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Television Media

Cable Industry backs Mpeg-4 for Streaming Video 84

Posted by CmdrTaco from the standardization-time dept.
Greyfox writes "This techweb story informs us that the Cable Industry has thrown their chips in with Mpeg4 and will probably want to tweak the codec for streaming video. I'm all for it, I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for. "
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Cable Industry backs Mpeg-4 for Streaming Video More

Cable Industry backs Mpeg-4 for Streaming Video

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  • The MPEG-4 Industry Forum:

    http://www.m4if.org [m4if.org]

    Is working to that you can conveniently obtain a licence to the whole MPEG-4 patent bundle (over 200 patents), in the same way as you can for MPEG-2.

    A free software imnplementation of an MPEG-4 CODEDC is available from ISO, which is linked from the M4IF site. Note that while the software (i.e. the implementation) is free, you still need to licence the patents to use it.

    Still, we're all using free MPEG-2 players and encoders under Linux, so it sounds pretty good to me!
  • I was an early adopter of DSS; in fact, the DSS reciever I still use is the original first-generation RCA unit. Having used DSS for years I can say that TCI (ie AT&T) digital cable is inferior.

    Specifically, newer (anything in the past 3 years) DSS units do not have the slow-channel-switching problems. Also the channel guides are very sophisticated and morever very useful. The image quality is like S-VHS, and the sound quality is AWESOME. I only notice MPEG artifacts when there is a subtle gradient or a large dark area on the screen.

    My DSS freaks out maybe three times a month. By freaks out I mean the MPEG signal goes crazy, the screen becomes corrupted (sound is fine) and it takes about 5 seconds to return to normal.

    With digital cable, this is a MUCH more frequent occurance. And, like you mentioned, channel switching is painful. Not only does it take a second to tune, but then it seems like it starts building the image before it gets a keyframe; ie you will see a bunch of boxes on the screen that eventually resolve into a normal image.

    Whats more is the cost -- "digital cable" here in Berkeley, CA means 40 channels of analog cable at $25/mo + $10/mo for TEN channels of digital (+PPV). Uhmm... no thanks, I'll stick with DSS, which is technically better, as well as the fact that not only do I get ALL the cable channels in digital, I also get the local networks digital for an extra $5. Thats ABC, NBC, CBS, and Fox.
  • The streaming server never decodes or encodes a movie file. And a player for the Quicktime file format is not a problem either. xanim can access them just fine. The problem is that nearly all QT4 videos use the Sorenson codec. This codec is a proprietary product of Sorenson. Apple has a license to encode and decode Sorenson in their player and encoder. Sorenson and Apple even refuse to allow a decoder to be written under an NDA. The xanim author was able to write Indeo and Cinepak decoders under NDA, and then distribute binary modules. We can't even do this!
  • What do we do if the companies decide to get greedy like Fraunhoefer and clamp down on Open-Source players (as FhG is planning to do with AAC) as well as encoders (as FhG does with mp3)?

    This is why I think ISO shouldn't be accepting patent-encumbered stuff as open standards. Companies do have a right to their work and their intellectual property. But they shouldn't be allowed to hold that out to the public as an "open standard" then force people to jump through hoops. You want to patent stuff, fine. You want to open it as an indistry standard, fine. But you shouldn't be able to have your cake and eat it too. Nowhere else in the universe do things work that way. Why, then, should standards?
  • Most of them didn't even know what I was talking about when I pointed out the MPEG artifacts (they called it "macro blocking").

    I noticed that when talking to cable people and reading various magazines. This field, especially on the digital side, has a completely different terminology. It makes me wonder if any of the architects of digital cable have had any experience with traditional networking and telecommunications. That along with shared bandwidth has turned me off of cable. My hope is that television will eventually be broadcast over the internet ala iCraveTV, and with DSL finally give those cable bastages some real competition.

  • No; Apple keeps the Sorensen codec proprietary, and promote movies in exclusively that format; (Episode I Trailer, for example) look it up, this has been discussed on Slashdot before.

    Yes, I agree that MPEG is not a good format for editing; you'd want to use something else for that. But at that level, I'm sure there are expensive, proprietary formats that are designed for this. (Amiga MODs for Video, I suppose...)

    Also, I just want to see the movies. :)

    Anything Apple is a strong supporter of never becomes the great success it should have been. Witness The Macintosh, Taligent, the Power PC Architecture, System 8, Rhapsody, etc. I hope Mac OS X changes things for them, but they have a long history of spoiling good ideas in favor of making them more proprietary. Sure, it gives them more control, but wouldn't they want to be popular too, and get their message out?
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Well, if we can't get a free player, then at least we have a number of large linux companies in the game now with large numbers of $$$ at their disposal. They could use some of that cash to pay for a commercial port if one cannot be gotten elsewhere.

    I know some people will disagree with me on this, but I personally believe that it's better to have a binary solution than no solution at all. Hobsons choice, 'n all that.

    Macka
  • Maybe you haven't heard (it wasn't announced almost a year ago I believe) but QuickTime was adopted as he MPEG-4 standard. I've got it bookmarked somewhere. It would be nice to have a Linux player though, damn nice.
  • Can you post a link to the ISO demo? I've been looking for this program for months, and still can't find it on that website.

    ~Chris Carlin
  • Reminds me of the thing with movie standards where the whole industry is touting moving to expensive digital theaters when there is no real improvement, while a new analog format has been created that provides MUCH improvement at relatively no cost.

    Digital is one of the biggest buzzwords in the world in both computer circles and pop culture. I wish people would think more rationally about it, because in the end it is probably hurting us all.

