Bluecherry Releases GPL'd MPEG-4 Driver 45
azop writes "Today Bluecherry released a GPL'd driver for its multiple-input MPEG-4 hardware compression cards. The driver supports audio and video capture from 4-, 8-, and 16-channel single-card encoders using the Video4Linux and ALSA APIs. More information about the driver and its features can be found on Bluecherry's development blog and on Ben Collins' personal blog. Bluecherry is the first Linux software company to release a complete driver based on Linux kernel APIs (Video4Linux and ALSA) for multiple-input hardware-compressed MPEG-4 capture cards under the GPL. The cards are designed for security applications (digital video recording), but other applications could potentially make use of the compressed streams and Video4Linux API integration. An H.264 version is 'in the works.'"
Patent pools! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Patent pools! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Patent pools! (Score:5, Interesting)
I thought this Slashdot story... ...led us to believe otherwise - at least if the stream you encode ends up being used commercially; and some interest groups tend to believe that having an ad on your site where the video is played back = commercial exploitation.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/02/1114235/The-MPEG-LAs-Lock-On-Culture [slashdot.org]
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I thought this Slashdot story...led us to believe otherwise - at least if the stream you encode ends up being used commercially; and some interest groups tend to believe that having an ad on your site where the video is played back = commercial exploitation
MPEG LA has no interest in you until you are raking in the big green.
There are no royalties on videos twelve minutes or less.
The TV broadcaster's license for H.264 video is a) a flat one-time charge of $2500 per AVC encoder or b) scaled to the size of hi
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Self-hosting freely distributed feature length video is lunatic without deep-pocket sponsorship
Why, with bittorrent available?
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Actually, imagine if there were no protection for IPs on a chip. All of the sudden, a small firm, let's say sandforce, has a great idea, and implements it. Imagine a larger company with lower production costs, and not having to do any R&D let's call it intel, says: we want that tech and xray the chip then replicate it. I am not trying to troll by giving this example. I just feel that some patent trolls gave intellectual property a very dirty name. That being said, I work on FOSS and love it. :)
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You are talking about a DEVICE. No one here has a problem with patents for THINGS, but we do have a problem with patents on IDEAS. Software patents are just that, patenting an idea, an algorithm. Math. Kind of like when Microsoft patented zeros and ones [theonion.com].
Re:Patent pools! (Score:4, Insightful)
You are talking about a DEVICE. No one here has a problem with patents for THINGS, but we do have a problem with patents on IDEAS. Software patents are just that, patenting an idea, an algorithm. Math. .
You may not patent math per se, but you can patent a novel and non obvious application of it. RSA is a good example. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Patent pools! (Score:5, Informative)
Patents forbid the use of any patented device, not just the sale or manufacture. There's fortunately something called the Exhaustion Doctrine, that says as soon as a patent holder has sold a device in an unrestricted manner on the open market, their patent rights have been exhausted. So, if you buy a MPEG-4 encoder card without any restrictions on that purchase, all patent rights to it are supposed to be done. However, you'll have to go to court to prove that.
Additionally, it's not very surefire of a defense at all, due to the fact that the courts are at best a crapshoot, and at worst a popularity contest. LG licensed some patents to Intel, with the condition that Intel inform all buyers of Intel chips that the LG patents are only licensed on the condition that you only use the chip with Intel hardware. In defiance of this notification, a computer reseller violated patent law by selling systems built with Intel chips, but containing non-Intel brand peripherals. Though the computer retailer lost, it eventually reached the Supreme Court, where it was ruled unanimously against LG. This is contrary to all previous lower court rulings, that held that just a note on the box constitutes a "restriction" and so the patents remain in full force. The Supreme Court said that since the reseller didn't need a patent, the note from Intel that they don't get one doesn't really matter, and doesn't constitute an implicit contract.
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What would be the cosnequences of what you mention to the recent fuss about cameras using H.264 with "for personal use only" disclaimer?
Not likely (Score:4, Insightful)
To everyone who knows about software patents, they are already exposed as ludicrous. To everybody else, they wouldn't learn anything from a small company being sued. Few people learned anything about patents from Microsoft vs. TomTom, and those are companies that most people have heard of.
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What have you learned about .jpg vs. .gif?
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Or Neptune versus Uranus?
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.jpg is used when lossy compression is ok, while .gif is better for lossless stuff?
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To everybody else, they wouldn't learn anything from a small company being sued.
Why would MPEG-LA sue them if they already licensed the patent pool?
NOT FREE! (Score:1, Insightful)
These guys are evil!
MPEG is owned by a bunch of fascists who charge money for their patents! This should be a WebM driver!
First? No. (Score:2, Informative)
It wasn't a "multiple input" device, but many years ago Plextor released a GPL driver for their go7007 based video capture devices, which captured directly to MPEG-4. Unfortunately few people bought them, so Plextor stopped working on the driver and it has since disappeared from the kernel, even though it was in the staging branch for a while.
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The go7007 driver is still in staging in the v4l-dvb tree. It still needs quite a bit of work to get out of staging however.
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The Hauppauge 1212 is a similar sort of device. It had a community built driver pretty much when the device was released. It was quickly supported by MythTV.
The only thing missing is a firmware update utility. Dealing with this device in Windows (for firmware) gives me a great appreciation for the Linux driver.
The community is quite up to the task if they are given the opportunity.
