X264 Project Announces Blu-ray Encoding Support 139
An anonymous reader writes "The x264 project has announced the first free software encoder to be able to generate Blu-ray compliant video. In addition, the announcement comes with a torrent of an x264-encoded Blu-ray disc containing entirely free content, such as the Open Movie Project videos. While there are still no free software Blu-ray authoring tools, hopefully this will change now that video and audio are taken care of so that everyone will be able to make their own Blu-rays without expensive proprietary software. Additionally, it seems the Criterion Collection is a friend of free software, having sponsored the effort to confirm x264's compliance with the Blu-ray spec."
The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't x264 (heavily) patent encumbered? And does that mean that the makers(or distributers?) have to pay a licensing fee? I know that it makes me weary to roll this out in a setting other than my home computing enviroment.
Anyone to easy my mind/confirm my suspicions?
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Re:The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Informative)
The patent licensing fees for H.264 (20 cents per encoder) are the least of your problems if you're commercially publishing a Blu-ray disc. The license fees for *everything else*, up to and including the Blu-ray name itself, are much more onerous. But anyone making Blu-rays for commercial purposes already deals with this.
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And does that mean that the makers(or distributers?) have to pay a licensing fee?
Nope, it means that you can only distribute it at all in countries where the relevant patents are not valid. The x264 encoder is GPL'd, and according to clause 7 you may not distribute it if it is covered by any patents that would prevent the people that you give it to from exercising their rights according to the GPL.
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If, as a consequence of a court judgment or allegation of patent infringement or for any other reason (not limited to patent issues), conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot distribute so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not distribute the Program at all. For example, if a patent license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.
Emphasis mine.
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But I would like to add that it is up to the copyright owners to decide whether to pursue an infringement. So unless the x264 authors have a problem with others distributing their software when it is otherwise forbidden by patent law, this shouldn't be a problem in practice.
Of course, since the redistributors are forbidden to do so by patent law, they are additionally liable to the patent holders, who don't necessarily have goo
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Re:The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Informative)
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You know who else loves it? People who, because of Blu-ray, get to watch high bitrate 1080p movies on their large TVs.
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Living in the love of the common people isn't enough... HD-DVD gave people that benefit too.
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Blu-Ray has a max capacity of 25GB/layer, and a standard player can read discs up to 100GB without modifications.
No they don't, because no-one has ever made such a disc. All we have are people making claims about how many layers they can get onto a disc. Works the same for HDDVD.
The reality is that 30 GB is enough for a HD movie, and we're never going to see these super-discs they keep bragging about. A 51GB HDDVD standard had been approved BTW.
So while you can claim that HD-DVD supports full 1080p, in reality many movies were over-compressed or simply encoded at 1080i in order to fit them onto a single disc.
Bullshit. Every film on HDDVD was released in 1080p, just like on Blu-ray. Interlaced video is only used for high-framerate television recordings.
but the studios were lining up on one side or the other, nobody was releasing to both mediums.
Actually they were. Particular
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Bullshit. Every film on HDDVD was released in 1080p, just like on Blu-ray. Interlaced video is only used for high-framerate television recordings.
also, ironically, most top tier BD50 movies that came out in the first year or two would have fit on a 30GB HD DVD disc (some may have required lossy compression like DTS 1.5) like Pirates, Crank, Ratatouille, Baraka, Corpse Bride, No Country For Old Men. you could probably even with a bit of hand tweaking (or easily with h.264) get Harry Potter into 30gb (most are under with 2 and 3 at ~35gb).
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The reality is that 30 GB is enough for a HD movie, and we're never going to see these super-discs they keep bragging about. A 51GB HDDVD standard had been approved BT
Transformers bluray, over 40gb. (48?) Was a major PITA to transcode for my AppleTV because of the size x movie length x bitrate made it impossible to encode to a single file below 4gb (appleTV max) at higher than 420p. (also 4mbps max bitrate for appletv) They had to run the bitrate that high on the bluray though because they knew people we
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...who could do this without BluRay
BluRay makes this easier and simpler but it is possible to do this without BluRay ...
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So no Blu-ray home movies then?!? (Score:1)
Am I missing something? Sony cannot be that stupid? Do they really want
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Duplicated discs (BD-R/RE) do not require any AACS. Replicated discs do require AACS processing, but do not have to be encrypted (see my first reply to the OP).
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Just to clarify: duplicated isn't just BD-R/RE, but also DVD-R (BD-5/9). Replicated are BD-ROM.
Re:The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Informative)
You do not need to encrypt content on a BDROM - go and read the AACS spec, which is publicly available on the AACS LA's website. CPS Units on a BD Prercorded can be either encrypted on unencrypted for Basic Titles, per the CCI.
