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The Schrödinger Project

The Schrödinger Project, named after Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger, is a joint effort between Fluendo and BBC Research & Development with the aim of developing a set of ANSI C libraries that implement the encoding and decoding functions of the Dirac video codec project. "Dirac is a video codec that provides general-purpose video compression and decompression tools comparable with state-of-the-art systems. Dirac is available for distribution under the MPL version 1.1 software license."

[Schrödinger] The Dirac introduction outlines that project's early history: "In January 2003, BBC R&D produced a prototype video coding algorithm, based on wavelet technology, which is different from that used in the main proprietary or standard video compression systems. Our algorithm seems to give a two-fold reduction in bit rate over MPEG-2 for high definition video (e.g. 1920x1080 pixels), its original target application. It has been further developed to optimise it for internet streaming resolutions and seems broadly competitive with state of the art video codecs. At the moment the codec, called Dirac, is in the early stages of development. It has been developed as a research tool, not a product, as a basis for further developments. An experimental version of the code, written in C++, was released under an Open Source licence agreement on 11th March 2004."

The Schrödinger Project is the next step forward. The Dirac codec is a C++ project, while the Schrödinger libraries will be written in ANSI C. The Schrödinger Project's initial announcement states: "The goal of this new implementation is to focus on speed and maintainability."

The announcement mentions the planned support for Ogg containers:

As part of this project we will also make sure the Dirac video codec can be contained in the Ogg container format and work with Xiph.org to ensure that this mapping is acceptable to the Xiph community. The code is not yet in a working state, but interested people are suggested to join the mailing list or check out development as it proceeds in our Subversion repository.

A more formal announcement is forthcoming. This looks like fertile ground for the development of some interesting new video applications. New developers are welcome to join the project.

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