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Euclid Discoveries Compression Rates 460% better than MPEG-4

eucliddiscoveries.com — Euclid Discoveries has announced they have the technology to reach video compression rates at 460% over MPEG-4, with the hardware & software available now. With this they can reduce a 23mb 30fps video down to 1519bytes. Awesome!

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  • D4RKfantasy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+33Ugh, I smell another KGB and Fractal Compressor in this one.
    • pipdipchip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2April Fools ?
    • IcedZ, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yeah.. I smell KGB again.. though this looks a LITTLE more convincing.. still not likely =
    • mrops, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Actually I let KGB run for 24 hrs since the story was posted yesterday. I didn't get those dramatic results of 460MB to 1.4MB, but I did compress about 50MB file to about 10MB in 24 hours. Best WinZip and WinRar did was 26 and 27 MB respectively. Though both rar and zip saved me 24 hrs, give or take a few minutes, compared to say KGB.
    • JQP123, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Pewww, something about this stinks.
    • dclowd9901, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4What stinks is the vid quality. The picture in the release is for a cell phone. You can compress anything down to kilobytes, as long as you're willing to lose that quality.

      I don't care what it says about no loss to vid quality. We're talking about compression here. Something has GOT to be lost in the encoding.
    • liava, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Um, no. Compression does not guarantee lossiness. Fixed-rate compression does, but variable-rate compression can be lossless.
  • szelij, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Hmm not enough information in the press release. How fast is the decompression rate? If it can be played on hand-held things i would think it's pretty fast. If so, watch out for an open source version of this technology...
  • dragoth, on 10/12/2007, -1/+11From the article:

    "There is no company that is solely dedicated to making such effective use of this methodology besides Euclid Discoveries, and the company has effectively shut the door on future competitors because of its diligent patent filings covering key aspects of this underlying technology."

    Bah! Humbug. Anyone remember the old video-over-modems hoax that sprang up a few years ago?
  • dtfinch, on 10/12/2007, -3/+61I bet the 23mb video is a raw, uncompressed video of total silence and blackness.
    • Olle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Seriously, it must be.

      They say "EuclidVision compressed a 23mb 30fps reference video down to 1,519 bytes (15,168:1 compression ratio, 3.56 Kbps bandwidth). MPEG-4 H.264 compressed the same video at similar quality to 8,518 bytes"

      They claim the test file is 23mb and mb really means mega _bit_ afaik, but MB, for mega byte, is the normal size measure so who knows that they mean with that measure.

      Anyway, wether they mean 23 megabit or 23 megabyte, if Mpeg 4 can get it down to 8,518 bytes then it must be silence and darkness. Or a small single picture that doesn't change.
    • ThatsUnpossible, on 10/12/2007, -0/+28No, no, no.

      However, the resulting euclid video file is only at a resolution of 2x2 pixels.
    • JohntB, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9millibits? That explains how the resulting file was so small.
    • jeznav, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5(I'm posting my comment here to save you all that reading down below)

      Seriously, people who read only the suface of the article shows that they don't know much...
      For some people who cannot take drastic statistical numbers will absolutely not believe it until there is proof of this plausible information.

      "23mb 30fps video down to 1519bytes".... Yes the article said it in bytes
      "Well how in the world can that be? There's no way you can compress 23mb to 1519 bytes"
      "Unless its a blank video"
      "Ill just flag this article as inaccurate.." etc, etc.

      Well, how many compression algorithims do you know? Run Length Encoding, Dictionary based, Huffman? Obviously this video codec is not using those compression techniques but as stated, Discrete Cosine Transformation and Object Based Compression.

      For starters, for example MPEG-4 compression based on, keyframe which the codec interpolates(predict) the next frame based on keyframes. Less frames = smaller size , more keyframes better quality. (I'm not going to talk about data rates.)

      Ok as for EuclidVision, their method is based on moving objects, so you only need to capture non-moving object once (such as the background). The problem is how many times are you going to capture the moving object? This is using 2d/3d mesh overlay as it analyze moving points.It then uses another overlay mask which the object get affected by the mesh.....Therefore it does not need to record change in pixels but the mesh in which the pixels will get affected.