You are correct though that to replicate a BD that you need to pay an AACS fee, but that's now down to $500, IIRC.
I haven't see any issues with players playing back Type A CMF burnt to BDRE (i.e. partial AACS, as sent to replicators before AACS processing). This is how most authoring houses test their content. In fact, I don't even remember having to specify unencrypted + no disable Copy Permission Indicator when testing on the PS3 recently - at one time we had to burn to BD-REv3 format (which is annoying because that format doesn't support everything in BDROM).
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This is incorrect. I've created unencrypted BDs and they play on all players. And even if they didn't work, nearly all BD players also play AVCHD discs (which are very similarly laid out and encrypted) and you could just make one of those instead to play the HD content you want to play.
It'd be great if you knew from where you spoke before putting out false information like this.
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It depends on the profile and player. Prereocrded blu-ray's are using the BDMV profile, which gives you all that nice menu, java, a
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Are you sure about that? Don't the pressed discs have the same file/directory structure as BD-Rs, and so if they can play those files unencrypted on BD-Rs, why couldn't they on pressed discs?
Although I'm sure there wouldn't be too many pressed BDs that are unencrypted (Big Buck Bunny might be a rare exception, though I don't know for sure), it doesn't make much sense to unconditionally force all pressed blu-rays to be encrypted. Though, maybe they figured the extra AACS licencing fees they would get made it
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No, as I said BD-Rs don't have the same file/directory structure. And even if they did, and a Blu-ray player actually was one of the early ones that allowed an "unencrypted Blu-ray image" on a BD-R to be playable, it cannot LEGALLY (as in the licensing forbids it) read one from a pressed disc. The BD player has to per
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It would be wise of the people in charge of Blu-Ray to "give" a particular encryption key away for nonprofit or noncommercial use. From my understanding, this would allow non-profit/non-commercial folks to MAKE compliant disks, while not really helping the people they are worried about. The TRUE pirates (ie, selling pressed bootlegs etc) are already in deeper shit, so using said non-profit key to press them would just add on to the fines they already deserve.
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Yes, theoretically that's right, but as far as I know there isn't a single blu-ray player that won't play BD structure on BD-R even without AACS. BD-Rebuilder (link in TFA) will reencode video and audio of blu-rays so it can fit a 25 GB BD-R (or DVD) while keeping the BD structure intact and while it's a bit problematic on DVD, where you are better off using an AVCHD for compatibility, on BD-Rs it works flawlessly.
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There's my answer. Thanks, AC.
I'll be damned if I'm going to pay someone juice just to use their format. I'll just wait until, like mp3, free versions like lame come out.
This is another reason I hope Sony goes bankrupt someday during my lifetime.
Well if decryption has been broken ... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Since it appears that the BD encryption has been hacked
It has not. It has been worked around.
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Instead all that they've achieved is to make it hard for legit users of the format to do what they should be able to, and the unauthorised duplicators are ripping the discs to alternate formats anyway.
The idea is to harass independent content producers. They would much rather have you just sign your legal rights away to one of the big boys [sonypicturesstudios.com].. If you don't, they'll be taking away your lunch money.
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Do you have the tools to create your own pressed discs? I can't imagine any replicator out there would accept such a disc from you. In fact, the Type A (or V) CMF that you send to them makes no provision for this, and they would probably raise their eyebrows if you tried to send them Type B, or C or later in the process. If in fact you're just duplicating (BD-R/-RE or DVD-R) then your point is moot.
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x264 is a video encoder, not a format. You're thinking of h264, which x264 encodes into.
h264 has been used on Blurry disks since day 1.
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If we're going to be pedantic, it's H.264.
Re:The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Funny)
h264 has been used on Blurry disks since day 1.
If we're going to be pedantic, it's H.264.
And there's nothing else in the parent's post which suggests he might not bother spelling everything properly?
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Pedantic? Pshaw ...
"The openness of the MPEG process does not exempt you from your duty of calling things with the proper names. ISO/IEC 14496-10 | ITU Recommendation H.264 is called Advanced Video Coding or AVC."
Something regularly copy pasted on MPEG mailing lists a couple year back ... they are just a bit but hurt over people ignoring their hard work on it (coming in a couple of months before finalization and rubber stamping it, basically ... oh and providing the container format of course, which origina
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Wrong. The patent protects the encoding process [uspto.gov], not the format. It's the software which implements the encoding, hence, it's a software patent.
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Currently using it is free, but that will run out in the near future.
Web use is freely licensed until 2016. I wouldn't exactly call that the "near future".
