Blu-ray quality with free formats

[ilias.k.cs]

At the moment, is it possible to obtain Blu-ray image quality using solely free formats? If so, how would you suggest? (Note that I have only elementary knowledge of multimedia systems).

Thanks,
Ilias K.

[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

Post by ilias.k.cs
At the moment, is it possible to obtain Blu-ray image quality using
solely free formats? If so, how would you suggest? (Note that I have
only elementary knowledge of multimedia systems).

What do you mean by a free format here?

-Timo

[Torsten Grote]

Dear Ilias,

Post by ilias.k.cs
At the moment, is it possible to obtain Blu-ray image quality using solely
free formats? If so, how would you suggest?

As far as I know Blue-ray videos are ordinary videos that just have a "high"
resolution (more pixels and therefore more detail, more sharpness) plus nasty
DRM.

You can have a high resolution with all free codecs as well. The Matroska
container with VP8 (WebM) or VP9 codec is usually a good choice.

Kind Regards,
Torsten
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[Michael Kesper]

Hi Ilias,

What exactly do you want to do?
Taking photos/movies with a camera or playing bluray discs or even something completely different?

Bye
Michael

[Vicen Rodriguez]

Hi Ilias,

I don't know what do you exactly mean with 'Blu-ray image quality', but
I think the short answer is undoubtedly 'yes'.

At Wikipedia, you can find info about:
- Blu-ray Disc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray_Disc
- H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, the non-free video compression format used by
Blu-ray Disc: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC
- WebM, an audio-video container format:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM
- VP8, the video compression format that can be an alternative to H.264:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8
- VP9, a successor to VP8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9
- FFmpeg, a free software project that produces libraries and programs
for handling multimedia and data and has a native VP9 decoder since
October 3, 2013: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FFmpeg

Best regards

Vicen

Post by ilias.k.cs
At the moment, is it possible to obtain Blu-ray image quality using solely free formats? If so, how would you suggest? (Note that I have only elementary knowledge of multimedia systems).
Thanks,
Ilias K.
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[Hugo Roy]

Post by ilias.k.cs
At the moment, is it possible to obtain Blu-ray image quality using solely free formats? If so, how would you suggest? (Note that I have only elementary knowledge of multimedia systems).

IIRC, Blu-Ray media is usually encoded using H.264. VP8 is a good
video codec alternative to this, so you should probably research
in that direction. VP8 is also the video codec used by webm (for
the web).
--
Hugo Roy, Free Software Foundation Europe, <www.fsfe.org>
Deputy Coordinator, FSFE Legal Team, <www.fsfe.org/legal>
Coordinator, FSFE French Team, <www.fsfe.org/fr>

Support Free Software, sign up! <https://fsfe.org/support>
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[ilias.k.cs]

Thanks for your answers! :)
By free format, I meant a format with an open specification, and by `same image quality` I was somewhat informal there :) but I won't bother you anymore with this. I was asking because I'm in the process of replacing everything I'm doing on the computer with free equivalents, and I guess I'll be using vp8 and vp9 as you suggested in order to convert my proprietary stuff, whenever possible(I already use Vorbis for audio, and it works like a charm). ;)
Thanks again!

[Simo]

Post by ilias.k.cs
Thanks for your answers! :)
By free format, I meant a format with an open specification, and by
`same image quality` I was somewhat informal there :) but I won't
bother you anymore with this. I was asking because I'm in the process
of replacing everything I'm doing on the computer with free
equivalents, and I guess I'll be using vp8 and vp9 as you suggested in
order to convert my proprietary stuff, whenever possible(I already use
Vorbis for audio, and it works like a charm). ;)
Thanks again!

For video Webm/VP8 [1] have open specifications, of course there is also
Theora [2] (though not as good as VP8 imo) from Xiph.org [3] the same
one that created Ogg/Vorbis [4].
For the future I would keep an eye on VP9 [5] from Google and even more
on Daala [6] again from Xiph.org/Mozilla, seem very promising.

For audio I started moving to Opus [7] also from Xiph.org/Mozilla (made
in collaboration with Skype, fully open) and now also an IETF Proposed
Standard [8].

HTH,
Simo.


[1] http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/# and see the Docs
tab in the page for the actual format technical specifications
[2] http://www.theora.org/
[3] https://www.xiph.org/
[4] http://www.vorbis.com/
[5]
http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/07/vp9-lands-in-chrome-dev-channel.html
[6] https://xiph.org/daala/
[7] http://www.opus-codec.org/
[8] http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716

[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

Post by ilias.k.cs
By free format, I meant a format with an open specification, and by

This might be bit off-topic already but would you regard for example
LaTeX as a free format? Afaik there's no strict specification, it's
mostly defined by the implementation.

[Filip M. Nowak]

Hello there,

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors

Post by ilias.k.cs
By free format, I meant a format with an open specification, and by

This might be bit off-topic already but would you regard for example
LaTeX as a free format? Afaik there's no strict specification, it's
mostly defined by the implementation.

