VP3, Open Source Video at 200kbs

Honest Man noted that intel is hyping VP3 as the first low bitrate open source video codec. 200kbs for VHS quality video sounds good to me, especially when I can apt-get it. But is DivX already to entrenched in this niche?

More info...

[kaptkudzoo]

More info here at http://www.on2.com

Yah, its open source for development but it costs $395 to license? You do the work, but we'll take the profits.

Some real info

[BigDaddy]

The page linked in the article is notably lacking in any resembling information on this codec. For more info try: On2's website [vp3.com]

Re:Will the MPAA allow Intel to do this?

[zmooc]

Sue? On what charges? If one can be sued over this, manufacturers of VHS-tapes, paper, pencils and photo-paper would be in danger as well. Under that new law (SSCCA or something) this could possibly be considered illegal, but I believe there's nothing that can be done about this nowadays.

Don't forget about patents.

[jmoffitt]

There are patents on the technology, which means it is of no more use to the open source community than True Type font hinting and MP3.

I hope that they address the patent issues, and not just brush them aside like the DivX guys have done.

There's a reason the Xiph.org project is trying to develop a video codec too :)

The **REAL** links are here...

[bani]

The real open source VP3 site [vp3.com]

The VP3 open source license [vp3.com]

The VP3 license claims to be MPL derived. Would be interesting to see if it still fits the open source criteria.

Right...

[GroovBird]

SO

- I registered at the web site (www.vp3.com) in order to receive the source and binaries for VfW and QuickTime.
- I downloaded and started the installation.
- I was welcomed by an EULA agreement ("in consideration of your payment of $39.95").

My Question

Is this safe?

Dave

Re:Quick Answer

[triple_c]

Is DivX ;) entrenched in the market? Well, how many non-technical people have heard of it? How many PCs is it bundled with? It has a reputation for being primarily used for pirated video (regardless of the truth). So, the answer is a resounding "no, it isn't entrenched".

I encouraged my Digital Video Professor here at the University of South Florida to institute divx as the codec standard for all of our projects. He tried it out and now he swears by it. I am pretty positive that divx will be used as the class standard for a while now..

Re:Open Source???

[Anonymous Coward]

> Am I missing something here????

It uses a modified Mozilla license, and I just downloaded source for free (reg. required) from here:

http://www.vp3.com/

Re:well

[Wesley Felter]

I went to the VP3 site to watch some movie trailers they have. When I started playing the trailer, QuickTime Player told me I didn't have the VP3 codec and offered to install it for me. I clicked OK a few times and the trailer started playing. It couldn't have been easier. It even installed the encoder, so I can encode VP3 from any QuickTime app.

On2's last blaze of glory

[Mr_Ust]

On2 could have been there first, but they squandered their chances by charging money for a codec while everyone else and his mother were giving it away for free.

Their technology was slightly better than the latest mpeg at the time, but marketting ruined another .bomb

Disclaimer: I used to have money invested in this company.

For informational purposes relating to the on2 codec, check out http://www.duck.com

200 kbps...

[chhamilton]

Is that video *and* audio? Or is that video only? Either way, it seems too good to be true. Typically, 128kbps is the considered the bottom end for near CD quality for MP3 audio... at 200kbps for this VP3, if they have decent stereo sound encapsulated, that doesn't leave a lot of room for the video!

Even if that figure is for video data only, that seems way too good... 200kbps is barely enough to describe audio, let alone a decent representation of video! Don't forget, DivX takes about 10Mbyte/min or 1365kbps for audio and video at decent quality...

I wonder what the quality and resolution are truly like...

CVS

[BigDaddy]

It's available from their cvs server. Look at: this page [vp3.com] for more info on browsing the CVS tree.

Re:Open Source???

[ndogg]

Uhh, yeah, it's pretty open source [vp3.com], in spite of what you may believe. Whoever modded this up obviously did about as much research as the poster.

missed info

[akb]

Lots of missed info for a project that whose source was released in early September. Good to see it finally got noticed by /.

-first source is available on vp3.com [vp3.com]. You must register to download (hrm).

-Its license [vp3.com] is MPL derived, with some restrictions on IP for their patents. Also derivatives must always be able to play VP3.

-Its streamable with QT hinting.

-only currently available for Win and Mac. Port to *nix should be easy since there is code for OS X.

-Apple and Real will be supporting it in their players

That'd be audio as well..

[Svartalf]

Standard VHS quality audio is encodable in something like 40-60kbps. It's nowhere near hi-fidelity. Now, stereo hi-fi stuff would probably require something like 300-400kbps for the video and audio as it'd need an MP3-like audio stream present.

Why don't you look a little closer?

[Svartalf]

On the bottom, there is this link to the official site at www.vp3.com. The code's under a slightly modified MPL license- if you want much of anything in the way of support, you'll be paying them $395 for the "certified" version. Otherwise, it's as free and open as Mozilla is right now without the GPL license on some parts of it.

