Sun, Philips Push MPEG-4 Up Steep Hill 128
Kellym writes: "Sun Microsystems and Philips Digital Networks are putting their chips on MPEG-4 in the battle to determine the streaming media standard of the future. The companies have agreed to expand their year-long relationship to promote and develop MPEG-4 technology for broadband and wireless markets. The companies have partnered on marketing and have agreed to share technologies. In the most recent deal, Philips licensed Sun's StorEdge Media Central server technology. Philips said it will include the technology in a WebCine Server MPEG-4 system it is developing to run on Sun's Solaris Operating Environment and Sun Cobalt servers."
What about other companies? (Score:2)
are there any other companies involved in MPEG-4 that have competing products?
Re:What about other companies? (Score:2, Interesting)
For that reason alone I am glad to see Philips standing behind MPEG-4 since they are perhaps the only consumer electronics company that can force a standard through market share.
Re:What about other companies? (Score:1, Informative)
all the DivX:) crap is a TINY SUBSET of MPEG-4.
Re:What about other companies? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, (Score:1)
Pedant (Score:1, Informative)
DivX;-)
And DivX;-) does use a subset of MPEG-4 for the video encoding. The reason DivX;-) is seen as "special" is just that it's a patch/hack of the Microsoft Windows Media Player MPEG-4 codec that has been changed to use AVI encapsulation, rather than the Windows-Only WMA/ASF encapsulation.
Re:Pedant (Score:2)
You can encode a 90min action dvd into 700mb with sound(160kb mp3) and afterwards watch it on a computer without almost any loss in perceptable picture quality(interestingly sound suffers almost more).
Downside is that 2-pass variable bitrate encoding for 90min movie takes roughly 13 hours on a 900mhz athlon and setting it up is not exactly trivial..
Check out www.divx.com [divx.com] for more info.
Re:Pedant (Score:2)
As an aside:
What is the best cross platform (client), linux based, open source (or at least free) solution for streaming 5 videos at arround 200-500kbits/second (preferably running on a low end server)?
Re:Pedant (Score:1)
whole internet, using swarmcast.
Re:Pedant (Score:2)
Re:Pedant (Score:1)
Re:Pedant (Score:2)
Re:What about other companies? (Score:2)
One that looks quite promising is MPEG4IP [sourceforge.net], a project to create an entire open-source system for using MPEG-4.
Also note that the OpenDivX [projectmayo.com] project is producing an MPEG-4 compliant open-source audio/video codec for windows, linux, and any other OS imaginable.
Re:What about other companies? (Score:1)
Re:What about other companies? (Score:1)
Re:What about other companies? (Score:1)
But seriously, I agree... an open standard is in no danger from any company, precisely because it's open. But it's especially in no danger from these companies, now that I think about it... I still thought of Philips as a media company (a la Sony) for some reason.
Funny, Mpeg-4 wont win the battle, ya right. (Score:3, Insightful)
People are trading VCD because they play on newer dvd drives. If they come out with a DVD player that plays some Mpg4 format, everyone will jump all over it. (IMHO)
I have a Dazzle and 2. I started encoding home movies on VCD and then migrated to SVCD for higher res. DVD-R is still a little pricey. If they come out with a Dazzle type of encoder with Mpeg4, I can keep using cheap CD's and make a "mini-dvd" type of disc. (Also DVD-Rs dont have burn proof yet, 10 dollar coasters, oh boy.)
Re:Funny, Mpeg-4 wont win the battle, ya right. (Score:1)
Until the SSSCA passes, making all these formats obsolete by their lack of access controls... Have you written your representatives lately?
mini dvd (Score:1)
Re:mini dvd (Score:1)
MPEG 4 IS NOT DIVX.
Re:mini dvd (Score:1)
Sorenson Video 3 Codec (Score:1, Interesting)
hmm (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
Uuh...actually, the background is marginal on any kind of connection because it doesn't move around a lot and therefore only gets sent when a shot changes or when there's a lot of foreground action covering and uncovering the background.
Most of the compression achieved by streaming codecs is already accomplished by only sending the pixels that moved (the "delta") between frames.
Re:hmm (Score:2)
Re:hmm (Score:1)
At the "DVD: quality level (full resolution interlaced video, multi-channel audio) its benefits over MPEG-2 are neglible and there are even some drawbacks.
Re:hmm (Score:3, Funny)
How am I going to watch full length moveis over morse code?
No-one shoudl invent anything until eveyone has upgraded from morse code (or below).
My friends inthe next valley are still on smoke signals. It's not fair that all of you with spiffy 1200/75 prestel should be able to get weather reports once an hour.
