A web video company that is most likely a hoax

http://ihatelawyers3.github.com/

by pavel_lishin • 15 years ago

261 87 15 years ago

ihatelawyers3.github.com

cpfohl• 15 years ago

Hate to sound ignorant, but someone want to explain?

pcubed• 15 years ago

Seconded. It seems like they basically just turned the frame-rate down, but it's not clear to me.

aidenn0• 15 years ago

If you encode their test-video with an off-the-shelf open source H264 codec on normal settings, you end up with a video that is smaller than their sample video. Their "amazing new technology" is just vanilla h264 compression.

madamepsychosis• 15 years ago

Is this a good example of information asymmetry?

joelhaasnoot4• 15 years ago

It's marketing ignorance: it's like selling a Facebook like button for 1200 euro's as a "social marketing" (true story BTW).

emp_• 15 years ago

Go on...

refurb• 15 years ago

Not anymore, the stock is down more than 50% since 11pm yesterday!

PotatoEngineer• 15 years ago

Lovely; they'll just start anew with a different company.

thomson• 15 years ago

This repo was first created at 8am today though. (https://github.com/ihatelawyers3/ihatelawyers3.github.com/co...)

What's going on here?

tedsbardella• 15 years ago

Please explain

bash$ mencoder -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -x264encopts \ subq=6:partitions=all:8x8dct:me=umh:frameref=5:bframes=3:b_pyramid=normal:weight_b \ -o hoax.avi ray_480p_normal.mp4

then o god o god.. is this a porn?

Dobbs• 15 years ago

Their proof is an unoptimized video vs an optimized video.

Their product is a standard recommended video optimization.

The people behind RayStream are either lying and/or don't understand what they are talking about.

khichi• 15 years ago

If it is standard then why the author was surprised by the compression ratio?

joelhaasnoot4• 15 years ago

Read this page: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-feat-x264.html Each of the keys in the string has a value which is explained in the document.

Basically they're claiming something revolutionary, which in the end is just using the x264 encoder with the right fine-tuned options.

DarkShikari7• 15 years ago

They're not "fine-tuned" in the slightest; they're cargo cult options that are going to give worse results on a compression-per-speed basis than the presets that already come with x264. Many of those options are completely redundant; they're specifying things that are already default!

There are quite literally dozens of scam companies built off x264, claiming in many cases that they made an "incredible" magical proprietary encoder with "revolutionary" compression. Of course they just run x264.

Fortunately it is extremely easy to identify an x264-encoded stream, even if all the headers are stripped and rewritten: it would be extremely difficult to modify x264 to cloak such a stream entirely unless you knew the code line for line, and even then, some of the features of x264 that are responsible for much of its compression advantage are extremely obvious in an analyzer (variance adaptive quantization).

makira• 15 years ago

It means the _normal.mp4 file was encoded in an absurdly high bitrate for no reason except to make their claim of 90% compression.

jc4p• 15 years ago

You hit the nail on the head here. While it's possible that the video they posted is 6fps (which is close to what those mencoder flags will achieve), it's more likely that they simply saved the first video with no compression and saved the second one as a regular video file with compression.

lukeholder3• 15 years ago

This is crazy... the website is a shell of an investment pitch. These guys need to get reported. Anyone want to make some money off the collapse.

Wow, their first 'contract' is with a company called edgefactory OMNIMEDIA, which I think is owned by martha stewart OMNIMEDIA?

edit: Wow, I just posted a link to this article and this thread on their facebook account and now the item has been deleted off their wall within minutes. everyone should let me know....

http://www.facebook.com/RaystreamInc

AznHisoka• 15 years ago

that's OMinous...

richardkeller• 15 years ago

"Report" > "Other/abusive content" > "Spam or scam". Done.

djb_hackernews• 15 years ago

The market is way ahead of you man.

giberson• 15 years ago

My guess, based on the man page for mencoder linked on the page where he got the mencoder options, you can encode a source video file to target video file aiming for either quality of frames, or speed of frames (per second). "Very high quality" options results in a video output of roughly 6 frames per second. Comparing the file size of the output file hoax.avi, its basically identical. So the revelation is that this company's miracle method is simply delivering video at 6fps.

If you've ever played a video game that was too much for your system, you've seen 6fps before, and you know it is intolerable.

That's my take on it, I really wish the author would have elaborated more on the result.

jcromartie3• 15 years ago

No. They just deliver video compressed with H.264, with a target bitrate of about 1Mbps. The framerate is unaffected.

larrys• 15 years ago

OP should contact some hedge funds with this info. If true they will be quite interested.

lukeholder3• 15 years ago

or: http://www.sec.gov/whistleblower

quote: The Commission is authorized by Congress to provide monetary awards to eligible individuals who come forward with high-quality original information that leads to a Commission enforcement action in which over $1,000,000 in sanctions is ordered. The range for awards is between 10% and 30% of the money collected.

hvs• 15 years ago

Looks like a pump-and-dump scam: http://www.beaconequity.com/smw/14546/Raystream-RAYS-Stock-a...

wmf• 15 years ago

All "investment opportunities" in over the counter stocks are scams; there's no real news here.

jaequery• 15 years ago

this kind of reminds me back the increase your MEMORY BY 8 fold MS-DOS "RAMBOOST" days.

dpcan• 15 years ago

Whoa - thanks for the nostalgia. I remember spending SO MUCH time trying to work around RAM limitations using all these techniques only to find the best you could get was the ability to trick a piece of software into thinking more RAM is there, but the performance hit made it a worthless practice.