    I think I saw this on Slashdot a while back.
  • Reminds me of the thing with movie standards where the whole industry is touting moving to expensive digital theaters when there is no real improvement

    Uhm, I think you're missing the primary purpose of digital theaters: satellite distribution. Think about it, instead of printing hundres or thousands of VERY VERY expensive movie reels for every movie, then worry about people stealing/damaging them, and them all fading in five years, you just stream a movie up to the satellite and down to thousands of theatres simaltaneously....
  • Well the cable tech. was actually speaking knowledgably in this case. The square blocks that can be seen in MPEG videos and JPEG images are called macro blocks. They represent the blocks the image or frame was chopped into during compression. With high compression ratios the edges of these blocks become apparent as discontinuities, particulary on large areas of a single color. When people talk about artifacts in an image they are usually referring to the visible edges of the macro blocks.

    This is really not a failing of digital cable in general. It's just a consequence of the cable provider being unable or unwilling to transmit a data stream with higher bandwidth.
  • Broadband internet is already very suitable for streaming high quality video. I fooled around with some divx videos yesterday (matrix and starwars). I was very much impressed with both. The matrix had been ripped straight of a dvd and the starwars video was ripped from a video tape.

    The matrix at some points approached dvd quality (nice sharp images and a decent framerate). It then occured to me that it only took me about 3 hours to download the thing. With a little boost in bandwidth (the download was not maxing out my connection), it would have been possible to stream the movie.
  • Not only does it take a second to tune, but then it seems like it starts building the image before it gets a keyframe; ie you will see a bunch of boxes on the screen that eventually resolve into a normal image.

    Heh, I forgot about that. :-) But I think that only happened with the premium channels.

  • instead of printing hundres or thousands of VERY VERY expensive movie reels for every movie, then worry about people stealing/damaging them, and them all fading in five years, you just stream a movie up to the satellite and down to thousands of theatres simaltaneously....

    First off, this sounds a lot like the New Coke fiasco to me. The audience is going to reject digital movies if the MPEG artifacts become visible. And what about when there's a storm, and the signal drops? Is the theater going to want to reimburse 400 people? I don't think so.

    Second, is the price of a movie ticket going to drop? Of course not! The money savings will be pocketed by the theater or the production company.

  • I doubt consumers will see any benefit to this, though. They will only have the warm glow in their hearts from knowing that the theater is digital :)
  • For me, the real killer in QT is it's SLOOOOW launch time. I'm finished watching the movie in WIMP (WIndows Media Player) before QT even launches. It's a joke, and I wish Apple would do something about it. QT 3 was okay, but QT 4 is very slow, even on my 300MHz G3.

    I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
  • I think you just violated the DMCA!

    I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
  • Seven Layers?

    All People Seem To Need Data Processing!

    I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
  • They can't give out the codec, they do not own it. Sorenson does.
  • Everyone who knows something about video compression and who loves free software, to come together, and create a new, truly open standard.

    Unfornately, the only requirement, I myself, fill, is that I love free software. And I would hate seeing people walking away from it, just because it can't follow state-of-art video technology.
  • I don't think Apple insistantly promote proprietary format.

    The QuickTime is just an architecture or wrapper or accessor to many codecs.
    It gives "Same access method on different codecs"
    So, if you make a codec as a plugin for a QuickTime, it works under QuickTime without significant modification of your existing source codes.

    And the MPEG4 is just standardized.

    Because the Apple is in multimedia industry not just for playing but also for editing media, QuickTime would be better editing format than just a MPEG S/W.
    Because there are many tracks, Text, Sound, Video, etc, it would be easier to edit with QuickTime movie files than MPEG movie files. For example, if there are 2 scens which are transited by dissolve effect, the cut detection could be done without considering "slow transition" or "abrupt transition". But with MPEG, although when a media is created, there would be no problem, when handling existing MPEG file, that kind of manipulation would be difficult.
    I still study the MPEG and QuickTime things.
    I have why MPEG could be bettern than the QuickTime or the AVI or vice versa in question for long time.
    Probably as a distribution media, MPEG could be better, but.. you know..

    And the MPEG4 is not what you get from the MPEG1( video CD ) and the MPEG2 (DVD). The purpose is quite different.
    And the QuickTime already has the foundation and Apple's own solution to the MPEG4 issue already.

    And the Apple is a strong supporter of the MPEG4.
    According to the MPEG group leader's own explanation in ETRI,located in Taejon, Korea.
  • Mpeg is an open standard on almost every platform, I don't see many quicktime tools for SGI which most professional video is done. Quicktime is just some "standard" that apple pushed on everyone. Of course windows will be the dominant platform, how can it not be when over 80% of the world uses it.
  • I'm willing to bet that very few people are too lazy to download RealPlayer. The reason I don't have it is because Real produces the most intrusive and bloated software I have ever seen. You have to give your life history and medical records to download it, and once you do it throws icons everywhere and has itself start in the system tray every time you boot. I won't even begin to comment on their Linux products...

  • Multimedia file formats (Score:3)

    by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @03:20PM (#1075097) Homepage
    Sooner or later, somebody is going to have to accept that in the near future, computers will be dealing with high-quality video in a similar way that today's computers deal with pictures and sound.

    Ten years ago, just displaying a high quality image was a novelty, today your computer is doing it all the time with banner advertisments. In ten years time? Perhaps broadband internet will be prevalent, and banner advertisments will be full motion video. And in another ten years? Who knows...

    What the industry really needs is a standardised, open multimedia format, much like the JPEG is a standard format for pictures today. Just imagine how the WWW would have developed if anyone wanting to write a program that could read or write JPEGs had to pay large royalties - this is what's happening today with systems such as MPEGs 2 and 4. The technologies may be esoteric now, but soon they'll become commonplace, and it would be best if they weren't encumbered by such restrictions.

