by Mark Nelson
Welcome to this issue of Dr. Dobb's Data Compression Newsletter! This newsletter keeps you up to date with news items, product information, and the occasional editorial aside about the world of Data Compression. Your input is always welcome in the form of comments, submissions, or original material.
China to MPEG Committee: Drop Dead
August 9, 2003
Our friends in the PRC have apparently decided that those MPEG royalty payments are more than just an annoyance. The good folks in their consumer electronics industry have decided to push for a home-grown video compression standard to be used in future DVD players made for domestic consumption.
I don't know much about this new standard, other than what you can read in the article linked to below. It's being referred to as AVS, and will have a dirt-cheap royalty rate. No word on how it sizes up against MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 for performance.
ZDNet: China rejects Western Mpeg format
Yet Another On2 Announcement
August 9, 2003
On2 Technologies has an uphill battle in their attempt to gain acceptance for their proprietary video codecs. It looks as though part of their strategy for making this whole thing work out is to issue as many press releases as possible.
This current missive announces that they're shipping a new version of their VP6 encoder. They've souped the thing up to improve the quality of the encoder in quite a few different areas. Follow the link for the details!
EETimes: On2 Technologies Announces New Release of VP6 Encoder
WinZip: Feelin' Good
August 8, 2003
The folks at CNET.com have been running the download.com web site for years and years. They got a little reflective a while back and decided to create a Hall of Fame.
And who should they pick for the first download inducted into their Hall of Fame? Why, none other than WinZip, which has been on the web site since 1996. In that time, the archiving program has been downloaded over 100 million times. (Even though almost one million of those were from my Dad having a bit of trouble with the install program.)
EETimes: WinZip Hits 100 Million Download Mark on CNET Download.com
Download.com Hall of Fame
On2 Technolgies VP6 Lands Another Deal
August 8, 2003
On2 Technologies continues to push its VP5 and VP6 codecs, signing licensing deals with anyone with enough market presence to lift a pen. In today's deal, PERFECTV says they are going to use the VP6 codec in their Video On Demand set-top boxes.
Sounds like a pretty good deal, right? Well, you might think so, but just who the heck is PERFECTV? The press release says PERFECTV is a division of Gatelinx, some outfit in North Carolina. My extensive research on these two companies didn't turn up any information about customer base or deployment plans, so I'm not quite sure there's any beef here.
In fact, if you want to take a strange trip, check out the Gatelinx web site and see if you can figure out what exactly they do. My initial thought was that I was watching outtakes from "Being John Malkovich," but that turned out to be a bad first impression. Maybe yours will be better.
Internetnews.com:
On2, PERFECTV in VOD Technology Deal
Gatelinx home page
Worst Cross-Promotion Ever?
August 8, 2003
In the compression world, this bundling deal stands out as one of the more foolish deals every made. A company named First Internation Digital makes portable audio players and some software called MP3i. They apparently got together with Aladdin Systems, and are going to be bundling StuffIt with their products.
Sure, everyone likes to get a free copy of Stuffit, but really, if your only products are software and hardware that use MP3 files, you've got a bit of a synergy problem. After all, Stuffit is very unlikely to be able to compress any of those files by even a single bit. And check out the title on the press release. They're billing it as a summer promotion to "ease MP3 downloads."
I'm sure the FID tech support people will enjoy the calls letting them know that the free copy of Stuffit is broken.
MPEG-21 + DRM = Match Made In Heaven
August 7, 2003
I've been wondering for a long time just what the heck we were supposed to care about in MPEG-21. Finally, I see some actual substance. It turns out that MPEG-21 parts 5 and 6 are just now wrapped up. These two parts are going to add Digital Rights Management (DRM) capabilities to both audio and video streams.
Yes, that's right, content providers are now going to have a way to make sure that you can't freely duplicate your copies of Swordfish or the latest Radiohead CD. You may not think this is such a great thing, but Hollywood is going to be thrilled. And if they're happy, they're going to be more inclined to make distribution deals for their content a reality.
Microsoft's Useless KB Article of the Day
August 7, 2003
Let's imagine you just bought a new Dell notebook, you've rented a copy of Minority Report, and you're eagerly awaiting word from the captain giving you the go-ahead to turn on your portable devices. The plane reaches 15,000 feet, the PA announcement gives you the high sign, and you happily start up Windows Media Player.
But there's a problem! Media player says that it is "Currently Unable to Play DVD Video." Curses! Fortunately, you have access to the Microsoft Knowledge Base. You look up the error message, and find Knowledge Base article 823770. With great hope, you click on the link to read the Resolution section of the article:
To resolve the issue, contact your computer manufacturer or the manufacturer of the DVD decoder program to inquire about how to upgrade to a version of the program that is compatible with Windows XP.In other words, Bill is here to tell you it's not his problem!
Microsoft Knowledge Base Article 823770
Mark Adler's Modest Proposal
August 6, 2003
Mark Adler and Jean-loup Gailly are the two guys that are the original authors of zlib, the free library that implements the deflate alorithm. This library is just the thing you need if you intend to create a Zip-compatible archiving program, and literally thousands of programming teams have done so. Zlib is undoubtedly a key ingredient representing millions of dollars of revenue to various software firms over the past ten years. I shudder to think what sort of a world we'd be living in right now without zlib.