Dylan16807• 15 years ago

Well, under certain circumstances you can swap to a compressed ramdisk. There are ways that that can be helpful.

TylerE• 15 years ago

Doesn't the fact that a stock is traded on an OTC exchange really tell you all you need to know?

garethsprice• 15 years ago

There's been a number of hoaxes like this previously: http://compressionscams.blogspot.com/ - even down to "software demos" that turned out to be various utilities downloaded from the Internet bolted together (http://www.c10n.info/archives/415)

What is it about scammers and impossibly high compression? Is it because it's easy to explain but hard to prove the concept to non-tech savvy investors, or is it just because they read about it having been done before and copy it verbatim?

Guessing the latter, as there's other technologies (cryptography and semiconductor fabrication come to mind as easy to explain/hard to disprove) that could hoodwink unsophisticated investors.

lukeholder3• 15 years ago

this guy is a penny stock trader and he called it a pump and dump scam:

http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock-promot...

AJ007• 15 years ago

This is an obvious case of fraud which the SEC should be investigating:

http://www.smauthority.com/raystream/

TDL• 15 years ago

A simple way of finding out if it's a scam is by looking at the balance sheet. If you see little to no assets it is most certainly a pump & dump; this "firm" has not assets. These scams are usually formed through reverse mergers, that is how they are able to sell stock.

chrisbolt• 15 years ago

http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=RAYS.OB

steveplace• 15 years ago

Here's more details: http://www.timothysykes.com/2011/11/how-a-penny-stock-promot...

The RAYS campaign was run by the same guys who did LEXG, the latter being one of the best pump and dumps last year-- ran from $1 to $10 in a short amount of time.

brandonhall2• 15 years ago

Glad you mentioned Tim here. He's one of about five truth-tellers in that world of scams. Great resource

cher• 15 years ago

Timothy Sykes a truth teller? Now I've heard it all...

radley2• 15 years ago

I checked the demo videos:

"Original Version" - 1080p, AVC uncompressed

"Standard Compression" - 480p, AVC uncompressed

"Raystream Version" - 480p H.264 AAC, ~1200kb data rate

Nothing that fishy here. They seem to be advertising to broadcasters. It's possible they have some nice custom algorithms for their videos. That isn't uncommon - take a look at Apple movie trailers and iTunes videos: they have their own magic juice too.

With that, maybe the investment is a scam, but posting a "hoax" via "ihatelawyers3" on github is waaaaaaay more suspect to me.

[EDIT] they seem to be pretty active for being supposedly fake. Check their twitter feed. They tweet as much if not more than most video companies and it's not fluff.

andfarm• 15 years ago

Specifically, the "standard compression" version is MainConcept at 10 Mbit, and the "Raystream" version is x264 at 1.15 Mbit using the following options:

> x264 - core 112 - H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec - Copyleft 2003-2010 - http://www.videolan.org/x264.html - options: cabac=1 ref=3 deblock=1:0:0 analyse=0x3:0 me=hex subme=7 psy=1 psy_rd=1.00:0.00 mixed_ref=1 me_range=16 chroma_me=1 trellis=0 8x8dct=1 cqm=0 deadzone=21,11 fast_pskip=1 chroma_qp_offset=-2 threads=6 sliced_threads=0 nr=0 decimate=1 interlaced=0 constrained_intra=0 bframes=3 b_pyramid=2 b_adapt=0 b_bias=0 direct=2 weightb=1 open_gop=0 weightp=0 keyint=250 keyint_min=24 scenecut=40 intra_refresh=0 rc_lookahead=40 rc=crf mbtree=1 crf=22.0 qcomp=0.70 qpmin=10 qpmax=51 qpstep=3 ip_ratio=1.41 aq=1:1.00

DarkShikari7• 15 years ago

Also known as...

... the default x264 parameters. Yay!

DarkShikari7• 15 years ago

"Custom magic algorithms" in this case being "off-the-shelf free software, using completely default parameters, that we've stolen and claimed is our magic algorithm".

gavingmiller3• 15 years ago

I hate to burst your bubble, but "custom magic algorithms" actually exist. I was involved with a contract that accomplished the same end as mentioned in the article - compressed video data, playable within standard video players. The company wasn't achieving the same level of compression that this article is claiming, but they did manage to reduce video size while maintaining quality.