      So it might turn out to be like this:
      based on 160x160
      Static pixels (non moving objects) with image compression : around 700 bytes
      Moving entity objects with image compression : 500 bytes
      Mesh points (say aroud 100 points) : 100 bytes
      Tweened motion points data (xy vector xy vector final * 100points) with compression : around 3000 bytes
      Total size: 4.3 kb
      ^ This is an example of how it works so don't take it for accuracy.

      Basically, the point is it is not impossible for this video codec to compress a 23mb video to 1513 bytes.

      And go read this research paper http://www.ece.gatech.edu/research/labs/MCCL/pubs/dwnlds/Yucel_CSVT97.pdf

      P.S. Does anyone remember those 64k demos or that 92kb game that we all thought it was impossible? Just let your minds be curious.

    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2The problem isn't the fact that a compressor theoretically could reduce the right video by that much, the problem is that they don't tell us anything about the video that they compressed, show a demo of the compressed video, show an image taken from the compressed/uncompressed video, or do anything to prove that their algorithm has any kind of validity.

      I can RLE a video clip of all black pixels that's 1024x1024 and have it come out to being just bits in size (the RLE table will look like one black pixel and 1,048,576 as the repetition number, what's that come down to.. one 32-bit integer for the repetition operator and depending on how the pixels are packed, either another 32-bit integer (8-bit color, RGB+A) or a 24 bit integer (8-bit, RGB) [more if we're talking 16/24-bit colors, though they're not common in video processing due to the insane amount of bandwidth required to process them, also could be inflated by using a different colorspace or colormodel, like YUV], and one byte to mark the difference between the data.. total ~72 bits/9 bytes for the pixel data, plus however much was used in the full frames video to mark the frames (which would also be a consideration in the RLE).

      Quite simply, no matter what they profess, it's unlikely these kind of results are repeatable for any reasonable video test suite (and I should know, I helped develop two of them in my 11 years experience in DSP). It's quite easy to develop algorithms that work for specific videos. It's even been suggested in my company's RnD department to do something called "retrograde compressor development", where a computer during encoding of video will take a look at the entire video, break it into portions, examine each portion individually, special tailor an algorithm that works best to compress the scene, then pack the appropriate algorithms into the compressed file's header (along with any description to build uncommon filters), then compress each individual scene with those compressors and store the data. This would mean each individual video would be highly compressed and would have a compressor specially built for it that would work no matter what, but it's been proven time and again that the processor power simply isn't available (and likely won't be in my lifetime) to even consider this kind of compression, even with newer processor designs (like the 92-core external FPU chip, or any of the MIMD chips that I have stacks of information on my desk about; I've entertained that the idea could be done on an extremely limited basis, such as introducing multiple versions of MPEG compressors into one compression system, but it's likely this will only be possible with MIMD computers and not SIMD computers, as resetting the registers and Instruction caches will likely take too long for the latter).

      Video is extremely complex information. Innovations on how to look at that data simply do not happen overnight; compression specialists have been looking at this kind of data all of their lives and rarely does anyone come up with a truly innovative way to compress it. Most of the advances that will ever be made in compression were done 50 years ago by mathematicians working at places like Bell Labs and Texas Instruments. Hell, most MPEG standards aren't anything that's new to us, just the ways to apply the techniques we know become more available as processors become more and more powerful. Ten years ago, MPEG-4 would have been nonsense. No home computer could ever decode the frames fast enough to play anything back. Not even 15 years ago, the researchers at Fraunhofer tabled their idea for MP3 because computers at the time were nowhere near fast enough to look at that kind of data, and the institute said it was unlikely home computers would ever have that amount of power. Now we're looking at decoding multiple MPEG-4 streams simultianiously with the CELL processor.

      Bottom line: vaporware. Lacks evidence, lacks proof.
  • DevilsRejection, on 10/12/2007, -4/+32get this technology into the hands of independent press agents or known reliable sources and let's get an opinion.

    i wouldn't clean my ass with a print out of a press release from anyone.
    • threepio, on 10/12/2007, -3/+15You owe me a new keyboard. And a new carton of milk.

