Slashdot Mirror
Money For Nothing and the Codecs For Free
Davis Freeberg writes "In an in depth discussion on the codec industry, CoreCodec CEO and Matroska Foundation board member Dan Marlin shares his thoughts on the growing popularity of the MKV container, confusion in the marketplace between X.264/MKV and DivXHD and weighs in on a controversial decision by Microsoft to block third party filter support in future versions of Windows media player. His interview offers a behind the scenes look at an important piece of technology that is helping to power the P2P movement. It also raises the prickly question of whether or not Microsoft is abusing their OS monopoly, in order to rein in competition within the codec industry."
I would have liked to hear more on how he plans to break into the streaming market when everyone is going proprietary on that for the sake of DRM. He mentions it briefly but does he have any definite plans?
...
Davis Freeberg, if you're reading this could you introduce Marlin to the editors for a Slashdot Interview? I can think of a lot things to ask him as I'm sure other users could
My work here is dung.
I want my... I want my... I want my .mkv...
I think that if VLC runs on windows 7, 3rd party codecs will too.
VLC doesn't use external codecs. It uses the libavcodec library for playback. A completely different situation from that of CoreAVC which is an external directshow decoder.
However, Microsoft is making the new versions of media player less useful by not playing 3rd party codecs.
Well it can, it just requires some registry tweaks.
BTW, ts TFA just FUD or a guy promoting his own agenda??
He's probably disappointed that Microsoft won't license his codec from him and pay him lots of money for lots of installs that will rarely use it.
Wow, am I the only person that read the article? From Matroska's Wikipedia entry:
Matroska is an open standards project. This means it is free to use, and that the technical specifications describing the bit stream are open to anybody, including companies that would like to support it in their products. The source code of the libraries developed by the Matroska Development Team is licensed under GNU LGPL. In addition to that, there are also free parsing and playback libraries available under the BSD license, for proprietary hardware and software adoption.
The only thing this guy's guilty of is trying to get everyone to use his LGPL developed stuff and lamenting on DRM and proprietary crap they have to deal with. Get off his back.
My work here is dung.
Because people don't know the difference between the standard which is called H.264 and the open source encoder that is an implementation of that standard which is called x264 (note the lack of the . as is the common incorrect spelling of its name).
Except that the CoreAVC codec, the CorePlayer, the two main products of CoreCodec, and their media splitter that is bundled with the CoreAVC codec are proprietary software. This isn't some open source project being squelched by Microsoft. It's a proprietary software vendor who is mad that Microsoft is obsoleting his company's products.
That reminds me of people who think .mp3 stands for MPEG-3 when in fact it's MPEG-1* Layer 3 audio.
* or MPEG-2 Layer 3, or even the so-called "MPEG-2.5 Layer 3", depending on the sampling rate.
Unfortunately, Microsoft may get away with this under the guise of concern for security. There was a time (and perhaps these are still out there) when links to fake codec were used to compromise the victim's computer. (For an analysis of one of these, please see http://www.lavasoftsupport.com/index.php?showtopic=5302 )
Most of us here know how this scenario unfolds: user is trying to view some form of media, often of "questionable" morality (either pr0n or "pirated" video) and the site claims that the user must install a new codec or upgrade to a new version of Flash or Quicktime or whatever and "kindly" has the link right there. It may even have the simple "click here" puzzle-piece link to install the proper codec/player so you can see the multimedia clip. Victim clicks, wanting simply to see the media clip, and presto!, the victim's machine is now a spam-spewing zombie.
Of course, the link could install other things, too, but the point is that the "fake codec" ploy is common enough that Microsoft could easily claim that they are only allowing "approved" or "signed" codecs out of concern for security. They may state that third party codecs are allowed, and will permit Quicktime (for fear of a suit and driving people to Apple) and Flash/Shockwave, but other third-party codecs could be blocked through some combination of testing and/or certificate/signing fees.
This one is too easy, and it just might work.
(I find it strangely amusing that the captcha, given that these fake codecs are often seen in relation to pr0n sites, is "explicit".)
