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Sun, Philips Push MPEG-4 Up Steep Hill 128

Posted by Hemos from the push-push dept.
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."
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Sun, Philips Push MPEG-4 Up Steep Hill More

Sun, Philips Push MPEG-4 Up Steep Hill

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  • I think MPEG-4 (read "DivX :)") is cool... but, i'm afraid of market domination by companies like Phillips and Sun...

    are there any other companies involved in MPEG-4 that have competing products?
    • hmmm, I wonder what Sony has in store for MPEG-4. Since they are smiling tyrannical MPAA mafia dons, I would think they would attempt to counter it with something propitiatory so they could encode it all to shit.

      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)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Please note that MPEG-4 is much wider in scope than just video. It also specifies a lossy (quantized) 3D scene graph API, for example. See www.web3d.org [web3d.org] for more information.

      all the DivX:) crap is a TINY SUBSET of MPEG-4.

    • I remeber that philips came out with a cd version of the double cassette-deck (player and burner in one machine) shortly after they sold polygram. Whether that was a coincidence or not I do not know. I don't expect too many bad things from philips since they're not a media company anymore (unlike Sony)
    • It's "DivX ;)", and DivX ;) is not MPEG-4.

      • Pedant (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        If you want to be pedantic about it, it's

        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.

        • Actually the latest DivX;-) implementation is totally their own and it's quality rocks.

          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.

          • Unfortunatly even 90 minutes at 700MB still means a maximum realistic limit of arround 20-50 users simultaneously streaming from one server on a hundered megabit fully switched super high powered network. And forget trying to do real time encoding at the same time.

            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)?
            • But it only takes 1 stream to serve the
              whole internet, using swarmcast.
            • Ah.. But my point with 700mb was that it fits on a cd. Resolution in question is the full dvd-resolution with black borders cut off.. If you're willing to halve the resolution the filesize will probably roughly be halved too(need better quality for those fewer pixels)..
            • You could try ffmpeg ( http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/ ) It seems pretty fast on my 1ghz Athlon system for encoding mpeg-1 files, it is also capable of encoding in a few other formats, like divx/mpeg-4
        • Specifically, the newest incarnation of DivX ;-) is compliant with MPEG-4 simple profile video. For an explanation of MPEG-4 profiles, see the MPEG 4 standard [cselt.it] website.
    • Check out the MPEG-4 Industry Forum website [m4if.org] at http://www.m4if.org/. There are several companies supporting MPEG-4, including iVast [ivast.com], PacketVideo [packetvideo.com], and others.
    • Philips and Sun scare me a lot less than domination by certain companies who will "embrace and extend" MPEG-4 forcing people to use their proprietary technologies and pay their "taxes". Besides, Philps and Sun are both founders of the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (www.isma.tv) which is about open streaming standards. And, no, I don't work at either company! :)
      • Yes, the obligatory slashdot post... "at least it's not Micro$oft." :)

        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)

    by BrookHarty ( 9119 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @04:14AM (#2313409) Journal
    I have mpg1, mpeg2 and mpeg2.5(mp3) hardware in my house and car, I'm pretty sure mpeg4 will be there shortly.

    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.)

  • i too think mpeg 4 is cool, for with DivX you can make cool mini DVDs, all with subtitles and menu and stuff
    • DivX is NOT MPEG 4. Divx 3.11 was hack of an MS release of an early mpeg 4 codec. DivX 4 is a completely new (partly mp4 based.. i think) codec.

      MPEG 4 IS NOT DIVX.
      • Your sig is wrong man. Without light there is only darkness. Without darkness there is only light. But having no darkness implies there is nothing there to block light and create some dark shadows.

  • Sorenson Video 3 Codec (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Thaidog ( 235587 )
    Based on MPEG-4 with Quicktime support enhancements. The bomb if you've ever seen it. Twice the compresion of the sorenson2 codec. Very small file size with great picture quality.

  • hmm (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cdraus ( 522373 )
    I can't help but wonder where this leaves me. Some (few ?) of us are still using dialup 56K (or lower) connections. All this wonderful new content is great, but remember it takes some of use a bit longer to download stuff. Yep, you could say "Get with the times" and "Get Cable or ASDL or something" but it's not exactly affordable in some places... sigh

    • Re:hmm (Score:4, Informative)

      by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @05:11AM (#2313476)
      MPEG4 has been designed from the get go to support decent video quality at sub-ISDN speeds which means with a little buffering dialup users should be able to watch the same video that broadband users will have access to. The other design components of MPEG4 make it very usable for dialup users. If you encode your video properly, dial-up users can have their video stream app drop objects from the stream they don't want/need. Who needs the background of a news broadcast on a low bitrate connection? Turn off the loading of objects with "background" tags and it will just download the foreground object that is actually changing. You also have object based random access. So lets say the index of a stream says at frames 00340 through 00450 have some specific image or information you can only download those frames from that object. I think dialup users will be pretty satisfied with the features of MPEG4. Well I hope they will so my only options for downloading video are RAM and WMA.
      • Who needs the background of a news broadcast on a low bitrate connection?