      And possibly some Kleenex and a clean shirt.
    • harrisbradley, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6again, another nominee for best comment of the year
    • bradmoreland, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"i wouldn't clean my ass with a print out of a press release from anyone."

      I would if the press release was on nice, soft, thick, absorbent paper.
  • tazamore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Seems a legit company with a downloadable demo:
    http://www.eucliddiscoveries.com/information.php

    Seems their compression is optimized for talking heads, like video conferencing, where only some of the image changes from frame to frame. But I'd bet it has nasty artifacts for other kinds of video.

    They are proud of their 15 patents. They will most likely try to license this to video conferencing suppliers. I doubt they will release a freeware version and if they did MPAA would probably try to sue them for further enabling piracy.
    • bart9h, on 10/12/2007, -19/+2Duplicate Registration Found

      A duplicate registration for e-mail address 'a@b.com' has been found in our database.
    • shillbert, on 10/12/2007, -1/+19Talking Heads would be an awesome name for a rock band.

      Oh, wait...
    • richardiscool, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I had to read that twice before I realised you weren't talking about the band.
    • strangeman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Whatever. The thing is: If the HAVE an algorithm to do this object-based compression it won't have fallen out of the sky. The WILL be research papers on it since their employees most probably have a universitary background. This will make the algorithms reproducible. And to hell with their patents. You can't file any patents on software of algorithms in Europe. So you can just supply that free version of the algo from Europe.
  • en3r0, on 10/12/2007, -23/+2I just want to know, how?
    ___________
    -en3r0
    http://virtenu.com
  • tokachu, on 10/12/2007, -9/+15Read this very carefully:
    "With this they can reduce a 23mb 30fps video down to 1519bytes." (Note the "1519 BYTES")

    Flag as inaccurate, please. Mathematical errors and typographical mistakes are offenses that cannot be forgiven, and should be considered for the death penalty.
    • florin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It's definitely either a typo, or a brain fart by the tech writer, or even something worse such as intentional misleading. Hard to tell at this point.
    • FlyingAvatar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Amusingly, that's actually what it says in the article.
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+61519 bytes is about 1.48KB (about the size of the tiny avatar to the left of my name.)
    • Knoton, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Actually that avatar is just under half that at approximately 661 bytes

      /nitpicking
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9ok fine, i lied. the movie is twice as large as my 16x16 avatar.
    • craigwblake, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13It's not a typo, ~1500 bytes is what you get applying their advertised compression ratio of 15,168:1 - 24,117,248 / 15,168 = 1,590.0084. Similarly, the MPEG4 compression ratio they stated as 2,705:1 applied to the same initial file size results in the MPEG4 file size they also claimed - 24,117,248 / 2,705 = 8,915.8033. Clearly, they actually did mean to say "bytes" there.

      Now, whether or not that is realistic is another question altogether. The important thing to realize is that they explain that their compression ratio only provides an 5.6 times improvement over standard MPEG4 compression, which is not too unbelievable considering the particular subject matter, i.e. a still background with a face on it that really only has moving lips and blinking eyes most of the time.

      It is rather amusing that they are so proud of their patents, though.
    • iloveredcups, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11Death penalty? Ha! There is a typo in your comment. "Mathematical errors and typographical mistakes are offenses that cannot be forgiven (,) and should be considered for the death penalty."
      "Should be considered for the death penalty" is not an independent clause.
  • scaaven2, on 10/12/2007, -6/+6"With this they can reduce a 23mb 30fps video down to 1519bytes"

    Yeah, if the video is a BLACK SCREEN. Seriously, why do people think this ***** is innovative? Digg really exposes the naivity of the internet.
    • siekosunfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Before you show your own naivete, learn to do reserch:
      http://www.ece.gatech.edu/research/labs/MCCL/pubs/dwnlds/Yucel_CSVT97.pdf