Re:The first question that popped into my head (Score:5, Interesting)
But what if I'm an independent filmmaker and want to make my high-def movies available in Blu-ray and let people download them online? I've already done this with standard hi-def, making a DVD image available via bittorrent.
I wonder if I'd need to pay any patent holders the vig? Because if I do, fuck it, I'm OK with my current formats.
Anybody got any idea?
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BD9 (Score:5, Interesting)
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Which also comes with lower bitrate support than BD25/50.
Is there a free BD multiplexer available too? What about any word of development of an AVC MVC encoder for the profile 5 BD players?
Now how about... (Score:1)
Concentrate on making a better open codec. (Score:1)
Did I miss a memo, or would anything x264 only be considered free software where the shackles of 'patented software' don't apply?
I like the way some DVD players can play DIVX.
Maybe someday some Blu-Ray players will be able to play Theora or some other open codec.
Until then I think Blu-Ray will be 'Read-Only' for me.
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Of course I know that DIVX is not free.
What I want is a little [THEORA] logo next to the [DVD],[BLU-RAY] and [DIVX] logo.
lame was created and is used (Score:4, Interesting)
Even though mp3 is patent encumbered. This project is along those same lines.
Re:Concentrate on making a better open codec. (Score:5, Insightful)
would anything x264 only be considered free software where the shackles of 'patented software' don't apply
You can't patent software. Well, you *can* in the USA, but they seem to be happy to legislate themselves into a technological backwater. I hope the rest of the world hasn't left them too far behind when they finally figure it out.
Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:5, Informative)
There is in fact a free software Blu-ray authoring tool. And it is rather nice.
http://multiavchd.deanbg.com/ [deanbg.com]
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FTFL: "multiAVCHD is free and no one can charge you, should you decide to obtain/download it."
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Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:5, Insightful)
If you at least capitalize it (like "Free Software"), you give your readers a hint that you are talking about something specific, rather than 'free' in general.
It is still ambiguous, but it is better.
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If my "Free phone" (which requires a 2 year contract) is "Free"
It isn't. The "Free phone" costs money because you are required to pay money as part of the 2 year contract, which subsidises the cost of the phone.
then that software is for *SURE* Free.
At least this software doesn't cost money.
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You aren't free to use any definition of free you want, you know. Here on Slashdot, free means "free to do as RMS approves."
You guys must be a riot (Score:2)
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You're kidding, aren't you? There are far more RMS-haters on Slashdot than RMS fans, at least overt ones.
When he wrote "free to do as RMS approves.", he was counting himself in (at least for humorous effect, if not in earnest) the group of "RMS-haters". As is/are the people who modded him up, as well as those that modded you down.
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FTFL: "multiAVCHD is free and no one can charge you, should you decide to obtain/download it."
Hence, spikeb is correct. It is not Free Software. It is software that costs $0.
Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:4, Insightful)
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The confusing word here is software, not free. If he had said "free Blu-ray authoring tool" I would have thought gratis, but "free software Blu-ray authoring tool" makes me think of a FLOSS Blu-ray authoring tool. Otherwise the word would be redundant, like opposed to what? Are there any authoring tools not made of software? I suppose you could say as opposed to a dedicated appliance, but tI thought even that all ran on standard computers these days.
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You must be new here.
Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:4, Funny)
You must be new here.
Watch it buddy, I'm in the highly prestigious and arbitrarily exclusive 5 Digit UID Club. I'm 1.57 orders of magnitude less new here than you. ;-)
Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:5, Funny)
Young whippersnappers these days crowing about their 5 digit UIDs...
Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:5, Funny)
Get off my lawn.
Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:5, Funny)
I hadn't seen a UID war in such a long time that I almost forgot about them... :P
Those youngsters with their retro trends
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Np it isn't. "You must be new here" not to know that. :-)
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We need one of the 1-digiters to come in now, and then for CmdrTaco to top (bottom?) them all.
Now, if I was running this site, I'd have a script which watches for any poster with 3 or fewer digits replying to anyone with a higher UID and mentioning the string "UID", just so I can jump in and trump them.
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Not like the UID war means anything - Mine is six digits and I have been here since 1998.
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What Lawn? I thought that was the retirement centers lawn. Or are you the fac-maint person
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I was gonna chime in but I have no clue what my UID is. I'm so old school I had slashies in my name.
Oh wait nevermind. It's 182850
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Re:Free BD Authoring Tool: Multiavchd (Score:4, Insightful)
Can we PLEASE STOP with letting RMS try to completelt subvert the meaning of a word simply because we are talking about software? Everything else on the planet if you say free it means it don't cost you money.
You are free to use the word anyway you want.
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Yes, but if you are trying to actually communicate with other people, it helps if both parties know what the other means.
