Dirac 0.5.4 released

[sankt]

Dirac open source video codec.

Released 2005-12-05

This is a minor release with the following changes:
- Added support for lossless encoding.
- Improved decoder performance by up to 20%.
- Improved encoder performance.
- Several bug fixes and patches applied.
- New patch released for latest FFMpeg cvs version dated 05-Dec-2005 and for latest release of MPlayer.
- The DirectShow filter released for earlier versions of Dirac can be used with Dirac 0.5.4 as well.

Project Page (sourceforge.net/projects/dirac)

Dirac Specification 0.9 (sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=494208)

[slavas]

jeez sankt pls stop posting various pr not related to NSV, even if it about open source projects

[rockouthippie]

What else would we talk about?. NSV has nothing to talk about.

Rehashing a 4 year old broken beta that no one is developing.

Or we could answer questions like

"I am f*cktard, I kan't reed or rite... how I make shotcast
work?"

[sankt]

jeez sankt pls stop posting various pr not related to NSV, even if it about open source projectsVideo streaming requires the use of video codecs. X.264 / H.264 developement within Winamp is hindered by international patent / royalty agreements.

The Dirac video codec has no patent or royalty hinderances to prevent it from being used for NSV streaming.

[slavas]

Originally posted by sankt
Video streaming requires the use of video codecs. X.264 / H.264 developement within Winamp is hindered by international patent / royalty agreements.

The Dirac video codec has no *known* patent or royalty hinderances to prevent it from being used for NSV streaming.

in IB style ;), and IIRC bitstream fromat is not finalized

btw anybody tried it? Whats speed and quality? Hopefully Doom9 will test in his annual codec comparison, so we would get idea about its performance at least in high bitrates region

[gaekwad2]

Last I heard was that it wasn't yet really usable.

It was able to produce very impressive results (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=698064#post698064) but also hideous artifacts.

[sankt]

The artifact problems they were talking about were taken care of in build 0.5.3

There were some problems with "b frames" in the 0.5.3 build but these were taken care of with a patch.


Post 122 (forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=717903&postcount=122)
30th September 2005, 12:01
The encoding speed is indeed much faster than before, it's starting to reach the usable state.

The quality seems to be similar than before, except that the video is littered with annoying flashing blocks. They don't last long, so i believe this problem occurs only in the b-frames (or whatever they are called in dirac).


Post 124 (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=717941&postcount=124)
I've attached a patch to block_match.cpp. It slows things down a little, but I think it fixes your problem. Check it out.


Post 127 (http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=719028&postcount=127)
3rd October 2005, 12:37
Indeed, the patch has fixed it.


No discussion or feedback on latest build 0.5.4.

forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=96759&page=7&pp=20


The latest version of VLC natively supports Dirac now as well.

[slavas]

Originally posted by sankt
The latest version of VLC natively supports Dirac now as well.

:) sakai - žinai

[slavas]

sankt could You please post provide any *.drc file which shows how cool it is, so I wouldn't think today I've wasted few hours compiling and trying dirac.

It could convince me to try make nsv_*.dll thing even if Dirac lacks rate control due that isn't useable at all in streaming ATM

edit: in (relatively) low bitrates, as doing CIF at 1 mbps shouldn't be difficult for any (modern) codec on any content (exluding noise)

[sankt]

24th August 2005, 22:44
Post 55 (forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=703280&postcount=55)
dirac encoded video : www.carrotland.uw.hu/test1.drc
source video : www.carrotland.uw.hu/fastscene_xvid.avi


30th September 2005, 12:01
Post 22 (forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=717903&postcount=122)
some test video showing effects of "flashing blocks " due to " b frames "
dirac encoded video : www.carrotland.uw.hu/blocks.drc


Lives video editing system provides Dirac encoder support :
lives.sourceforge.net

Dirac specific information for Lives here :
www.xs4all.nl/~salsaman/lives/multi_encoder.html

[rockouthippie]

Is lives worth the trouble to build?.

I tried Dirac. Dirac isn't winning any beauty contests, but it's better than theora.

It seems to be more or less stable.

[slavas]

sankt be nice do *click* on those links to *.drc at least.

rockouthippie: any sample?

[gameplaya15143]

omg :eek:
a video codec i havent tried
... downloading...

[gaekwad2]

patched ffmpeg binaries c/o celtic_druid (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=748669#post748669)

[putnam]

I haven't fooled around with this yet, so I guess this is sort of a low-content post -- but I'm very, very hopeful for it. If this can outperform Theora/VP3 (and it damn well should), then we could finally have a viable fully open-source codec for use by some of us low-budget stream owners.

Oh please, keep development rolling!

[sankt]

It pays to be persistant.

Here are some comparisons of different codecs, all using the same still frame from the same video.

http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?p=697866&postcount=38

Of course the images don't truely represent the quality, for example they don't show the motion artifacts, but they are good indications for the texture detail. Dirac is quite good in this regard, and it has clearly a big advantage in potential over theora. The current Dirac build should have taken care of a majority of the artifact problems and speeded up the encoding / decoding processing time.

[sankt]

Originally posted by slavas
The Dirac video codec has no *known* patent or royalty hinderances to prevent it from being used for NSV streaming.Dirac Licenses

The Dirac software source code is licenced under the Mozilla Public License Version 1.1.
www.mozilla.org/MPL/MPL-1.1.html


As a defensive measure the BBC has applied for patent protection for some techniques that are, or may be, used within Dirac.

Our purpose in doing so is to provide protection for Dirac from spurious patent suits by other parties.

Under the terms of the MPL we have licensed these patents irrevocably and royalty free for use within the Dirac software. Our aim is to increase the likelihood that Dirac succeeds, and is used.

dirac.sourceforge.net/licenses.html

[slavas]

Dear Fatum Terminatum,
it would really nice t\if you tried many things yourselfs\, i tried dirac and couldn't get satisfactory result in low bitarate area, if You do please post samples/fhsjdcgfds to examples

sincerelly


OT/BTW I myself would be very drgfdg/sdkhasdhk to see good free codec but actually imho dirac and theora at least a bit sucks so let's pray for google taking over aol and including patent license for H.264 (yeah code need to be licensed too)

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[rockouthippie]

Dirac is way too slow too. So is x264 really. Even with an Athlon 64 and Fedora encoding with it is about 4 times slower than normal mpeg4ish stuff.

The performance of x264 with NSVate isn't stellar either. My windows box is a 2.5 Ghz barton and it won't encode real time, full framerate video. (1/4 DVD rez)