[gst-devel] Re: First draft for MCF transor API

[ChristianHJW]

Hi Ruben,

>"Ruben" <ryu at gpul.org> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:1029707471.6200.9.camel at songoku...
>O Xov, 2002-08-15 ás 11:32, ChristianHJW escribiu:
>> I hope i dont have to introduce the MCF project to you now anymore, else
you
>> find all the necessary links on the bottom of this mail ( sent via gmane
>> newsserver BTW ).
>I've seen the project page, and found that you are only comparing this
>format with AVI, what I think is an error. AVI is a very old format
>although it's very extended. Why don't you compare it with a modern
>transport standard like MP4 (the transport layer standarized to take
>more advantage of MPEG-4 codecs)?
>I imagine that you already know MP4 and you can explain the advantages
>over it, but for people here that don't know it, the better information
>source related to MPEG4 is the open MPEG4 project:
>http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net
>Regards

thanks for you reply and your interest in MCF.

Here very briefly the main advantages i see for MCF when being compared to
MPEG4 ( container ) :

- MCF is opensource and released under a L-GPL  license, means absolutely
free to use. Dont trust MPEG-LA ! They may have been nice with us with the
current MPEG4 license, but please dont forget they may change this soon
after MPEG4 has been established as standard.

- Number of codecs to use with MPEG4 is limited and exactly specified (
MPEG4ISO video, AAC audio, TwinVQ audio, etc. ). MCF can support every
existing VfW codec ( at least in AVI compatibility mode ) and also a big
number of codecs 'natively', right from the very start given a transor for
the codec is being coded or already existing. Of course, you can put Vorbis,
Speex. MPC or Tarkin into MPEG4 container also, as well as MP3, but its a
hack and not in the original MPEG4 specs. MCF specs will cover all of them,
and many more are to come.

- MCF is targeted to work x-platform for both playback and encoding right
from the start, at least in 'native' mode, while for MPEG4 container even
today there are no free MPEG4 parsers available as Dshow filters for
windows, means you have to use 'propietary' MPEG4 players like Philips or
Envivio to play those ( dont know status for linux, sorry ).

Disadvantages for MCF compared to MPEG4 container :

- for MPEG4 hardware support is planned and very likely to come ( only with
further reduced spec concerning resolution, bitrates, etc. ). Although we do
have 'hardware profiles' for MCF in preparation we have to very realistic
here, its very unlikely to ever happen if MCF should not become the new AVI
and be used a lot.

We know very well MCF is a pretty challenging project, now as both MPEG4 and
Ogg container are available and being used already. But we wouldnt invest
work into MCF if we were not convinced that there is sense behind creating
it.

Christian