
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
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
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!
Look at Dirac's Sourceforge project pagefor more information the project, including license info, mailing lists, public forums, news and current source.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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
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!
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."
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).
... but I say throw in some variety. Maybe a redhead, a brunette, and a sky blue haired girl in a threesome?
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
the BBC is funded by the British government
I think you mean the British people.
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.
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?
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.
It's named after a Paul Dirac, a British scientist who worked on quantum mechanics.
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!
o logy/:
Learn to read, buddy. From http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/10/01/bbc_techn
"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."
-mkb
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.
OOPS I meant to say "They can now see what they are going to buy.."
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.
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.
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).
--
USA: home of the world's largest terrorist training camp.
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
How does dirac compare to MPEG-4 when it comes to compression? And how about performance?
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.
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.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
TimoT
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.
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.
They could have thrown their resources behind an existing codec like Theora rather than inventing yet another one!
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.
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.
Did he inhale?
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.
So what you're saying (in a few more words) is, "[I] mean that bastard child of a vp codec derivate".
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.
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...
"Sex hurts compression"
I thought you were talking about something else.
They may actually be weightless! Zero-G aircraft, private spaceflights....the possibilites are endless!
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
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).
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.
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.
Someone had to do it.
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.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
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.
Introducing the new Occam Fusion! Now with sqrt(-1) fewer blades!
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.
I am always doing that which I can not do, in order that I may learn how to do it. - Pablo Picasso
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.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
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.
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.
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".
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)
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?