So when Mark Adler speaks, I listen. And last week, Mark weighed in on the current fracturing of the Zip archive format at the hands of PKWare and WinZip. With at least two companies now making incompatible versions of Zip files, Mark proposed that perhaps it might be time to take action:
So, now may be the time for the community, in particular the community that reads this newsgroup, to develop an open, scalable cross-platform format that supports archives of directory structures, files, and meta-data, high-quality lossless compression, and high-quality encryption and authentication.Good idea! Mark rightly also notes that this is a heavyweight task, and will take both elbow grease and brainpower. He throws out one suggestion under which corporate sponsorship might be strongarmed, although this is definitely an untested notion.
What would it take to pull this off? Unfortunately, you need a Linus-type. Someone with excellent technical and organizational skills, combined with the interest, inclination, and ability to put a lot of time into the project. Absent this person, most complex Open Source projects don't get very far. Anyone know of a volunteer who fits the bill?
Planet Zip Suite
August 6, 2003
Here's a novel approach to cracking the already-crowded Win32 Zip market. Instead of just selling you a single program, the folks at Innovators.com, Inc. want to sell you an entire suite, and Planet Zip Suite 1.0 is their first shot at it.
Planet Zip Suite includes a Zip program the supports 21 compression formats, an SFX creator, a file slicer, encryption, and of all things, a world clock program!
One thing these folks got right was the price. They're asking you for a modest $15 for this guy, which is fairly reasonable. You can download an EXE without coughing up a penny, so I'm guessing that some sort of trial is possible, but I wasn't able to find a clear explanation. Let me know if you figure it out, okay?
JavaScript Compression
August 6, 2003
Here's an article from the Code Project on how to perform some basic compression on JavaScript pages. This type of compression is interesting, because the object is to make the JavaScript page as small as possible without changing the semantics of the page. Other than that, any mangling you wish to perform is legal.
This particular program is pretty tame in this respect. It takes the safe, traditional approach, which is to remove white space, comments, extra line feeds, and that's it. That will definitely shrink your JavaScript, but I'd love to see a combination of obfuscation and shrinkage that could be accomplished with serious analysis of the scripts. Renaming variables and function names could save a lot more space!
The Code Project: A JavaScript Compression Tool for Web Applications
PKWare Patent App. Dissected
August 5, 2003
Readers of this column already know that PKWare has filed for a patent on their particular implementation of an encrypted Zip file. This, in combination with WinZip's proprietary extensions to the format, is potentially trouble for the venerable archiving standard.
The readers of comp.compression got into this a bit last week after a post from one Darryl Lovato. Now, we do have to look a bit askance at Darryl, seeing as how he signs his post as "CTO, Aladdin Systems, Inc." That puts him squarely in the middle of fight, as the two biggest competitors of his are probably WinZip and PKWare.
All that aside, it's an interesting train of thought that we follow through, with input from some folks who are pretty well informed on the whole matter. Well worth a read.
Home Music Distribution Over 802.11
August 5, 2003
Yet another story that can only be considered marginally related to data compression, but it's on one of my favorite topics, the home music distribution system.
In this ExtremeTech article, Don Osburn describes how he uses ShoutCast to stream music to various locations in his house. I like where he goes with this up to a point - I think he does pretty well figuring out a decent server configuration.
Where I think Don goes a bit astray is in his discussion of the clients used to play the music. Or I should say, his lack of discussion. Basically, he says: "Get a PC and connect to the server. Good speakers will help." Not good advice if you ask me, particularly when there are a raft of receviers out there right now capable of playing music streamed over a wireless connection.
ExtremeTech.org: Using WiFi For Home Media Broadcasting
libdvbpsi
August 5, 2003
This nice little library is designed to perform the decoding and generation of all Program Specific Information in MPEG-2 TS and DVB streams. The project says that it currently supports the Program Association Table in MPEG-2 and the Program Map Table in MPEG-2.
I don't know anything about this library, but it's apparently the same group that runs the VideoLAN project. The VideoLAN VLC Media Player has helped me make it through many a two-hour platelet donation by playing DVDs on my laptop, so I'm down with this group. The library must be good.
Gif2Png
August 4, 2003
Those GIF patents are almost dead. The US patents have expired, and the Japanese and European patents will be gone soon. But still, it's the priniciple of the thing. We just don't like GIFs. Or at least maybe you feel that way.
And if you do feel that way, this tool was made for you. Gif2Png will convert your GIF files to PNG en masse. And it will do it under pretty much whatever O/S you prefer.
This is free code, but it has a man page and everything. It even has work from Greg Roelofs, who is to PNG what Fabio is to romance novel covers. Go Greg!
FAAC Adds Support for MP4
August 4, 2003
The folks at the FAAC project have added support for MP4 file types, and now offer both command line encoding and a Winamp2 plugin.
I'm still a little hazy on the difference between AAC and MP4 - for some time I was under the impression that they were the same thing.
However, the FAAC release notes seem to say that MP4 is a combination of AAC and SBR coding. SBR coding is the super-duper Spectral Band Replication, which is the secret sauce that turns MP3 into MP3Pro. I think MP4 is what you get when you buy a track from iTunes.