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Everything else on the planet if you say free it means it don't cost you money.
Only in your commercially centered world. "Free" has several meanings and co-opting it to mean only the commercial version is a political statement in itself.
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Where are my mod points!
This is exactly why a lot of us like to use the term "libre". "Free" is an overloaded term.
Even in the highly crass America, the term "Free" is often equated with freedom rather than
price. Yet people still get their panties in a bunch when you try to emphasize that rather
more important usage of the term "Free".
Don't like the bias? Move to Cuba or the nearest Junta of your choice.
The 4th and the 14th are coming up...
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Only in your commercially centered world. "Free" has several meanings and co-opting it to mean only the commercial version is a political statement in itself.
But as a rule, "free as in liberty" is reserved solely for humans, groups of humans, or sometimes animals.
The idea of software having freedoms is absurd. The notion that RMS is trying to put forth is *not* absurd. Unfortunately, natural human language is not based on logic, thus such contradictions are allowed.
Which is why people are so adamant about using the term "Free Software" as a proper noun, because it indicates a specific branding. Whereas "free software" is generic, and in standard material parlanc
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So if I say "I'm a free man", does it mean I'm worthless? What about a "free market"? And when you said, "change to that free lane", does it mean the other lanes cost money?
Free has multiple definitions. It's not RMS' fault, it's an English bug. In other languages (at least Portuguese, Spanish, French, Romanian and Italian) there are clear distentions between the two concepts.
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"So if I say "I'm a free man", does it mean I'm worthless? What about a "free market"?"
Yes a "free market" is worthless too. Want proof, nowhere in the world is a true "free market" being used on any scale more than local and even that's sketchy at best.
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Free love?
Free Tibet?
Free Mitnick?
. . . Free Willy?
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Free Tibet?
Offer only valid when purchasing another Tibet at the normal price.
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The problem is that this -isn't- what everyone else on the planet means by free. It is *sometimes* but not generally, and that's why it's ambigous in english. If someone says that Germany has free elections, nobody thinks they mean the elections do not cost money, they understand that it's free as in freedom.
What you claim; that in every other context on the planet, free means "for zero money" is simply not true. Free Willy ! Live Free, or die trying. You're free to publish any book you want.
It's sometimes
As long as someone's putting in the effect... (Score:2)
Additionally, it seems the Criterion Collection is a friend of free software, having sponsored the effect to confirm x264's compliance with the Blu-ray spec.
Well, then I give them an A for effect. :)
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The site is a bit outdated. The format war is over. Blu-Ray won.
The other problems of course remain.
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Why don't you freetards just buy a mac and use real world professional software to do your work?...
You are like the Amish of the computer industry.
So, I should stop using free software and go to a system that is based on, you guessed it, free software. You do realize that OSX would be nothing like its current form without the completely free and open source software that it is layered on top of, right? For most intents and purposes, the OSX that you seem so fond of is little more than a set of libraries and a pretty face plastered on top of mountains of open source software. Now who's the freetard?
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True, it is based on open source but it's more than a little questionable to say it could never be the same without open source. They could have licensed Solaris or AIX or some other closed source unixish kernel if they wanted to and still built the same libraries on top. Everybody seems to jump up and down that it got open source somewhere down there but I would say it is fairly irrelevant to the success or failure of OS X. There's a reason that the desktop market [hitslink.com] has 5.33% OS X and 0.01% OpenBSD.
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They could have licensed Solaris or AIX or some other closed source unixish kernel
That's extremely speculative and has no basis on what actually happened nor is it relevant to what I was saying. This is just my opinion but I find it extremely unlikely that Steve Jobs would have ever licensed someone else's kernel, Unix or not, to put into OSX. The more likely scenario is that they would have gone a few more rounds negotiating with Be inc., bought them out, and just based OSX on that as that's what they intended to do in the first place had Be inc. not been asking so much money for their
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"Yes, you COULD replace them, but without them now, MacOSX would not work anything like the way it does now."
Not just that but MacOSX would cost significantly more than it already does due to increased licensing fees if competitors would even allow their bits to be licensed at all. If they would have had to do all the development themselves most likely the project would have been doomed. So get over it fanboys MacOSX owes its existence and continuing popularity to Free Software at several levels.
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I'll quote one word from your trolling: "work".
For my work, I use "real" software for the most part (and some of that is Free software with appropriate commercial support). For all my other stuff, I don't see why I should pay hundreds or thousands of $/£/ in order to burn a home movie to disk, or install an operating system on an old machine, or edit photos or design a personal website. Hell, you are technically paying just to burn a DVD-R or watch a DVD under most versions of Windows because they
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Buck Flewray: Pilot of the future!