      Yes you can compress a stream of video, without audio, that large down to a few scanty kilobytes using temporal-based object based compression - as this is one part of a research project I am doing. There are IEEE articles that are even more recent which provide far better results than that article, which is dated 1997.
    • Izzie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1or if the video is a scene with very changes over time, remember this is targerted at "talking heads" videos used in video conference. this is very specific use of a very specific kind of video.
      this is not a way to rip a DVD to a one and a half kilobytes file.
      you would be surprised to know what we are able to do with technology tricks nowadays.

      anyways this is a patented technology and so has no interest to my eyes and is doomed to disappear to oblivion. I despise companies who are patenting software and so support the idea that a software it patentable.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5"Yes you can compress a stream of video, without audio, that large down to a few scanty kilobytes using temporal-based object based compression - as this is one part of a research project I am doing. There are IEEE articles that are even more recent which provide far better results than that article, which is dated 1997."

      Sure you can. And the minute the person sneezes, your compression ratio goes to hell (along with a scene morph, or an object coming in or leaving a frame), and those very demos back in the late 90's exhibited this fatal weakness to the tee.

      Hell, MPEG is built around partial temporal object-based compression; all a "B-Frame" really consists of is the difference between the last I frame and the next I frame (though how this difference is generated, be it motion vectors or image data itself is up to the encoder). The more recently invented compressors (as I assume this one and the one you're working on in your research does) can look "outside of the box" in search of objects (e.g. using a wider macro-block for interframe data generation and/or using the more advanced arithmatic coding systems more recently invented, and thusly can more accurately generate P/B-frames without as many temporal glitches as are often seen in darkness and fades in MPEG-2/4 frames) and/or have highly variable size macro-blocks, along with highly advanced motion comp/prediction and way updated framing models to improve compression ratios without killing performance.

      We've got people in another department looking at more granular-type object-frame generation (as part of the standard that defines H.264 says that compressors can look around at up to 32-frames instead of the traditional two frames as allowed by MPEG-2/B-Frames; I highly recommend if you want to be on the most innovative front of video compression that you buy a reference copy of the H.264 standard and read it backwards, forwards, on the toilet and in the car. I've not even digested a third of it yet and some of the things H.264 allows in video compression are over my head and I've been in the field for ages).

      Sadly, I'm a bit out of touch with the research aspect of it anymore, as my job has me working more on tweaking the software and the actual computers running the encoding/decoding of the data, but I'd love to be back in school working on the new-age compression systems like this one. Sadly though, I doubt if the work that this company claims or the research you're doing now will prove reasonable, or will have complexity problems which will put them outside of the current realm of computing (as it seems all new compression systems do).
  • Monguisine, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm digging their prefab page template complete with cheesy stock photos
  • disrupter, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4"23mb 30fps video down to 1519bytes" sure rofl
  • Toallpointswest, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8I'll believe it when I see it.
  • bek99, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2"This technology, called EuclidVision ™, has achieved compression ratios of thousands to one, for MPEG-4 compatible video, with the ability to enhance the video's quality. Euclid is creating technology that will be able to shrink digital video without sacrificing visual quality, letting you use your PDA for high-definition video conferencing, or your iPod for storing hundreds of full-length, high-quality movies."

    • danpsmith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3A two hour movie is still going to occupy a certain amount for audio. If they invented a new audio codec that does the same ***** for audio, I think that would've been a big story when they invented that. So obviously they haven't, and this press release is probably in range of another fractal compressor.
  • FlyingAvatar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Hahahah, 1519 bytes? Riiight.

    And I just invented a new audio compression scheme that can further compress a 5mb mp3 to 516 bytes. With virtually no discernable difference in quality to dead people!
  • kankerfist, on 10/12/2007, -1/+31519 bytes? That can't be possible, maybe kilobytes?
  • coding, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8Yes, and using most compression software you can zip up files larger than 80 gigabytes down to 300 bytes if the file contains just the letter 'a'.
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6hmm, i need to spread the news.. maybe i'll submit your comment to digg!
    • sHARD>>, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2God damn, 300 bytes for such simple subject matter? Terrible! Let's write an open-source implementation and do it right!
    • sosuke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1do {
      echo 'a';
      $i ;
      }while($i < 85899345921);
    • sosuke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1sry i couldnt add my 's to my lil program, it was hard enough getting it past all the filters digg has lol
    • foolfromhell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1a
      that is 80 gigs???
  • sundancekid503, on 10/12/2007, -0/+323mb down to 1519 bytes??? I call bullshirt! I think maybe they meant kilobytes?