ZipSplitter
August 4, 2003
ZipSplitter is a Win32 program that does two things for you. First, it zips up a single file. Second, it will split that zip file into several pieces of a size of your choosing. When it does this, the last chunk is an EXE file that knows how to recombine all the files into one. The resulting chunks can be sent one by one, or copied to individual floppy disks.
Now, you might be asking yourself, don't most Zip programs support multiple archives via the disk spanning feature? It's true that this is often the case, but programs like WinZip seem to insist that you do this by writing to floppy disks - kind of a pain.
ZipSplitter doesn't require the whole floppy disk shuffle, which is kind of nice. Of course, it's going to set you back 20 bucks, which takes a little bit of the luster away if you ask me.
Filzip 3.0
August 3, 2003
The first time I noticed Filzip was back in 2000 when it was a brand new product. Well, during the past three years, Philipp Engel has been steadily improving this program, and is now proudly rolling out version 3.0.
Filzip is a completely free Win32 archiver, which has support for what I would call a very complete list of archive types (althoug I'd love to see him add bzip2 to the list,) shell integration, multi-disk support and more. And Phillipp isn't asking you to pay a penny for this product. No adware, popups, spying, etc. This is the real deal, completely free. (Not that a donation would be rejected.)
So if you're a supporter of freeware, I recommend that you give this product a look. And did I mention that Filzip has German and French versions as well?
J. Hepple's AVI to MPEG Converter
August 3, 2003
This nice little program is used to convert your Win32 AVIs to MPEG files. There's a free version which converts to MPEG-1 only, which seems fairly useless to me, although I guess it gives you a proof-of-concept.
The full version is going to set you back $20, which is not all that much for software that can create MPEG-2 files, MPEG-2 with Super VCD extensions, and MPEG-2 with DVD extensions. You need this. Buy it.
PCMag on WinZip 9.0
August 2, 2003
PC Magazine likes WinZip. Let's get that out of the way right now. Their First Looks column likes WinZip enough to review the beta version of WinZip 9.0.
The First Looks column is usually pretty brief, and this one is no exception. All we get here is a little gushing about the new features, notably some cool new encryption and ability to handle huge files. Plus the obligatory dig at one or two missing features.
They don't take the time to mention in this article that those spiffy new encryption algorithms are incompatible with the rest of the world. Use that cool new 256 bit AES compression and your Zip file will definitely be safe from cracking, but you better keep a copy of WinZip around, because nobody else is going to be able to open it up!
PCMag.com: The Winning Way to Zip
ZipZag
August 2, 2003
ZipZag. Is there anything new to say about yet another Win32 archiver? Well, it looks as though ZipZag's distingushing feature is the fact that it can handle over 125 different file extensions!
Looking at the list on their web page is kind of confusing - I don't recognize the vast majority, but I'll take their word for it. I'm sure that "Curxptheme" must represent some sort of compressed archive.
What's even more interesting is that ZipZag claims to outperform some of archivers that are known to do a pretty good job, including 7-Zip, WinRar, and WinAce.
If you think it's worth a look, you can get a 30 day free trial. Let me know how it does!
OpenH323 Project
August 1, 2003
As far as open source projects go, this has got to be one of the more ambitious ones around. The goal is to create an open H.323 stack, and apparently include all the code to run a full-fledged client as well.
For those not completely up on this, H.323 is a low-speed videoconferencing standard, used by application such as Microsoft's NetMeeting to implement cool videophones. H.323 typically uses an H.263 video codec, which wants bandwidth in the neighborhood of 384 Kbps for pretty decent quality video transmission.
If you check around, you'll find that free H.263 codecs are not exactly lying around for the taking. Much less the code to render said compressed video on multiple operating systems. Much less the code to pull video out of webcams and feed it into the codec. But all that stuff is coming to life in the H.323 project.
It's a huge job, and it's amazing to me that somebody is even tackling it, much less actually moving forward and shipping product!
AckerPack
August 1, 2003
This commercial Win32 program is designed to take a folder and turn it into a self-extracting archive in some proprietary format. Thus, no decompressor needed, just send the EXE to its destination and execute it to unpack.
You can tell this is a commercial product and not your typical piece of shareware, because the product's home page has a photo of an attractive young lady, (undoubtedly a satisfied user) right at the top of the page. Better yet, the box it ships in seems to have a different attractive young woman. They're everywhere!
But that's what it takes to sell a piece of software in this competitive market. Unfortunately, you don't seem to be able to give this software a trial run, so you're going to have to cough up $45 right now. A bit stiff for this market, in my estimation, but maybe it's worth it.
Ackerpack page on the AvatarSoft site
libmspack - A library for Microsoft compression formats
August 1, 2003
Over the years Microsoft has whipped out quite a few proprietary compression schemes in their various products. This includes the CHM compressed help file format, the CAB file format used for software distribution, the LIT eBook format, and more. Does Microsoft release source code for using these formats? Of course not!
Well, the folks at libmspack want to do something about that. ("Folks" maybe is just Stuart Caie, I'm not sure.) This open source library aims to support six different MS formats for both compression and decompression. As of yet just a couple are in the bag. But it's a start.
PKWare Takes Steady Aim At Foot
July 31 2003
Steady readers of this column know that PKWare has already taken a few steps that have made the venerable Zip format not quite as universal as it once was. For various reasons, WinZip and PKWare have released new versions of their software that use incompatible encryption schemes, meaning that Zip files created with one program may be unusable by the other.
