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Sun Developing Open Media Stack
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.
> hopefully Sun will decide to add something to
> the table beyond just their name.
The *Java* Sun Open Media Stack ?
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.
Isn't there already a gpl'd alternative to .flv? What advantages are there in sun's offering? And given that the patent fees on .mp4 are so low, is that really needed?
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...uhm. not only is Xvid an "attempt" at an open codec, it's arguably a success. I use it for just about all of my encoding, andyway and it's certainly more of a success than Theora.
- 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?
Probably that whole "actually being used" part that tends to cause problems
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.
Different context for the word stack: in this case it's a stack of components, like video and audio codecs sitting on top of some stream format sitting on a container file format. You know - like when they talk about a protocol stack (HTTP on top of TCP on top of IP on top of Ethernet, etc.).
Theora is a last-generation codec. It's pretty good, but quality/compression-wise, it's comparable to DivX.
What we really want is something which is comparable to h.264.
Oh, to have mod points for you.
Some people just don't understand that "Open Source" doesn't mean "license-compatible with my license of choice."
The problem with dirac was that it was to slow. At least two implementations Schrodinger and the partial not yet finished one in FFMPEG (last SoC) can offer the performance users want to have. Since there is there are now hardware (GPU and FGPA) decoders and encoders for Dirac, a browser plugin going to developed, chances are that this can be a next step in a better codec and free for all. Now I always wondered what will be the audio equivalent of Dirac ;)
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If the web is heading in the direction of being an online virtual library and multimedia service, then yes, you want HDR. You want online photographs and mediascapes to be every bit as good as they are in other formats. Web 3.x (or whatever the latest version is under cvs) has chosen to compete with physical publishing, television and cinema. Those are tough fields to compete with, if you're operating at a significantly lower grade.
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Except that Sun's work is based on h261, because it's so old that no patents can possibly apply to it any more. Dirac is a current/next-generation codec that's also royalty free, and certainly a lot closer to completion than Sun's offering. The FAQ for OMS considers Theora and Dirac as friendly competition, which is fair enough, but really, why not just put more talent into Dirac?
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Nice article on what H.26x is at ddj: http://www.ddj.com/201203492
I had no idea how tangled the standards were... ugh.
Actually, I think Sun is one of the only companies that could possibly do this. Java is installed on the majority of Windows desktops, and self-updates on each new version. Sun could roll this out as part of a Java update and hardly anyone would notice. Now their only problem is getting content producers to use the codec - good luck with that.
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First of all, the specification and the reference implementation to produce and read back a valid stream were just finished. A month ago. After a few years of development. And it still doesn't even use all of the features, let alone efficiently.
The reason the BBC isn't using Dirac yet is that it isn't anywhere close to being ready, so it isn't actually usable in any meaningful way. Give it another year of development to get the obvious optimizations done and then the BBC may have a reason to switch to it entirely in the iPlayer. And once the millions of people that use the iPlayer to watch BBC's content prove the value of Dirac, other companies will have an incentive to use it.
Chances are that it will be used in many ways that people won't realize. For instance, Vorbis isn't well known at all in the public, but many game developers use it for audio in games. Game developers love having an open source and royalty free audio decoder with top of the line performance. When Dirac matures, they will love having an open source and royalty free video decoder with top of the line performance too.
The Japanese were looking at a format 30x high-definition, according to a story on Slashdot not too long ago. Dirac might be a reasonable competitor for storing or transmitting a video signal of that magnitude. Another possibility would be to have an all-digital IMAX - regular codecs aren't really up to the job of storing or delivering data of that quality and resolution. A third would be for transmitting video to hand-held devices. I'm not sure ultra-low-power buys you much after a while, but bandwidth to mobile devices is always at a premium, as is memory on the device itself. Any of these could be markets for Dirac, if sufficient research and development is put into the format and at least one implementation.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I might be wrong, but I don't think Java updates itself autonomously on Windows. Maybe there's a setting so it will do that, but I think by default it'll only notify/annoy you about the latest version. You (as the user) still have to give it the "go ahead" before it will install anything.
Feel free to mod me down if I'm wrong though.
You can check out the progress of Shrodinger (A Dirac implementation) over here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=135176
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??
http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/stereo.html - there is joint stereo support in OGG.
OGG format also has 5.1 support but I have not seen it 'in the wild'.