Seriously what are you actually trying to say?
"Hey! Wait for me" isn't go to get heard I'm afraid.
I would be very surprised if these guys were developing mpeg4 just so ppl could trade DVD rips!
But if you still feel left out, get a friend somewhere in the world with a cd burner and send him a five bucks to burn you a few cds!
Re:hmm (Score:1)
In addition, MPEG-4 does have the capability for scaleable encoding in the same bitstream (encode once, play over many bandwidths), although you loose a lot of quality at lower bandwidths.
Let's hope sun will be sensible (Score:2, Insightful)
I just hope that Sun & Co. will not try to go for their profits immediately. It'd be better to lower the prices, perhaps sponsor some Open-Source work, make it a popular thing among the consumer. Otherwise, it'll all be crushed by M$'s "we do it for free" strategy.
Re:Let's hope sun will be sensible (Score:2, Informative)
From what I've read, it looks like Sun is just trying to sell some servers. If that's the goal, they are pretty likely to play nice and try to get the software that makes their server more useful in as many hands as possible.
Re:Let's hope sun will be sensible (Score:1)
GOOD (Score:5, Insightful)
It's time we stopped tring to one up each other with new codecs and media players. We need to seriously PICK SOMETHING. This is the only way technology gets adopted by the masses.
I don't have to upgrade my CD player, DVD player, radio, or microwave every 6 months, why should I have to update my stupid computer's media players.
Consumers HATE adding plugins, codecs, and players...and I hate developing for 1 million different things.
MPEG4 is dynamic, auto-upgradable, and will make me a muuuuuch happier camper.
Re:GOOD (Score:3, Informative)
"Steep Hill" indeed.
Re:GOOD (Score:2)
Now, if only Real and Microsoft can be talked into supporting MPEG-4, maybe I won't need to have 3 media players anymore.... Anyone know what these guys are planning?
Re:GOOD (Score:1)
Unfortunatly I'm not sure the Real media people are going to be up for it either. Why does everyone download Realplayer? Because somewhere there is some "realmedia" that requires it. Real media survives because of their own format - although I would expect that they would be much more open to at least supporting mpeg-4. Other than the fact that it requires a special player, I really don't have much of a problem with realmedia. But in all seriousness I have never used a version of Realplayer that wasn't total shit, and having a form of media that only one player will play that crashes all the time seriously detracts from any 'real' format.
Re:GOOD (Score:2, Funny)
Re:GOOD (Score:1, Troll)
A specific MPEG4 implementation might be auto-upgradeable, but only to the extent *any* other application/codec. For example, such as GIF, FLI, IFF/ANIM, Cinepac or Sorenson.
Re:GOOD (Score:1)
I was modded as a troll? Hopefully this will clarify my point.
When talking about video formats, PLEASE don't confuse following concepts: Application, transport layer/file format and CODEC.
CODEC is a collection of algorithms that CODes and EnCodes a (video) signal. Examples, MPEG-1, MPEG-4, Sorenson, FLI, even GIF can be considered as a CODEC.
Transport layer (or file format) contains the data stream for CODEC. There reasons transport layers are used such as streaming (multiplexing different streams in one stream) and enabling editability. Examples of a transport layer: AVI, QuickTime file format, ASF, GIF, FLI.
In some cases, such as FLI and GIF, the transport layer is not seperated from the CODEC. FLI and GIF files can only contain one kind of data.
In this context, the application is a piece of software that encodes, displays (decodes) or otherwise processes the transport layer stream.
Applications, like Windows Media Player, QuickTime Player and Real can all handle different transport layers that are encoded using many different CODECS. Gimmicks like Auto-upgradeability must be handled at the application level.
Re:GOOD (Score:1)
MPEG-4 = DiVX? (Score:2)
Re:MPEG-4 = DiVX? (Score:1, Funny)
MPEG4 allows for things like lossy-compressed 3D scenegraphs, synchronisations of arbitrary real-time-stream data, and such.
Yes, but not yet (Re:MPEG-4 = DiVX?) (Score:2, Informative)
What is DivX [divx.com]
Forum discussion about
MS-MPEG4 is - of course - a different take on MPEG-4 with a different feature set.
Re:MPEG-4 = DiVX? | Linux MPEG-4 streaming? (Score:2, Interesting)
Many people don't really understand what DivX is. There's the DivX
I've been looking into streaming MPEG 4 video off a Linux server [trustix.net] and it's still rather immature. FFMpeg [sourceforge.net] looks like it might be getting there, but I quote from the FAQ [sourceforge.net]: "New developments broke ffserver, so don't expect it to work correctly. It is planned to fix it ASAP."