So are the two companies trying to work out their differences in the interest of the computing public? Hah! It turns out that PKWare has filed a patent on their method of creating an encrypted archive, and they aren't about to share this technology with WinZip without licensing fees. Not likely to happen any time soon.
PKWare's patent application was filed just a few weeks ago, so it's going to be some time before it's made public, but I really want to see what they think is novel about encrypting an archive file. In the meantime, I think that we users are stuck with using PKWare's ancient and easily breakable algorithms from the pre-2003 releases of the software. Too bad.
Yahoo!: Debate Over Zip Format Heats Up
Speex for Java
July 31 2003
The Speex Project aims to create a patent-free, Open Source voice codec that compresses speech in the low-bandwidth ranges of 8-32 Kbps. An admirable goal indeed, but one that seems to be within reach of current technologies. After all, we have proprietary codecs that don't have too much trouble getting decent results at those kind of bit rates.
Okay, then let's raise the bar a bit by creating a project to implement the Speex codec in Java. Nothing like a CPU-intensive task to really put to the test that Java-is-nearly-on-par-with-C++ meme that's floating around.
I don't know how well they're doing, but the fellows who are running JSpeex are at least taking a shot at this. They're still in Beta, but a version number of 0.8 would indicate that either they are close to a releasable product, or they're running out of version numbers.
Rarewares
July 31 2003
This web site seems dedicated to keeping links to everything going on in the audio/music compression world. Want to know where the most obscure AAC codecs can be found? You'll find it here. Want to know where the latest Nero plugins can be found? Same thing. Check it out.
Sand Video Announces H.264 Core
July 30 2003
H.264 is close to becoming a reality in the commercial world. There's a lot of excitement about this video compression standard, also referred to as MPEG-4 Part 10. One of the things that will help make the whole thing take off is the availability of code and hardware that can be licensed for manufacturers wanting to make compatible gear.
Sand Video is hoping to kick-start the process by selling a hardware design that can easily be dropped into an ASIC. Their design supports the H.264 main profile, and can also decode High Definition MPEG-2 video streams. Want to see the unit in action? Sand says it's presently running out of an FPGA. Give them a call and I'm sure they'll set up a private viewing at your place of business.
EE Times: Sand Video offers H.264 decoder core licenses
libExif
July 30 2003
Ever heard of an EXIF file? Odds are that if you have a digital camera, it produces EXIF output. EXIF is simply a variant of JPEG that allows you to add metadata to an image, such as the date of the photo, the camera's settings at the time the picture was taken - even audio annotation.
EXIF is a standard that has been blessed by JEIDA, which I believe is a Japanese industry organization. No, that's not quite as good as having the ISO on your side, but it's something.
In any case, what we all need to work with EXIF files is a standard library, and that's what the folks at the libExif project are attempting to do. They've got a C library that is currently in beta release, and it should allow you to read and manipulate metadata in EXIF images.
kArchiver
July 30 2003
This archiving program is designed to run under the KDE Desktop on your Linux system. It offers the usual friendly GUI with the nominal amount of integration with the desktop. Expect to see support for tar, gz, bz2, and zip archives.
AAC Listening test complete
July 29 2003
Seems like it ages ago, but it was actually only a few weeks back that I referred you to Roberto Amorim's AAC listening test. Roberto thought it would be fun to test a big batch of AAC encoders at the same bit rate and see who came out on top.
The test was a veritable who's-who of encoders, including big shots such as QuickTime, and a range of others. And guess what? The big shot, Apple's QuickTime encoder, clearly rules. Sorenson, Psytel, and Nero clustered in the also-ran space, and FAAC got left in the dust as the only real loser.
Audio testing is tricky, audio testing is subjective. I like the way Roberto managed his test, but you might not. Read all about it and suggest improvements.
Results of AAC at 128kbps public Listening Test
Compression Hack Idea
July 29 2003
Przemyslaw Brojewski posted a question to comp.compression that is actually a bit intriguing. He wonders if it is possible to create a zip file that when uncompressed creates an exact copy of itself. Interesting idea!
Przemyslaw's question kicked off a lot of discussion, and in the process managed to illustrate some of the best and worst points of USENET. All that aside, nobody was able to definitively answer the question one way or another. Sounds like a good project to me, though. If you manage to cook up an example, by all means let me know.
comp.compression thread courtesy of Google
Archos AV320 Review
July 29 2003
You've seen me drool over the Archos AV320 portable video player a few times already. Here's a pointer to the guys on ExtremeTech.org doing a little drooling of their own. Nice, informative review.
ExtremeTech.org: Video to Go: Archos AV320 Review
Text Preprocessing Paper
July 28 2003
J¼rgen Abel and Bill Teahan have authored an interesting paper on preprocessing schemes for text compression. A simple example of a preprocessing algorithm would the Star Encoding scheme I described in the August, 2002 issue of DDJ.
This paper is a preprint that has been posted on J¼rgen's tremendous data-compression.info web site. The duo gets credit for writing a very readable paper, which is not the norm in the world of Information Theory. Well worth a read.
