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X264 Project Announces Blu-ray Encoding Support

Posted by timothy on from the news-from-mid-spectrum dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The x264 project has announced the first free software encoder to be able to generate Blu-ray compliant video. In addition, the announcement comes with a torrent of an x264-encoded Blu-ray disc containing entirely free content, such as the Open Movie Project videos. While there are still no free software Blu-ray authoring tools, hopefully this will change now that video and audio are taken care of so that everyone will be able to make their own Blu-rays without expensive proprietary software. Additionally, it seems the Criterion Collection is a friend of free software, having sponsored the effort to confirm x264's compliance with the Blu-ray spec."

6 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. The first question that popped into my head by Daimanta · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Isn't x264 (heavily) patent encumbered? And does that mean that the makers(or distributers?) have to pay a licensing fee? I know that it makes me weary to roll this out in a setting other than my home computing enviroment.

    Anyone to easy my mind/confirm my suspicions?

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
    1. Re:The first question that popped into my head by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Forget about the patents. In order to publish any Blu-ray content, you have to encrypt it, which means buying a key from the AACS. Blu-ray players are not allowed to read unencrypted pressed BD discs (some will play unencrypted BD-Rs with a BD layout, though as I understand it that's increasingly rare.)

      This project is about as useful to the free software movement as a "free software" iPhone development kit.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:The first question that popped into my head by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Interesting

      But what if I'm an independent filmmaker and want to make my high-def movies available in Blu-ray and let people download them online? I've already done this with standard hi-def, making a DVD image available via bittorrent.

      I wonder if I'd need to pay any patent holders the vig? Because if I do, fuck it, I'm OK with my current formats.

      Anybody got any idea?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
  2. BD9 by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If you burn a Blu-ray Disc file system onto DVD+R DL, it's called BD9.

  3. lame was created and is used by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Even though mp3 is patent encumbered. This project is along those same lines.

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    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  4. Well if decryption has been broken ... by dingram17 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Since it appears that the BD encryption has been hacked, what is to stop people encrypting their discs with the key of a major studio if they want to distribute pressed discs? I can't imagine that a group of naughty people wanting to distribute some propaganda is going to be too concerned about IP violations if the message being promoted was not all that savoury. So basically the BluRay people thought that by banning unencrypted (plain) pressed discs (which was perfectly fine with DVD) then someone BD rips would be stopped. Instead all that they've achieved is to make it hard for legit users of the format to do what they should be able to, and the unauthorised duplicators are ripping the discs to alternate formats anyway.