Atamido
9th January 2003, 07:53
This is a brief update on what UCI (http://uci.sourceforge.net) is and how it relates to Matroska. (http://matroska.org) From the UCI page:The Universal Codec Interface Project's primary goal is to create a portable, consistent set of APIs and corresponding interface library to allow all manner of applications to use the widest possible variety of multimedia codecs on unix-like operating systems (and other platforms).
MCF/Matroska began its association with UCI last August, I believe. (The UCI project existed long before the MCF/Matroska team heard about it.) The reason for the association is that, although it wasn't necessary, it would fix a lot of the problems that currently exist with vfw/DS. And, it offered the added benefit of being cross platform. So, somebody could create a codec and use it in Windows, Linux, BeOS, etc. without having to totally rewrite the interface. Also, only a single library would have to be written for each container (MCF, Matroska, OGG, AVI, MOV, whatever).
There were lots of features that we were implementing that support could 'easily' be added in windows, but that there wasn't an existing framework for Linux and other OS's. So you can see why one would be excited. A kind of Holy Grail of multimedia interfaces. So, it got mentioned alongside Matroska all the time because it made things so much easier to implement.
Unfortunately the project manager, Alex 'foogod', has disappeared for the past month or so. While this doesn't mean that functionality will be lost from Matroska, it does meant its more difficult to get support for all of the features across all platforms. We don't know that the project is dead, but we have started looking elsewhere to speed things up.
Some discussion has gone on already with Erik 'omega' Walthinsen lately, the founder of gstreamer, about an alternative with full support by gstreamer, and even some working codec plugins derived from existing gstreamer plugins.
We really hope to see the development of this, if not from UCI, then the gstreamer team. This isn't just for Matroska, but for everyone that works with A/V on all platforms.
BTW, Alex, if you are out there, give use a buzz.
Edit: Solely spelling errors. It was bad.
MCF/Matroska began its association with UCI last August, I believe. (The UCI project existed long before the MCF/Matroska team heard about it.) The reason for the association is that, although it wasn't necessary, it would fix a lot of the problems that currently exist with vfw/DS. And, it offered the added benefit of being cross platform. So, somebody could create a codec and use it in Windows, Linux, BeOS, etc. without having to totally rewrite the interface. Also, only a single library would have to be written for each container (MCF, Matroska, OGG, AVI, MOV, whatever).
There were lots of features that we were implementing that support could 'easily' be added in windows, but that there wasn't an existing framework for Linux and other OS's. So you can see why one would be excited. A kind of Holy Grail of multimedia interfaces. So, it got mentioned alongside Matroska all the time because it made things so much easier to implement.
Unfortunately the project manager, Alex 'foogod', has disappeared for the past month or so. While this doesn't mean that functionality will be lost from Matroska, it does meant its more difficult to get support for all of the features across all platforms. We don't know that the project is dead, but we have started looking elsewhere to speed things up.
Some discussion has gone on already with Erik 'omega' Walthinsen lately, the founder of gstreamer, about an alternative with full support by gstreamer, and even some working codec plugins derived from existing gstreamer plugins.
We really hope to see the development of this, if not from UCI, then the gstreamer team. This isn't just for Matroska, but for everyone that works with A/V on all platforms.
BTW, Alex, if you are out there, give use a buzz.
Edit: Solely spelling errors. It was bad.