Text Preprocessing for Data Compression
Nicobi Has a Notion
July 28 2003
A fellow named Nicobi had an idea. I can't say it any better than he did:
In lots of codecs nowadays, one is simply trying to estimate the motion between 2 frames and then one is coding the error between those frames... So my question is the following: would it be possible and worth a try encoding the error between frames by using wavelets on the whole reconstructed error surface?Nicobi got some interesting responses on this. I won't spoil it for you by summarizing here; you can read the whole thread in a just a couple of minutes, give it a go!
comp.compression thread courtesy of Google
GRZip: Another BWT Compressor
July 27 2003
Here's the text directly from the GRZip web site:
GRZip - is a high-performance file compressor based on Burrows-Wheeler Transform and Advanced Weighted Frequency Counting. It uses The Block-Sorting Lossless Data Compression Algorithm, which has received considerable attention over recent years for both its simplicity and effectiveness. This implementation has compression rate of 2.364 bps on the Calgary Corpus.Sounds good to me. Executables available for download in DOS, Windows, and Linux versions, along with source. The author, Grebnov Ilya, has posted some nice graphics detailing compression speed and ratios with a couple of different input types.
PhpZip
July 27 2003
If you're a big-time web developer, you undoubtedly know all about the PHP programming/scripting language for the web. And you probably also know that there's a PHP script out there to do just about everything by now.
Well, add archive management to that list, because PhpZip will take care of managing your Zip and tar files via the venerable PHP interface. Released under the GPL, so download it and have a go.
Streaming Media Patent Trouble
July 26 2003
So what if there was a comprehensive patent that covered nearly every possible way you could stream audio or video from the Internet? This would be a problem, wouldn't it? Wouldn't the company that held said patent be in a position to choke off the growth of an emerging technology?
I tend to be yes-ish about all these questions. And given my perspective, there's reason to be alarmed. It turns out that a company named Acacia Research actually does hold broad patents on streaming media, and those patents have been validated to some extent in court.
So far Acacia has only been dragging porn firms into court, but it's got to be only a matter of time before they start harvesting low-hanging fruit elsewhere. A prime target would be my beloved pay-for-play streaming services, such as Rhapsody or PressPlay. And what about iTunes or Amazon.com? They stream samples of the music you intend to buy. Deep pockets!
What can we do about this threat? Short answer: not much.
ZDNet: Broad patents on streaming media upheld
The Shadow Knows... About Your Sharp SL-5000
July 26 2003
This open source project is definitely a piece of niche software. The goal is to create a player for Sharp PDAs that can do a decent job of rendering vintage AM radio broadcasts. So if someone out there has captured and digitized the entire run of The Lone Ranger radio serials, this software would let you listen to it on the train in to work every day on your PDA.
This is one of these little pieces of information that hints at a great world lying out there that I know nothing about. Apparently there are fans of these vintage radio broadcasts, and they've got enough momentum to make it worth creating this software.
One thing is for certain. Those old radio broadcasts are still copyrighted, so this may be another Napster-type project. But considering the small pool of listeners, copyright violations just might be slipping under the radar.
MPEG Guru Creates Yet Another Consortium
July 25 2003
Leonardo Chiariglione is described by EE Times as an "MPEG Pioneer," which I guess means he was hanging around in the dawn age of that group. Anyway, Leonardo is using his enormous street cred to try and get digital media really cooking in this modern world.
According to the Times, he blames "technical, political, legal, and economic differences" for the digital media logjam. Earth to Leonardo: What else is there?
Anway, this new group will be named The Digital Media Project, and it will be using its enormous political and technical pull to unsnarl all those logjams, leading to a bright, happy, future in which everyone gets all the digital media they want, all the time.
Sounds good to me. But didn't Napster already do that?
EETimes.com: MPEG pioneer tips project to unsnarl digital media
PCMag: MP3Pro Rules
July 25 2003
Yesterday I mentioned that John Dvorak was pumping up Coding Technologies, the folks who developed MP3Pro. Well, it turns out that PCMag.com has a nice article on MP3Pro and how it can help you save a little space on your audio collection.
The article goes into a fair amount of detail on all this, including references to software that's compatible with this souped-up format, so you don't have to think too much, just convert!
PCMag.com: MP3Pro: More Music in Less Space
Use DirectShow to Play Audio, Video
July 25 2003
This article on the CodeProject gives you a nice sample demonstrating the use of DirectShow to play audio and video. It's a C# project, so I'm certainly not fit to judge. You give a look and tell me what you think.
CodeProject: Direct Show - Playa, for Audio, Video,
Dvorak: aacPlus Good
July 24 2003
John Dvorak has always set the standard for the opinionated, slightly off-center tech columnist. Guys like me just have to sit back and watch in awe. He combines a pretty decent command of the technolgy, a willingness to go out on a limb with a wacky notion, and a huge network of tipsters.
In his August 5 online column, Dvorak lets us know about Coding Technologies, the company that developed mp3PRO and aacPlus. As far as I know both of these technologies use Spectral Band Replication. What I like about John is how he manages to pump it up:
People who have done comparison testing say there is nothing like it. The technology is expected to be incorporated into everything from cell phones and talking books to music download systems.Way to sell it, John!
PCMag.com: Thanks for the Memories Dept. - Fourth paragraph
BitZipper 3.4
July 24 2003
BitZipper is one of the many Win32 archiving programs competing for a single, well-defined market niche. It's got to be tough to make a living in this space, but I have to respect BitZipper's strategy.
