[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Thomas Davies]

Dirac is _just_ a video codec - there are no DRM components in the
system. 
 
regards
 
Thomas


________________________________

	From: Gareth Hay [mailto:gazhay at gmail.com] 
	Sent: 22 March 2007 12:51
	To: Thomas Davies
	Cc: whatwg at lists.whatwg.org
	Subject: Re: [whatwg] <video> element proposal
	
	
	This is maybe off-topic to some degree. 

	What are the DRM constraints of this format?
	I only ask as your organisation is embarking on an MS-DRM fueled
online media project, and I am curious as to the position of this codec.

	thanks

	On 22 Mar 2007, at 12:28, Thomas Davies wrote:


		Hi 

		Having been pointed at this discussion by Christian, I
thought I'd let you know a bit more about where Dirac is as a
royalty-free open source codec. We're certainly very keen for Dirac to
be considered as one of the supported video formats.

		Dirac has been in development for 4 years. In
compression terms it's about twice as efficient as MPEG2, competitive
with H264 and VC-1 and substantially more efficient than Theora. The
Dirac sourceforge site contains a full specification of the system which
is very nearly complete. A subset of this, relating to professional
profiles for TV production, has already been proposed to the SMPTE for
standardisation as VC-2. Assuming that there are no roadblocks in this
process, we intend to submit the rest of the Dirac system as VC-3 (or
whatever number they're up to) towards the end of the year. So this time
next year, there is a good chance that Dirac will be an international,
royalty-free SMPTE standard.

		When we started Dirac, our intention was that the Dirac
software on the website could be developed to build a real-time system.
However, it proved difficult to make a system that could be a reference
codec for testing the specification/draft standard and which had
real-time optimisations. So in conjunction with Fluendo, we started the
Schrodinger project (http://schrodinger.sf.net
<http://schrodinger.sf.net> ) which is a real-time, multi-platform
implementation of Dirac being developed in parallel with the Dirac
software. This isn't quite finished yet, but we will have a compliant
alpha release in the next month or two. It will be alpha because
although it will do real-time encoding and decoding in software, it
won't compress all that well. The Dirac site software is being
maintained as a reference and demonstrator system. 

		Our aim then is to do a beta release of Schrodinger by
the autumn using all the encoder optimisations in Dirac, so by the end
of the year we should be "there" in terms of having a really good,
efficient real-time encoder and decoder. Third parties can start
designing implementations when the spec is finalised at version 1.0 in
only a couple of weeks from now. 

		We have been developing Dirac hardware as well. Hardware
for the professional applications will be on sale in a very few weeks,
and we're developing a prototype hardware HDTV encoder too.


		Thomas 


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