It would be nice to find a good OpenSource (pref. Linux) solution for streaming MPEG 4 content (from a Video4Linux [linux.org] BTTV [metzlerbros.de] device). Does anyone know of one?
Re:MPEG-4 = DiVX? (Score:1)
What happens to QuickTime? (Score:1)
Maybe MPEG-4 can be added as an additional
compression module inside QuickTime, but it
looks like Apple is not playing its innovative
role anymore in this area.
Re:What happens to QuickTime? (Score:3, Informative)
(Oh, and I doubt Apple Expo was canceled for the reason you give; the most recent Macworld Expo set attendance records. Again.)
Re:What happens to QuickTime? (Score:1)
Release hardware codecs with full linux support. (Score:5, Interesting)
If the whole 'Napster' thing proved anything it's that there are a shitload of people out there desparate for content they don't get supplied through 'mainstream media', but nobody wants to pay the same people who have been screwing them down at the record store for years.
The Linux community is crying out for decent video tools, and none of the other players except maybe Real seem particularly interested in providing them.
To beat M$ in this area, Sun and Philips are going to need some serious help, and the only place they're likely to find it these days is with the Open-Source/Free Software community.
We have more clout with M$ than the US Justice department does, anyway.
Re:Release hardware codecs with full linux support (Score:2, Informative)
I contacted MPEGLA because I'm the author of an MPEG-1/2 encoder (http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net) and I wanted to lay the groundwork for an official Debian distro. The official response was "everyone who *distributes* an MPEG encoder
must obtain a license from MPEGLA and pay $4 unit". This is fine and actually quite reasonable(ish) for a hardware vendor. For an open-source project
Since M$ bundling of their codec more or less precludes any commercially viable closed-source MPEG-4 codecs I think we can safely conclude MPEG-4 is dead dead dead as a mainstream platform in the PC space. Informal derivatives (the DivXes) of course will carry on, but I think its safe to assume no-one will be broadcasting or pressing disks in those formats.
Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware? (Score:2)
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:2)
Dave
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:2)
My last round of encoding on an Athlon 1200 took more than a day (120 min movie, dual pass).
Currently, my home PC (Duron 800) is busy encoding another movie, encoding time is estimated at 30 hours.
No, just a CPU doesn't do quite nicely. That was the point of my original question. I want a dedicated DSP to speed-up things.
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:2)
There is a specific encoder for AMD? Afaik, the DivX codec (the Windows binary) is compiled for both platforms and is partly optimized for both.
I am also doing some additional filters on the material in VirtualDub - e.g. resizing and subtitling.
It all adds up, making the whole process slow.
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:1)
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:2)
Uhm, thanks, but I am looking for hardware acceleration of the encoding process.
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:1)
Re:Ask Slashdot: Encoding acceleration w. Hardware (Score:1)
Me too! Only not on my home PC - at work. We're a copyright library (like the Library of Congress [loc.gov]) and digitization is the big thing. MPEG2 is just too big (we're reaching 31TB of storage this year, and expect to go to over 100TB within the next 2 years) - a Free (as in speech - we can't use MP3 for audio, for example - you *don't* archive stuff in encumbered standards) MPEG4 solution with hardware accelerated encoding is one of our Holy Grails. Given this, we could be streaming hundreds of hours of (Free) content to our reading rooms, and eventually to the world (once the bandwidth will allow). Working at a copyright library really shows the damage that closed systems and braindead copyright laws can do to free exchange of information.
Quality (Score:1)
Especially when compared to Real Media. There is little worse than downloading a long sought after clip in
And I think EVERYONE would love a standard in this area.
Re:Quality (Score:1)
Surely you jest. I recorded an Invader Zim episode off Nickeloden and encoded it twice - once in MPEG-1, and once in Divx;-)
The MPEG-1 video is approximately 220 MB, clear with few artifacts.
The DivX;-) video is approximately 120 MB, with so many artifacts it's painful to watch. When a character raises his head suddenly it leaves a little trail of lower eyelid running down his face.
I hope they seriously improve the codec before using it for anything serious.
Re:Quality (Score:1)
DivX does seem to be really bad at doing cartoons. It must be something about the format/algorithm. Perhaps they need a "cartoon optimization" feature.
Personally I think someone needs to create a codec/algorithm specifically designed from the get go for cartoons, then we'll see some spectacular quality with really low bandwidth.
Re:Quality (Score:2)
Kiss goodbye to MPEG4 (Score:1)
Gr.