    Either way that would be nuts and I don't believe it.
  • sorti, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3What is it April 1st somewhere in the solar system now?
    • DrDabbles, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0We're the only planet with April 1st.

      I mean, technically other planets experience time during our April 1st. However, we're the only planet in position to experience what we call April 1.

      Physically speaking, no other planet can occupy the same spot in space as ours. At least, not without our demise first.
  • gmikej, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Even if that were in KB it still wouldn't be accurate. This was a waste of the last 2 minutes of my life.
  • pwncore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Are we talking about compression as in turning a video into an ugly mess of multi-colored artifacts or retaining what actually resembles human beings in this 1.5 kb video?
  • rolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If this technology works, which would be great, it sounds almost as if will force the computer to render scenes in a way like a 3d animation. I wonder if mobile phones, one of the markets they mentioned with video streaming, have the necessary processing power/memory for such a thing yet.

    Also, take the compression rations they mention with a grain of salt, the "sample" scenes may be heavily biased toward this technology, while other scenes won't give favorible results - think of BMPs of one color being great candidates for simple zip compression, but BMPs of photographics scenes resulting in zip files that are larger than the original.
  • fortytl, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0Compression Based April Fools Jokes = The Suck
  • rm999, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"EuclidVision’s technology is object-based. In simple terms, EuclidVision recognizes objects in the video, like a face, and applies new compression techniques to those objects differing from the background. Current video compression using Discrete Cosine Transform does not look at objects, it just applies a constant rate of compression to the entire frame or picture."

    Remember - every compression technique optimizes for something, and if that something is not present it will actually lead to a the same or a larger file size. In this case they are looking for objects (it seems) which could possibly work but may lead to higher compression/decompresion times.

    It is easy to get over-excited about new technologies. The true test is how it will work in a real-world setting - never trust the developers of a product on how good they will be. I find that most revolutionary compression techniques are not much better than existing ones - juts overexcited developers creating hype.
  • Minos, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1And it won't see the light of day unless they release it open-source.

    As a side note, I've seen these kinds of reports for a few years now, a bunch on slashdot and two on digg even. Oddly enough, my compression world hasn't changed in all this time.
  • ScottishCaptain, on 10/12/2007, -7/+4LAME.

    1519 Bytes = 1519 Characters of text, if you want to think of it that way. I've written articles bigger then that.

    It is impossible to compress 23MB, or 23552KB, or 24117248 bytes to 1519 bytes.

    Could someone please tell me where the other 24115729 bytes went? It is physically impossible, unless as above mentioned, its just a raw, uncompressed, 23mb file containing only black and NO audio. Hell, you could compress that to 1 byte (consisting of basically #000000 for black).

    There is simply no way you can compress data that much and expect to get the 24115729 other bytes back upon playback.

    They can take their patents and stick it. I'm perfectly happy compressing my 4.7GB DVD's down to 700mb for my iPod Video (60GB).

    PS: I don't know who would want to compress "Talking Heads" in the first place. Their music sucks, with the exception of Once in a Lifetime.
    • rolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think the author screwed up and meant 1.5MB, because it says %460 better than mpeg-4 compression and so it couldn't be smaller than that.
    • L0phtpDK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Actually, they are right:

      Their compressor, aka "Yadda-Yadda-Yadda" reads the objects on the screen and gives you the general idea, or as they call it, the 'Jist of it all'. So you gain the same amount of information, but in a ‘slightly’ compressed form.

      For example: Euclid Discoveries compressed a video comprised of a reenactment of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address (which would have been aired on TNT, because only them would do that kind of *****). Using their "Yadda-Yadda-Yadda" engine, they compressed the ENTIRE speech into this:

      "Some Joe with a beard and a hat saying something about being four scored... when some guys died... yadda-yadda-yadda... The Union is good."