        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.

        • You're missing the point. MPEG4 allows for objectification of certain elements. If part of a frame is decided to be "background" it is tagged and encoded as such. So to see ONLY the frame to frame delta you can select to not download any scene object tagged as "background". You select which components you want to view. In fact MPEG4 has inherent support for chroma keying so a broadcast could just stick someone on a blue screen and send that feed and provide a static background to go behind them. Also the difference between MPEG1/2 and 4 is that objects (delta components) can be arbitrarily sized whereas in MPEG1/2 the encoding was based on blocks. THis is the specific reason why low bitrate MPEG1/2 videos look like shit. The block size is enormous compared to the size of the frame in order to get a high compression ratio (known as compression artifacts). MPEG4 can encode objects of any size and shape which lends to having much higher quality at higher compression ratios.
      • If you think "decent video quality" is available at sub-ISDN data-rates ( MPEG-4 can support useful *low-quality* video down to very very low data-rates. It can also support the broadcast of synthetic multi-media imagery (texture mapped heads, 3D scenes) at low(ish) bit-rates. However, at Broadcast TV quality video (loosely the range between VCD and SVCD) its benefits over MPEG-1/2 are pretty modest (MPEG's own trials suggest 10-15% on bit-rate). I.e. you can get a VCD quality feed at around 1Mbps, but below that it just won't go.

        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)

      by DrSkwid ( 118965 )
      I wonder where this leaves me. I still use morse code to communicate.

      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!

    • 56k is ok. You won't get DVD quality, but you'll get an ok picture and sound. I've seen an iPAQ connected to the Net via a 14.4k cellular phone connection pull down a stream at 5-7 frames/second. It was extremely viewable for what we were doing (looking at traffic cams), but the guy showing me kept it in perspective: "it's great for this, but I wouldn't want to watch a two hour movie on it."

      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.

  • 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.

    • "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,"



      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.

    • Actually, everybody [newsfactor.com] knows that MPEG4 doesnt stand a chance in the PC market, with stiff competition from both M$ and RN. On the other hand, they stand a chance in the wireless market. I would bet that, this is where their eyes are on at the moment. For one thing, it is a nascent market, everybody wants to try new things, access speeds are still growing etc etc. I would like to see more standardised components coming out, rather than some proprietary stuff....

  • GOOD (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Aqua OS X ( 458522 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @05:11AM (#2313475)
    I want everyone and their mothers to support MPEG 4. As a web developer I am simply SICK of having to support 3 different media players and a bunch of different OSs. I want to be able to stream 1 format that can be played on every media player on every OS.

    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)

      by dimator ( 71399 )
      If you ask me, Sun and Phillips are going about this the wrong way. A media standard will not be chosen by the strength of servers. It won't be chosen by you, the developer, either. It will be chosen on the desktop. And as we've seen in the past with web browsers, the company that controls the desktop chooses for the consumer what he/she will use, simply because consumers will use what's already built in rather than seek an alternative.

      "Steep Hill" indeed.

      • Re:GOOD (Score:2)

        by znu ( 31198 )
        Well, Apple, at least, is a major supporter of MPEG-4, and contributed quite a few important things to the standard. So QuickTime support is a sure thing, and Apple's Darwin Streaming Server (which has been ported to just about every remotely relevant server platform on the market) will provide a nice open source solution for MPEG-4 content streaming.

        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?
        • Microsoft has a huge market share of the media player market since they shove it down everyone's throat. I wouldn't count on them to officially support anything they don't control. Why do you think they're trying to get away from mp3 in favor of their OWN audio format?

          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)

          by billcopc ( 196330 )
          Actually, if Real could be talked into closing their doors, maybe I wouldn't need to reboot my box every time some idiot friend shows me an RM movie. Heck, I'd be happy if they just discontinued the RealPlayer and admitted that they're really just out to sell our souls for more cocaine and prostitutes.

