The G.729.1 "wideband" codec is starting to show a slight bit of traction. There is a possibility that Asterisk could support G.729.1 - would you use it or buy it if it was available? More importantly, does any equipment with which your systems currently exchange traffic support G.729.1? Currently, the number of devices supporting G.729.1 seems to be fairly limited and it may be an imbalanced decision to support a codec that nobody else uses. If G.729.1 were to be offered as a codec for Asterisk by Digium, it would have to be as a commercial product, as the codec is patent- encumbered. Pricing and licensing terms are outside the scope of this discussion, but I would expect something like G.729. Of course, passthrough-mode (non-transcoding) would not require licensing with Asterisk and is outside of the scope of this question. Timing is also an unknown issue - there are obviously many other projects in the pipeline for the Digium engineering team to work on before this probably could be completed, even if the decision is made to pursue a development effort. Note that G.722 is free and already available, and may have similar MOS scores (but certainly not exactly similar) as that of G.729.1. Comparisons of G.729.1 and G.722 are left as exercises to the reader, or see the excellent presentation below which is quite enlightening. Your opinions are welcome on the topic! Resources: http://portal.etsi.org/stq/workshop2007presentations/quinquis_slides.pdf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.729.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.722 [Apologies for the cross-post - this has some interest to both the user and development community, I think. I'll also apologize for what is a post about issues that are not "open-source", but it seems that within Digium I'm probably the most appropriate person to canvass the community on this particular question, as it involves gauging the general thinking of the VoIP community and is not merely a Digium-only concern.] JT --- John Todd email:jtodd at digium.com Digium, Inc. | Asterisk Open Source Community Director 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville AL 35806 - USA direct: +1-256-428-6083 http://www.digium.com/
John Todd wrote:> The G.729.1 "wideband" codec is starting to show a slight bit of > traction. There is a possibility that Asterisk could support G.729.1 > - would you use it or buy it if it was available? More importantly, > does any equipment with which your systems currently exchange traffic > support G.729.1? Currently, the number of devices supporting G.729.1 > seems to be fairly limited and it may be an imbalanced decision to > support a codec that nobody else uses. > > If G.729.1 were to be offered as a codec for Asterisk by Digium, it > would have to be as a commercial product, as the codec is patent- > encumbered. Pricing and licensing terms are outside the scope of this > discussion, but I would expect something like G.729. Of course, > passthrough-mode (non-transcoding) would not require licensing with > Asterisk and is outside of the scope of this question. Timing is also > an unknown issue - there are obviously many other projects in the > pipeline for the Digium engineering team to work on before this > probably could be completed, even if the decision is made to pursue a > development effort. > > > Note that G.722 is free and already available, and may have similar > MOS scores (but certainly not exactly similar) as that of G.729.1. > Comparisons of G.729.1 and G.722 are left as exercises to the reader, > or see the excellent presentation below which is quite enlightening. > > Your opinions are welcome on the topic! > > Resources: > http://portal.etsi.org/stq/workshop2007presentations/quinquis_slides.pdf > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.729.1 > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.722 > > [Apologies for the cross-post - this has some interest to both the > user and development community, I think. I'll also apologize for what > is a post about issues that are not "open-source", but it seems that > within Digium I'm probably the most appropriate person to canvass the > community on this particular question, as it involves gauging the > general thinking of the VoIP community and is not merely a Digium-only > concern.] >Where have you seen it getting traction? France Telecom came up with it, and are using it, but that's kind of isolated from the rest of the universe. The PDF you referenced is little more than a France Telecoms sales pitch for G.729.1. Audiocodes announced something, but its vague and they aren't shipping yet. AMR-WB would make more sense, as 3G cellphones all use it, and transcoding these things looses huge amounts of quality. G.722.1 is also getting somewhere, largely because of Polycom's commitment to it. The really wacky one is G.711.1. Has anyone heard of people taking that seriously. Regards, Steve
Kevin P. Fleming
2009-Jan-14 19:09 UTC
[asterisk-users] [asterisk-dev] G.729.1 - any interest?
St?phane Van Geystelen wrote:> You know my opinion about it ;) > The G729.1 is still a 50Hz 7000kHz bandwidth. An ultra wideband codec > capabilities would be a real breakthrough.7KHz is not ultra-wideband, it's wideband. There are already wideband codecs out there, including G.722, G.722.1 and AMR-WB, to name a few. There are also ultra-wideband codecs (16KHz bandwidth) including G.722.1C. -- Kevin P. Fleming Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA skype: kpfleming | jabber: kpfleming at digium.com Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org
Kevin P. Fleming
2009-Jan-15 14:32 UTC
[asterisk-users] [asterisk-dev] G.729.1 - any interest?
Dmitry Andrianov wrote:> Did I miss something? Is Asterisk capable of handling 16KHz audio already? Can it mix 16KHz streams in the meetme rooms? Can it downsample them to 8kHz for Zap channels?Asterisk 1.6 can handle 16KHz streams and resample between 8KHz and 16KHz. The current conferencing implementation is 8KHz only, but the new one that Josh Colp has been working on will be able to support 16KHz (and higher, presumably) conference mixing. It is scheduled to be in Asterisk 1.6.2, although it will be a parallel implementation, and won't affect app_meetme.> Who needs 16khz codec if the rest of the system cannot do anything about it?Very true :-) -- Kevin P. Fleming Digium, Inc. | Director of Software Technologies 445 Jan Davis Drive NW - Huntsville, AL 35806 - USA skype: kpfleming | jabber: kpfleming at digium.com Check us out at www.digium.com & www.asterisk.org