[XviD-devel] Re: UCI : a open standard, x-platform VfW replacement ?

ChristianHJW xvid-devel@xvid.org
Sun, 22 Sep 2002 16:27:11 +0200


Hi Pete,

thanks for your opinion

<"peter ross" <suxen_drol@hotmail.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:F202beUzmRf6Ci6nx8d0000086a@hotmail.com...
<my opinion:
< currently there's way too many bloated media frameworks. e.g. video
<  for windows, directshow (aka activemovie), direct media objects,
<  gstreamer, and quicktime. with the exception of VfW, very few 3rd-
<  party applications use these frameworks.instead 3rd party applications
<  (such as winamp, xmmms, mplayer/encoder, transcoder, realone)
<  generally provide their own plugin apis.
<  so if you have, for example an audio decoder, and want people to use
<  it, you must write frontends/wrappers for atleast three apis to
<  achieve compatibility.

Wouldnt you agree that this is confirming that the need exists to work on a
'common' media API, at least regarding codec handling and file creation ?

< VfW is very popular for many reason: its simple to use, widely
< supported by encoder and decoders, and has been mature for about a
< decade. only recently have issues regarding bi-directial bframes and
< non-CBR audio has been raised.

MCF will have a VfW compatibility mode for this very reason, so every VfW
video and ACM audio codec can be used in MCF containers. But the streams are
then no 'native' ( MCF-N ) streams but called 'MCF-A' streams ( AVI
compatibility mode ).
The limitations you are mentioning above were the main reasons to start
creating MCF ... its not that we felt bored and said '....ok, lets make a
new container..'   :-) !!

<  you should try and get support (ideas, comments, etc.) from the
<  people most likely to use the api. eg.
< winamp

the winamp ( Nullsoft ) guys created their own video container recently, i
dont think they will listen to us

< xmms, transcode

Havent contacted them yet .... will do soon, thanks for the hint

<  virtualdub

Avery is one of the 'fathers' behind MCF in fact, he is following
development from time to time and commented already on a few parts of the
specs, and also to our transor API lately.  We do have pretty good contact
because i'm admin on his 'unofficial' support board on
http://virtualdub.everwicked.com

< mplayer

Mplayer people and MCF have a mailing list of their own on
mcf-mplayer-coop@lists.sf.net. Its been a but quite there lately, as our
biggest contributor, Alban 'albeu' Bedel is currently moving appartments and
hasnt shown up for about 2 months now. Arpi doesnt like the fact that libmcf
is C++ , another good reason to drop transor API in favour of UCI.

< ffmpeg

Will do soon ..

< lame,  flac

Steve 'robux4' L'homme, our 'chief' developer, created n Lame ACM codec
almost one year ago and is planning to make 'transors' for Lame and FLAC

< faad

I was planning to inform Menno as soon as the first muxers/parsers are
available for MCF, because i was told he doesnt want to loose time with half
done projects :-)

>  also:
>  earlier in the year i sent a "VFW-extensions-api proposal to avery
>  lee (virtualdub) and eugene kuznetsov (divxnetworks). iirc, we talked
>  about 2pass api support and the abilities pause/continue encoding.

Pete, please, can you send me a copy to christianhjw at users dot
sourceforge dot net or post it here ? I'd love to forward it to Alex and
Steve for x-checking of available elements.

>>1. How difficult was it to adapt XviD such that it supports both, VfW and
>>UCI ( is this possible at all ) ?
> easy. xvid already supports vfw, dshow, transcode and mplayer/encoder
>  (also quicktime partially).

Good to hear

>>2. Would you put this in CVS if there was a working, stable version for
>>such
< yep. i dont see why not.
< -- pete

:-) ! Before we were talking to UCI people, means when we were working on
transor API  it was always the goal to make 'transors' for the most common
codecs like Vorbis, including XviD of course. The best thing to happen to
MCF was of course that the API is suported in the cdec itself, because this
makes distribution much easier for us.

Thanks for the offer to respect MCF, once it will be available.

Christian

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