    The main reason for this post is because I've just been playing with DivX ;-), watching the trailer for the Matrix. The video quality for a small file was astounding - we need this thing for Linux...

    Ford Prefect
  • From what I've seen, most mpeg programs now use the SMPEG library (except for those that implement the codec internally). The way things are going, that'll probably be the standard. Now if only distributions would include it....

  • Re:Quicktime (Score:5)

    by Mithrandir ( 3459 ) on Sunday May 14, 2000 @01:35AM (#1075099) Homepage
    OK, I'll assume ignorance on your part because not everyone sits down to read a 2000+ page specification as an after-dinner entertainment. I have ( I had to review the Geometry spec as part of my VRML work back a few years ago).

    The stream format in MPEG-4 is the QT streaming protocol. You can also use the QuickTime file format over those streams if you want to. However, the codecs for whatever goes over the stream is not the Sorenson codec, which is the most used of the QT options in QT players.

    MPEG-4 is a huge beast of many different layers. There's the streams, then the synchronisation protocols, then you have audio, video and geometry over the top of that. In the Version 2 spec and MPEG/J there are even whole APIs defined for interacting with the stream (They basically ripped my entire work that I did on the VRML External Authoring Interface and put it in there without so much as a single credit!)

  • We already have 200 channels with MPEG-2; how many do they want to give us with MPEG-4?

    I suspect with the building demand for HDTV signals that we'll still get 200 channels, just at HD resolutions.

  • To the moderator:

    No, the original comment is not flamebait. It is /extremely/ annoying having to deal with this stupid nag screen if you have to watch multiple QuickTime movies.

    Normally, commercial software has some sort of remind-me-later checkbox that will make the buy-me window pop up only at some rare occasions. Nobody will buy the software only because they don't like those screens, people just get a bad opinion of QuickTime. That's where MS Media Player wins -- no problems, no price, just works.
  • http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/feb/11iso.htm l

    why doesn't anybody check this stuff out? mpeg4 is based on quicktime! to everyone who is ranting about quicktime sucking, it is funny that you support MPEG4, you obviously didn't do your homework... MPEG4 is technically just a quicktime format! Apple developed MPEG 4 to be the standard for video and web and to replace the other variants of MPEG 4! Do you research, and you will see that MPEG4 is from apple. Mediaplayer for windows is terrible... i can't stand it... i can't stand avi. For what it is worth quicktime is so much better... and it is the standard for web,video editing, graphics... AND realplayer don't even get me started on that bloatware, that has a terrible GUI. Trying to run realplayer (latest version) on my mac g4 500 with 256MB ram and 10,000 rpm scsi2 and it still sucks... Mediaplayer for mac isn't much better. And realplayer for windows is just as bad... Quicktime on the pc works awesome, but you have to tweek a few settings first, otherwise you will be FRUSTRATED..
  • Can't say but that I agree with you. There is more hope for quicktime for Linux given OSX than there is for Mpeg-4 for Linux. Don't expect Apple to open source it, but if they are serious about making a dent in streaming media with the OSX servers, then they probably could be convinced to produce binaries. The worst thing that could happen is for Microsquish to co-opt Mpeg-4 and bring out a crappy product like their windows media product. We would all then be stuck with whatever "Unka Bill and the Balmer" decide to give us. Yuk!!!

  • OSX? Theft!

    What are you talking about, theft? They bought the company (NeXT) that owned the code they used as a basis for Rhapsody/OS X. As an added bonus, many (as far as I know) of the engineers that worked for NeXT now work at Apple, with Avie Tevanian being being their senior VP of Software Engineering. In fact, it is almost as if Apple became NeXTified, rather than NeXT becoming Appleified.

  • DISH Network, my man.

    Digital signal, I've had it for three months now. Razor sharp images, and I've never once noticed any artifacts.
    Of course, due to stupid legislation, I don't get NBC or CBS, and you know what? I don't miss them. What's on CBS anyways? Nightline, or 20/20, or some stupid pseudo-news show doing documentaries on the heartbreak of psoriasis.

    Now I have Cartoon Network. Johnny Bravo dude. And my son can watch like 10 episodes of Pokemon every Saturday. I get like 20 channels of sports I don't ever, ever watch. And best of all, NASA channel, where they show the award-winning Earth Views - cataloged video from shuttle missions. This rocks. Cable sucks.


    I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .

  • Have you even used a computer? Or even tried one of the programs?

    Windows Media Player kicks RealPlayer's ass at streaming audio and video and doesn't do that bad of a job with other formats. I keep NT around under vmware for it and a couple other programs. Its one of the best "free" players I've seen that handles mpeg (fullscreen!) and other so called open standards well.

    And as for quicktime... it just blows on any platform... The damn windows player is the most infuriating thing in the world... the quality looks terrible and the sound skips like a whore... meanwhile windows media player can play 100MB fullscreen mpegs without even sweating...

  • Digital CAN be a great technology, and has the capacity to provide as good a quality as analog (as far as the sensitivity of humans can discern). BUT, Digital content gives providers the means to throttle that quality with much finer control. So if Time Warner wants to take your $40/mo for digital service, and be cheap-asses on bandwidth, they can easily do it, because Joe Six-Pack wont know the difference. Most people are not audiophiles and videophiles, and that is why this technology lets these content providers get away with crap like this. The edge-cases like you and me will go to better, competing services like Satellite, or maybe someday, DSL-provided internet, and get a better deal, with better quality. (Satellite lets a provider pick up an unlimited number of new customers without having to divie-up the bandwidth, just sit under that satellite's footprint with a dish, and you have a good signal).