      And there you go; a 15,168 to 1 compression of the Gettysburg Address via the patented "Yadda-Yadda-Yadda" engine.

      That should quiet all you naysayers.
    • L0phtpDK, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2And just to amend to my previous response....

      The original comment by ScottishCaptain and all three of these replies are actually bigger then the video that Euclid produced...

      Something to think about...

    • jaypee68, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You forgot Burnin Down the House.
    • Ebenonce, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1#000000 would be 7 Bytes, dammit.

      Thjis is all unrealistic, in theory with this type of compression could have the of your computer that does the for it.
    • cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0First, it is than, not then. Then applies to time or order. Than is a comparison.

      Second, Burning Down The House is a kick ass song.
    • EternalNY1, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Remember, all the random digits of pi can be represented by a short math formula. So it IS possible to remove that many bytes and "get them back" as needed. But from reading the article, this doesn't seem like their approach, and I am calling BS anyway.
  • ibart, on 10/12/2007, -2/+30I just wrote a new codec that will enable all 3 LOTR movies to be compressed into this:

    0110

    Feel free to download this HD version before digg gets shut down!
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12WOW! I decompressed your numbers into multiple Blu-Ray discs!

      Do you have some binary for the entire 24 season? (in HD please)
    • sundancekid503, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23I'm downloading the torrent of this right now... damn..... stuck at 80% waiting for the last 0
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16No need for a torrent, just type 0110 into Notepad, and change the file extension to .avi. The computer does the rest!
    • atdigg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+17Even better, I reduced all the Universe to 101010
    • ibart, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I can only encode seasons 1, 2 and 3 right now: (it works well in sets of 3)

      1101

    • shrewd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6"Even better, I reduced all the Universe to 101010"


      hmmm that's weird, when i compress life/universe/everything i get: 101111
    • CaughtThinking, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3bwahahaha. hilarious, i'm digging all you guys.
  • ahhell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I wonder if this will work with the Phantom? That would be sweet.
  • EdgarVerona, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I call *****. There is no way that a 23mb video with any realistic qualities inside of it could be described in just over 1500 bytes. No amount of compression coul possibly make the video compress that much and still contain *any* meaningful data.

    I mean, I could write a lossy compression algorithm right now that will compress it to 1 byte. That doesn't mean that the data would in any way resemble what it previously had.
    • Tochi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Past predictions made concerning new technology:

      "This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."Western Union internal memo, 1876.

      "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

      "640K ought to be enough for anybody."Bill Gates, 1981

      "Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

      "Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.


      In any case humanity has continually improved upon technology and the thought that this technology (albeit in it's infancy) could very well change the way video is compressed, is not such an impossible proposal.
  • wscott, on 10/12/2007, -2/+81519 bytes is out of context:
    EuclidVision compressed a 23mb 30fps reference video down to 1,519 bytes (15,168:1 compression ratio, 3.56 Kbps bandwidth). MPEG-4 H.264 compressed the same video at similar quality to 8,518 bytes (2,705:1 compression ratio, 19.96 Kbps). Given that MPEG-4 is 50% more efficient than MPEG-2, the 5.6 times improvement over MPEG-4 represents an implied 740% improvement over MPEG-2.

    Do the math, the video was only 0.4 seconds long. They also seem to be claiming the high gains are for videos with very little movement. ie.. talking heads
    • mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2..i never did read the article... maybe we should do that before making comments..
  • Otto, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12When they say 1519 bytes, it sounds like they mean it. Note that they say that H264 compressed the same video to 8,518 bytes.

    However, this is clever marketing speak.. The important bit here is the bitrate. Notice that they says the video was 23MB and 30fps, but they didn't give an actual bitrate or length or any other parameters to determine how many frames we're talking about here... However, they DID give a bitrate of the final videos!

    So...
    1519 bytes * 3.56 Kbps = 3.33347963 seconds
    8518 bytes / 19.96 Kbps = 3.33401177 seconds

    Which tells us that this 23MB video was, in fact, only about 3.33 seconds long. Which means that it was probably exactly 100 frames of video.

