Greetings all.. I'm sending this message out here because I suspect that some folks involved in the vorbis codec might be interested in the following (we'd certainly like to make vorbis work well with UCI, and welcome any help in this area). If this is not the case (or this is not an appropriate forum for this sort of thing) I apologize in advance.. <p> Project Announcement and Call for Participation ----------------------------------------------- The Universal Codec Interface (UCI) Project is aiming to create a consistent, well-designed, portable set of programming interfaces for multimedia applications and codecs to interface to one another on unix-like (and potentially other) operating systems. The UCI system is intended to provide an interface which is both consistent enough to allow easy ("plug and play") use of any codec by any application, while being flexible enough to allow sophisticated use of specialized codec features by applications designed to take more thorough advantage of certain codec implementations, or even to allow the user to control codec features of which the application itself may not be directly aware. It is not tied to any particular system or set of other libraries (such as graphical environments), and is intended to be lightweight and as efficient as possible so as not to get in the way of application/codec builders. We are interested in developing an interface which is well thought-out and meets all the needs of multimedia applications and codecs, both now and in the future. To this end, we are inviting (and encouraging) participation by any and all current multimedia developers or other interested parties, to provide input and feedback on developing UCI specifications, suggest features, contribute code, or simply keep up to date on the current state of the project. UCI is an Open-Source, Open-Spec, Peer-Directed project. Choice of licenses and related issues are still somewhat under discussion. Contributions and feedback in this area are welcome, as well. Everyone and anyone interested in contributing, knowledge, skills, critical thinking, or anything else that might be useful to this project is welcome! It is our hope that through the participation of a range of contributors from various backgrounds, we will build a system which is useful and effective for everyone's needs, and will significantly simplify the development of both platform-specific (linux, etc) and cross-platform multimedia software now and in the future. Those interested in the UCI project should visit the project web page at: http://uci.sourceforge.net/ A public UCI-Devel maillist is open to participation by everyone. To subscribe, point a web browser at: https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/uci-devel ..or simply send a subscription request to: uci-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net We also have an NNTP gateway, web archives, and an IRC channel on FreeNode for discussing UCI development. More details can be found on the main project page. Some basic specifications and documentation as to the current direction of UCI development are available from the main project page. Please note that these "specifications" are preliminary and subject to change based on feedback from the larger multimedia community. If you see something that looks wrong, please feel free to contribute suggestions to the UCI-Devel maillist. Thank you all for your kind consideration, -alex --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
To : vorbis-devel cc : uci-devel <alex@foogod.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag news:20020924182614.K16854@firestar.foogod.com...> Greetings all.. I'm sending this message out here because I suspect thatsome> folks involved in the vorbis codec might be interested in the following(we'd> certainly like to make vorbis work well with UCI, and welcome any help inthis> area). If this is not the case (or this is not an appropriate forum forthis> sort of thing) I apologize in advance.. > Project Announcement and Call for Participation > ----------------------------------------------- > The Universal Codec Interface (UCI) Project is aiming to create aconsistent,> well-designed, portable set of programming interfaces for multimedia > applications and codecs to interface to one another on unix-like (and > potentially other) operating systems. > The UCI system is intended to provide an interface which is bothconsistent> enough to allow easy ("plug and play") use of any codec by anyapplication,> while being flexible enough to allow sophisticated use of specializedcodec> features by applications designed to take more thorough advantage ofcertain> codec implementations, or even to allow the user to control codec featuresof> which the application itself may not be directly aware. It is not tied toany> particular system or set of other libraries (such as graphicalenvironments),> and is intended to be lightweight and as efficient as possible so as notto get> in the way of application/codec builders. > We are interested in developing an interface which is well thought-out and > meets all the needs of multimedia applications and codecs, both now and inthe> future. To this end, we are inviting (and encouraging) participation byany> and all current multimedia developers or other interested parties, toprovide> input and feedback on developing UCI specifications, suggest features, > contribute code, or simply keep up to date on the current state of theproject.