    Where this doesn't work so well is when content providers are also content producers, and when the game starts getting rough, and when Time Warner decides that none of it's provider competitors will have Time Warner movies or other content available.
    We saw this a couple of weeks ago when Time Warner played hardball with Disney during negotiations, and cut ABC from their cable networks. This was only the beginning. It's going to get worse, much, much worse. Just thank whatever diety you worship that DivX didn't take off.

    I just remembered this old Metallica song. . .
  • Just a thought - wouldn't it be possible to port the Sorenson codec to x86 linux using Windows Quicktime? As stated it is relatively straightforward to write QT players for any platform, and I'm sure xanim could be updated to support QT streaming. In this case the only boundary to Linux QT would be porting the codecs. If someone could find out how the Windows QT player interfaces with the Sorenson codec .dll then could they not reverse engineer it? Of course I may be talking rubbish.
  • Of course, the whole idea of International Standards that can't be used by anyone is patently (heh) ridiculous. How to deal with this, I have no idea, short of creating a new codec that rivals MPEG-4, which is no easy task. Perhaps we can find a way to make our voice heard to the various lawyers deciding licensing, but I'd rate that as a rather low chance of success.

    If truly open standards are to persist much into the next century, it is critical that patented methodologies be explicitly excluded from consideration at the get-go. Furthermore, methodologies which become patented down the road (for which there is no prior art - e.g. there is a patent application pending which no one is aware of) would be immediately disqualified or marked as "tainted" and replaced with an unencumbered equivelent.

    To achieve this we need to dump the ISO as a standards body. This wouldn't be as difficult or traumatic as one might think - they are not know for creating great technical standards (remember the virtually unimplimentable, horribly ineffecient, and none too soon defunct OSI "seven layers"?).

    I would submit that we should use and expand the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force, with a specific addendum to the charter prohibiting proprietary and patent-encumbered technologies from being considered, much less defined into, any open standard whatsoever.

    More to the immediate point, we do need to develope our own standards and codecs (see OggVorbis [xiph.org] and the nascient Open Video Disc [linuxvideo.org] mailing list for examples.

    We need to take back our standards on both the implementation (defacto) front and the institutional (IETF vs. ISO) front.
  • Lets assume Apple has donated the QuickTime file format to the good of all man kind in MPEG4.

    Great... of course, that makes Apple a tonne of cash down the road :) but thats fair :)

    ---

    Next, I suppose you could say that that peeved MS a bit. After all, they did submit AVI or was it ASF (I lose track of these things ;) ) to be the file format... but Apple's QuickTime was chosen...

    ---

    Well another 'minor' part of MPEG4 is how to compress the 2D Video Streams :)

    This has traditionally been where all the focus has been in other MPEG standards, but MPEG4 is more about multimedia than compression.

    But of course, compression is an essential part of this.

    Anyway, way it works is MPEG defines it, and some MPEG related group usually implements an implemention to test the methodologies. Once EVERYTHING has been finalised, things are accepted and made public... Including at least one implementation to assist the hardware and software implementers. Of course, there are always patents invovled... so you pay the licensing fees and all that jive.

    MPEG4 has TWO official code implementers,

    There is, I believe an italian, group doing the C implementation. And there is Microsoft.

    Microsoft is doing the C++ implmentation.

    Now. You can bet your bottom dollar microsoft won't be giving away their code when its time to open up one of the implementations :)

    In fact, I'd bet the OTHER groups, specific purpose is to write the implementation for others to follow.

    ---

    What does this mean?

    MPEG4 files/streams are quicktime.

    Microsoft is developing a version of the MPEG4 standard.

    Apple already has MPEG4 and are just missing a few codecs :)

    They will be made open, and then Apple can start selling Final Cut Pro and pals as an MPEG4 authoring system, and PowerMac G4x4 systems as the supreme MPEG4 authoring system.

    Of course, MPEG4 is everything, so Linux can just use the free implementation, after all patents never seem to bother opensource coders ;) (see LAME)

    ---

    What's interesting at the moment, is microsoft seems to be trying to use their advanced access to the MPEG4 coding systems to try and rest dominance in the current internet streaming field... Does this mean they're trying to embrace and extend MPEG4?

    Hmmm...

    Perhaps they're trying to make it irrelevant.

    You see...

    MS-MPEG4.3 which is a great codec... some say, "The MP3 of Video" only works inside a microsoft active streaming format file.

    You can't use it inside an AVI file (which is just a way of interleaving audio and video streams after all) or inside a quicktime file (similar to AVI but all embracing ;) )

    (aside: QuickTime is like the Borg of Media :), Your decompressors, mediahandlers, datahanders and stream handlers WILL be assimilated ;) )

    [hmmm I think I've gotten lost, I did have a point :)]

    Anywho...

    It is possible to hack MS-MPEG4.3 implementation and turn it into a legitimate Win32 AVI CoDec :) and then you can embed MPEG4 streams into AVI containers, and use it just like another format ;)

    Heh... Sortof defeats the whole posturing MS seems to be doing with the ASF format.

    MPEG4 is a multimedia architechture whose file format happens to be based on Apple's QuickTime.



    ---
    Live Long & Prosper \\//_
    CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
  • You can buy a CD with the MPEG-4 source from ISO.

    I can't find any mention of it on their web site (www.iso.ch), but you can send an e-mail to:

    sales@iso.ch
  • I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for

    How the hell can anyone be "for" anything that you don't have a clue about? If this shapes up to be like 90% of all other big commercial ventures, it'll be Windows only. Maybe the Mac, and probably not Linux. Second, it's a custom codec, so if you're too lazy to DL realplayer, MPEG4 isn't going to be any different.

    Don't hold your breath expecting any open source details on the custom codec. In fact, the mere mention of any customization of a standard (oxymoron), should flash huge warning signs.

    Same ol same ol, is about the best I'm hoping for.