    Their compression seems a bit less impressive considered in that context, and you don't need to assume a black screen. It's just that there's not enough frames to perform a really good test of the ratio over time.
    • joebrodie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Here is the math for those not in the know:

      H.264 => 8518 bytes * 8 bits/byte = 68144 bits
      68144 * 1 Kb/1024 bits = 66.55 Kilobits (Kb)
      66.55 Kb/19.96 Kbps = 3.33 sec
    • cawpin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Thank you both for pointing that out to Mr. I-Am-Going-To-Talk-Out-My-Ass and say it is only .4 seconds. Do the math before trying to bash something.

      That said, I don't think this is going to do much for actual movies, as others have said. It looks to be concentrating on video calls.
  • krinn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Gee, great, another video format. As if Divx, Flash, RealVideo, Quicktime, Theora, Windows Media, H.264, etc weren't enough. If this tech isn't vastly better than anything else out there, I'm going to be mighty pissed if I have to install yet another media player or codec.
    • pwncore, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You forgot Dummy and Xvid.
    • danpsmith, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I agree, I'm about sick of more video formats that all look the same or worse. Given that xvid and divx did actually _do_ something for video encoding that was of value, but what have all these others really done besides have the same flaws and artifacts and a worse compression ratio.
  • skyshock21, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This has to be seen to be believed. No example video downloads???
  • plamoni, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Check it out... I can reduce more than 23MB of film down to even less:

    1 second of 30FPS video of a black screen sized 640x480 pixels at 24bits per pixel color.

    That video (uncompressed): 26.37MB
    This post (rendered as standard 8-bit extended ASCII, including comments): 345 bytes

    Now render the video somewhere. There, compression!!!
    • pwncore, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4When do you plan to release the extended edition director's cut superbit criterion collection boxset?
  • clueless, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2does anybody have a download link? (don't want getting my email spammed)
  • molecool, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Well, a lot of comments here seem to be ridiculing this to death and claim that this is impossible. It's funny how everyone on Digg.com seems to suddenly have turned into an 'expert' in video compression. Now, the BYTE thing might be a typo, but still - before everyone starts demonizing these guys, let's keep cool and wait for a demo. If they can indeed provide us with a demo player and a few example clips any doubts could be buried, right? After all, as a company focusing on video compression they would be very foolish to release this to the press without being able to proof it at some point.

    Finally, everyone seems to be 'anchored' in this insanely high compression ratio now - may I point out that even a factor of 2 on top of MPEG4 would be a big deal? So, let's not be too cynical about this right from the getgo - give them a chance to proof that this is not just vaporware...
    • sundancekid503, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2People are ridiculing it because it's a ridiculous press release. If you're a company that's serious about making compression software, you do NOT make a mistake like mixing up bytes with kilobytes. (if it was just a typo, I still find these stats very hard to believe)

      The general public does not "owe" this company a chance. This company is obviously just trying to scrounge up funding for a product that doesn't exist.

    • Hypertime, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"...suddenly have turned into an 'expert' in video compression."

      Would I have to be an automotive expert if I knew a car company was full of ***** when they claimed they had a car getting 460% better miles per gallon than the most fuel efficient car on the market? No, I'd just have to have a brain and a little bit of common sense.
  • 14digg, on 10/12/2007, -9/+0good compression but how long does it take to compress??
    _________
    http://aljitech.com/ $25 FREE 2 more days
  • celeronxl, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5Patented. This technology will die.
  • celeronxl, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Ugh, double post. First post did not show up initially or after 2 refreshes.
  • Fly1m1, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Where are the open source alternatives in all of this? There is a great need for smaller video file sizes with all the vidcasts being so popular now. I send 500 meg video files (h.264 home movies) all the time. If i could get the same quality out of a 50 meg file I would be jumping for joy. Open source, please step up.
  • michelr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2(looks at the calendar) rrright ..
  • miker71, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3April fool?
  • dnos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"its technology has achieved compression ratios of 15,168 to 1 for CERTAIN VIDEOS."

    They never explain what these certain videos are. Hell, I could compress a 1TB video down to a few bytes if the only thing in the video is just a black screen.

