31–40 of 194 posts
I echo the sentiments of many when saying I am surprised no one had scooped them up earlier (although I doubt it wasn't for lack of offers).
What is the point of making custom codecs for Bink, instead of using state of the art free codecs?
[Edit- I may have misunderstood your question, but I'll leave my reply anyway.]
Here are some possible reasons you might use Bink instead of a free codec:
- Bink video has been around for a long time as a product, even though the codec has been updated (probably multiple times, I don't know). There weren't always good-enough free codecs, and if you have prior experience integrating Bink with your stuff then you may prefer to stick to something you know is good even if it costs money.
- RAD focuses on producing libraries that are very easy to drop in, specifically in the context of games. They know how game code is written and structured. They know game developers want to be able to integrate video in a way that works -- and performs reliably -- within an existing game engine that does a lot of custom management of textures/buffers/graphics memory. State of the art free codecs don't necessarily have free libraries that are actually high performance and easy to integrate within a game context.
- Your state of the art free codec might work great on a modern smartphone or PC, but good luck getting it to work on a Nintendo Switch or whatever weird console you're targeting. Bink is available for whatever game-specific platform hardware you're targeting.
So low-overhead (fast) decompression is essential for AAA titles. But recently I guess developers think disks are fast enough now, because PC games have been using more uncompressed assets to free up CPU time, massively bloating install size. Current-gen consoles also all have NVMe SSDs.
Given this trend, RAD's heyday was definitely in the days before consoles had NVMe disks (Bink in particular let games punch far above their weight) so this might be a nice forever-home.
Blame Intel for not making faster CPUs, and consumers for tolerating massive install sizes, i guess.
The other angle to this story is that the PS5 has a hardware decode unit for RAD Kraken. To get the best use out of the PS5 hardware, it's essential that the encoder is still made available. This is a huge competitive moat. (PCs probably won't get a comparable decompression accelerator card and such a card wouldn't get enough market penetration anyway.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really hoping epic takes the opportunity to give Bink a more open license, to be honest. Much as I appreciate how advanced Bink was at the time, i don't know any dev that still use it given that av1 and such are just Good Enough.
Bink isn't the codec, though that's good too, it's the software stack. How do you render AV1 on a PS4 or a Nintendo Switch, synchronize it with the audio stream? No, seriously, tell me. GStreamer with its ridiculous threading architecture and lock-heavy approach? You think that's going to run on a console CPU? ffmpeg / libavcodec? Yes, we can hook that up, have it crank out YUV buffers and display those on the GPU, o…
When Bink was released and the PS2 and Gamecube were on the horizon this kind of thinking was needed. When you get to PS4/Switch you're just running consumer PCs. The exact same Nvidia SoC used in the Switch is actually used by Nvidia for their Shield Android TV boxes whose literal purpose is to play audio/video streams - it's quite capable of doing so.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really hoping epic takes the opportunity to give Bink a more open license, to be honest. Much as I appreciate how advanced Bink was at the time, i don't know any dev that still use it given that av1 and such are just Good Enough.
Bink isn't the codec, though that's good too, it's the software stack. How do you render AV1 on a PS4 or a Nintendo Switch, synchronize it with the audio stream? No, seriously, tell me. GStreamer with its ridiculous threading architecture and lock-heavy approach? You think that's going to run on a console CPU? ffmpeg / libavcodec? Yes, we can hook that up, have it crank out YUV buffers and display those on the GPU, o…
That said, yes, Bink certainly is a more turnkey solution, which can definitely make business sense to use. This is a byproduct of consoles being closed platforms.
The history of RAD is a history of media read speeds - playing back full-motion video from a CD on a PS2 with its near-zero available CPU resources was a superhuman effort. So low-overhead (fast) decompression is essential for AAA titles. But recently I guess developers think disks are fast enough now, because PC games have been using more uncompressed assets to free up CPU time, massively bloating install size. Curr…
For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website ( http://www.radgametools.com/ ): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D
For those interested in what RAD Game Tools actually makes, as far as I understood from their website ( http://www.radgametools.com/ ): Bink 2 - video codec Oodle - data compression suite Telemetry - profiling toolkit Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D
Bink 2 - video codec
Oodle - data compression suite
Telemetry - profiling toolkit
Granny 3D - toolkit for building 3d games
Miles Sound System 10 - sound authoring toolset in 2D and 3D
The history of RAD is a history of media read speeds - playing back full-motion video from a CD on a PS2 with its near-zero available CPU resources was a superhuman effort. So low-overhead (fast) decompression is essential for AAA titles. But recently I guess developers think disks are fast enough now, because PC games have been using more uncompressed assets to free up CPU time, massively bloating install size. Curr…
Meanwhile here I am with a sound card in my desktop PC for no real reason anymore :\