Free BBC Dirac Codec in Version 1.0

Sep 19, 2008

Version 1.0 of the free Dirac video codec is now available.

Dirac is a video codec data compression technique first developed by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that is under Mozilla Public License Version 1.1. According to the Dirac FAQ, the BBC intentionally released the product under the Mozilla license because it allows re-licensing. Their related Schrödinger project is a homegrown research implementation of Dirac that is variously available under MPL, LGPL und MIT licensing. The Schrödinger variant is written in C while the initial development of Dirac was written in C++ and known by the name dirac-research.

The robust Version 1.0 complies with Dirac Bytestream specification 2.2.2 and adapts itself to the frame types in the frame sequence of a film. The three-step research-intensive motion estimation was improved, along with pre-filtering. A DirectShow filter was also developed that allows playback of raw Dirac bytestreams and Dirac data packaged as AVI containers in Windows Media Player und MPlayer.

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