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GPL'd Driver and Linux Support For New H.264 Capture Card
azop writes "Almost a year ago Slashdot covered the story of a MPEG-4 multiple input capture card with a GPL Video4Linux licensed driver. Earlier this year, Ben Collins added H.264 support into the solo6x10 Video4Linux2 GPL driver. The H.264 PCIe cards are finally released and shipping to customers. The new cards support faster frame rates and sport a PCIe interface. The driver is available for forkin' on Github."
Why is it important that linux drivers have source available but we don't worry so much about seeing the firmware source? Should we be pushing to see firmware source too? Instead should it not matter about seeing driver source? I'd love to hear your perspectives.
Anyone know where I can find a good HDMI capture / tv tuner ?
Does it play nice with M$ Media Center?
The world is truly better off without H.264
H.264 is actually pretty damned nice. It is patents that the world would be better off without.
Depends on the device but the firmware may well be something that isn't very accessible to users. For example if the device uses an FPGA, which many do, then the firmware might be the FPGA programming. Ok fair enough, but do you have the Xilinx development software and hardware, not to mention expertise, to mess with it? Not nearly as easy or cheap as firing up a compiler and messing with a driver.
Even if not, if the firmware is just code for something onboard kinda like a BIOS/UEFI on a PC, it could still be pretty difficult for users to deal with.
There's also the issue of bricking the device. Messing with the driver might screw up the OS if done badly enough, but the device should be fine. However messing with the firmware could render the device unusable, and depending on how bad it was messed up could render it unfixable in that you couldn't flash a stock firmware back on it.
Too much risk for not much reward overall, which is probably a big reason not to do it.
It's OK for a final distribution codec as long as you have the horsepower to decode it, but it sucks rabid weasel scrotums for acquisition and editing. With common hard drives at 3 TB, ubiquitous gigabit ethernet on LANs, and incredibly fast internal and external bus speeds, there's simply no reason to use an interframe codec or high compression ratios for anything but web delivery.
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The world is truly better off without H.264
Why? It's a good codec as demonstrated by its wide adoption.
Good show.
But all the open source drivers in the world won't mean diddly squat if the h264 patent pool gets in the way.
I bet this driver runs like a 600bhp V8 being that it's made by The Stig.
I would not say world would be better without patents.
I would say world would be better with reasonable time with patents. Like you have 2-3 years time to start commercial use with the patent or loose it. From the patent day (day 1) you have 5 years to use it, if you got commercial use for it. And then it comes free (not public domain but something like GPL).
Without patents you would not have copyright either and so on no GPL or any other license than just public domain and that means there are no protecting anyone from abusive actions.
If you invent something or you create something, you must have rights to use it so no one (bigger/clever ones) do not steal it. But it should not be something what it is now that 75 years after creators death is the time... It is just so stupid.
Well, my 1080p consumer camera saves directly to H.264 - if your ambition is not higher than that, I'd say it's fine. Sure, if you're going to throw in lots of effects and filters and whatnot it's not ideal but two rounds of loss, one in acquisition and one in final print is not that horrible. It's not much point using a worse lossy codec, and if you go lossless those 3TB will be gone rather quickly...
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The REAL issue with Linux/FOSS video right now is the total lack of support for Cable Card and Tuning Adapters. Without them, there is no way to make an effective Linux DVR other than just over-the-air recordings. Gone are the days of "cable ready", analog, and in-the-clear digital.
Of course, that is not the fault of Linux, but of the media giants and cable companies who are just terrified of someone sharing/ripping their content.
The thing that makes H.264 bad for editing is not that it is lossy, it is the interframe compression. DV cameras use a variant of MJPEG, where each frame uses JPEG-like compression, but is compressed independently. This means that you can slice the video between any pair of frames without reencoding. If your source is H.264, then it has bidirectional interframe compression, meaning that every frame between key frames depends on the contents of the frames before and after it. If you slice the video anywhere other than a keyframe, you must reencode the frames before and after, which degrades the quality. It takes about 10GB/hour for SD with DV compression, but if you're doing anything more complex than just putting the entire clip on YouTube it's probably worth it.
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I initially thought this headline was an April Fools' joke that got duped. ;-)
I'm fairly sure you're trolling, but I'll reply anyway:
Because it's not all about the compression rates.