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I don't think the Hauppauge 1212 (the HD-PVR) is a comparable product. The 1212 takes in a single analog video up to component 1080i and produces a x264 stream from it. This card has multiple inputs (4,8, or 16) that are D1 (720x480) max. Utilizing 16 inputs it does not support 30 frames/sec that NTSC video uses (7.5 fps max @ 16 inputs). This is aimed at the digital security market. The 1212 is aimed at the HTPC market.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
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> I don't think the Hauppauge 1212 (the HD-PVR) is a comparable product.
Neither is the ConvertX that I was actually commenting about.
Linux device drivers don't have to be vendor supplied and an "interesting" product won't necessarily fade away for lack of interest.
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an "interesting" product won't necessarily fade away for lack of interest
That's not necessarily true, unfortunately. While I was 100% happy with my Plextor m402u (which used the go7007 driver) on an older kernel, I eventually had to upgrade my mythtv backend and the newer "staging" kernel driver is a P.O.S. So now I have switched to the Hauppauge HDPVR in order to get back to having actively maintained well written drivers. In other words, even though the driver exists and my hardware still works perfec
Compares with the Hauppage unit? (Score:4, Interesting)
Anybody know how this differs from the Hauppage USB<->mpeg4 encoder's driver?
This is primarily aimed at the security market (Score:5, Interesting)
I actually have one of their cards and I must say it works quite well. For full D1(720x480) you only get 7.5 frames/sec from 16 cameras, but for security that is plenty. I think the 4 port cards may be able to do 30 fps per camera. Version 1 of their software is a bit kludgy. It works, but needs help. Version 2, supposed to be a complete rewrite, is due out next month. If you are interested in good quality security hardware take a look at their stuff. bluecherrydvr.com [bluecherrydvr.com] I don't work for them, just am a happy customer.
Cheers,
the_crowbar
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According the specs through Bluecherry;
Realtime recording (120FPS @ 720x480)
Too bad their recording doesn't support HD resolution; it could be a killer for the DVR market.
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They wont. all the HD security cameras are Ip based so a analog recording car is not needed.
Their card is to support legacy analog security cameras. when mans higher video quality right now. All the Ip cameras are utter garbage. Until I can buy a high quality security camera in a IP format (no Axis cameras are not high quality, just expensive) that uses real lesnes (c mount not the crap mini lenses) then analog security cameras will stay the top of the line.
As for HD security, those are IP simply bec
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good enough for home or store security.
Casinos want to record full 30fps all the time.
In fact some of the new card table cameras are 120fps to allow them to capture cheating in slow motion. but then those are not your el-cheap $350.00 each security cameras.... those suckers cost upwards of $6000.00 each and are near broadcast quality in HD.
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I checked their website; the 4-input card is capable of full-framerate (30000/1001 fps) video at 720x480. The company for which I previously worked (and still do some work on the side) built a DVR system around cards that used four CX23416 [conexant.com]s to encode four inputs to MPEG-2 at the same resolution and framerate. We've been having trouble getting someo
Kernel update breaking drivers? (Score:1, Flamebait)
Are these some sort of stable APIs, or are they the driver APIs that are randomly changed every few kernel versions to break binary compatibility?
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>> Bluecherry is the first Linux software company to release a complete driver based on Linux kernel APIs (Video4Linux and ALSA)
>
> Are these some sort of stable APIs, or are they the driver APIs that are randomly changed every few kernel versions to break binary compatibility?
The only people that seem to complain about that are sandbagging companies that need to distract from the fact that the community is doing better.
V4L dates back to the original bt848 carts.
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The point of the story is that they release their driver source code, under the GPL.
So you dont care about binary compatibility, you just recompile the driver for every version of the kernel you need....
And you can fix the source code incompatibilities yourself if they ever happen and they dont keep up.
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It's GPLed so how does that matter?
The only folks that complain about that are closed source driver folks.
Good company (Score:5, Informative)
Oxymoron (Score:1, Offtopic)
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I am all for open source but isn't an open source mpeg4 codec kind of an oxymoron?
Why would that be an oxymoron? If the source is available to see, modify and distribute what is the oxymoron? That your source code may be covered by patents in some regions of the world doesn't change the fact that your code is still open source.
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If you can't distribute without licensing the patents, it's not freely distributable, hence not open source has defined by the OSI.
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If you can't distribute without licensing the patents, it's not freely distributable, hence not open source has defined by the OSI.
People distribute, for example, the ffmpeg, xvid, x264 source code all the time without having the license any patents.
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People distribute copies of Windows all the time on Bittorrent networks, doesn't mean it's legal.
Debian, for example, removed the x264 and compiles ffmpeg with some options disabled for that reason.
DVC170? (Score:1)
Bluecherry+ zonealarm = best SPVR (Score:2)
even the multi thousand dollar Security recorders look like horribly junk compared to zonealarm.
I was fixing a Axis system for a customer and he asked what I use... I told him zonealarm and logged into the interface for him to see. the fact that you can look at a graph of the day and see threshold levels instead of wading through useless video made him freak out.
Zonealarm kicks the utter crap out of ANY security DVR made. If used with real hardware. Most people try to use the crappy BTTV based cards. T
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Very true.
I was sorting out the network of a businessman friend of mine. He'd recently spent £4000 on 4 IP cameras and a PC to monitor it all.
I've never seen such suck. The interface only worked with IE7, nothing newer, and had to install an ActiveX control plus three other InstallShield installers to get any sort of picture. Most of the screen was overlaid with cheesy graphics, and some of the tooltips were in Chinese.
The suppliers didn't have a clue about it, all they do is buy this shite by the con