MCF-Features

[bond]

I have two questions about the future mcf-features:

1) On the mcf-hp it says that there will be the possibility to include menus in mcf files!
How will this look like?

2) Will it be possible to mux all kind of formats like vorbis, aac, divx, xvid, rv9, wm9...into mcf?
It would be pretty cool to have only one file-format

I am expecting much from mcf, hope this will be fulfilled :)

[ChristianHJW]

Hi and thanks for your interest in MCF

Originally posted by bond I have two questions about the future mcf-features:
1) On the mcf-hp it says that there will be the possibility to include menus in mcf files!
How will this look like?

We honestly have no clue yet :D ... to be more precise, we havent looked at it for the time being. Jon 'milkman.dan' Hickman is our MCF authoring specialist and is the one creating -gemma , the Java based tool for it.

He may have a good idea about the type of menues we will be providing as he is very familiar with professional DVD authoring tools like scenarist. In the current specs version we simply reserve some field type for this, EBML makes this easily possible.

BTW, if any of you has some background here, you are more than invited to start a discussion about it, even here as Jon is registered to this board since a long time already.

2) Will it be possible to mux all kind of formats like vorbis, aac, divx, xvid, rv9, wm9...into mcf?
It would be pretty cool to have only one file-format

This questions deserves a detailled answer :) :

First of all, yes, MCF is aiming to be able to hold all kinds of video and audio streams, also subtitles. But, as MCF is not a general container and always wants to 'know' exactly whats in it, support for a certain codec has to follow some rules :

1. VfW/ACM/AVI : we will implement a way to be able to mux complete AVIs into MCF. There are still some decisions to be made about how to do it exactly, but there is no doubt that the successor of AVI will be capable of containing everything AVI can do. As a result, all VfW based video codecs and all ACM based audio codecs can be used in MCF. But, if these codecs are somehow restricted in their functionality because of limitations of the above mentioned codec APIs ( like no VBR for ACM, no proper b-frames in VfW ) the resulting MCF files will suffer from the very same limitations as the AVI.
In short, apart from a few additional functions like menues, chapters, advanced seeking, perfect sync due to timestamps on each block of a track/stream, there wont be much benefit in using MCF when compared to AVI.


2. Dshow compatibility : Same as with AVI mode. Those codecs that are only available as Dshow codecs ( i dont know any ? WMV9 hacked ? ) will be supported so you can store them in MCF and parse them again, but thats it.


3. UCI ( http://uci.sf.net ) : now here is where it gets really interesting !!
It was decided that UCI will be the standard codec interface for 'native' MCF streams. We really do hope UCI will be fixed and usable until the time when we will be able to create first specs compliant files, but unfortunately the UCI creator Alex 'Foogod' Stewart cant invest much time into the project right now.
UCI has the power to become very important for the opensource video and audio encoding world, maybe even more important as MCF, because its the first attempt to
- create a common codec interface API for all platforms
- replace the old and outdated M$ VfW/ACM codec API
- introduce the first kind of standardized codec API on Unix/Linux to ever exist
- replace the old, proprietary BeOS codec API for OpenBeOS
Now, to answer your original question : basically every codec with a UCI interface can be used in MCF !!! Thats one of the most interesting points of MCF compared to OGM if you like, unless Tobias decides to support UCI in OGM also. The common codec interface makes MCF extensible a lot, all that developers of new codecs have to do to make sure their compression format becomes 'native MCF' is to add a UCI interface and to inform the MCF team about the codec and what MCF ID they have been chosing, so we can update the ID list, thats all.
Suiryc had already a look at UCI and libuci, so dont be surprised if one day you will find an option to select 'audio' 'compression ACM' and 'compression UCI' ;) ...
About RV9, WMV9, etc. : The best solution is of course always if the codec gets a 'native' UCI interface, like the XviD people suggested already. If this is not possible, like for closed, proprietary codecs there is another possibility :
A UCI wrapper ;) !! In this case all you need to know about the codec is its internal API, and then you can link the UCI wrapper to it. Should be well possible with RV9, given that the container is open now and the API to interface to the codec should be open also now ?
To answer your question : find a friendly codec making such a UCI wrapper for RV9 and you will be able to store it in MCF !


4. Subtitles : Same that goes for video codecs goes for subtitles also. The UCI interface will support the creation of 'subtitle codecs', so every fansubber group creating and maintaining a subtitle standard can make a UCI codec for it and we will be able to use it in MCF files, similar to additional video streams. The MCF parser ( connected directly to the video renderer ) can be set such that it 'blends' one video stream in the MCF file ( subs ) over another ( movie ). MCF will probably also have some very basic text and PNG subtitles in its specs, or we decide to go for USF ( Universal Subtitle Format ), once this project would ever become reality.


5. Hardcoded support for codecs :
This is similar to what Tobias is doing with Vorbis now. In this case we have to link the MCF tools to existing libraries and probably also provide these in the MCF package. AFAIK both libogg and libvorbis are
included in Tobias filters, so that he can
- en/decode Vorbis
- parse/write Ogg files
We could basically do the same with the most used codecs that can not be used via VfW/ACM, like Vorbis, or MPC, at least until UCI is finally available. Its not what we really like to do, but if UCI was delayed for some reason its our plan B.

I am expecting much from mcf, hope this will be fulfilled :)

The MCF team and me will do our very best to not let you guys down ;) !!

[Milkman Dan]

Yeah, that's me.

The authoring tool for MCF, -Gemma, is my job.

I started a thread in the advanced DVD authoring section asking about what people thought of Scenarist's user interface, and got zero feedback.


Maybe I could get something in this thread. Otherwise, -Gemma will be exactly patterned after Scenarist, exacept for the things I didn't like.

I'd type more, but I sliced the holy god damn out of my finger earlier this evening, and I'm typing with 9 digits, and it sucks.

[spyder]

That's sad to hear MilkmanDan. I hope this doesn't slow your coding down too much ;)

I plan to resume work on the EBML version of MCF4Java soon.