The Opus format thread

[Brutish Sailor]

OK, so I started a new thread on the OPUS codec, which everything says it will outdue AAC+ as the wave of the future in the streaming industry.

 

http://www.opus-codec.org

 

I don't want to take credit for calling it the future, so to be fair, I got the idea and possibility in my mind from a post of Dave St. John at Casterclub.

 

http://www.facebook.com/casterhub (please subscribe)

 

What Im doing to support its development:

 

I shot an Email today to Karl Heyes of Xiph to ask him about his recommendations for optimum streaming. He's part of the Xiph project, and probably knows the inside. From the developers page, Im going to guess somewhere in the 72 khz-84 kbps range. max out the khz.

 

http://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/

 

This convo might lead into the possibility of support through IC2

 

I am still curious about the ideal raw encoded recording the files should be for streaming digital from source.

 

 

As far as listening devices: FOOBAR. FooBAR has a plugin to support the audio for it.

 

 

Which just leaves the encoder.

 

Thats all the updates for today.

[Brutish Sailor]

Another thing to take note of here:

 

 

• [h=3]WebRTC Adopts Opus as MTI Codec[/h] 27 July, 2012
   
  Participants to the IETF rtcweb working group have accepted (through typical IETF strong consensus) a proposal to select both Opus and G.711 as mandatory-to-implement (MTI) audio codecs. This means that all browsers that implement that standard will have to ship Opus support.
   
   
  

[Brutish Sailor]

Tonight Im prepping for the "Opus streaming test"

 

The File I encoded? I picked an artist that deserved some airplay, Timmy Beats.

 

 

NOW! Go get Foobar2000 (you want the foobar2000 v1.1.14 beta 2 to decode opus)

 

 

Here is the original file (WARNING, EXPLICIT LYRICS):

http://thebeattransit.com/Don't Insult Me - Timmy Beatz(Beat Transit).mp3

 

9.65 MB

 

Heres the Encoded file into Opus 64 kbps FROM that lossy 320MP3:

 

Insult Me.opus

 

1.96 MB

 

The reason I chose this lossy source file? I want you to be able to hear the difference in the encoding, to simulate the live encoding of your regular files as is.

 

Every test I ran on spectrum, EVERYTHING said better. If Im not going to make you a believer. I hope your waking up and smelling the AAC replacement.

 

This is the codec of the future. I hope your ready.

[Brutish Sailor]

The next step.... Start pounding on Adobe's door. Start shooting E-mails for Opus support in the next release.

 

 

Update:

 

DONE.

http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1047379

Request away.

[Brutish Sailor]

Still havent heard anything from Adobe. SO.. Im jumping to the next step. See if Karl can include an arguement to call to Opus in the same mannor as he did with AAC+v2. So basiclly OPUS playback through .flv container to flash. It makes sense when I say it out loud, but it actually working is another story.

 

NIOTE: That Opus file, I forgot to mention, it was transcoded from 320kbps MP3 to 64bit OPUS with only a 16bit float. So the lows are VERY dirty on the file transfer. Im going to get a cleaner cut from the MP3 to give you an idea of the full potential, and Im going to do it in 24kbps OPUS (thats right, 24 kbps OPUS) After listening to it at lower bitrates, its my personal opinion that the chart is wrong, and OPUS KILLED the AAC+ game at lower kbps. Im guessing its due to the fle transcoded with a 32bit float.

 

Way of the future. Im calling it now.

[saint]

Is Opus open source and who developed it ?

[jessewillem]

Is Opus open source and who developed it ?

Opus is developed by the Xiph.org foundation, so it's open source ;-)

 

I'm using it for some streaming stuff in my software, and it sounds great on low bitrates.

[Brutish Sailor]

Ok, the newest release of Icecast supports OPUS. Thats part 2 to make this equation go.

[Urban Hitz Radio]

I listened to the file and yes the sound is much clearer. Have you contacted all of the Radio Automation program companies. Those that are on the front line and those looking to breakout? Maybe if they implement this technology in their software, they may have way to enter the market and use a technology that the others simply will ignore.

Have you contacted Shoutcast?

