Nothing to complain of with the speed of delivery, it took me no more than 10 minutes to order the new box, be notified of its availability, and install an Ubuntu Lucid distribution (signaled as beta).

As I was very curious about the performance of the famous Nano processor, I pitted my older Dedibox (the server powering this very website) against the new one using nbench, here are the results:

First, the original dedibox:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :             450  :      11.54  :       3.79
STRING SORT         :          71.765  :      32.07  :       4.96
BITFIELD            :      2.5932e+08  :      44.48  :       9.29
FP EMULATION        :          88.285  :      42.36  :       9.78
FOURIER             :           13993  :      15.91  :       8.94
ASSIGNMENT          :          18.371  :      69.90  :      18.13
IDEA                :          3042.6  :      46.54  :      13.82
HUFFMAN             :          1113.4  :      30.87  :       9.86
NEURAL NET          :          21.175  :      34.02  :      14.31
LU DECOMPOSITION    :          762.56  :      39.50  :      28.53
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 35.427
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 27.756
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : GenuineIntel Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU          220  @ 1.20GHz 1200MHz
L2 Cache            : 512 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.24.2dedibox-r8-1-smp-x32
C compiler          : gcc version 4.2.4 (Ubuntu 4.2.4-1ubuntu4)
libc                : libc-2.7.so
MEMORY INDEX        : 9.421
INTEGER INDEX       : 8.429
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 15.394
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

Now the new server:

BYTEmark* Native Mode Benchmark ver. 2 (10/95)
Index-split by Andrew D. Balsa (11/97)
Linux/Unix* port by Uwe F. Mayer (12/96,11/97)

TEST                : Iterations/sec.  : Old Index   : New Index
                    :                  : Pentium 90* : AMD K6/233*
--------------------:------------------:-------------:------------
NUMERIC SORT        :          625.84  :      16.05  :       5.27
STRING SORT         :          72.811  :      32.53  :       5.04
BITFIELD            :      2.9437e+08  :      50.50  :      10.55
FP EMULATION        :            88.6  :      42.51  :       9.81
FOURIER             :          8060.1  :       9.17  :       5.15
ASSIGNMENT          :          13.373  :      50.89  :      13.20
IDEA                :            3123  :      47.77  :      14.18
HUFFMAN             :          1478.7  :      41.00  :      13.09
NEURAL NET          :          13.524  :      21.73  :       9.14
LU DECOMPOSITION    :           772.2  :      40.00  :      28.89
==========================ORIGINAL BYTEMARK RESULTS==========================
INTEGER INDEX       : 37.871
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 19.972
Baseline (MSDOS*)   : Pentium* 90, 256 KB L2-cache, Watcom* compiler 10.0
==============================LINUX DATA BELOW===============================
CPU                 : CentaurHauls VIA Nano processor U2250 (1.6GHz Capable) 1600MHz
L2 Cache            : 1024 KB
OS                  : Linux 2.6.32-22-generic-pae
C compiler          : gcc version 4.4.3 (Ubuntu 4.4.3-4ubuntu5)
libc                :
MEMORY INDEX        : 8.883
INTEGER INDEX       : 9.899
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 11.077
Baseline (LINUX)    : AMD K6/233*, 512 KB L2-cache, gcc 2.7.2.3, libc-5.4.38
* Trademarks are property of their respective holder.

Snapshots can be downloaded on the Google Code project page at: http://code.google.com/p/flvmeta/downloads/list

A lot of new features have been added, here is an exhaustive list:

A few things are still missing for the next stable release, for example some proper user documentation, now that a complete set of command line options are available, as well as the implementation of the check command.

Everyone is welcome to test the software and report bugs on the issue tracker.

I’m also still pondering the benefits of using gettext in order to fully internationalize the output of the program. On one hand, there are many people who don’t speak english, and adding the potential to reach a wider audience is tempting. It is also a must-have in order to be featured in distros like Debian.

On the other hand, I still have issues with building flvmeta with gettext enabled. First of all the cmake/windows combination would be kind of experimental at best, and using autotools, I still need to fully understand which files must and must not be added to the repository.
There’s also the question of performance, since flvmeta is mostly used as an automated tool for update purpose. Dynamically loading strings in that setting is kind of pointless since speed and memory can be affected and there’s noone to ever read those messages anyways.

After version 1.1, which is transitional in the sense that it really represents the maturation of flvmeta into a real CLI tool, a 1.2 version will be in development.

Features expected for 1.2 include:

To add a quick follow-up to my previous post, I might add that… no, FLV is not quite dead yet, since H.264 streams in FLV containers are working quite well in the Flash Player, and major sites have adopted that combination.
I think we also might even expect support for On2 VP8 in FLV files before the end of the year. If Google really open-sources its code, alternative flash implementations will certainly jump the wagon before maybe even Adobe.
Of course, due to Adobe being a major On2 licensee, as well as thanks to the rather good relationship between them and Google, the official Flash Player might support this codec fast enough for it to become a viable alternative to the increasingly controversial H.264.

That can seem like a rather bold statement, but let’s face the truth. After Adobe’s recent publication of updated and open specifications for the FLV/F4V and SWF formats, that seems to be about the most logical conclusion.