  • Very nice... (Score:3)

    by Millennium ( 2451 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:02AM (#1075113)
    The only question now is, when are we going to see an actual standard released? All I've seen so far is Microsoft's proprietary implementations of MPEG4 drafts, and those certainly couldn't be called cross-platform. DivX is just a hack of the Microsoft codec, so that's just as closed in the end (though I do hope that contest will help speed things up as concerns platform adoption, particularly since that implementation is to be Open-Source).
  • One thing that windows has that Linux doesn't have is "standard" component based media libraries. I Say "standard" in the sense that you don't have 4 different system mpeg API's that all work in different ways.

    I like Linux but it sure sucks in the "wow" department for digital entertainment and production.

  • MPEG4 (Score:3)

    by yetisalmon ( 70744 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:06AM (#1075115) Homepage Journal
    I also came across the MPEG4, Web3D collaboration 'movement'. Check it out here [vrml.org]

    For all of you who are confused about MPEG (Moving Pictures Experts Group), check here [techweb.com].

  • Quicktime (Score:5)

    by effer ( 155937 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:09AM (#1075116)
    You hate a format because a viewer compatible with your OS of choice is unavailable?!
    That's a pretty narrow minded view of the world. The push is on for Apple to either release a Linux viewer and/or release the codec allowing a viewer to be developed.
    Free distribution has one goal and many methods. Release the codec and allow many implementations, develop for all platforms, focus on one or two and screw the rest. All have advantages and disadvantages, but this is not our decision as much as it is our responsibility to convince towards the option of our choice.
    I happen to love QT over Mpeg and I'm also a Linux supporter. Doesn't mean I stay up at night fretting over it. I don't bother with AVI's as my main machine is a PowerBook and my Linux, Irix, WinNT, and W2k boxes are secondary minimally powered systems for testing and learning. I don't for a second feel deprived of content by not bothering with formats such as AVI.

  • but what does it all mean basil? (Score:3)

    by Bad_CRC ( 137146 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @11:07AM (#1075117)
    it's a bit nut-ty.

    video on linux is poor at best. I have xanim, and every other player I could find, but I still have had spotty luck at best getting anything to play under linux.

    windows media player is still many, many times better than anything available for linux.

    If I could just view asf and DivX in linux, I'd be happy. So far RealPlayer is looking like the only hope.

    ________
    1995: Microsoft - "Resistance is futile"


  • I know that mpeg standards are created by some kind of coellition (sp) of engineers-- but it's my understanding that there's still some kind of closed-aspect to the standards.

    My question is-- what uh, "license" is the mpeg4 standard released under, if that's the right term to use. Will anyone be able to write an mpeg4 encoder/decoder on any platform? With there be royalties that have to be paid, etc.?

    If I remember correctly, mpeg4 has all kinds of cool standards for somehow tying vrml into audio sources so that you can have an unlimited # of sources coming from any virtual location. I also seem to recall something about "structured audio" whatever that is... is this all still there?

    Sorry for the uninformed questions.. I guess I'll go check out an mpeg 4 site....

    W
    -------------------

  • Keep in mind that even though MPEG-4 is an ISO standard, that doesn't mean it's free. MPEG-2 requires a $4 license every time anything MPEG-2 related is transfered to a consumer. That means no free players. We have no idea what MPEG-4 licensing is going to look like, but I'm not holding my breath. I ran across a document showing that all the big patent players explicitly objected to free implementations of BIFS, which AFAICT is the equivalent of Program/System Streams for MPEG-4. If we can't even get a free implementation of the transport stream code, how are we going to get a free implementation of the codec itself?

    While anyone with a brain can plainly see that free decoders are critical to any kind of market share on the Internet, these are lawyers making these licensing decisions. We all know that lawyers live in their own little litigious world, and can't generally be counted on to have any connection to reality. I wouldn't at all be surprised to find MPEG-4 requires a $N license just to get a player.

    Of course, the whole idea of International Standards that can't be used by anyone is patently (heh) ridiculous. How to deal with this, I have no idea, short of creating a new codec that rivals MPEG-4, which is no easy task. Perhaps we can find a way to make our voice heard to the various lawyers deciding licensing, but I'd rate that as a rather low chance of success.

    Suggestions as to how we can deal with this problem would be welcome....

  • This [eetimes.com] appears to be the original, geekier version of the story before TechWeb's editors got to it. I'm not sure I like the idea of inserting personalized advertising objects into video streams.

    We already have 200 channels with MPEG-2; how many do they want to give us with MPEG-4?
  • Hopefully everyone will think that it's some cool runner up to MP3 and it will become improperly marketed and everyone will want to use it.

  • I agree, I often have problems with quicktime and it never runs properly on my computer...at school, on the macs, it seems to work fairly well. I think that this will probably solve a lot of problems. This format will hopefully catch on.


  • MPEG is developed by ISO; that means you have to pay for the specs and can't give copies to your neighbors, but it isn't viral, so you can at least own the code you write.

    MPEG-4 is covered by so many patents that a licensing association [m4if.org] has been set up to keep track of the whole thing. If you want to sell something that uses MPEG-4, just give them your wallet and back away slowly. :-)
  • ...and they branched out from there and added to it. Another feather in Apples cap.

    From : http://www.vxm.com/MPEG-4.html

    The QuickTime file format will be used to store digital video, audio, and other types of content displayed using MPEG-4. According to Apple, the creator of the QuickTime technology, MPEG-4 will also contain things like MIDI, animation and 3D worlds. QuickTime will be used to store all of these things. The fact that QuickTime is being used for these kinds of things today is one of the reasons it was such a compelling choice for the MPEG-4 efforts.

