Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Sun Developing Open Media Stack

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the shine-it-up-and-call-it-new dept.

Graftweed writes to share that Sun is working on a new open video codec called Open Media Stack (OMS). OMS video will be based on H.26x technology and promises to deliver royalty-free open video. This certainly isn't the first attempt at an open codec, hopefully Sun will decide to add something to the table beyond just their name.

4 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. I thought h.26x was patented by tepples · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I thought there were essential patents without Free licenses on the H.26x technologies, such as the H.264 Advanced Video Coding used in MPEG-4 part 10.

  2. Seriously? Why? by rmdir+-r+* · · Score: 5, Interesting
    What's wrong with existing solutions? Xiph has a pretty good container format, and a codec comparable divx/xvid, while the BBC has recently finished Dirac, which is not quite ready, but which has the advantage of being:
    • Patent and royalty free (the BBC worked very hard at this)
    • GPLv2, LGPL, MIT or MPL licensed reference implementation
    • Finished: the bitstream has been frozen, etc. Integration with container formats isn't quite there though.
    • Better than h.264
    So why is trying making a patent-free h.264 clone worth the time? You are certainly duplicating effort, and we already have solutions.

    NIH, perhaps? Too many bored engineers?

    1. Re:Seriously? Why? by trawg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Xiph has a pretty good container format, and a codec comparable divx/xvid Last time I checked the open source Xiph stuff wasn't really comparable to DivX/Xvid - that was a while ago so maybe they've made advances since then, but the last benchmarks I saw showed it was not as good for quality/bitrate.

      I have been posting about Dirac in almost every thread on video codecs on Slashdot hoping to raise awareness; the fact that it is truly free and (hopefully) not going to be encumbered by patent rubbish means we might stand a chance of freeing Internet video from the clutches of Adobe/Flash and all the h264/other codec patent holders.

      So why is trying making a patent-free h.264 clone worth the time? You are certainly duplicating effort, and we already have solutions.

      NIH, perhaps? Too many bored engineers? My first reaction on reading this was "this is awesome news because the more options the better", which is typically my attitude towards most software. That said, the more people working on Dirac, the better - the BBC have done the hard yards and having a pool of awesome Sun engineers working on it and improving it would certainly help matters.
  3. Re:Alas, another flavour by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    All they have to do is include it with the various java distributions and suddenly a billion lazy programmers have a free, well documented, easy to use, cross-platform codec that requires no additional tooling. There are libraries out there for using other codecs, but the 2 steps it takes to develop for them (download, then add library to build path) is such a huge barrier to entry they might as well not exist.

    Of course they could have just supported one of the other open formats, but why would you blow tons of cash on someone else's failed format when you can have your very own stillborn one? The grief is just so much more personal that way.