Hertog
Re: Betamax came from Sony (Score:1)
Re: Betamax came from Sony (Score:1)
Re:Kiss goodbye to MPEG4 (Score:1)
Their biggest failure was to NOT allow porn on the excelent Video 2000 system, the (then) vastly inferior VHS took the marked as a result.
MPEG-4 and "content protection" technology? (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the ways in which the MP4 standard is quite dumb is that the "security" features are an optional extra. You don't have to have lots of ornate key management policies and encrpytion schemes in order to enjoy the benefits of increased compression/versatility/whatever.
But (as we all know, I guess) that'll never work the way they think it should. This is simply because so long as there is an "insecure" standard for exchanging content (alongside the secured version), people who rip stuff off and share it with their friends will use it. The only ways you can stop that are: (a) pass an unenforcable law like the DMCA, or (b) get rid of all "insecure" standards. Solution b is not workable because everyday life would grind to a halt if everything had to be authenticated with military-grade encrpytion. So we're stuck with the laws (which, incidentally, don't necessarily go away once the companies which bought them go bust).
My conclusion is, therefore, by all means adopt MPEG-4 because in almost every other way, it rocks. Don't be scared by the "rights management" bullshit, because as long it's optional, it's worthless.
--
anonymous CVS: geeks check in - they don't check out
This is a funny situation. (Score:2)
I Like This... Kinda (Score:1)
I suspect MPEG4 has a better chance against MS/Real/Apple than people realise.
Being an open standard means that you can check out the technical overview [wwwam.hhi.de] on the MPEG4
site right now if you want an idea of how it works. MS/Real/Apple is NEVER going to be this
forthcoming - they even change their format regularly to force upgrades (and royally annoy
developers and userbase). People can stop yelling at each other about what language they should be speaking and spend their time writing fast, small, elegant implementations of the standard. Kinda like TCP/IP.
Any hacker with an itch can write their own MPEG4 decoder for Linux, Palm, Amiga, Timex Datawatch, mobile phone, whatever, which breaks the Windows/Mac video hegemony. I know I'm preaching to the converted on
The possible downside lies with the licensing - hopefully we'll avoid a repeat of the Fraunhoffer mp3 fiasco, where they started demanding payment for what was meant to be an open standard.
shut up man
Re:I Like This... Kinda (Score:1)
It will be like MP3, 100% (Score:2)
Remember, "standard" doesn't mean "Free"(as in freedom,) it just means that everyone uses it.
Look to Ogg Vorbis as an example of what could be a Free standard.
MPEG-4 a large standard (Score:2, Interesting)
I can really see the MPEG-4 Video codec taking off, as it offers superior video quality for low-bandwidth connections, but the MPEG-4 standard as a whole...hmmm I don't know
Admitedly, I've stopped following the developments of the MPEG-4 standard closely, but the last I saw it was quite a bloated standard that incorporated the video codec, much of VRML and some Java scripting. All these parts of the standard are necessary for things like scene graph rendering of video objects (turing off backgrounds in video etc.), and interactivity.
Unless a subset of this functionality (profile) is decided on for internet use, I can't see the whole standard taking off. However, I think that the video codec on its own has a lot of potential.
MPEG-4 patents (Score:4, Informative)
The standard is also being put forth by ISO, a notoriusly shitty standards body. Do you want to pony up more than $1,000 to get a copy of the standard so you can begin making a standards compliant implementation? That's roughly what the MPEG-4 standards docs cost. Even if we disregard the patent concerns, this represents a serius barrier to entree for anyone wanting to do an open source implementation of the codec.
ISO ( and it's child the ITU-T ) are designed to be used as weapons by corporate players against each other, not to produce good clean standards that can be used by all.
Try looking at the ogg tarkin project http://www.xiph.org/ogg/index.html [xiph.org] as a group trying to pursue a non-patents encumbered video codec with a truely open standard ( I don't consider ISO standards to be open because of the intense barriers to entree like the expense of the standards docs).
Re:MPEG-4 patents (Score:1)
MPEG-4 means QuickTime/everybody wins (Score:4, Informative)
The wavelet compression of MPEG-4 offers better quality than JPEG with file sizes approximately 25 percent of the size for Web quality. Wavelets dynamically allow servers to reduce bitmap file sizes (which also affect quality) when working with lower bandwidths, reducing the need to create different presentations to account for a variety of connection speeds.
For audio, MPEG-4 offers a wide variety of features, such as codecs for low-bitrate speech and general purpose audio. For servers, the audio component offers several quality layers which, based on bandwidth, can be dynamically adjusted. Given how MP3 became a popular music file format MPEG-4 could well follow the same trend.