Fake "codecs" are one of the main ways windows PCs currently get infected with spyware/viruses. This comes from all the people who install Limewire with no AV and then download the first thousand results for "porn".
VLC - has all codecs built-in. Use it. :)
I use Windows... like a two dollar wh.. why don't I just go ahead and not finish that sentence.
Good suggestion, It would be interesting to see what other people would be interested in. I'll ask if he has any interest and hopefully he'll be open to fielding some questions.
Never Pick A Fight With Someone Who Buys Ink By The Barrel.
Matroska is a container format that has existed for many years before CoreCodec co-opted it. The issue at heart for this topic though is about their proprietary DirectShow codec CoreAVC which will be obsoleted by the Windows Media Foundation which is why the company is whining and in arms.
I would have liked to hear more on how he plans to break into the streaming market when everyone is going proprietary on that for the sake of DRM.
Everyone ? Do you mean Dailymotion and Youtube going vorbis+theora for their streaming needs doesn't count ?
The proper phrase is "dire straits", "strait" as in "a narrow place" -- "a tight squeeze". :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
This is a perfect example of salesmanship, optimism and double-speak. Excerpts from TFA:
we do plan to open source pretty much our entire eco-system,
Pretty much eh? That sounds interesting. Where can I sign up for your newsletter?
if the business warrants it
If eh? That's a pretty important article leading that phrase. I could get really excited without that "if."
and right now it looks like does
Ohhh the winds are blowing your way eh? Well, lets wait and see. Your investors might have another opinion on the matter. Still kind of exciting. I'm feeling a little wobbly in the knees and all!
We can still open source it and monetize it and also release our encoder as well,
You mean like how Sun tried to make Java free-ish? History is working against you on this one. But, you know, crazy things have happened before, so I'm even more excited. Not only are my knees wobbly, but my stomach's got a few butterflies in it!
but at the same time weâ(TM)re very cautious about what we do.
Ohh there's the double-speak. You were getting me all fired up imagining relatively simple playback on a plurality of devices until that line. Was I supposed to ignore that one?
Like Matroska, the Haali media splitter may not be open source, but it is free
Coitus interuptus Mr. Streaming Codec dude. Coitus interuptus.....
Ohhh you mean like those other binary blobs that work *so* well? Is this free like so many 'free' applications I download off the internet that are supposed to speed up my windows machine? I get all these adverts popping up everywhere and that's just the beginning.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
We've been waiting for years for a killer video container, and it appears to me that mkv is probably going to be the one. It seems poised to become the mp3 of video. There's finally a container that can be played back in an acceptable number of hardware devices, with acceptable quality, at acceptable filesizes. The lack of file-embedded metadata in the container is still a problem, one that's been holding back online video distribution for years, but external sites such as imdb and thetvdb seem to be working around this well enough.
iPod / iTunes took off like a rocket imho because of a few key factors:
-They created hardware that followed the pipe dream of the mp3: A portable player capable of holding many gigs of music in the size of a deck of cards, with headphone out. This wasn't innovation, such solutions were already on the market, but theirs was the most beautiful.;
-They smoothed out the rough usability edges in existing portable hdd player solutions by offering great desktop software in iTunes, which took advantage of metadata to create not only a really compelling library system, but also provided very tight integration that was intuitively the same across the iPod & iTunes.
-They offered a legal means of acquiring music on demand for their solution.
-They made it ridiculously easy to use their device with black market content.
Because Apple were the first with the sack to give people their dream device, with a sensible organized interface, a legal means of acquiring content, and full integration with illegal content, they dominated the marketplace.
Video has been held back, as I said above, by a couple of things. The first was the lack of file-embedded metadata (I can't search for all files in my library directed by James Cameron, for instance), but the ubiquity of always-on wireless connections has solved some of that, and external metadata references are now acceptable. Second, it's been held back by codecs & containers that were way out of date, and don't deliver broadcast-quality (especially HDTV) at acceptable filesizes. The average mp4 vs a highly compressed digital cable channel might be equivalent, but the market wants DVD quality without any sacrifice from downloaded video.
