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3IVX Being Added to "Thriving" HaikuPosted on 2008-Feb-12 at 08:18 - Post Comment3IVX, pronounced "thrive-ex," is a popular video encoding format that opens the door to a whole world of video for any operating system that supports it...and Buzzer David McPaul is making it happen for BeOS and the up-and-coming Haiku operating system. Here's a leBUZZ "exclusive" from David, who describes the history and current status of the project in his own words:"I have a side interest in video encoding/decoding and a number of years ago, the 3ivx company invited me to port their MPEG-4 ASP encoder/decoder to the BeOS platform. I did an initial version of their 3.5 release and then later updated it to 4.5 (This can be found on BeBits). This allowed BeOS users to create and view videos from AVI and MOV files that conform to the MPEG-4 ASP video specification Part 2 (DIV3, DIV4, DIV5, XVID are the main fourcc's you will see). But BeOS lacked a MP4 extractor/creator so we could not play MP4 files :-( "Since then despite the BeOS company going away, 3ivx have generously allowed me to continue to have access to their source code. Over the last few years the company has added an AAC decoder/encoder (MPEG-4 Audio specification) and are working on a MPEG-4 AVC (aka H.264) encoder/decoder (MPEG-4 Video specification Part 10). "So I am trying to get their current MPEG-4 ASP encoder/decoder ported to BeOS and their new AAC decoder (Not sure yet about the AAC encoder). I am also writing a MP4 extractor so BeOS can play MP4 files. "So what does this mean for Haiku, you ask. Currently Haiku has a native decoder plugin API but no encoder API. After Marcus checked that in I ported the 4.5 3ivx decoder to haiku as a proof of concept (ie not released) and wrote the MOV and MP4 readers for haiku but for MP4 files we were missing audio. "So once I have the current 3ivx decoder, aac decoder and MP4 extractor working on BeOS I will produce native haiku versions of the decoders and update the MP4 reader. Then when haiku gets a encoder API I want to create a native version of the 3ivx encoder as well. "Future wise, as long as 3ivx continue to allow me to port their code I will. I am particularly looking forward to getting an AVC decoder working as their are a lot more MP4 files that use this these days." The short version? Haiku users can look forward to viewing MP4 files with video and audio decoded by 3ivx and an MP4 reader, courtesy of David McPaul! |
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