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Message # 1883.1.1

Subject: Not wars but oportunities

Date: Mon 20/01/03 02:24:29 GMT

Name: xbertx1

Email: bertel@world4you.com

Website:

By max - max_2@poczta.fm Sun 19/01/03 17:40:05 GMT

Website:

It is enough to just look at ffmpeg source code (http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net) to see how much common code base they share. This project aims to reimplement many popular codecs and formats in one, handy, small, fast, and multiplatform library. This library is a base of another project - ffdshow (http://cutka.szm.sk/ffdshow) - which aims to create a universal DirectShow codec for playing all those mpeg/divx derivatives on Windows. You may want to try it, because it knows quite a lot of formats, although I heard there are some compatibility problems with particular versions of Media Player.

To answer your question, why so many codecs then?: to make some $$$ IMHO. Do you think, that those companies  making codecs care about the poor end-user who just want to play movies? No! They only care about how much licences they can sell to 3rd party companies producing handhelds, cell phones etc, and how much they can get selling their "super-duper" encoding software to content producers. There will be more and more codecs, as long as there will be money from making them.

OK, this is getting really off-topic, so I suggest EOT.

By AnthonyX - anthonyx@jowc.net Sun 19/01/03 13:51:00 GMT

Website:

I've noticed quite a proliferation of codecs over the past couple of years, and it seems that as new contributors arrive on the scene to share their material, as often as not, they render it using a codec nobody's heard of before. I look forward to seeing all the material being offered up, but I'm not that comfortable with downloading a seemingly endless array of new codecs to do it.

By my understanding of information theory, there is only so much one can achieve re: image compression without sacrificing quality. I believe that the array of popularly available codecs for the past year represent more-or-less the limit of what can be done; any further improvements would only be incremental - not of any real practical value. Also, they perform well enough on most platforms that again, any further improvements are unlikely to yield any appreciable benefit.

So... with no real benefits coming from this "latest and greatest" stream of codecs, can't we standardize on one or two or three of the myriad of codecs most of us already have on our computers, instead of adding yet another one to the mix?

It seems to me almost like an arms race... just when consumers have settled in to the latest emerging "standard", providers moving forward to something new, which consumers can't use (until they find a way to move forward). I know this isn't the intent, but I think it does tend to be the effect.

Why am I making a big deal out of it? What's so difficult about going to www.supernewcodec.com to download it? Well, two things: (1) I need this computer to earn a living; I can't risk installing software which might make my computer unstable, and (2) It seems to me that codecs are a great opportunity to introduce a virus into a computer; I'm not saying it's been done, but I think it may only be a matter of time.

Any thoughts on this? I'd especially welcome perspectives from people who are producing/providing video clips.