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In The Zone
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: ತುಮಕೂರು, ಕರ್ನಾಟಕ
Posts: 247
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Bink is a "better-than-DVD" class codec - it compresses with more quality than DVD at up to three times the playback speed! Bink uses up to 10 MB less memory at runtime than other codecs. It has been licensed for over 2,500 games since 1999!
Bink is a hybrid block-transform and wavelet codec that can encode your video using 16 different compression techniques (wavelet, DCT, motion compensation, a variety of vector quantizers, Smacker-style, etc). With all of these techniques in one codec, Bink can handle any type of video.
Bink also has a psycho-acoustic based audio codec that is capable of 8 to 1 perceptually lossless compression, so your audio will sound as good as your video looks. Other video codecs force you to license a separate audio encoder, but Bink has one built right in!
Another nice feature of Bink is that it's technology was completely independently developed. We are not based on any MPEG standards (our techniques are even fairly different) of any kind, so the IP is safe, encumbrance-free, and (best of all) entirely royalty free. That's why we develop our own codecs (both video and audio) - we don't want to be hindered by any third parties who see games as a side market rather than the target market. RAD has been developing video codecs for games since 1992 - our software codecs were being used before MPEG could even be played on a PC without a hardware decoder card.
The other big reason that we develop our own codec technology is because general video codecs are just not designed for games. They are designed to play movies in a nice little media player sandbox on a PC with little else going on. They use a ton of memory (Bink uses up to 16 MB less than other codecs), and they use almost all of the CPU. Bink is designed just for games - we aren't trying to be a media player for the masses, or get integrated into some set top box, or stream video off the internet. Our only goal is great looking, easy to use, high performance video for your games.
The Bink SDK supports the Sony PlayStation 2 console, Windows 95, 98, Me, NT, 2000, XP, the Xbox console, the Nintendo GameCube console, MacOS, MacOS X and GNU/Linux. It support DirectDraw, DIBSections, DirectSound, waveOut, Sound Manager, NGC AX, NGC MusyX, SDL_mixer, and the Miles Sound System.
Bink uses the YUV colorspace, so it can use overlays for hardware color conversion and smooth scaling on Win32, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube. Bink also includes a bunch of hand-optimized assembly YUV to RGB colorspace blitters, so you'll be able to access Bink's output in any RGB format you like (32-bit RGB, 24-bit RGB, 16-bit RGB, etc).
As far as data rate goes, Bink really doesn't have a minimum - 320x240 animations look great at 100 kps (less than a 1x CD!) and 640x480's look awesome at 300 kps (only a 2x CD!) and perfect at 500 to 750 kps. Most cross platform console games use a 550 to 650 kps data rate.
For a high-end codec, Bink requires very little hardware resources - it will run on a machine as slow as a Pentium 166, and will be screamingly fast on a modern P3, P4 or Athlon. Any Macintosh shipped in the last 4 years will run Bink great. All of the modern consoles can handle Bink easily (even the slow-ish PS/2 for which we've done massive assembly optimization to get Bink running wonderfully).
Because Bink is pretty different from other codecs, we've put together information describing the advantages of using Bink. You can even view the entire Bink development history to see the complete evolution of Bink. Finally, you can check out what other Bink customers think.
You can download the Bink Tools for free, or call 425.893.4300 or email to try the Bink SDK today!
Think Bink!
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