Unlike DivX, the people opening it up OWN them.

[Svartalf]

On2 owns the patents for VP3. They're granting rights to anyone that wants to use the source and produce a codec for their platform. They're granting the rights to the patents for people that make improvements to the system so long as they don't break stream compatibility with the open source code in their CVS repository.

Re:Quality comparison?

[dschuetz]

(yes, I suppose I should have spent a couple minutes searching on google before I posted my question).

I just found two comparisons:

Extreme Tech [extremetech.com] from June 18, 2001, compares Windows Media Video 3, 7 and 8, Real 8, MPEG-4, Sorenson MPEG-4, and QuickTime (Sorenson V3 and V2). Hard to get clear results, though it looks like they liked WMV and Real about the best.

Also, Digital Video.com [dv.com] (looks like it's from november) compares WMV8, Real 8, QT 5, Sorenson 3, H.263, VP3, and ZyGoVideo. Like many magazine articles, he declines to pick a "best", since it's so usage-dependant. He thought you needed to get to at least 800 kbps for VP3, didn't like ZyGo, liked Sorenson V3 better than H.263 (which he liked better than SV2), but thought WMV8 was better. Also RV8 wasn't as good, in his opinion, as WMV8.

Anyway, they might be worth a read...

Dont bother registering..

[josh crawley]

I found out that the 'downloading' part is register locked. Big deal. guest:guest worked for me :-) I love default passwords...(ahem, root:root)

Re:*Not* Open Source *or* Free Software

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the problem with the "Open Source" movement -- it's become such a buzzword

Let's see whose fault that was:

Bruce Perens and ESR and their cronies applied for a US Trademark on "Open Source Software" and got rejected because there is plain English meaning to the words.

Rather than going back to square 1 and dreaming up a trademarkable term, they instead decided to continue invest a massive marketing effort into a term that they did not own, including laughable concepts like the "Open Source Definition". Ow - Now's it's quite possible to have "Open Source Software" that doesn not meet the OSD.

Of course, this has lead to pure confusion. "Open Source" means that the source is viewable. That's all. A MS Shared Source licence is "Open Source".

This confusion brought to you by your moronic leaders. (And don't even get me started on FreeWare, err I mean, Free Software).

Re:VP3 as counterpart to MP3...

[WWWWolf]

and how does Ogg Tarkin fit into all of this, now that there is an 'open source' codec?

Well, Ogg Tarkin codec (at code or even specification level) doesn't seem to exist as of yet. =( Last time I checked, they had debate on which "technologies" to use.

I'm not an expert on Ogg things, but I was under the impression Ogg stream format could be used to contain mostly any data, not just Vorbis-encoded audio. (there's some overviews [xiph.org] of it...) VP3 for video and Vorbis for sound wrapped into Ogg stream, anyone?

(Not sure how VFW or Qt codec-encoded data can be fitted to the Ogg world...)

Re:Major differences

[SectoidRandom]

I dont think you have looked at divx encoding much recently. Or perhaps computer specs. Firstly you say "your hard drive is likely too small" but at the moment the smallest drives you can buy are 20Gig, and the standard is about 30GB, it only takes 4-7GB temp space for encoding. IF you do it that way that is. With programs like FlaskMpeg and some addon's you can do the whole job in one turn ripping directly from the DVD. And on your average P4 chip it only takes 3 hours or so for an average movie.

I doubt it will be long either before downloading divx's becomes even more common than it already is, it doesnt take a CompSci student to relise that on his Cable modem Kazaa can download XYZMovie-divx.avi in only a few hours (taking a 650MB movie).

Think of all the trouble so many 'average-joes' would goto to copy a VHS in the past. Eg. Buying two VCR's!

I Compared DivX & VP3...

[Port1080]

And the results - for the same file, at 910 kbps, indistinguishable quality, both had minor artifacting, etc, but looked pretty good full screen, and looked great at default res. The big difference was time to encode - divx took 6 1/2 minutes to encode the clip I selected, VP3 took 11, and size - divx was 20.7 mb, vp3 was 29 mb. All other things were equal, I used Virtual Dub for both, same video clip, and the default encoding parameters for both (Medium for speed/quality in DivX 4.0, Fast Encode for VP3). My computer's a Celeron 566, 256mb RAM, running Windows 2000 SP2.

Re:Quality comparison?

[BrookHarty]

Same thing pisses me off about digital cable and satellite. They use higher mpeg2 rate for football games and ppv movies, but they lower it for my favorite tv shows. They only have so much bandwidth (they say) so the big money makers get the better quality.

This also happens with live tv, watch a football being passed, no mpeg2 artifacts. Watch a late night kungfu movie, and you can see artifacts. Older movies are stored on tape at lower quality, they should really start re-encoding those older movies for broadcast.