 

If you are going on a grass roots campaign for Opus, good luck and wish you much success in getting it implemented in many programs and applications out there. It does sound good though.

[PapaBearPW]

Well, he contacted me.

 

All future releases of LunarCaster DJ will have full OPUS support.

 

Decoding (Playback) seems to be working fine. I am still working out Tag editing but that shouldn't take much longer since I believe it uses the same structure as ogg.

 

Encoder support is also nearing completion. I have only run into one problem with that so far...I have been having trouble installing Icecast 2.4 (which is supposed to have OPUS support) for testing the encoder. So that may take a little while to work out.

 

Paul

[jessewillem]

Going to implement Opus too in my radio automation system for playback (not that it's going to be heavily used here, because of FLAC) and for streaming to Icecast. It's already supported in the inbuild server, so porting it over for Icecast shouldn't take long :-D

 

@PapaBearPW: It's just like Vorbis and FLAC, they're wrapped in a Ogg container with Ogg Comments in it.

 

@Urban Hitz Radio

Making it popular as audio format for files is going to be really hard I think, just because most people don't even know what MP3 really is and what it really does to their music, it's just stands for music for them. Let alone that they've heard of other codecs and formats for audio, like Vorbis, AAC, Musepack etc.

 

But I hope it's going to be popular for streaming audio, because Opus gives a better quality at lower bitrate's than MP3 or (HE)-AAC. Also that it's open source and free to use are 2 really big pro's for Opus. The only thing at the moment is support by program's like media players, browsers etc.

[Vanlen]

Opus sounds very interesting. Looks like we need to shout it out to all the folks we know. Quality at low bit rates...Very impressive.

[PapaBearPW]

jessewillem - Thanks. Yes, I had seen that. The problem at the moment is that I am using the TagLib# library and still trying to find out how to add the opus extension to have it recognize opus files as ogg for tag purposes. I have an idea of how to do it right now, but need to wait until I get home to try it out.

[Arkadas]

We need to get a source client for icecast to support opus!!!

 

We need to hammer Edcast reborn http://code.google.com/p/edcast-reborn/

 

Altacast http://www.radiodj.ro/community/index.php?topic=2554.0

 

Butt http://sourceforge.net/projects/butt/

 

and for for STL http://www.fideliphone.com/

 

Regards,

 

Arkadas

[saint]

A little donation towards open source projects lets people know their work is appreciated and provides an incentive for continued developement ;)

[djgary72]

Just seen on twitter that Skype are to start using the Opus Codec.

 

http://t.co/Q7ANbquE Link to endgadget who broke the story on twitter.

 

If skype are to start using it hopefully it will start getting used more by other big developers.

[PapaBearPW]

We need to get a source client for icecast to support opus!!!

 

The current Alpha version of LunarCaster DJ has an experimental (untested) OPUS encoder option. If you (or anyone else) would like to try it out.

[cr08]

The only thing that bugs me so far in playing around with it is, in comparison to HE-AAC, once you go below 48kbps and start working with 32 and 24, the lack of SBR/PS drops it below HE-AAC's quality threshold IMHO. Not that I am complaining too loudly and I am pretty sure the developers were looking real hard at adding the technology but due to the proprietary nature and likely patents out the wazoo, made it hard to do. And the artifacting seems a little more harsh sounding than HE-AAC's. Though so far my test material has been some pretty harsh content codec-wise, I'll have to try other material and see how it fares.

 

FYI: I am all for an open source standard in this field. HE-AAC is really amazing but given its proprietary nature it made a nice minefield of things when it first came out. I remember initially the only encoder available was a proprietary/pay copy from Orban or a hardware encoder from them and then if you wanted to decode in full fidelity about the only option was a separate plugin for winamp. So I am rooting for everyone behind Opus to improve and push it into more devices and applications.

[PapaBearPW]

 

[PapaBearPW]

So, I let that setup run for about 12 hours and everything ran clean.

 

That's using the Icecast 2.4 beta3 release and sourcing it with an opus stream from LunarCaster DJ. Playback was with VLC. Just one little problem I noticed is that the title updates to the server don't seem to be working. I'll have to work on that a bit to see if I can find the problem.