Dirac news

[PatchWorKs]

PRE: sorry for this crosspost (already in 'News' section), but too mutch important !

After the inclusion in MediaCoder...

Originally Posted by 0.6.0-pre5 MC changelog

[add] Dirac encoder (BBC's open source wavelet video encoder) support
.
.
[add] Dirac encoder DLL

...some interesting news came out from the dirac's Open Discussion forum @ SF.net:

Originally Posted by Tim Borer

The inclusion of Dirac in MediaCoder is great news. Many thanks :-).

iPlayer is certainly in favour with the BBC at the moment. But this does NOT mean that Dirac has been dumped in favour of iPlayer plans. In fact it is entirely possible that Dirac will be chosen for a platform agnostic version of the iPlayer.

The BBC Trust, who now ultimately governs the BBC, has given approval to iPlayer, but they have said that a platform agnostic version (not MS Windows only, but including MACs and Linux) must be made available within a reasonable time scale (24 months is stated in one of the BBC trust releases). In order to achieve this they need a platform agnostic video codec and Dirac fits very nicely into this slot.

Overall the project IS proceeding well (even if that is not always apparent from without).

We have been doing a lot of work on something we call Dirac Pro, which is a high quality, high bit rate, version of Dirac aimed at professional video production (makes sense for the BBC, no?). We now have hardware for this, which will be launched (for sale) at NAB (the US broadcasting trade show). We are standardising Dirac Pro, as VC-2, through the SMPTE. Whilst Dirac Pro may not seem directly relevant to Dirac, nevertheless it has proved extremely useful for Dirac’s development. The SMPTE standard will be a subset of Dirac and so will help us provide a final version of the Dirac spec and software.

We have continued to work on the Dirac code, as you will see from checkins to CVS. We are also working with Fluendo on the Schodinger implementation of Dirac. One of our tasks at the moment is to make sure that Dirac, Schrodinger and the specification (version 10.4 on the web site) are in agreement. Cross checking them has turned up quite a few bugs, which we are addressing.

We are also working on real time encoding hardware for Dirac (for HDTV). This work has also been very helpful in refining the Dirac specification.

So, from the outside it may appear that things are going slowly. But inside the project the team is working hard and, I think, making good progress. I’m not going to promise specific dates but we are getting there as fast as we can. And we still DO have the support of the BBC.

Future wise I am hoping that we can make another release of the Dirac software within the next month or two (I know it has been a while since the last one). I’m hoping that Schrodinger will soon be finished. We will be exhibiting both Dirac and Dirac Pro at public shows and exhibitions in the coming year.

Tim

[Guest]

Originally Posted by PatchWorKs

PRE: sorry for this crosspost (already in 'News' section), but too mutch important

You don't get to claim exemptions from the forum rules for yourself. Therefore, your News posting was deleted.

[foxyshadis]

Have you given it the ol' encodin' try to see how far it's come? I can always give it an overnight run, but if someone else knows now that'd be nice too.

[Kurtnoise]

Dirac 0.7.0 is out...

This is a major release complying with Dirac ByteStream Specification 1.0.0_pre4. The specification is available on the Dirac Homepage on Sourceforge.

- Added support for Constant Bit Rate Coding.
- Improved quality of encoded pictures at low bit-rates and
for difficult sequences.
- Improved motion vector data partitioning to allow for
parallel encoding and decoding of this data especially in
hardware.
- Added support for integral motion vector precision.
- Improved Arithmetic coding.
- Solution and Project files for Visual C++ 2005 Express
edition.
- Encoder and Decoder API header files have changed so
applications using the old API will have to be recompiled.
- Released patches to MPlayer, FFmpeg to comply with this
release. Earlier patch to transcode can be used with
release.
- DirecShow Filter released to be able to play back Dirac
v0.7.0 files in Windows Media Player.
- Bugs fixed: 1362673, 1508532, 1588191
- Patches applied: 1537623

For those want to test this codec on windows, I've made a ffmpeg compile (with dirac & avisynth support). And for playback/decoding with any dshow players, a pack is available here.

[Revgen]

@ Kurt

Do you know a place where the FFMPEG Dirac commands are posted?

[Kurtnoise]

Included in the README from the sources :

Sample Usage: (encoding)

Constant quality encoding example:
ffmpeg -s 720x576 -i input_file.yuv -vcodec dirac -strict -2 -qscale 15 dirac_output.drc

Constant bitrate encoding example:
ffmpeg -s 720x576 -i input_file.yuv -b 1500000-vcodec dirac -strict -2 dirac_output.drc
The encoder will attempt tp keep the bitrate constant at 1500000 bps.

Currently, the output from the encoder is exactly as it is written to the .drc
encoded file. The -qscale flag controls the quality of the Dirac encoder
output. The bit rate is not constant when this option is choses. A qscale of 1
maps to dirac quality factor 10 and 30 maps to quality factor 1). The -b flag
controls the bitrate (in bps) of Dirac encoder output. The Dirac encoder
attempts to keep the output bitrate constant at the value specified.

Of course, you can replace the yuv input file by an avs script...

All commands are available in the dirac_encoder command line tool...

[PatchWorKs]

For those who -still- don't know: (thanks to me) MediaCoder already supports -latest!- Dirac:

Originally Posted by Changelog

0.6.0.3690

* [update] MediaCoder build 3690
o [add] several absent XviD options (including BVHQ)
o [add] file list invert selection
o [update] preference window reworked with XUL
o [update] aspect ratio option updated
o [fix] join mode issues
* [update] Dirac video encoder 0.7.0
* [update] MPlayer/MEncoder r23315
* [update] FFmpeg r9022
* [update] x264 r655