[Helix] Community Updates #5
Rob Lanphier robla at real.comHi everyone, It's been a long time since the last update, but plenty has been going on. * Helix Community Grant Program: Deadline Oct. 3 * Helix Player * Helix DNA Client * Helix DNA Producer * Helix DNA Server * New Fixed-point MP3 Decoder * Community Contributions * Free Hardware for porting to the AMD 64 * SMIL 2.0 now open source * Helix in the Wireless industry: Vodafone, Nokia * Site news: wideopen project, Chinese-language mailing list Rather than send a lot of emails to this list, you'll find that we've been adding many news items to the Helix Community homepage. Be sure to always check back on that page for the latest updates. ======================================================================== Helix Community Grant Program: Deadline Oct. 3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ RealNetworks is pleased to announce the Helix Community Grant Program for open source digital media projects. We think this is a great opportunity for industry researchers, faculty and students who are seeking research topics as well as funding. We'll be awarding $75,000 by year's end to proposals, and we have a particular interest in advanced research related to streaming media performance over networks. The deadline for applications for our first round of funding will be midnight PST on Friday, Oct. 3. We encourage you to share this grant information with interested colleagues. You can find more details on what we're looking for in research proposals at the following address: https://www.helixcommunity.org/2003/grants/ Please join our mailing list at grants at open.helixcommunity.org to keep informed about grant program developments and to get answers to your program or technical questions. ======================================================================== Helix Player ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Last week at LinuxWorld, we formally announced the Helix Player project. Our mission is to develop the next stage in evolution of media players for Linux, Solaris and Unix. Right now we are in the planning stages and have some rough specs and milestones for the product features. We are seeking committed active participants for development and QA. We are also open to constructive feature suggestions, so if you'd like to have your say (and help out) join our team! Current team members: * Nicholas Hart - Development Lead * Ryan Gammon - Developer * Vikram Dendi - Program Manager * Michael Maloney - QA Coordinator If you attended last month's O'Reilly Open Source Conference (OSCON 2003), you might have heard early details about the project. We posted some initial design documents and started the discussion at that time. For our formal launch at LinuxWorld, we expanded upon the material there, and received a lot of great feedback, and started working with our industry partners to really accellerate this development. For more information, please see the player press release, available here: http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases/2003/helixplayer.html Those of you who saw us at LinuxWorld got the latest information on the project, and hopefully got a chance to meet Nicholas and Vikram. We're excited to be working with the community on this project. More information about the project can be found here: https://player.helixcommunity.org/ ======================================================================== Helix DNA Client ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Helix DNA Client team has been primarily focused on size reductions in the system, to make the client better suited to constrained devices such as handsets and consumer electronics equipment. The memory reduction work has been primarily focused on our Symbian platform implementation, but the effort will benefit users on all platforms. For more information, see the Symbian project page: https://symbian.helixcommunity.org/ In an effort to make the Helix DNA Client easier to build, and to give developers a stable release to work from, the team has created the KittyHawk branch of the player. That work is done; all new development will be going on in the HEAD, with only occasional bugfixes occurring on the KittyHawk branch. Details about this release can be found here: https://helix-client.helixcommunity.org/servlets/NewsItemView?newsItemID=160 More information about the Helix DNA Client can be found on the homepage for the project: https://helix-client.helixcommunity.org/ ======================================================================== Helix DNA Producer: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Helix DNA Producer team has been very busy, and is fast approaching the 9.2 release, and have released the first beta. Among the features already completed for this release are: * ActiveX Control * Multiple Outputs * Multi-channel Audio Codec * RealAudio Lossless codec support * Destination output file rolling in job file * Input/Output file reader/writer plug-in selection based on priority and type * More extensible job file format * Lower latency support for audio/video (via configurable audio interleaver) * Parallel input structure in job file (support in SDK in later release) * Improvements to A/V Preview support in SDK (users of previous SDK versions have to do their own color conversion/resampling etc.) * CPU Scalability improvements * Video Resize Pre-filter * Destination output rolling in command line * Audio Delay Compensation Pre-filter For more information, see the Helix Producer project home page: https://helix-producer.helixcommunity.org/ For recent Producer-related announcements, see the news headline page: https://helix-producer.helixcommunity.org/servlets/ProjectNewsList ======================================================================== Helix DNA Server ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Helix DNA Server team is working on improvements to wireless handset support, quality-of-service, standards-compliance, stability, and performance. Since the last newsletter, they created a new stable branch of the server (SERVER_9_1_STABLE) and have been working on the next version of the server (labled "10.0". For more details, see the mail from Dean Collins describing the branch: Server Branch Creation Announcement: SERVER_9_1_STABLE: https://helix-server.helixcommunity.