oggZmax - free A/V codecs for MaxMSP/Jitter

oggZmax (pronounce ogg-see-max) is a collection of four Max externals for Audio/Video streaming using the free Codecs Theora for video, Vorbis for Audio in an ogg container available in terms of the Gnu Public License.

[oggrx~] and [jit.ffdec] actually use ffmpeg as decoder and support a variety of codecs, formats and protocols. It is possible to read files from disk, access HTTP and RTP sources.

[oggtx~] and [jit.oggenc] are the counterpart using xiph's libraries to encode and transmit A/V to an icecast streaming server.

• play Ogg/Vorbis encoded audio streams and files in mono or stereo.
• play Ogg/Theroa encoded video streams and files.
• play various other codecs and formats (FLAC, mpeg, speex, flv,..; avi, mov, matroska, wma, vob,..)
• encode and stream Ogg/Vorbis audio in mono or stereo.
• encode and stream Ogg/Therora video.
• connect to icecast and peercast servers.
• variable bitrate encoding (VBR) based on quality or bitrate settings.
• absolute bitrate encoding (ABR).
• resampling - receive and stream at any desired sample rate, regardless what sample rate Max/MSP is running at.
• add Meta-information to streams.

oggZmax is available as binary for Max OSX 10.5, 10.6 both i386 and PPC and tested with Max5.1.3:

• oggZmax-v0.6-i386.zip (intel)
• oggZmax-v0.6-ppc.zip (ppc)
• oggZmax-v0.4.zip (universal)

Example patches and install information are available with the oggZmax package; more information can be found in TheArtCollider Wiki.

The source-code is available from:

• git://rg42.org/maxmsp
• http://rg42.org/gitweb/?p=maxmsp.git;a=snapshot;sf=tgz

I've written these externals in the first 5 days of my 30 days trial period of MaxMSP to satisfy various request from artists for TheArtCollider project.

Developing and maintaing Max externals does not require a license - however testing does. So In order to maintain the code I'm relying in you: licensed users. And of couse this software is open-source so there's nobody to stop you improving it yourself. Drop me a line if you have questions, suggestions or patches.

In the future I'm planning to merge audio-decoding into the jit objects as to provide a synchronized stream of A/V data and break the stereo limit by adding support for multi-channel audio. However I currently lack motivation and time to do so.

Personally I'm a fan of Pd - the successor and open-source version os Max which includes native support for ogg streaming and I highly recommend to do the switch, trading off Max's nice GUI with the freedom and flexibility provided by Pd. After all that's what Miller Puckette - the original author of MaxMSP - did.

FWIW: oggPro is a similar - alas commercial version - for audio streaming with MaxMSP.