Category: MPEG-4

  • Sorenson Media announces MPEG-4 support for Squeeze 3

    Sorenson Media, best known as the company behind QuickTime’s Sorenson Video, has announced that the next major release of Squeeze will support ISMA-compliant MPEG-4 encoding. Squeeze is available in single-format versions for $199. Their “Compression Suite” version is $199, and supports Flash, MPEG-4 and QuickTime output. Caution: The Windows version also supports RealSystem and Windows…

  • MPEG LA releases MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License

    MPEG LA has announced that the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio License is now available. (The world says, “Great!”. And then, under its breath, “It’s about f#$%!@g time.”) The terms of the license are the same as those announced in July — no royalty payments up to 50,000 subscribers, $0.25/subscriber or $0.02/hour above that, with an…

  • An unintentionally amusing article with 3ivx's CEO

    In another My First MPEG-4 Article, the German site 99mac interviews 3ivx about their “miracle” 3ivx codec. The interviewer (conducting the interview via email, apparently) quotes Happy Machines’ CEO, Jan Devos, verbatim. Happy Machines is a company that was formed in July 2000 as the official entity for developing and marketing the 3ivx codec, the…

  • Could AACplus make MPEG-4 the best streaming format for audio?

    AACplus is the next evolution of AAC. It’s being used today in XM satellite radio, and it’s on its way to becoming a core audio format for MPEG-4. This is extremely good news for MPEG-4, as a source imtimate with its quality reports: It is spectaculary better than all proprietary schemes. AACplus uses Spectral Band…

  • "Where is MP4?"

    Another day, another My First MPEG-4 story. It’s interesting that the author’s frame of reference is MP3 — the only thing he knows, probably — when something like QuickTime would be a far better starting point for helping readers understand what MPEG-4 is today and will be in the future. Although the author says silly…

  • RealNetworks' new (MPEG-4!) product

    RealNetworks’ new encoding tool, Mobile Producer, creates content for 3GPP-compliant devices. Envivio — the France Telecom subsidiary whose software RealNetworks used to support MPEG-4 in their platform — is creating the new product in partnership with RealNetworks. 3GPP is the Third-Generation Partnership Project, an organization that brings together several telecommunications standards bodies to define standards…

  • MPEG LA extends AVC "essential patents" submission deadline

    MPEG LA has extended the deadline for companies to submit patents neccessary to support AVC, from October 11, 2002 to January 31, 2003. That makes sense, since AVC hasn’t quite reached FDIS (Final Draft International Standard) status, and “essentiality” — whether a patent is essential to AVC — can only be determined against the final…

  • Qualcomm's new 3G chipset supports MPEG-4

    Qualcomm has announced that they’re shipping an important new mobile chipset for 3G (CDMA 2000 1X) devices, and it includes their “Qtv” MPEG-4 decoder. This is a significant bellwether for MPEG-4. It says that Qualcomm’s customers are demanding MPEG-4 — and as significantly, not Windows Media or RealSystem — in the DNA of their mobile…

  • New MPEG-4 video codec to be ratified by year's end

    Great news for MPEG-4 — Rob Koenen, President of the M4IF (MPEG-4 Industry Forum) and Chairman of the MPEG Requirements Group, is reporting that AVC will be ratified by year’s end. MPEG-4’s current video codec (MPEG-4 Video) is roughly a generation behind proprietary, non-interoperable solutions. AVC (MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding) codecs will make MPEG-4’s video…

  • Apple's 3-day MPEG-4/QuickTime Streaming course

    Apple has announced the release of its 3-day, hands-on MPEG-4/QuickTime Streaming course. I talked to Victor Alexander, Apple’s QuickTime Curriculum Developer, and here’s how he described it: The QuickTime Streaming course takes an in-depth look at QuickTime Streaming Server and Darwin Streaming Server by teaching system administrators and media authors the details behind real-time streaming.…