> UCI is an Open-Source, Open-Spec, Peer-Directed project. Choice oflicenses> and related issues are still somewhat under discussion. Contributions and > feedback in this area are welcome, as well. > Everyone and anyone interested in contributing, knowledge, skills,critical> thinking, or anything else that might be useful to this project iswelcome! It> is our hope that through the participation of a range of contributors from > various backgrounds, we will build a system which is useful and effectivefor> everyone's needs, and will significantly simplify the development of both > platform-specific (linux, etc) and cross-platform multimedia software nowand> in the future. > Those interested in the UCI project should visit the project web page at: > http://uci.sourceforge.net/ > A public UCI-Devel maillist is open to participation by everyone. To > subscribe, point a web browser at: > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/uci-devel > ..or simply send a subscription request to: > uci-devel-request@lists.sourceforge.net > We also have an NNTP gateway, web archives, and an IRC channel on FreeNodefor> discussing UCI development. More details can be found on the main project > page. > Some basic specifications and documentation as to the current direction ofUCI> development are available from the main project page. Please note thatthese> "specifications" are preliminary and subject to change based on feedbackfrom> the larger multimedia community. If you see something that looks wrong, > please feel free to contribute suggestions to the UCI-Devel maillist. > Thank you all for your kind consideration, > -alex<p>Cheers ! Anybody from the Xiph team care to comment on Alex' proposal ? I seem to remember that Monty has stated on the theora list recently that he is planning to create a new API for the project. Maybe worthwhile to check UCI before doing so, could save you guys a lot of precious time i guess, and would also be a big step into the right direction to help achieving a kind of x-platform 'standardisation' for media handling. Its maybe interesting to hear that the XviD team is discussing to drop VfW and use UCI as main API, mainly because of constant incompatibilities between all the supported APIs in XviD CVS. Peter 'suxen_drol' Ross, the man responsible for the XviD APIs, was suggesting this lately on xvid-devel . There were even discussions between Alban 'albeu' Bedel and Alex about a mplayer wrapper for UCI ( based on libmpc i guess ), Alex wants to do the same for VfW. I am posting this to vorbis-devel instead of theora-devel because it would be a major boost for UCI if Vorbis had a UCI interface, so every Video enoding app ( and also audio encoding app ) being able to call UCI codecs could use Vorbis for the audio in the movies, same goes for theora and the video of course. The variety of different media APIs is pain in the ass, and its great to see people like Erik Walthinsen, the founder of gstreamer, contributing to UCI, as well as people from the OpenBeOS world. Thanks in advance for a short 'official' comment from Monty or Emmett . Regards Christian http://uci.sourceforge.net BTW : I sais this already on xvid-devel , although i am a strong supporter of the idea behind UCI, the project is not at all related to MCF in any form, both are completely independant. <p><p><p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
Hi Monty, None of the APIs that UCI plans to work on will be of use to you as an external API for the Ogg mux/demux platform. The reason why you don't see anything in the spec about mux/demux plugins is that mux/demux is not a target for the UCI project. UCI consists of two APIs, one of which is implemented by a codec writer, and the other which is utilized by an application that wants to use one (or more) of the codecs provided. So, UCI could possibly be of use to you as the internal API for the vorbis/theora codecs. In this situation, the Ogg mux/demux framework would use the UCI application API to access the codecs. Vorbis and theora would implement the internal codec API. The result would be that Ogg could also store any other codecs that supply an UCI interface. And also that any other container (such as MCF) could use the UCI application interface to access the vorbis or theora codecs. It's true that there's only a partial implementation of the API so far. (AFAIK) As such, I can understand if you feel it is desirable to proceed with your own solution for this API. (especially seeing as you already have one worked out for ogg/vorbis and clearly have plans for its extension) Still, I hope that you can find some time to contribute your wisdom directly to the project, especially to the extent that you find that UCI is incapable of providing the necessary interface between the Ogg framework and the vorbis/theora codecs. I know your time is limited (as is all of ours :-) ) and if this isn't possible then you can still rest assured that we will examine your design choices to ensure that UCI will be able to ultimately serve your need. Thanks for taking the time to look over the specs so far. Andrew Bachmann -----Original Message----- From: xiphmont@xiph.org (Monty) Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2002 20:40:05 -0400 [snip] I'm building an Ogg mux/demux platform. It has no other goal in mind than turning Ogg into a framework that uses multiple internal codecs seamlessly and presents a very easy to use encode/decode interface for any and all Ogg transport streams and their contents. This neither duplicates nor works against UCI's goals. [snip] I'm going to continue working on seamless Ogg mux/demux. The designed API, both externally exposed to the application and internally exposed to the codecs, is somewhat beyond what you're proposing, but it should be perfectly useable within a well-designed UCI frame. [snip] Monty <p>--- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.
alex@foogod.com wrote:> It should also be noted that if UCI does prove to be serious and > capable (which > I'm pretty confident it will), and produces a product which gets > adopted by a > fair number of other systems, it may then be too late to make sure that it > works with Ogg the way it should, and Ogg could easily get left out of the > loop. I would rather not see that happen, which is why I would like > to have > input at this stage, when it's still feasable to change things, from > you guys > about what you think UCI needs to meet your requirements.I think it's not that important, that UCI works with Ogg, but that Vorbis (and Theora) could be a UCI codec. I'm not sure if Ogg should be an transport layer for lots of different codecs (patented ones?), but you could always use Vorbis audio as UCI codec, if you specification allows this. --- >8 ---- List archives: http://www.xiph.org/archives/ Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/ To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'vorbis-dev-request@xiph.org' containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body. No subject is needed. Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.