Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Getting G.729 to work on Windows in the cheapest and most effective way

This is a very common question people ask for G.729: G.729 is the most common codec supported by a variety of VoIP providers and gateways. Though there are lots of better and free codecs around, G.729 is still the most preferred (and expensive) codecs around. The G.729 IPR billing is controlled by a company called SIPRO and if your product is sold with the G.729 codec embedded in it (even if it never gets turned on), you must pay the order of $5-$10 bucks per port to the consortium. SIPRO takes care of disbursing the payments around to the IPR owners. However, this is a well hidden secret for some reason. The common path taken by a lot of product vendors for supporting G.729 is that they license a complete media package from companies like VoiceAge. The media package bundles a voice processing layer which integrates G.729. The cost of the package is in the tens of thousands of $$. Here is an option which is much cheaper and works as good or better since it gives you full control of what is going on at least on Windows:

1) Get the Intel IPP development package from any of the resellers. This costs a few hundered bucks. The IPP is basically a development package which takes the original G.729 code published in the ITU standard and makes it work on Windows with some mods and optimizations.

2) As and when you sell licenses of your product you get a deal done with SIPRO and pay few bucks on a per seat basis. This avoids a lot of fees and proves to be much cheaper.

DI almost forgot to add that its as good voice quality as well!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Medhavi,

I'd like to try to use Intel's G.729a implementation w/pjsip.

Would it be possible to see or use your code?

Tom

Medhavi said...

Sure. PJSIP is GPL. I will find out the details and will communicate with you how we can do that. You can follow up with me on this blog or send me an email.

Unknown said...

thanks! btw, have you run any load tests on the intel G.729 codec? i'm curious about how many simultaneous SIP/RTP 'calls' are possible on a souped-up server (e.g., dual quad code xeon processors).

Medhavi said...

Hi Tom,

Intel's G.729 codec is used by Asterisk as well and there are enough performance metrics on that in passthrough and termination modes I believe. Here is a link:

http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/index.php?page=Asterisk+G.729+licensing

Codecs said...
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Codecs said...
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Codecs said...

Hi i was just wondering that G.729 is sellable or licensable? and if yes how much we have to pay?

recently i came across one site www.ipsupermarket.com where all commercial codecs are available including G.729 but here also no where price is mentioned.

If somebody could let me know the price! i would highly appreciate

Medhavi said...

Hi Neo,

G.729 costs are as follows. You will need to pay from one time $6-$10 charge per port for the codec to the G.729 consortium. The actual price depends on the volume of shipments you do. You will need to contact sipro for that. Now that was for the licensing and Intellectual property.

The integration of G.729 into your software could cost you varying amounts of money depending on how savvy you guys are! The cheapest way for Windows, for example is to get the Intel IPP kit which costs just $800 for single node license. There are lots of other options depending on what platform you are running it on.

Unknown said...

Medhavi,

I have been struggling to get Intel's G729 to work with PJSIP. It's above my skill level. I have the licensed libs and includes, just not the PJSIP files necessary to properly include it as a codec. Can I trouble you for some help?


Regards,
Archie