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)
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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