For Rich Media, MPEG-4 constructs everything out of media objects, such as video/audio streams, stills, text, etc. Further, these media objects can be mapped to a scene as opposed to simply working within a rectangle. Also, MPEG-4 can blend the capabilities of Flash, VRML, Shockwave and digital video into a single file format, making it easier to deliver content over slower connection.
MPEG-4 Variations Version 1 of MPEG-4 offered nine video and four audio profiles. Version 2 added seven more video and four audio profiles. These profiles create subsets for different marketing options. Profiles, or features, are designed to work on different platforms. An example would be cell phones and on the other end of technology, HDTV. Into the Future Among other things, MPEG-4 has been slated to replace the current MPEG-2 standard in the cable industry, meaning among other things, that the companies could triple the number of channels available and could implement interactive capabilities.
MPEG-4 also offers MPEG-J, a Java library for controlling MPEG-4. Combining the two would let developers embed a Java applet in the MPEG stream, making possible such innovative cable options as interactive advertisements, home shopping capabilities and more. Other possibilities include videoconferencing, security observation, etc.
A potential barrier to widespread MPEG-4 use are the licensing and fees issues, due to several companies having patents that apply to aspects of MPEG-4. According to Shelly: "There is a group known as MPEG LA, based out of Los Angeles, that are working with a number of people who hold patents. They are attempting to speak for the entire industry, but not everyone who owns a patent for MPEG is a part of that group." The challenge is to combine the patents into one licensing fee, which is still in process.
The preceding is from: http://streamingmediaworld.com/ [streamingmediaworld.com]
Curious George
Re:MPEG-4 means QuickTime/everybody wins (Score:1)
Re:MPEG-4 means QuickTime/everybody wins (Score:1)
Here's an existing MPEG-4 decoder chip... (Score:3, Interesting)
They are Pushing a Rope! (Score:2, Insightful)
My view is that there are some applications that are well suited for point-to-point communication mechanisms such as IP. If we were discussing the possibility of using this technology to enable video phone or other video conferencing applications, I would be a bit less pessimistic. But, we need to recognize the fact that some transmission modes are inherently broadcast: one source, many many listeners. We can talk about implementations of IP broadcast to save upstream bandwidth, etc, but the fundamental scaling problems are still there. Many networks need to carry identical copies of the same data.
Last Tuesday, we witnessed the fragile nature of current servers/onramps in dealing only with high levels of http traffic. How many of us got anything more than a server timeout from cnn.com last Tuesday? But it wasn't very hard to just punch 204 in the DirecTV remote and there it is. Streaming anything over IP has a long way to go to catch up with truly broadcast mechanisms.
If such streaming applications are going to be attempted, the entire process needs to be decentralized. Video-on-demand needs to stream from many servers at once to improve robustness. It needs to automatically replicate popular data to servers in different parts of the Internet, etc. The current work in P2P networks is focusing on just this type of scheme. Of course, doing so flies in the face of DMCA and the media wonks who want paid. Centralization provides control and a single point of failure. Decentralization provides robustness and loss of control.
I question whether or not streaming media will ever become the service that Sun, Sony, and MS are envisioning. The only way to make it work is by taking the P2P route and most of those approaches are "pirate" in nature. It may come to fruition with P2P swarmcast/distributed-caching schemes, but I doubt that using it will be legal.
MBone dem MBones (Score:2)
The next step beyond that is smart content caching in the network. I had no problem with CNN on Tuesday because I share a caching server with a large number of users. One person gets through and we all get the results. The next level is caching in the back bone so someoen who subnscribes "late" to a channel gets the "old" data first. Think of it as a TIVO in the router.
In re reliability, the solution again is caching, in this case local caching to cover any reasonable sized "hiccups" in transmission.
The solutions arent rocket science, they just require enough financial icnetive to make them worth developing and installing.
Re:They are Pushing a Rope! (Score:1)
This technology is truly cool. Invented by Michael Luby, it addresses this very paradox, that the more popular the content is the more it costs to deliver with a one viewer per stream approach. The demo showed a server pushing an MPEG2 stream to about 20 different clients with different starting times. Watching the load on the server showed a negligible increase for each new client. It was astounding, so much so that I felt kind of sorry for all the folks pushing their one stream/one viewer media servers. I want one for delivering more riding and running videos...
MPEG-4 at core of video over Bluetooth (Score:2)
Therein lies the potential for reasonable quality video from you cellphone/PDA/mobile-device...
I'm certainly looking forward to it.
The VQF Connection? (Score:1)
No just MPEG4 audio and video--www.iVAST.com (Score:1)
From what I understand they offer support for 2d,and 3D animation--pretty cool! Plus they should have their first release soon...