    No doubt, this QuickTime victory will likely ruffle some feathers at Microsoft, as its adoption by MPEG was actively "supported" by several of its most notable arch rivals -- Sun, Oracle, and Netscape (SGI and IBM also pushed for its adoption). But apart from smarting over the obvious NIH factor, if Microsoft wants to be MPEG-4 compliant, it must now incorporate the Quicktime format into its multimedia applications, like NetShow, NetMeeting, ActiveMovie, and Interactive Music. ActiveX Controls may also have to make some sort of accommodation with Quicktime. How likely and how soon Microsoft will deliver all these modifications after MPEG-4 debuts is anybody's guess.

    Other resources:

    http://www.internetwk.com/news/news0211-15.htm

    http://www.cselt.it/mpeg/faq/faq-systems.htm#MP4-M PEG_4_is_based_on

  • Yes, but Windows codecs are not just limited to mpeg streams only. They are nice when you get things off of the web. They are especially usefull when producing music on a virtual mixing console, or editing video.

    It would be nice if Gnome && || KDE could get together and agree on some form of central media API's that everybody could write for and not have to worry if the end user has the correct libraries. :)

    This would be great for DV editing. Linux would make a kick ass platform for this need, but only if hardware OEM would support Linux. :(

  • Digital cable TV is worse than analog (Score:4)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @04:27PM (#1075126)
    "The amazing thing about streaming media today is how bad it is," said Jim Wood, vice president of advanced technology at AT&T Broadband.

    This past summer, I had the misfortune of trying out digital cable. Our cable provider, Time Warner, is promoting "digital cable" as a superior alternative to the standard analog cable. With digital cable, you get:

    • A bigger cable box that generates more heat, takes longer to switch channels (something I really hate), and needs to initialize itself for 10 minutes every time you plug it in.
    • About three times as many channels, none of which interested me
    • "Digital quality pictures", which basically means video that has tons of MPEG artifacts. Dark areas which used to be one color are now represented by dozens of big squares, half of which are black and the rest brown. Occasionally, portions of the screen become replaced with green squares.
    • A bunch of music channels

    I hated digital cable. The MPEG artifacts drove me crazy. I had technicians come out to my house FIVE times, and they couldn't do a damn thing. Most of them didn't even know what I was talking about when I pointed out the MPEG artifacts (they called it "macro blocking").

    The problem was not my signal. They rewired my apartment, and it didn't help at all. The signal was coming in 100%, no lost packets or frames. It turns out that the real problem was the broadcast. It was being transmitted that way. Depending on the channel, it was possible for the signal to go through multiple D/A and A/D converstions before it got to my TV. The ironic part was that that channels I wanted the most (SciFi, Showtime, etc) were the ones that had the worst problems.

    After about a month, I went back to analog. The picture is super-sharp in comparison, and I never experience any image degradation.

    So what's this got to do with anything? The cable industry thinks that digital video is the way of the future. But MPEG only works when the bandwith is high enough, and the cable industry is not interested in providing enough bandwith to make the picture 100% sharp. We've all seen DVD's that have MPEG artifacts, and it really sucks. They say that streaming media over the Internet is bad. Well, streaming media from Time Warner over my cable TV is not much better.

  • A good reason to hate QT is that annoying "Buy me Now!" window everytime it boots up. Sorry, you didn't convince me to buy you the first time, the next 100 times probably won't change my mind. Not to mention the brushed steel window and terrible UI.
  • Since when is an open standard a bad thing? Let the proprietry systems make money for their inventors until an open system comes out. Nothing wrong with a company gaining business advantage because they have what we want.

    But all the really good stuff happens once everyone shares a standard. And with that *fact* in mind, its just a good thing when an open standard (such as MP4) arrives that can compete and possibly overshadow proprietery standards on merit alone. (Remember life before MP3?)


    ...................

    ... paka chubaka

  • I agree with other posters in that real-time/streaming/ high quality/kick butt video will be a staple of computer interfaces in the near future. The intro to MPEG4 on Leonardo Chiariglione's web site [cselt.it] illustrates that these things and much more will be available with MPEG4.

    MPEG4 includes audio and video of course, but it also includes much more. Here's an excerpt from the link above:

    • Efficiently represent a number of data types:
      • Video from very low bitrates to very high quality conditions;
      • Music and speech data for a very wide bitrate range, from transparent music to very low bitrate speech;
      • Generic dynamic 3-D objects as well as specific objects such as human faces and bodies;
      • Speech and music to be synthesized by the decoder, including support for 3-D audio spaces;
      • Text and graphics;
    • Provide, in the encoding layer, resilience to residual errors for the various data types, especially under difficult channel conditions such as mobile ones;
    • Independently represent the various objects in the scene, allowing independent access for their manipulation and re-use;
    • Compose audio and visual, natural and synthetic, objects into one audiovisual scene;
    • Describe the objects and the events in the scene;
    • Provide interaction and hyperlinking capabilities;
    • Manage and protect intellectual property on audiovisual content and algorithms, so that only authorized users have access.
    • Provide a delivery media independent representation format, to transparently cross the borders of different delivery environments.

    In a few years, I imagine that you'll be do such cool things as generate a 3D model of your head, which you'll map onto the head of your favorite avatar model, and you'll have a character with a head that looks like you, but a body that looks like Van Damme or Lara Croft. Or some Linux guru will get ticked off at Bill {Gates, Clinton} and will render an entire video using 3D models and textures obtained from CNN. And these technologies will be based in part on what's happening now with MPEG4. Just as RealVideo is essentialy H.263, new tools will excel because of the foundation that MPEG4 is providing.

    Sanpitch

    Moab rocks.

  • Hehehe

    If you didn't know GIFs were/are patent encumbered.

    That's what all the fuss about PNG format is.