If someone reads the aforementioned specification in detail, there’s one thing that will immediatly be noticed. The specification is not about FLV, but FLV and F4V.
What is F4V ? In a nutshell, it is a subset of the MPEG-4 standard destined to be a container for video, audio, and various metadata. Exactly what FLV is supposed to be too, you’ll tell me. That’s only partly true. FLV has a few limitations as a media container.

First of all, FLV fails as a streaming format. Ok, it’s widely used on major sites like Youtube, dailymotion, and many others, but it’s not true streaming, because all it does is playing an already existing file, not a stream generated on-the-fly, and playing continuously, like a TV channel.
Even for random access seeking, an encoder producing FLV files has to add some specific metadata, that tell the player where it can seek.
Some tricks are needed on the server side, like using specific modules for the web server (eg: mod_flv_streaming for Lighttpd), or using some scripting, in PHP or other server languages.
Unhappily, free encoders like ffmpeg or mencoder are unable to add those precious metadata while encoding the files.
That problem drove me to write the FLVMeta tool, that precisely does this, taking an existing FLV file to update with the needed metadata. To be fair, there are several existing tools doing the same thing, but none of them worked well enough for my taste

Another problem with the FLV format is that each frame belongs to its own “packet”. Every frame is accessible in a standalone way, even when a frame is not a keyframe, a frame containing enough information to be fully rendered, without relying on information from previous frames.
That means that a FLV file can only contain video data that can adapt to that layout. Basically, a FLV file can contain video data that belongs only to a hard-coded list of codec families, like Sorenson Spark and ON2 True Motion VP6. Unfortunately, Sorenson Spark, derived from H.263, is outdated and is not on par with the modern codecs in terms of image quality. On2 VP6 is much better as a codec, but is a proprietary format, and it’s known that On2 is not exactly friends with people who try to implement their format.

On the other hand, H.264 has been implemented as Free Software, like the encoder x264, even though the standard is encumbered by many patents that can be enforced in countries like the USA. H.264 has already superseded Divx as a highly compressed movie format, and is expected to be used more and more as a streaming format.

Therefore, realizing the limitations of the existing video formats, Adobe chose to implement H.264 in its Flash Player software.
However, as the FLV format is unable to contain H.264 video, Adobe pushed a variation of the MPEG-4 multimedia container format, and heralded it as its new champion, the F4V format !

This “new” format is able to contain any video and audio format, leaving more space for Adobe if they wish to widen their offer. It is also able to contain more diverse metadata, for instance in the recently introduced AMF3 format, as FLV was limited in being only able to contain AMF0 encoded data.

So, the most recent Flash Player (version 9.0.124.0) supports both H.264 playback as well as F4V. It’s only a matter of time before developers will upgrade their Flash authoring tools to versions able to output Flash9 files, using ActionScript 3. And then, will there be a reason to continue to support FLV ?
I’m pretty sure that the major players in the league will switch to H.264, to avoid paying license fees to On2, and to provide better High Definition contents.

So what will be the point of keeping on using FLV ? Pretty much none, in my opinion. Maybe the F4V format is somewhat harder to implement than FLV, but most of the existing encoding software will just have to adapt their already mature MPEG-4 code, making the F4V format even more well supported than FLV is today.

So yes, FLV is dead, long live F4V.

PS: Fear not for FLVMeta, I’ll continue supporting it and developing the latest 1.1 version, FLV will be around for a few months at least, but I will focus my efforts on developing my AMF0/3 parser/serializer libamf which should allow C and C++ code at least to fully support Adobe’s metadata.

For those who don’t know her, Marie is the singer extraordinaire of Katzenjammer Kabarett, a nice Electro/Gothic/Punk/Cabaret… errr well, an interesting band anyways

This is going to be Marie’s first solo concert, so she needs encouragements and a loooot of people screaming her name.

Oh I forgot, the entrance is free !

Links:
http://www.myspace.com/mariedarling

http://www.katzenjammer-kabarett.com/

http://www.myspace.com/aloysuke

Ok, ok, no digression for a first post. This one marks the opening of my first blog, and website, so I’ll talk a bit about me and blogs.

Why did I wait so long before doing my website ? It’s been like ten years I’ve been in the IT business, the Internet, new technologies, etc, and I have never found the motivation to invest time and energy into this. There are several explanations, I guess.

Maybe I’ve just been lazy, or I didn’t feel like finding a decent web host. I was a student for six years, and it’s true that I was pretty busy with my studies. I really prefered improving my programming skills rather than talking about those, and I couldn’t really afford a dedicated server.
I must also admit that I suck at web design (see http://noirotm.free.fr for an early example of what kind of web design I can come up with). I’m really happy that there are now very intuitive solutions such as Wordpress, or Drupal, that have thousands of themes, and can be almost be used as-is, as publishing platforms.

Another explanation is that maybe I didn’t have anything to say. Yeah, a lot of things have already been said on the Internet, and I didn’t think I could contribute with my limited knowledge about stuff. And I don’t like talking about myself either

But fear not, after all those years, I now have my blog, and it will be as random as possible !