Indeo

Last updated
Indeo
Intel Indeo logo.svg
Filename extension
ivf
Internet media type
video/x-ivf, video/x-indeo
Developed by Intel Architecture Labs
Initial releaseNovember 1992;31 years ago (1992-11)
Latest release
5.11
Type of formatcompressed video
Contained by AVI
Extended from DVI

Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as "Indeo") is a family of audio and video formats and codecs first released in 1992, and designed for real-time video playback on desktop CPUs. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video stream format, a hardware-only codec for the compression of television-quality video onto compact discs, Indeo was distinguished by being one of the first codecs allowing full-speed video playback without using hardware acceleration. Also unlike Cinepak and TrueMotion S, the compression used the same Y'CbCr 4:2:0 colorspace as the ITU's H.261 and ISO's MPEG-1. Indeo use was free of charge [1] to allow for broadest usage.

Contents

History

During the development of what became the P5 Pentium microprocessor, the Intel Architecture Labs implemented one of the first, and at the time highest-quality, software-only video codecs, which was marketed as "Indeo Video". It has been developed since the 1980s based on the hardware-only Digital Video Interactive (DVI) which was previously developed by General Electric. [2] Indeo was first released in 1992 along with Microsoft's Video for Windows platform. [3] At its public introduction, it was the only video codec supported in both the Microsoft (Video for Windows) and Apple Computer's QuickTime software environments, as well as by IBM's software systems of the day. It was sold to Ligos Corporation in 2000.

Intel produced several different versions of the codec between 1993 and 2000, based on very different underlying mathematics and having different features.

Though Indeo saw significant usage in the mid-1990s, it remained proprietary. Intel slowed development and stopped active marketing, and it was quickly surpassed in popularity by the rise of MPEG codecs and others, as processors became more powerful and its optimization for Intel's chips less important. Indeo still saw some use in video game cutscene videos, such as in 1998's Police Quest: SWAT 2 .

Formats

The original format was designed for real-time playback on low-end Intel CPUs (i386 and i486), optionally supported by specialized decoder hardware (Intel i750). Decoding complexity was significantly lower than with contemporary MPEG codecs (H.261, MPEG-1 Part 2). [4]

The codec was highly asymmetrical, meaning that it took much more computation to encode a video stream than to decode it. Intel's ProShare video conferencing system took advantage of this, using hardware acceleration to encode the stream (and thus requiring an add-in card), but allowing the stream to be displayed on any personal computer.

Indeo 2

Indeo 2, previously known as Real-Time Video 2, works by delta coding pixels line by line, either against the temporally or spatially directly preceding line, coupled with static Huffman coding. [5]

Indeo Video 3

Indeo Video 3 is a traditional DCT-based transform coding format designed for video playback from CD-ROM that is very similar to the competing Cinepak. It uses chroma subsampling, delta encoding, vector quantization, run-length encoding and motion compensation (inter-frame coding) with a recommended key-frame interval of 4 and has distinctly asymmetric runtime characteristics. [6] [3]

Indeo Video Interactive

Indeo Video Interactive had greater computational complexity and was aimed at video game developers. [7] It was based on wavelet transforms [8] and included novel features such as chroma-keyed transparency and hot spot support. Initially, there was no support for Apple systems. [9] Two variants of this technology were produced: Indeo Video 4 and 5. The format was never officially documented but later reverse engineered to allow for third-party decoders. [10]

Indeo Audio Coder

Indeo Audio Coder is a transform coding format based on the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT). [11]

Indeo Version 5

Proprietary bitstream encoding for video, originally developed by Intel. The technology was sold in 2000 to Ligos Corporation. John McGowan states that Indeo 5 employs a wavelet algorithm and other encoding features; its predecessor Indeo 4 employs a presumably similar "hybrid wavelet algorithm." [12] Windows implementations of Indeo have been distributed by Ligos. Apple distributed Mac versions for "classic" operating systems through OS 9, but there is no MacOS support for Mac OS X.

Implementations

Official Indeo 5 decoders exist for Microsoft Windows, the classic Mac OS, BeOS R5 and the XAnim player on Unix. Reverse engineered decoders for versions 2, 3, 4 and 5 were introduced in FFmpeg between 2003 and 2011. [13] Indeo version 3 (IV31 and IV32), 4 (IV41) and 5 (IV50) are supported by MPlayer [14] and XAnim. Version 5.11 is freeware [15] and may be used on all 32-bit versions of Windows prior to Vista. Version 5.2 has been created for XP and is available for purchase from the official website [16] for use only with Windows 95, 98, ME, NT, 2000 and XP. This includes support for Indeo Video 4.5 and Indeo Audio 2.5 codecs but the version 3.2 video codec has been removed since the original release of Indeo XP for Windows. Although Indeo video is not officially supported by Windows Vista and Windows 7, simply entering the following into the command prompt might enable the playback of Indeo encoded video: regsvr32 ir50_32.dll [17]

Security advisory

The Microsoft Windows implementation of the Indeo codec contains several security vulnerabilities and one should not play Indeo videos from untrusted sources. Microsoft tried to remove them in XP SP1 but had to release a hotfix to add it back. [18] The codec was originally licensed from Intel and Microsoft likely do not have the source code that would be required to fix the vulnerabilities. On fully patched systems and all Windows Vista and later systems, the Indeo codec is partially disabled in most circumstances. [19]

Related Research Articles

QuickTime is a discontinued extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term QuickTime also refers to the QuickTime Player front-end media player application, which is built-into macOS, and was formerly available for Windows.

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The original WMA codec, known simply as WMA, was conceived as a competitor to the popular MP3 and RealAudio codecs. WMA Pro, a newer and more advanced codec, supports multichannel and high resolution audio. A lossless codec, WMA Lossless, compresses audio data without loss of audio fidelity. WMA Voice, targeted at voice content, applies compression using a range of low bit rates. Microsoft has also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store audio encoded by WMA.

Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology known as WMV, was originally designed for Internet streaming applications, as a competitor to RealVideo. The other compression technologies, WMV Screen and WMV Image, cater for specialized content. After standardization by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), WMV version 9 was adapted for physical-delivery formats such as HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc and became known as VC-1. Microsoft also developed a digital container format called Advanced Systems Format to store video encoded by Windows Media Video.

Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows. The original MPC, along with the MPC-HC fork, mimic the simplistic look and feel of Windows Media Player 6.4, but provide most options and features available in modern media players. Variations of the original MPC and its forks are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack and the Combined Community Codec Pack.

Cinepak is a lossy video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. One of the first video compression tools to achieve full motion video on CD-ROM, it was designed to encode 320×240 resolution video at 1× CD-ROM transfer rates. The original name of this codec was Compact Video, which is why its FourCC identifier is CVID. The codec was ported to Microsoft Windows in 1993. It was also used on fourth- and fifth-generation game consoles, such as the Atari Jaguar CD, Sega CD, Sega Saturn, and 3DO. libavcodec includes a Cinepak decoder and an encoder, both licensed under the terms of the LGPL.

SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, it was officially approved as a SMPTE standard on April 3, 2006. It was primarily marketed as a lower-complexity competitor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard. After its development, several companies other than Microsoft asserted that they held patents that applied to the technology, including Panasonic, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding</span> Audio codec

High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) is an audio coding format for lossy data compression of digital audio defined as an MPEG-4 Audio profile in ISO/IEC 14496–3. It is an extension of Low Complexity AAC (AAC-LC) optimized for low-bitrate applications such as streaming audio. The usage profile HE-AAC v1 uses spectral band replication (SBR) to enhance the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) compression efficiency in the frequency domain. The usage profile HE-AAC v2 couples SBR with Parametric Stereo (PS) to further enhance the compression efficiency of stereo signals.

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.

libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data.

Α video codec is software or a device that provides encoding and decoding for digital video, and which may or may not include the use of video compression and/or decompression. Most codecs are typically implementations of video coding formats.

This article describes audio APIs and components in Microsoft Windows which are now obsolete or deprecated.

Media Foundation (MF) is a COM-based multimedia framework pipeline and infrastructure platform for digital media in Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10, and Windows 11. It is the intended replacement for Microsoft DirectShow, Windows Media SDK, DirectX Media Objects (DMOs) and all other so-called "legacy" multimedia APIs such as Audio Compression Manager (ACM) and Video for Windows (VfW). The existing DirectShow technology is intended to be replaced by Media Foundation step-by-step, starting with a few features. For some time there will be a co-existence of Media Foundation and DirectShow. Media Foundation will not be available for previous Windows versions, including Windows XP.

The following is a list of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC products and implementations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP8</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2010

VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008.

Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP9</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2013

VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.

High Efficiency Video Coding implementations and products covers the implementations and products of High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC).

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. In 2018, Facebook conducted testing that approximated real-world conditions, and the AV1 reference encoder achieved 34%, 46.2%, and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.

References

  1. ↑ "Indeo® Video 5 Technical Overview(Archived)". Archived from the original on 2014-05-30.
  2. ↑ Boudier, Thomas; Shotton, David M. (1999-04-01). "Video on the Internet: An Introduction to the Digital Encoding, Compression, and Transmission of Moving Image Data". Journal of Structural Biology. 125 (2–3): 133–155. doi:10.1006/jsbi.1999.4097. ISSN   1047-8477. PMID   10222270.
  3. 1 2 "Codec Central – Indeo Codec". siggraph.org. 1998. Archived from the original on 2019-04-03. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
  4. ↑ "Indeo Video Codec, Version 3". www.loc.gov. 2011-12-05. Retrieved 2022-02-10.
  5. ↑ "Indeo 2". MultimediaWiki. 2018-01-24. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
  6. ↑ "Indeo 3". MultimediaWiki. 2018-01-24. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
  7. ↑ Mustafa, Suleiman; Xiao, Hannan (December 2015). "Comparison of Cinepak, Intel, Microsoft video and indeo codec for video compression". International Journal of Multimedia & Its Applications. 7 (6): 01–12. arXiv: 1601.01408 . doi:10.5121/ijma.2015.7601. S2CID   11570304.
  8. ↑ "Indeo Video Interactive". Archived from the original on 2006-05-07. Retrieved 2006-03-24.
  9. ↑ "Codec Central – Indeo Codec". siggraph.org. 1998. Archived from the original on 2019-04-03. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
  10. ↑ "Indeo 4". MultimediaWiki. 2018-01-24. Retrieved 2019-04-03.
  11. ↑ "Imc: Make IMDCT support stereo output (34271cab) · Commits · libav / Libav". 2 June 2012.
  12. ↑ "Indeo Video Codec, Version 5". www.loc.gov. 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2022-02-10.
  13. ↑ "git.videolan.org Git - ffmpeg.git/blob - Changelog". git.videolan.org.
  14. ↑ "Codec Status Table - MPlayer - the Movie Player".
  15. ↑ "Free Download Ligos Indeo Codec 5.11".
  16. ↑ "Ligos Corporation » Indeo". Archived from the original on 2006-09-03. Retrieved 2006-03-23.
  17. ↑ "Indeo 5.x problem with Vista".
  18. ↑ "Game stops responding (hangs) or quits unexpectedly when introductory video clip is played".
  19. ↑ "Microsoft Security Advisory 954157 - Security Enhancements for the Indeo Codec". Microsoft . 14 October 2022.

Literature

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.