    Of course, no one REALLY uses PNG... (but of course QuickTime does ;), and webpages with PNG files, and webbrowser which support QT have no problem!)

    Anywho, it comes down to the LZiff compression used in GIFs.

    PNG doesn't use it :)

    Same as Z and GZip compression on unix systems.


    ---
    Live Long & Prosper \\//_
    CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
  • I see lots of people here arguing about why one should or should not be upset that video format X, developed by big commercial company Y, available for $n.nn per play, is not available or is difficult to make work on platform Z.

    What the world needs is for another "standard" to come along that is able to be implemented by anybody who can read an algorythm and write some C. Example: MP3. Sure, it was developed by an organization that was originally charging a chunk of change to get the encoding program (remember l3enc?) ... but today we have a miryad of mp3 decoders for every platform, right? And commerical companies looking to make a few bucks by exploiting the latest technology rage will be able to do it using their own embraced-and-extended versions of the open format. (P.S. Don't ever, ever buy a Lyra.)

    How did that happen? Going from freihofer R&D to Winamp/XMMS for free? This is where my bottle o' clue runs out. I'm dont know how to get from point A to point B on this... but there has to be a way to do it, right?
  • If it is an ISO standard (like the other MPEG compression schemes) that means anyone can get all the specs to it.
  • Someone doesn't know what flamebait means. I always thought it was a waste to give moderators more than one point, at least then they'd have to be more careful and critical than just half-assingly label something like my above post. Oh well, I've got Karma to spare.
  • The nag movie in QT 3 & 4 does suck, but it's fairly easy to hack around it. It doesn't actually appear every time you invoke Quicktime, but the first time you do each day. Logic indicates that it needs to store the date when it does this, so you can banish it (virtually) forever by setting your computer's clock to some date far in the future (2019, say) and then opening a Quicktime movie. You'll see the nag one more time, and when you set your clock back to the present you won't see it again (until 2019 ;). This works on a Mac or a PC (and presumably on a Unix box when they finally get around to porting it).

    I can lay claim to having come up with this idea on my own, but it's also been independently discovered by a number of people. I needed it when I was running a lab with 30 Mac & Windoze boxen, all using QT3 heavily and all nagging my users when they had better things to do.

    It'd be nice if Apple would just get the message and lose the annoying advertising, of course. I'd be content if it played it one or a few times after QT was just installed, because that'd be of genuine utility to people who might want to know about the option to upgrade. Showing it every day is just dumb.

  • I know about the ridiculous patent problems with GIFs - the main thing there is that they let everyone create software using the offending compression algorithm before attempting to restrict its use.

    With the new MPEG standards, things are a lot worse - they're restricting the use of the relevant algorithms before they get popular. This means that a lot of the possible software won't be created, and the industry will almost certainly be set back a couple of years.

    Oh well... Perhaps an equivalent of PNG will come along eventually, so free software users can join in the fun as well.

    Ford Prefect
  • The solution IS to create competing code, just as was done with GZIP and BZIP2 for compression in response to the LZW patent problem. Note that I didn't say it would be easy....

  • double standard? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    MS tweaks Kerberos its bad. Cable Companies tweak Mpeg4 and its good.
  • I too hate Apple *and* Quicktime for their insistence on and promotion of proprietary codecs. The same goes for Microsoft *and* AVI files. Microsoft at least tried to make their NetShow player run under Linux, and maybe they'll port Media Player. (maybe their applications people will do it once they realize the potential captive audience involved :)

    What's the point of making a format if it's just a container for other, new, unsupported codecs? (okay, this can have *some* value, but then why make more than one? How about a generic container format, if we have to have them...) Then you can't reliably even make a player and say that it "plays AVIs" or "plays MOVs".

    You can make an mp3 player and say it "plays MP3s". That's because the file format specifies this. The same goes for the other MPEG variants. I'd be happy as a clam if everyone would just ditch their proprietary video formats and collaborate on one. Then websites wouldn't have two or three copies of different video formats, (that all seem to play fine on Mac and Windows anyhow, and *still* don't often work on Linux) and everyone would have a better file format, at both low and high bitrates...

    Of course, this is never going to happen as the situation is now. Hopefully free alternatives will eventually win out, but I doubt it. Incidentally, mtvp is a pretty good, free-beer player, and RealPlayer 7 really sucks on my Linux box, and I'd love to be able to play .ASF files under Linux....
    ---
    pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
  • Right on! ASF = "Ass-kicking Streaming Format." Besides, Microsoft deserves some credit for stealing QuickTime code to create their early video software. I mean, would PC video have every really become popular without Microsoft? I think not.

    Same thing with the internet. If Microsoft hadn't stepped in, we'd probably all be using something other than Windows nowadays. Think how much that would suck.

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • There must be some ISO source code for MPEG-4, just like there is some for an MP3 encoder. Patching the ISO code and get a free player would be a similar thing like some people did it with LAME for MP3 encoding.

    How much does Microsofts ASF's and AVI/DivX's /content/ differ from raw MPEG-4? The parsing of the chunked ASF / AVI structure is very easy and well-documented, I've done that part myself for another app.
  • What I don't like about ASF is how it likes to "lock-up" when it comes across some suspect bits... you advance the time bar, and it will resume... why can't it do that on its own...

    Time flies like an arrow;
  • Companies like MS and Real don't want to admit to using a file format designed by their competitor Apple, so they invented their own file formats.

  • Streaming (Score:4)

    by stevarooski ( 121971 ) on Saturday May 13, 2000 @12:44PM (#1075143) Homepage
    Heya. . .

    I'm project staff at a development lab in a major University (U of Washington, Seattle). I have spent a lot of time working with different streaming formats and wanted to toss my two cents into the middle, since here at the U we're working in making streaming video a viable classroom tool for instructers.