It looks to me like the three key points in the BitZipper strateger are 1) Features, 2) Price, and 3) Ease of use. The program is pretty cheap, has a really nice list of features that it supports, including a huge roster of archive formats, and stresses the usual batch of Wizards etc.
Anyway, BitZipper 3.4 shipped in July, adding support for .WAR files, Windows XP themes, and WinRAR 3.20 archives. And did I mention that once you buy this product, you never have to pay for an upgrade? I like that.
CodeProject: Win32 Wrapper classes for Zip/Unzip
July 24 2003
The author of this post on The CodeProject web site previously posted an article that showed how to easily use a previously published interface to the zlib library. The original article only offered support for navigating and extracting files from Zip files.
Apparently an enthusiastic chap, he has now posted another article, that added support for creating zip files. Naturally, it's wrapped up in a Win32 C++ class for ease of use. Sounds good to me.
CodeProject: Win32 Wrapper classes for Gilles Volant's Zip/Unzip API
Helix DNA Producer SDK
July 23 2003
The Helix DNA Producer is a project that Real Networks has dropped into the open source space. Producer is a platform for creating streaming content and downloadable media files.
Producer has all the features you would expect from a commercial product, so it's pretty cool to see this show up as a free package that anyone can use. I wish I could tell you more about the capabilities of the SDK, but I'm afraid it's all a bit overwhelming. Regardless, get a copy of the SDK and start developing apps. Now.
Helix DNA Producer SDK Project Home Page
PCMag On Home Entertainment Hubs
July 23 2003
PC Magazine categorizes a wide variety of products as Home Entertainment Hubs. They ranged from the $200 boxes that simply grab photos from a server and play them on your TV, all the way up to PCs that act as digital jukeboxes.
That covers a lot of ground, but PCMag.com tries to sort them all out and give you a decent review. They include quite a few different devices here, so if you have a big checkbook and plenty of time on your hands, read through it and find something you like.
PCMag.com: Home Entertainment Hubs
Ogg Vorbis Hardware Decoder
July 23 2003
The underdog Ogg Vorbis audio codec still seems to be having trouble getting traction in the commercial marketplace. It definitely has better technical specs than MP3, and in fact, it may be able to compete with AAC head to head. But it's just not seeing any support in commercial audio players.
Maybe there's some chance that will change. FineArch, Inc., a Tokyo design firm, seems to have come up with a hardware reference design for decoding Ogg Vorbis music. Ideally, this design can be dropped into an ASIC, with the result being a royalty-free music player that supports this nifty hardware.
How about it, consumer manufacturing sector? Can we make this happen?
MaximumCompression Update
July 22 2003
Werner Bergmans recently created the Maximum Compression web site, and I posted a note about it back in March. This site does regular tests on as many compressors as possible, against a wide variety of file types. The goal is to see who is best at what.
Well, I thought I'd let you know that the site is far from stagnant, I continue to see updates to the numbers of compressors listed. For example, on July 15th I saw these compressors added to the list:
- Durilca 0.2 (This version now also takes 1st place in the txt and doc test, and of course 1st place in best overall compression program)
- UHBC 1.0 (2nd place in jpg test)
- CTXf 0.69
- Dzip 2.90
- BWIC
- Win-GZ 1.2.
New Compressors
July 22 2003
You might have noticed the UHBC compressor listed in the new compressors in the previous article. It looks like it does a pretty good job, coming in second in the world on the JPG compression test. So, you might be wondering, where do I get a copy of this compressor?
Well, its a happy coincidence that the author, Uwe Herkoltz, recently posted a pointer to version 1.0 of this program on comp.compression. It looks like it's worth checking out.
At this time the program is free for non-commercial use, but Uwe cautions that it is an experimental program, so caveat emptor.
3D Compression
July 22 2003
We have lots of examples of one-dimensional and two-dimensional models used to compress data. Image compression frequently uses two spatial dimensions to process data, and to good effect.
Dario Salvi recently wondered aloud if anyone had attempted three-dimensional compression techniques on video streams. Very specifically, he was looking for code that does a transform on a pixel "cube" before compressing it.
Find out what the cognoscenti had to say about that notion!
comp.compression thread on 3D transformational coding
Bradenburg Talks
July 21 2003
Karlheinz Brandenburg may not be a household name, but the BBC is willing to give him credit for being the father of MP3 encoding. Nice title indeed.
In this article, we get a little bit of history of how Karlheinz cooked up the MP3 encoding scheme for a doctoral thesis, then hooked up with Fraunhofer Institute. The rest is show-biz history.
Anyway, The Beeb decide to quiz the good Dr. for his views on where his little creation has gone since it was let loose upon the world. Naturally the questions strayed a bit from the purely technical, but the good news is that nobody asked him what sort of tree he would be. Check it out.
MPEG-4 Enables Sci-Fi Specs
July 21 2003
Imagine, you're driving down the street, being a good citizen, when WHAM!, some bozo runs a red light and T-bones your car. You know it's his fault, but if you go to court it comes down to who can tell a more convincing story, right?
