Open source video codecs

[vkem]

Hello!

Could you tell me what's happening with open source video codecs. I've noted the following codecs:
1. XviD last update in June
2. hdot264 last update in March
3. Theora not published yet
4. Rududu waiting to be published open source

Especially I'm interested in H. 264 compression technology and wavelets. Any information about these? I tried VSS H264 codec and it seemed nice, Rududu lacks bitrate configuration. And when will come out open sourced Windows Media 9 codec?

[vkem]

And like to add that Chinese MPEG-like codec:
http://www.avs.org.cn/en

[Doom9]

And when will come out open sourced Windows Media 9 codec?Until Microsoft publicly releases the specs, nobody could start implementing them, and considering it's Microsoft, most OSS developers will probably rather invest their time working on codec based on well-known standards as MPEG-4. I very much doubt Microsoft would ever release the source code to their actual WMV9 implementation (and the codec isn't even that powerful.. I'd take XviD over WMV9 any day).

As for H.264, you will find some interesting links to the specs in this thread: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=40616

[superdump]

Originally posted by vkem
Hello!

Could you tell me what's happening with open source video codecs. I've noted the following codecs:
1. XviD last update in June
2. hdot264 last update in March
3. Theora not published yet
4. Rududu waiting to be published open source

Especially I'm interested in H. 264 compression technology and wavelets. Any information about these? I tried VSS H264 codec and it seemed nice, Rududu lacks bitrate configuration. And when will come out open sourced Windows Media 9 codec?

1. XviD dev-api-4 is being developed and currently bugfixing and polishing is underway. This will become XviD 1.0 but bugfixing is a boring and laborious task so I probably wouldn't guess at a release any time soon, but I dunno, they may surprise us. There are also a few things still to be added/changed from what I know.

2. The mailing list for hdot264 is still reasonably active but I don't know how much development actually goes on. Our very own (i.e. belonging to XviD [yes sysKin, you DO belong to XviD ;)]) sysKin joined the project briefly but left after people on the mailing list were too busy discussing what would be best to ever actually get anything done. I doubt the project will get very far.

3. Afaik there will be a bugfix release of Vorbis, namely version 1.0.1 and then the xiph dudes will continue work on theora. How good it will be is yet to be seen. You can try it in ffvfw but it pretty much has NO rate control. :) After this Monty is going on to catch up and overtake the rivals (that's his intention) by working on vorbis 1.1. :D

4. Nicolas (the author of Rududu) said if he ever decided to stop working on the codec he would open the sources to the community so they could continue with it. He has added the fundamentals of rate control but it doesn't work too well yet. For example if you want to get anywhere close to 500kbps then you'd have to scrap the bitrate mode and use the quality mode with the quality set to 63 and the node cost set to 7. A resolution less than 200000 pixels would help too. :) But he's steadily making progress on it. The output at 1000kbps or greater is very good by the way.

About h.264, I believe the FFMPEG team have pretty much stopped development on their MPEG-4 ASP codec and are working on a h.264 encoder, but this is only what I've heard, so don't hold me to it. I think this particular project is likely to be the best/first completed one. They have a good team there from what I know. :)

Doom9 himself has answered the question about WMV9 so that's about all. Thanks. :)

[vkem]

Thanks for reply, now I know :)
Btw. where could I download this ffvfw for tests? Is it open source for Win32?

[unmei]

yes, yes reasking this is sorta stupid, but still it bugs me:

anyone from the xvid team dare to make a rough estimation when a first public binary of 1.0 could be released ?

i have some old divx5 anime encodes lying around and i really don't like the picture of divx5 (4 was still great :) and plan to reencode (from DVD of course;)). Now if 1.0 is half a year away i would do it now using koepi's 24/6 but if there is a chance a devapi4 build is stable anytime earlier i'd rather wait a bit and then fiddle with it to compare against the the old divx5 encodes.

[Nibor]

Originally posted by vkem
Where could I download this ffvfw for tests?

Here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42710)'s the Thread of ffvfw! See the newest posts for a download site...

[Tommy Carrot]

There are pretty much discussion about FFVFW on the xvid forum, i'm sure you can find everything there. FFVFW is not just another mpeg4 codec, it contains a bunch of different codecs, including the most powerful lossless codec (FFV1) i've heard about (usually nearly 2 times better than huffyuv).

BTW, i would not really trust Theora as an opensource alternative of the modern codecs. It's based on a pretty outdated technology, imo it's not better than mpeg1, sometimes even worse.

The h.264 is very interesting, but all of the opensource projects died (the last h.264 related change in ffmpeg was made months ago), i think it's too much complex to make it only from enthusiasm. But commercial implementations are near.

Right now Rududu is the most interesting to me, because it's so different to the other codecs. I think it has great potential to beat mpeg4 codecs.

[vkem]

This page seems to work fine:
http://homepages.pathfinder.gr/ffvfw/

Great program! Many codecs in one pack, could one dream of better pack!

[Nibor]

@vkem
The page of your link is outdated...
This mirror (http://users.uoi.gr/ch02029/ffvfw/) has the newest binaries!!

[General Lee D. Mented]

I have an open source codec. =)

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
BTW, i would not really trust Theora as an opensource alternative of the modern codecs. It's based on a pretty outdated technology, imo it's not better than mpeg1, sometimes even worse.


Actually, VP3 (which is what Theora is based on) works quite well on the Macintosh. I could never get the same results from the Windows encoder for VP3, but on my Mac VP3 gave encodes at least as good as DivX 5.0.x.

The main limitations in my opinion were one-pass only, and poor Windows support.

I haven't the faintest idea why since the encoder is EXACTLY the same code from Mac to PC, but my VP3 encodes on the PC looked like shit. As Tommy says, it looks worse than MPEG1 sometimes. The same encode on the Mac comes out quite competitive with any of the other modern MPEG4 codecs. I dropped VP3 for XviD once XviD got b-frame support. XviD is better than VP3, but it remains to be seen how well the new changes to Theora compare to XviD.