    Quicktime is an interesting streaming option simply because it can do so much. It plays extremely well with others--you can stream everything from old Autodesk Animator files to Flash with it. You can also control web pages from within quicktime streaming moviess, as well as doing internal menus and interactive movies (using something like Flash in conjuntion). The primary codec used with Quicktime is the Sorenson codec, which is great for low-motion videos but often breaks up on anything else. . .supposedly the release of Sorenson II will fix this.

    Real is kinda the everyman of streaming formats. . .its quality is generally far poorer than either ASF or Quicktime, but its available on just about every OS and has a good compression ratio. Its also waaaay easier to set up than Quicktime or ASF! Working with a technologically-braindead instructor, I could set up a realplayer streaming lecture in under 20 minutes. Thats part of its alure. . .but real might be heading towards extinction if they dont improve image quality.

    ASF has me impressed!! Great image quality: however, the media player for mac just plain sucks, not to mention linux. If these two aspects of the format get fixed, I could easily see Microsoft (yeah, yeah, this is Slashdot ;o) ruling supreme with this format.

    So there's a bit of information and my humble opinions. . .from the streaming server setup end of things, all three are equally a pain in the ass. This article was interesting: a new player to the field, eh? We'll see how this all works out, but I think streaming content will have a big role in the direction the internet takes for the future.



    Thanks

    Steve Martin
    CTLT
    steve0@u.washington.edu


    http://students.washington.edu/steve0/ [washington.edu]
    steve0@u.washington.edu

  • I'm sick of QuickTime movies I can't view in Linux and RealVideo movies I'd prefer not to download the player for

    Apple released the source to their Quicktime Streaming Server as soon as it came out last year as part of the Darwin project. And this year Apple ported Darwin to X86 since no one else would take the source and "do it."

    All someone has to do is write the player, I am surprised one is not already there, or at least a mozilla plug-in.

    For the interested, the applicable necessary source should be here, and there may be further stuff being worked on with MkLinux [mklinux.org] or LinuxPPC [linuxppc.com], where these things were ported to the Mac Linux distros.

  • The questions is "Why buy Quicktime Pro?"

    If you click on the now button, it launches a browser window with some sell copy and that's it. The dialogue box never occurs again.

    Not to much to ask for free and pretty good software.
  • I challenge academics to produce a free and open standard the kicks the hell out of all these lame commercial money grabs.
  • The QuickTime file format is open, and the QuickTime streaming protocol is open. Sorenson isn't open. QuickTime does support several totally open codecs, but nobody uses them for streaming video because Sorenson just kicks ass.

    If MPEG-4 catches on in a big way, chances are it'll be added to QuickTime and people will start streaming video in it. It should be possible to write a player for Linux.

    --
  • Just what are you talking about? The QuickTime file format has always been open. There is no "embrace and extend" here at all.

    --
  • That first document seems a bit old. From Spring 1998? I read through the whole thing, and especially into the ending about Java becoming the 'glue' language for handling the MPEG-4 media Object model. Does anyone know of the current state of that? Was the Sun Java vs. MS thing solved?
  • Ever think about why there are so many wrappers for the standards?

    ASF -- Mpeg4 wrapper which improves streaming support for the format. The data which represents 99% of the file is just Mpeg4 standard.

    MOV -- Quicktime -- Pretty much just an MpegX file with a little extra data wrapping it up. Same story as ASF really.

    Real -- Pretty much useless.

    DivX -- Mpeg4 wrapped in a AVI and called DivX. The codec itself just makes encoding simpler.

    the real reason all of these exist is not because M$ thought they would be able to improve anything with ASF or anything like that, its because when they make it propreitary, they FORCE users to use thier player. Using thier player is just like advertising. That is why players are Free (usually) and they all have the same data in a slightly different package.

    I might be wrong about the Real Movie thing, but it seems that way. They play really shitty, even if they are already downloaded. Someone needed to smoke more crack when they made that piece of crap.

  • Apple released the source to their Quicktime Streaming Server as soon as it came out last year as part of the Darwin project. And this year Apple ported Darwin to X86 since no one else would take the source and "do it."

    All someone has to do is write the player, I am surprised one is not already there, or at least a mozilla plug-in.

    Uh, I'm guessing that the Streaming Server doesn't do a whole lot beyond pump bytes out to a socket, and maybe follow some particular protocol for communicating control information back and forth with the client.

    The real problem is taking that stream of bytes and figuring out how to display them as animated images on the client machine. The server source code provides little or no useful information on how to do this.

  • Re:double standard? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Microsoft is doing their utmost to prevent anyone else from interoperating by writing PAC code. It remains to be seen, but I expect cablecos to make their MPEG variant readily adoptable--they'd rather cut set-top box costs through competition and allow computer use than try to extort money through licensing the format.
  • I sure hope you were being sarcastic with that last line....
  • At the end of the day, does MPEG not provide:
    a) good quality compression,
    b) pretty much platform independance. There is a suitable viewer for every platform,
    c) streaming support,
    d) good (urghh, wrong terminology here) scalability.
    I think it does, and I resent all these goddamned Real format or Quicktime movies: they are simply not neccesary . Just slap your content through a nice, simple MPEG codec and you have a file viewable by almost all. I welcome the MPEG. 'tis good.

    --
  • That's nice, but it should be pointed out that the codec and the file format are too different things. We don't have any problems reading the AVI or Quicktime formats on free operating systems. The only problem is support for the codec. QT4 videos pretty much use the Sorenson codec, which is a very cool codec. Only problem being that it's proprietary. Though MPEG4 is supposed to use the Quicktime file format, it uses the MPEG4 codec. And I think that M$'s proprietary ASF doesn't actually use the Quicktime file format.

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