Not any more. The Deja View wearable mini camcorder is worn like a normal pair of glasses, and it continuously fills a buffer with MPEG-4 video recorded from wherever your gaze is fixed. As soon as you give the command, the camcorder can commit that video, which allows you to capture events that have happened 30 seconds in the past.
I can't tell you how many times I would have like to have been wearing one of these puppies. It seems like a really great idea, although there is a huge geek factor to overcome when wearing what are not doubt somewhat goofy-looking glasses. Still.
Yahoo!: Divio MPEG-4 CODEC Powers Deja View Wearable Camcorders
Deja View Inc.
Here We Go Again!
July 21 2003
Hash Zip will be an incredible product if it ever takes off. The author, Todd Fries, takes 256 byte blocks and runs them through a hash function, creating 30 byte blocks for output. Pretty good so far, that's guaranteed 8:1 compression, right?
True, but decompression is going to be a bit of a problem. It's pretty hard to reverse a hash function, and even more so in a deterministic fashion. After all, there are quite a few different blocks that will produce the same hash. In this case, the number of duplicates promises to be somewhere in the neighborhood of (2^2048)/(2^240). This is a very big number! My calculator says it's roughly of 1.8E544.
Seems like it's going to be a lot of work finding just the right block, although admittedly Todd does concede that his task will be CPU-intensive! Good luck, Todd.
MPEG-4 Industry Forum Looking For New Ground to Cover
July 20 2003
Ever heard of the MPEG-4 Industry Forum? No? Well, never mind about that. This industry association was formed to further the adoption of the MPEG-4 standard, yadda, yadda, yadda.. You get the drift.
Apparently these guys wised up to the fact that tying their charter to a specific release of the MPEG standard might mean an eventual demise. So starting July 1, they've changed their name to the MPEG Industry Forum, and they're going to be boosters for MPEG-4, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21.
Good move I say, and it certainly wouldn't hurt you to check out their web site. Lots of links to what's going on in the world of real products.
Yahoo!: MPEG Industry Forum to Promote All Emerging MPEG Standards
The MPEG Industry Forum Home Page
$99 Portable Video Player
July 20 2003
I've been drooling over some of the nice little video players that have been trickling in to the market. I'd like to be able to watch full-length movies in a decent resolution while driving in to work. (And you thought cell phones were dangerous.) But right now everything seems a bit pricey.
Well, along comes HandHeld Entertainment with an announcement of the ZVUE! player, which will feature a full-color display that shows videos as well as the ability to play MP3 files. And this little guy is going to go for $99!
Do you belive it? I'm suspicious, but I'll wait to see what sort of specs this thing offers before I start complaining.
HandHeld Entertainment announcement
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Licensing Consortium Open For Business
July 19 2003
Regular readers of this space are well aware that the final step needed to make a multimedia compression standard into a giant success is to work out the licensing details. The best way to make this happen is to have a royalty pool administered by a neutral party that is only interested in cashing checks.
One of the companies that specializes in this is the MPEG-LA licensing authority. They've done an good job in the past of getting all the patent holders together, negotiating a payout ratios, publishing a royalty schedule, then sitting back and waiting for the money to come rolling in.
Apparently MPEG-LA is going to be in the driver's seat for the new H.264 standard, also known as MPEG-4 AVC. My guess is that this is going to be a really popular distribution format for video in the upcoming years, so we will need to pay close attention to the royalty schedule that comes out of this negotiation. Of course, it could be some time before the smoke-filled room clears out and we find out how much we are going to have to pay for all this. Stay tuned.
Yahoo!: Development of Joint Patent License for H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Makes Progress
Linksys Media Adaptor
July 19 2003
I've covered quite a few different networked media players over the last six months, and it was no surprise to see that Linksys has finally come out with their entry. This box connects to your TV set, and uses a wireless connection to stream still photos and MP3 and WMA files from your server.
One nice feature is the inclusion of a remote control, making it easy to browse through the info stored on your server. However, judging from the screen shots on the Linksys web site, I don't think the UI is particularly sophisticated.
You can bet I'll be using my Cisco employee discount to pick up at least a couple of these units for use around the Nelson homestead. But there are at least two major shortcomings that have to be dealt with before this thing really catches one.
The first big problem is that the server-side software currently requires a Windows XP system. What's up with that? I mean, isn't the entire Win32 product line pretty much capable of serving up files over the network? If Linksys had their thinking caps on the server software would be a a Java 1.1 application, allowing it to run on virtually any server.
The second big problem might not be as easy to fix. This box doesn't have the ability to stream video. I'm ready to put my DVD collection on my hard drive, and if this box supported WM9 video codecs, I think I might even be able to stream it over 802.11b connections. If not, it does have the ability to connect to my wired 100 Mbps connections.
I'm hoping Linksys comes out with a 2.0 version that fixes up these problems ASAP. If so, they should be able to use their dominant retail position to carpet the nation with these things.
DynaZip Scores Big In Redmond
July 18 2003
Various versions of Windows have had support for compressed folders for the last few years. Microsoft's newest O/S, Windows Server 2003, is no exception. Compressed folders are simply a handy way to view Zip files - treating them as if they were a native part of the file system.
It turns out that the coders at Microsoft decided they didn't want to write this up from scratch, so they instead hit up InnerMedia for a license for their DynaZip product, finding that it was easier to buy than to build.