    I call B.S. It looks like another company trying to weasel some money from unknowing funders.
  • oepapel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Snakeoil. Some one is looking to generate some buzz before they cash out their shares. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
  • scards, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1i think people may have missed the main idea behind the press release. sure there isn't a whole lot of tech info behind their claims - but what's important here is the CONCEPT. If it really does what they say it does, this could have huge implications for businesses and business people. Video conferences over cell phones? Keeping an eye on the house while you're at the office or on the road for business using your PDA? Sounds way cool to me.
  • silverfire, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Full of crap. No digg and reported as inaccurate =_=;;

    If such compression were possible or even feasible, we wouldn't really have to rely on H.264 or other recent codecs.
  • Hypertime, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This is the same kind of compression ***** that gets trotted out and quickly forgotten every few years. 460% better compression? In your ***** dreams. Give me an H.264 trailer from Apple.com and then your EuclidWhatever at 460% better compression and then I'll pay attention. A press release with an outrageous claim? Hahahaha. It was a nice trick in 1996, not so much in 2006.
  • lostboytexas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1stock photos suck ass
  • liquidcoooled, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Ok,
    All the folks saying its IMPOSSIBLE to do good things with such a small filesize have to remember theres a whole group of people who create demos and graphics and stuff in ridiculously small files.
    I realise its not quite the same as generic video decoding, but I believe them about their current very specific claims (and no I don't think its just a black screen with no audio - it will just be a very optimised sample)

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene

    http://www.256b.com/home.php
    • jasqwerty, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2You're right about one thing. This is not quite the same as generic video decoding. It's so not quite the same, that's its actually completely different both in its theoretical and practical aspects. Good try though.
    • danpsmith, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3If you knew anything about demos then you'd know that it's based off procedures. Here, for an example is a procedure to generate a file with 1000 characters...

      f = open('file.txt','w')
      for i in range(1000): f.write(i)
      f.close()

      to write 1000 characters I only used three lines. This isn't talking about code to regenerate already realized data, it's talking about compressing anything within the pixels without loss or much loss, 460% better. There's quite a difference there.

      Please note also that the procedure does take more than the three lines it seems to, but a lot of the code used to generate this is in the interpreter, the OS, etc. Same is the case with the demo scene, they take advantage of a 3d framework already present in your video card. It's not real video, and it does not require the same amount of space real video does. In other words: get a clue.
    • liquidcoooled, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5dan, I think you will find most of those demos DON'T use 3d hardware, I don't recall such things existing back in the Amiga and dos days. Its not that difficult to do 3d matrix operations in a small amount of assembler.
      I do have a clue having been a coder for approximately 20 years and have coded numerous specific compression routines so most likely have a clue.

      I could create a CBR compression routine or pattern matching routine which CAN produce very very small compressed result files just like these guys, but once you allow generic inputs the results will go completely to pot. I remember hearing about some super zip compressor which promised similar, but theirs also fell apart once they allowed generic content, the only difference here is that they are using spatial elements instead of sequencial characters.

      They talk about object based compression routines, which in my eyes means searching for blocks to convert to graphical elements - "ahhh large block of green" -> "rect(l,t,w,h,green), "ahhh a circle of red" -> circle(x,y,r,red)

      They also talk about needing to handle smaller compression blocks - their source video is most likely composed of large flat coloured cartoony elements which would end up similar using practically any compression alg.
      A movie compressed in this way could then be further compressed using any of the standard text compressors to further reduce the framesize.
      Its not rocketscience, and I don't think they are ***** but I just don't think it will work in the real world.

  • Avaj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2I'll believe it, h.264 is amazing enough as it is. I'll get a good laugh out of it when everyone is using the format and somehow forgot how much they though it was impossible.
  • Johnny2085, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13This is obviously an April Fool's Joke for Slashdot. It has to get on Digg ahead of 4/1 though, so the slashdot editors can find it and then post their dupes on the actual day.
    • CrackHappy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1That's awesome. You've clearly been reading Slashdot way too long... I'm so glad I quite reading that trash.

      You know, instead of this trash.
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