Finally, video has also been held back by the lack of elegant playback solutions. Apple missed the boat with the AppleTV by failing to step up and partner with the black market, which is why the device hasn't been a wild success. Software solutions based on the xbmc core, such as boxee, plex, and uh.... xbmc, are doing much better, but they're still software solutions dependent on having a PC. People want a fully-integrated solution.
Mark my words: The first company with the temerity to market a device that will take a user's existing library and integrate it into an elegant set-top solution is going to CLEAN UP. They will dominate the set-top completely for years to come. It looks like TiVO is going to miss the boat, as is Apple. Are there any dark horses in this race?
Lest anyone think that I'm pipe dreaming, a working solution can be assembled out of off-the-shelf parts right now. Here's what I built in a weekend for about $700:
Hardware:
-Mac Mini c2d (winter '09)
-Harmony 720 remote
-DisplayPort --> HDMI cable
-Optical Audio cable
-1TB firewire-800 external storage from pricewatch
Software:
-Plex
-SwitchResX (only necessary for SDTV or older HDTVs)
-RipIt
-SABNZBD+
Subscriptions:
-Usenet service ($11/mo)
-Unnamed usenet header indexer ($.75 / week, roughly)
-rss feed for TV show subscriptions (free)
With these pieces, I've built a DVR that automatically downloads the shows I like the same day they air. Downloads are FAST, maxing out my internet connection. I can play back 1080p blu-ray rips with full surround sound & 0 dropped frames or stuttering. I can drop any DVD into the reader, and have it copied into the library and spit back out again once it's done. And it's all done with a universal remote in
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
Youtube is not going vorbis+theora, their HTML5 experiment uses h.264.
Interesting... one solution to the DRM problem is to make older codecs obsolete so no one can play the content that has gotten out into the wild.
Continuous obsolescence in hardware and software is the goal since then every time they release a new version, everyone has to buy it. So they can release new versions more often.
There are tools and appliances made -- out of steel, in the 1980's that are just now broken. Replacements for them break much faster (Hot water heaters, stoves, gas dryers are good examples-- google whirlpool appliances at home depot and lowes-- lots of angry people- even after market warranties didn't help them).
Likewise, there are software tools written in the 80's that still work today. Cobol, C utilities like Grep, Awk, etc. Meanwhile, our visual basic application is obsolete after 5 years. The business is risking complete failure by putting off replacing it since writing a new version in the language du jour is going to cost a lot.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Microsoft is not "obsoleting" products. They are providing their own solutions, which are in some cases inferior to competing solutions (performance, acceleration, features, quality), and:
* Preventing WMP/MCE using competing solutions whereas all previous versions of WMP were more open
* Changing the way DirectShow works so that without a custom graph builder third-party DirectShow applications will now also prefer Microsoft decoders for certain formats over any other regardless of filter merits
This in place of, for example, better designing their new media architecture (media foundation) to allow easy management of what gets used via API/UI as a solution to the problem.
It's a proprietary software vendor who is mad that Microsoft is obsoleting his company's products.
Even if that was true, there's a reason that product bundling is contentious and why Microsoft has been on the wrong end of various anti-trust cases. Maybe promoting consumer choice is less important these days? The MSDN documentation, and registry keys (yet unfilled) in the Windows 7 RC also imply that in addition to preferring filters they can also blacklist others so that intelligent connect will ignore them. Let's hope we don't see to much of that and only for good reason.
Matroska is a container format that has existed for many years before CoreCodec co-opted it.
Speaking as someone that was involved with Matroska development from the beginning, and as someone that is not a member of CoreCodec, I just want to clarify this. Members of CoreCodec were actively involved in the development and PR of Matroska from the beginning. I don't know of any of the original Matroska development members that oppose what CC has done, and it seems that many actively support the actions of CC in regard to Matroska.
It's been my impression that Dan Marlin has, from the start, been supportive of Matroska as a way to make the world of video "right". Business decisions and plans that leverage Matroska seemed to come afterward, such that the involvement Matroska was never directly dependent on a successful business model.