Well, looks like it is (but it's not compatible with GPL):

LaTeX is typically distributed along with plain TeX. It is distributed
under a free software license, the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL). [1]

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX#Licensing

Cheers,
Filip

[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

It is free software but is it a free format?

[Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild]

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
It is free software but is it a free format?

Is C++ source code a free format?

[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

Post by Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild
Is C++ source code a free format?

That's exactly what I was asking the original poster. We don't have a
clear definition for free format.

[Torsten Grote]

We don't have a clear definition for free format.

Why not talk about open standards instead?

https://fsfe.org/activities/os/def.en.html

Kind Regards,
Torsten
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[Timo Juhani Lindfors]

Post by Torsten Grote
Why not talk about open standards instead?

At least point 4 is quite difficult to assess. Does ogg vorbis meet it
for example? I have no idea if xiph.org foundation meets "developed
independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal
participation of competitors and third parties;".

Also could a compelete but non-free implementation fullfill point 5?

[Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild]

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
At least point 4 is quite difficult to assess. Does ogg vorbis meet it
for example? I have no idea if xiph.org foundation meets "developed
independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal
participation of competitors and third parties;".

As (to the extent of my knowledge) The Xiph.Org Foundation is selling
neither support nor software that implements Vorbis decoder/encoder, the
Xiph.Org Foundation is not a vendor of Vorbis by definition. It is also
unlikely that they are secretly collaborating with a single vendor to
dictate the format.

Regarding the openness of the process? If I am not mistaken, the
specification is/has been produced from the reference implementation's
code base. The reference implementation itself is Free Software and its
development is open to collaboration.

So in all likelihood, Vorbis conforms to point 4. Furthermore, Vorbis is
considered an open standard by the Free Software community.

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
Also could a compelete but non-free implementation fullfill point 5?

Possibly. However, proprietary software sometimes grants its users
freedom 0 (the freedom to run for any purpose), but is that relevant to
Free Software in any way? No, because an Open Standard should conform to
all five points in the definition as Free Software must conform to all
four freedoms.


Sincerely,

[Mirko Boehm]

Post by Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
It is free software but is it a free format?

Is C++ source code a free format?

From a computer science point of view, a written specification that
completely describes a format must be translatable into the actual
source or machine code by a compiler that understands the specification
language. With that in mind, code (freely licensed, of course) that
implements a format is more complete than any natural language
specification until we have compilers that understand the latter.

And we need to fix natural language to be free of inconsistencies and
misunderstandings :-)

Cheers,

Mirko.

[Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild]

Post by Mirko Boehm

Post by Heiki &quot;Repentinus&quot; Ojasild

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
It is free software but is it a free format?

Is C++ source code a free format?

And we need to fix natural language to be free of inconsistencies and
misunderstandings :-)

Oh no! That's why the C++ standards committee invented undefined behaviour.

In any case, the point of my rhetoric question was that there is no
point in squabbling over LaTeX like that. If you use TeX to produce
nicely typeset PDF-s, nobody cares whether you use LaTeX, XeTeX, MiTeX
or whatever. The resulting PDF most likely conforms to Open Standards
and the PDF is something you are going to distribute widely.

Choosing the TeX flavour is like choosing a programming language: if you
want to write your own language, go for it; if you want to use C++, do
it; if you want to use Fortran, do it. But when you compile your
program, please provide the binaries for the platform the software is
intended for (and obviously make sure that a free compiler
implementation is available).

There are a few cases where you need to agree on a TeX version with your
published or co-authors, but those cases are akin to picking a
programming language for a project with friends ? C++, C, Scheme, and a
good few other languages are standardised, but I have yet to see someone
pick one of them for the quality of being standardised.

[Carsten Agger]

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
It is free software but is it a free format?
_______________________________________________

It's a free format in the sense that it's unencumbered, unlike (e.g.) OOXML.

But the lack of specification means it's not too well-defined.

[Filip M. Nowak]

Hi,

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors
It is free software but is it a free format?

I think term "format" should be understood as document markup language
here. It's part of LaTeX and there is no word about other form of licensing.

Cheers,
Filip

[Tobias Platen]

Post by Timo Juhani Lindfors

Post by ilias.k.cs
By free format, I meant a format with an open specification, and by

This might be bit off-topic already but would you regard for example
LaTeX as a free format? Afaik there's no strict specification, it's
mostly defined by the implementation.
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There is Lib-ray a free format intended to replace Blu-ray:
http://lib-ray.org/

Tobias Platen

[Mauricio Nascimento]

Youtube is going 4K and bringing some hardware companies to support VP9
royalty-free codec.

Post by Tobias Platen
http://lib-ray.org/

Thanks for the link. :)
Cheers,

Mauricio Nascimento