Good move for the both sides, I think. DynaZip gave Microsoft support for some of the nice Zip features such as files greater than 4 GB, multi-volume archives, and more. I just hope they got a good check out of the whole thing. Their products are generally royalty-free, so pricing is done on a per-developer basis. If Microsoft got the whole package for a couple of hundred bucks, I'd say they got the best part of the deal.
Yahoo!: Inner Media DynaZip Compression Integrated with Windows Server 2003
On2 and Intel Make Friendly
July 18 2003
On2 makes video codecs, Intel makes chips. No direct competition, and a rising tide will lift both boats. So this is a match made in heaven, right?
Well, the folks at the two repsective companies seem to think so. Looks like Intel managed to persuade On2 to create codecs optimized for Intel's flagship product, the Pentium 4 processor.
I'm not quite sure how the quid pro quo is going to work on this deal. On2 is the only company that has to do any work, so clearly Intel has to throw a bone their way. The article on internetnews.com says that the deal opens a "potentially lucrative market for the distribution of On2's technology into Intel products." I'm not sure what that means. If you can read between the lines better than me, fill me in.
internetnews.com: On2, Intel in Codec Deal
Winamp OpenSource LCD Plugin for various LCD & VFD modules
July 18 2003
If you've been looking to create a jukebox-type appliance built around a PC, you've probably thought about using an LCD display as your UI. Something with perhaps two or three lines of text at maybe 60 characters width ought to do pretty well, right?
Well sure it will, and the thing will fit nicely in your car at that point, or perhaps in your handsome stereo rack. In any case, there's only one problem with the whole plan, and that is that you're going to have to write some code to play your MP3s and keep the LCD display updated.
Or I should say, you would have had to write some code until Markus Zehnder came along with his LCD plugin for Winamp. This nice little piece of code interfaces with quite a few different LCD displays and lets Winamp update them with no work on your part. Quite nice, as long as you're happy using Windows as your target platform. Thanks, Markus.
Using Intel's MMX Instruction Set
July 17 2003
Alex Farber writes a really useful article for The Code Project web site, describing how to use Intel's MMX instructions in your Win32 C++ programming project.
There are a number of ways to go about this, ranging from use of a specialized compiler to using Intel's proprietary libraries. Alex takes a pretty straightforward approach, which is to embed assembly code in a C++ header file, making it easy to use the code and debug it as well.
Alex's project demonstrates the use of the MMX instruction set using some sample image processing code, but you could clearly use exactly the same techniques for various data compression projects, such as a DCT computation on image blocks.
The CodeProject: Introduction to MMX Programming
PCMag on Bulding a Home Entertainment PC
July 17 2003
Yet another How-to article from PCMag.com. In this case, Bill Howard is going to teach you how to put together a kick-ass media machine that can be used for all your audio and video needs without spending the $2K needed for a Windows Media Center PC.
This isn't a bad article, particulary if you are already pretty savvy about integrating new software and hardware on a Windows PC. Bill gives you lots of pointers to specific gear that you might be able to make good use of.
What Bill doesn't do is go into the details of how to install and use the hardware or software. So this article really just skims the tops of the waves. If you go out and buy the hardware and software recommended here, you're still going to be stuck with going through what may turn out to be InstallHell without too much help from Howard.
That carping aside, still worth a look.
PCMag.com: Build a Home Entertainment PC
Very Unexciting Fix to Windows Media 9 Client
July 17 2003
Microsoft's Windows Media 9 player keeps a list of radio presets that you can use to quickly access Internet radio stations. When the player starts up, it apparently goes out to the Internet to update the list.
Sounds good, right? Well, maybe not. As Microsoft says, In certain enterprise scenarios, the network administrator may want to restrict this behavior. I think you know what this means. There are times when The Man doesn't want you to have control over your own radio presets.
Well, Microsoft has a fix for this scenario that allows system administrators to disable this whole automatic update of presets. And if you find that your system administrator is using this new feature, you might want to think about changing jobs.
FIX: Windows Media Player 9 Series Downloads Radio Preset Information
Windows Media 9 Speech on OS X
July 16 2003
Good news for those who love the voice codecs that ship with Windows Media 9. It appears that those codecs are going to be ported to OS X. This isn't an official statement from Microsoft, but rather a posting from a Microsoft employee on a company discussion forum.
This is probably to be expected. While Microsoft is definitely pulling back on apps support on OS X, it still seems to want to port WMA 9 to every platform it can. As has been reported here previously, that even includes embedded Linux.
ActiveWin: WMA 9 Voice Support in Mac OS X
How To Ruin Your Nomad In 1 Easy Step
July 16 2003
ExtremeTech.org has taken their review of the Nomad Zen 60G MP3 player to a completely new level. In this follow-up to their original review, they describe how you can replace the hard drive in a Nomad Zen player, or a Nomad Jukebox.
This is risky business indeed, and you have to wonder if there's ever a good reason for it. Hacking PCs is pretty easy - they were made to be disassembled and fooled with. But consumer devices such as the Nomad are meant to be put together in a factory following an intricate and detailed series of steps that may not be reversible. In other words, it's assemble-only.
The ExtremeTech.org team found this out, when despite their careful process, they managed to ruin one of their players. Why not see if you can do the same?
ExtremeTech.org: Hacking Your Nomad MP3 Player