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=262&from=nl6 The server turns "10.0": https://helix-server.helixcommunity.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=dev&msgNo=263&from=nl6 Additionally, support for OpenBSD and NetBSD has been added on the 10.0 ("HEAD") branch. More information about the Helix DNA Server project can be found on their homepage: https://helix-server.helixcommunity.org/ ======================================================================== New Fixed-point MP3 Decoder ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Helix MP3 Decoder is a cleanly implemented, portable and fast decoder for embedded devices. It is optimized specifically for ARM processors, but includes high quality reference C-code reference that is an excellent starting point for other platform specific implementations. For more information, visit the following page: https://datatype.helixcommunity.org/mp3dec ======================================================================== Community Contributions ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Here's some of the contributions from the community so far * Ryan Gammon - Ryan contributed a GTK+-based version of our guiplayer application. We liked his work so much, we hired him! He's now part of the aforementioned Helix Player project. * Jack Moffitt and Ryan Gordon - Jack and Ryan (Gordon, not to be confused with Ryan Gammon) did some great work on the Ogg Vorbis plugin for the player. Jack continues work on this, and it's nearing completion. For more information, see the Xiph project: https://xiph.helixcommunity.org For a complete list of contributors, see the contributors page: https://www.helixcommunity.org/2002/intro/contributors If you contributed, and you didn't see your name here or on our contributions page, please let us know. Send mail to feedback at helixcommunity.org ======================================================================== Free Hardware for porting to the AMD 64 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ AMD is looking for developers interested in porting the Helix DNA to AMD's recently launched 64-bit Opteron CPU. AMD has development hardware available for those that are willing to contribute their work. If someone can nail this, they are welcome to keep the loaner system. Please contact Conor Malone (conor.malone at amd.com) for details on this offer. ======================================================================== SMIL 2.0 now open source ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Earlier this summer, we released the source code for our implementation of SMIL 2.0 to Helix community. SMIL stands for "Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language", and is a W3C specification for coordinating the playback of multiple audio clips, video clips, images, or other datatypes. The Helix implementation of SMIL offers really powerful features. Examples of applications of this technology: * JPEG/GIF/PNG Slideshows, with visually appealing transitions synchronized with audio and video * Superimpose translucent logos on top of videos * Animate still images, zooming and panning around the image, creating video-like presentations using only low-bitrate stills. For more information about authoring SMIL content, visit the following page: https://datatype.helixcommunity.org/2003/smilauth/ ======================================================================== Helix in the Wireless industry: Vodafone, Nokia ------------------------------------------------------------------------ We've made a number of announcements in the area of wireless multimedia. Earlier this summer, Vodafone Group announced their choice of RealNetworks' Helix technology as global platform for mobile media. RealNetworks and Nokia also announced expanded support for Series 60 and Symbian-based mobile phones. We're porting the next generation Helix DNA Client to Symbian OS and encourage you to join the project. This is great news for the Helix DNA platform. You'll continue to see expanded support in the platform for 3GPP-related technologies, as we work with our partners to provide a world class platform for mobile media delivery. ======================================================================== Site news: wideopen project, Chinese-language mailing list ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Check out the new wideopen project, an open CVS repository where you, now have access to edit the Helix community website and collaborate on documentation. Bookmark wideopen.helixcommunity.org and check back frequently. Also, a Chinese-language discussion list has been created. For more information, subscribe to the "discuss-zh" mailing list, found on the "open" project mailing list page: https://open.helixcommunity.org/servlets/ProjectMailingListList If you are more comfortable asking questions or discussing issues in Chinese, this list is for you. -- Rob Lanphier, Helix Community Coordinator - RealNetworks http://helixcommunity.org http://rtsp.org http://realnetworks.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: announce-unsubscribe at open.helixcommunity.org For additional commands, e-mail: announce-help at open.helixcommunity.org