    • Re:GOOD (Score:1, Troll)

      by Jage ( 164751 )
      Auto upgradeable? Excuse me, do you have a method to auto update hardware now? If I'm not totally misguided, I understand for example cell phones will have hardware decoder.

      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.

      • 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.

        • Slight correction - in the parent, I was talking about MPEG-4, the CODEC, not MPEG-4 the standard.
  • Is this the same "MPEG-4" as used by the DiVX codec? Will we see standalone DiVX players possibly, like we have MP3 players for audio?

    • Re:MPEG-4 = DiVX? (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      no. DivX:) uses a tiny subset of the MPEG4 specification (which is a patent minefield, BTW).

      MPEG4 allows for things like lossy-compressed 3D scenegraphs, synchronisations of arbitrary real-time-stream data, and such.
    • DivX (from Project Mayo) is based on MPEG-4 and will at some point be fully MPEG-4 compliant. It still needs more features but the existing features are according to MPEG-4.
      What is DivX [divx.com]
      Forum discussion about .avi [divx.com]

      MS-MPEG4 is - of course - a different take on MPEG-4 with a different feature set.


    • Many people don't really understand what DivX is. There's the DivX ;-) codec, which was a hack of the Microsoft MPG4V3 codec. This allows you to stick MPEG 4 inside AVI files - the MS version only lets you do WMV [microsoft.com]s and suchlike. There's also the OpenDivX [projectmayo.com] project over at Project Mayo [projectmayo.com]. This is an opensource, cross-platform effort, and hopefully will Take Over The World (tm).



      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?

    • There's already a stand-alone DivX ;-) codec. It comes with DivX ;-) 4.01 (possibly with 4.00, too). Fun, huh?
  • So, where does this leave Apple / QuickTime?
    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.

  • Release hardware codecs with full linux support. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ikekrull ( 59661 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @05:49AM (#2313535) Homepage
    Then watch us build your 'high-speed distributed video serving network' in our spare time at no cost to you, while MS, Apple, Real and AOL fuck around for years trying to court 'industry players' and 'content copyright holders'.

    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.

    • Sadly, all MPEG standards are VERY heavily patent-encumbered (Patent-buried might be a more apt way of putting it). Worse, the MPEGLA (MPEG Licensing Authority) appears to have zero interest in supporting open-source implementations of MPEG video standards.


      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 ... forget it. Queries regarding the possibility of users buying licenses from MPEGLA which would enable them to legitimately receive the open-source encoder of their choice were met with stony silence.


      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.

  • Btw, is there hardware available *now* for reasonable cost that would allow me to speed-up the ProjectMajo/DivX/MPEG-4 encoding process on my home PC?
    • An AMD Athlon should do you quite nicely :)
      Dave
      • An AMD Athlon should do you quite nicely

        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.
    • There is a player for Linux and Unices called MPlayer (homepage at http://mplayer.dev.hu/homepage/ ) which gives excellent hardware video acceleration on Matrox G200 and later video cards. It plays DivX with TV resolution (anime fansubs) scaled smoothly up to full screen (1280x1024) at full framerate. This is on a Celeron 300->450. It also does an excellent job of coping with damaged streams, and can cope with pretty much every format you can get a codec for on Windows (except Sorenson encoded QuickTime) through a bit of code borrowed from the WINE project. It also can do output using a number of other methods, including X, framebuffer, SDL and aalib (always fun). All in all, an awesome player.
    • Btw, is there hardware available *now* for reasonable cost that would allow me to speed-up the ProjectMajo/DivX/MPEG-4 encoding process on my home PC?


      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.

  • If there is any justice in this world MPEG-4 will become the dominant format for no other reason than quality.

    Especially when compared to Real Media. There is little worse than downloading a long sought after clip in .rm only to find you have to watch it on a 2x2 cm screen to make out the details... Not trolling, I admit that file size is an issue, but the difference is never much more than 10mb or so for a four minute music video.

    And I think EVERYONE would love a standard in this area.
    • Quality? DivX;-) ?

      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.

      • 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.
      • This isn't DivX's fault, you must have made a mistake somewhere along the line. 120 MB should be more than enough to watch. I have a lot of Cowboy Bebop episodes (which are about 5 minutes longer then american shows) that are usually about 60 megs and the quality is pretty good. Well past acceptable.
  • Knowing Philips, they'll find a way to totally f*ck up the marketing stuff, and let others(sony?) have the market with inferiour products. Betamax, anyone?

    Gr.

    Hertog

  • See for example: http://www.e-vue.com/about/may072001.cfm

    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
  • So, two big companies are getting behind an open, high-quality video standard? Sounds good, and
    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 /., but it's always good.