A technically superior solution, with strings attached, might not be better for the end-users.
Without patents you would not have copyright either and so on no GPL or any other license than just public domain
BULLSHIT
Patents and copyrights are very different and there is no reason you can't have one without the other. Software has been copyrighted for far longer than it has been patented. In particular copyrights protect a particular implementation of a method but there is nothing to stop someone else implementing the idea themselves. Patents protect the method itself which can mean there is no way to implement a standard format without giving into the patent holders demands (which are often incompatible with the terms of licenses like the GPL).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The world is truly better off without H.264
Why? It's a good codec as demonstrated by its wide adoption.
The geek can be entirely self-absorbed, seeing nothing beyond his own pre-occupation with computers and the Interenet.
But standards like can H.264 evolve and take root in very different environments. They can serve very different constituencies --- and when they gain traction on the web, they can take him by surprise.
Seriously, almost every computer sold between 2001 and 2010 came with a WinXP license
I thought OEM licenses weren't fully transferable. They appear to be restricted to a single PC according to this page.
My understanding, from TFPR, is that the card does h.246 encoding onboard(and the manufacturer of the card has paid their protection money to the MPEG LA) so the driver has no h.246 related duties, it just configures the card and collects the encoded output.
It is not "protection money."
It is a royalty.
It is royalty that maxes out at 20 cents per unit after the first 100,000 units you sell each year.
Unless your are producing on an industrial scale, the custom boards you are buildi for the academic and hobbyist market aren't of the slightest interest to the MPEG-LA.
SUMMARY OF AVC/H.264 LICENSE TERMS
Make one.
That's difficult when the CPU core you licensed uses an instruction set that is "proprietary and confidential", or the revenue from additional sales to Linux users wouldn't cover the cost of developing free build tools.
It would be nice if the hardware vendors stopped worrying about software "thieves" so much
And it would be nice if people got a bonus check from the government just for being outstanding citizens, like in Lilliput, but that's not going to happen in this system of things.
Hint: I buy the hardware, it should come with the source code to make it work
That's difficult if your hardware product is essentially a DSP and FPGA on a board little different from the chip maker's reference board, and the programming of the DSP and FPGA makes the hardware what it is.
but it sucks rabid weasel scrotums for acquisition and editing.
How so? H.264 intraframe for doing editing and for an intermediate is pretty darn awesome. Using something like x264 with a pretty decently low CRF value you can beat pretty much any of the "pro" codecs for the same work. And it's funny you whine about the "horsepower" but most of those other intermediate codecs are usually just as intensive if not more so than working with H.264 (which in most cases you are using a hardware accelerated solution so it's all moot anyway).
The thing that makes H.264 bad for editing is not that it is lossy, it is the interframe compression.
You do realize that almost none of the formats used as intermediates are lossless, right? ProRes, DNxHD, etc are all lossy as well. Secondly, you can encode H.264 as intraframe only and still get better compression ratios than most of the other competing intermediate formats and you can easily edit it. You post smacks of knowing absolutely jack and shit about what you are talking about.
I've read somewhere (I don't have the citation handy) that some versions of the OEM agreement tie the license to the case to which the PC maker attached the certificate of authenticity sticker. I've read that other versions of the OEM agreement tie the case to one motherboard.
Actually....patents are supposed to protect only a particular implementation of an idea. Software patents have expanded to the point where they are encompassing the idea itself and that is the problem.
SD crap is just boring. Wake me up when you can do HD.
Hmmm...
I see how the fees for codec products (in OSes or Apps) could be a problem for open source. The Freebie there only applies to the first hundred thousand units. There's no way to limit the number of units in an open source product.
But in addition there are freebies for services and encoding for broadcast:
- Encoding as a service for a fee pays only if the encoded "title" is 12 minutes or longer. (At first I thought that might be related to YouTube's (former) 10 minute limit but the Wikipedia article claims otherwise.)
- Encoding for free-to-user (i.e. advertiser or otherwise funded) broadcast has a lump-per-year fee for air broadcast station based on the market size and is free for Internet distribution.
Looks like they are trying to be benevolent to Internet broadcasting, figure there is no money to be made off it, or don't want to get caught in a publicity or lobbying meat-grinder here in cyberspace.
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but alas no Linux support (at all.)
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