    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
    • Actually, if I recall, the guy at M$ who is in charge of streaming video there is also the chair of the ISO MPEG-4 standards committee and the ISO H.263L standards committee. Since I heard this at an ISO-sponsered event during a panel discussion, I'm pretty positive that it's accurate. YMMV.
    • The group involved are likely to allow free use for a good while, until it attains an MP3-like level of pervasiveness- then they'll pull a Fraunhofer.

      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)

    by jarty ( 165599 )
    I assume that when talking about MPEG-4, we're talking about the whole standard, and not just the MPEG-4 Video codec.

    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)

    by hagbard5235 ( 152810 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @08:25AM (#2313677)
    MPEG-4 is not the panecea everyone seems to think it is. Currently MPEG-4 is heavily patent encumbered ( see http://www.m4if.org/patents/ [m4if.org] ). The result is I doubt you will find it possible to produce a legal open source MPEG-4 codec.

    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).
    • actually if you have time to waiste Tords Homepage [mp3.no] (the guy who came up with blade encode - mp3) has quite a bit of interesting information scattered about his page concerning closed formats. Noteably, he also believes Ogg Vorbis to be the next best audio format.

  • MPEG-4 means QuickTime/everybody wins (Score:4, Informative)

    by Curious__George ( 167596 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @09:14AM (#2313969)
    While MPEG 1& 2 dealt with compression/decompression of video and audio, MPEG 4 is based on the Apple QuickTime technology. Although the MPEG-4 file format is based on QuickTime, it resolves issues that haven't been accounted for in QuickTime, such as the issue of dynamically adjusting to a user's modem speed. It offers high quality with low data transfer rates (from 20-1000Kbps).
    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

    • The wavelet compression of MPEG-4 offers better quality than JPEG with file sizes approximately 25 percent of the size for Web quality.
      MPEG-4 encodes video pixels using DCT in a manner similar but not exact to MPEG-1..3 and JPEG. Perhaps you are confused by the fact that MPEG-4 does use wavelet encoding for "sprites", ... or maybe you are referring to JPEG-2000 which also happens to be based on the wavelet transform and which does have the advantage over old JPEG that you mention.
      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.

      [...]
      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.
      Maybe I should mention: Xiphophorous' [xiph.org], the people behind Ogg Vorbis (an open source patent-free mp3-replacement) have started working on a free, patent-free video codec named Ogg Tarkin [xiph.org]. It is still in the research stage, but is leaning towards using wavelets for both image data and motion compensation.
    • Wow, you must be spoiled to think that 1000 Kbps is a low-bandwidth transfer rate.

  • Here's an existing MPEG-4 decoder chip... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AtariDatacenter ( 31657 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2001 @09:36AM (#2314116)
    It is from Sigma Designs [sigmadesigns.com]. They make PC cards, too, but none yet with this particular chip. And, oh, yes, they support Linux. Read the specs, though.
  • I am sorry to be a wet blanket, but I don't see how streaming video has much of a future for mass acceptance. There is an architectual problem with this approach. True enough...broadband rollouts have made it possible to distribute video with relative ease, but the transmission requirements are just so great that it is really difficult to justify the bandwidth investment, especially on the server end. More than that, I don't see how any streaming media company can try to provide robustness of service.

    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.
    • The answer to bandwidth issues is smart multi-casting in the pipe. The MBone experimental system showed this was quite feasible. I am unclear as to how much of this has gotten/will get into the actual backbones the majority of traffic goes through but if the demand is there then there is a proven solution as long as you group users together into shared time-slots.

      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.

    • There _is_ a solution to this very problem, which I was blown away by when I saw it at NAB last spring: the Digital Fountain [digitalfountain.com]


      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...

  • An interesting step forward. Since MPEG4 is the protocol behind video transmission over bluetooth links, can bluetooth-enabled HUDs be very far away?

    Therein lies the potential for reasonable quality video from you cellphone/PDA/mobile-device...

    I'm certainly looking forward to it. :-)
  • A while back, I was reading about Yamaha's VQF audio compression. It was similar to MP3 in utility, but managed to compress files smaller and preserve quality better. At the time, it was said that this tech was slated to be used as part of the MPEG4 audio spec. Is this true? Anyone have up-to-date references?
  • iVAST is a company that is implementing the whole standard, not just the audio and video. Check it out iVAST.com!

    From what I understand they offer support for 2d,and 3D animation--pretty cool! Plus they should have their first release soon...

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