JonnieCache• 15 years ago

H.264 is not "free software." You're thinking of x264, the free software implementation of H.264 that everyone uses.

There is a large market for proprietary optimised implementations of various codecs for use in industry. The same goes for mp3 and so on.

Unless people have found x264 headers left in the files, in which case, fail.

hyperbovine• 15 years ago

You've just described the business model of a surprisingly large number of consultancies. One man's obvious is the next man's "magic". AFAICT businesses are happy to pay for this sort of thing, so I'm not sure who deserves blame here.

recoiledsnake• 15 years ago

I still call BS.

>Before Raystream, a one hour video converted to 720p using the best compression algorithms resulted in files in excess of 1 GB, far too large to be streamed over commercial Internet connections. Using Raystream, the same one hour 720p video can be compressed up to 90% of its original file size, which makes it easily streamable over connection speeds ranging from 0.4 to 1.0 Mbs per second." ... "Raystream compresses online videos, reducing their file size by up to 90%, with no loss in video quality or clarity."

That's not possible unless Raystream developed H.264. Apple uses H.264 for their encoding too. The magic is just H.264.

mikeryan• 15 years ago

they seem to be pretty active for being supposedly fake. Check their twitter feed. They tweet as much if not more than most video companies and it's not fluff.

A good pump and dump scam requires a believable company presence. You just fell for the smoke screen.

muzz• 15 years ago

They seem to have some PR "help" too. For example, this story from "Bedford Research" made the wires and at first glance seems to imply, falsely, that Raystream and Level 3 worked together: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Breakthrough-Technology-From-i...

sfdfadds• 15 years ago

You underestimate the power of BS. I worked for a company that raised capital hand over fist and sucked in companies like nobody's business. We could have been doing nothing or been awesome as hell, but it didn't matter- it was all about the slick CEO selling his wares. And in the end, the company still exists even after seemingly burning up in a significant blaze of glory. Money is more important than technology. Unfortunately, many here don't realize that yet.

jcromartie3• 15 years ago

Here's a comparison of Raystream's "own" encoding side-by-side with their "uncompressed" video after being run through Handbrake with default H.264 settings.

http://imgur.com/a/uQsiU

See if you can guess which is which.

nikcub• 15 years ago

He could be a short-seller trying to get the stock to tank. This is what is interesting about small-cap public companies, you never know who is telling the truth (since there are so many forces at play from longs, shorts etc.) until you check it out yourself (or somebody you know/trust).

Edit: after checking it out I am 95% certain that this is a fraud. shame there is no stock to short :( (even though it is +6% today)

xsmasher• 15 years ago

That page ends on a cliffhanger - does the hoax.avi look as good as the ray_480p.mp4 or not? How does the framerate compare?

Geee• 15 years ago

Technically, they could be using pre-compression schemes / filters which modify the source to be more compressible by standard encoders. However, if that was the case, both files should appear to be encoded with the same settings to be a fair comparison.

malloc• 15 years ago

http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_i... should provide enough info about this.

lukejduncan• 15 years ago

FWIW

Registrar ID: CORE-123 (Klute-Thiemann Informationstechnologie GmbH & Co.KG)

Created On: 2005-06-16 19:22:24 GMT

Last Updated On: 2011-09-15 12:17:38 GMT

Expiration Date: 2012-06-16 19:22:24 GMT

Status: member-lock

Registrant ID: COCO-10657700

Registrant Name: Roman Rumpf

Registrant Organization: Raystream Inc

Registrant Street: 2101 Midway Road, Suite 140

Registrant City: Carrollton

Registrant State/Province: Texas

Registrant Postal Code: 75006

Registrant Country: US

Registrant Phone:

Registrant Phone Ext:

Registrant Fax:

Registrant Fax Ext:

Registrant Email: roman@raystream.com

nyellin• 15 years ago

Look them up on Google News. Disgusting.

socialist_coder• 15 years ago

Step 1: take short position in company Step 2: publish site affirming company is a hoax Step 3: you know the drill

Not that I don't believe it's a hoax...

msie• 15 years ago

Why not buy the stock anyways and sell it right before it gets dumped?

tlrobinson• 15 years ago

How do you know when it's about to get dumped?

If you're confident it's a pump and dump and it will fall you could short it, of course.

splitrocket• 15 years ago

Raystream was a publicly traded company called InterDom Corp, which was purchased for 200k by Unlimited Trade Incorporated, operated by Ramon Rumpf renamed it Raystream.

http://reversemerger.dealflow.com/wires/article.cfm?id=xhtjs...

brandonhall2• 15 years ago

This stuff is so common it's scary. Just do a search for "penny stocks" and this junk will come right to the top. Sad story

gbhn• 15 years ago

I'm not making any representations as to Raystream particularly, but it is not true that you can't make fancy encoding algorithms that will then run on a standard codec in a phone. Video standards are decoding standards, and specify what steps the decoder needs to do to take compressed video data and uncompress it.

Of course, this company may be a pump-and-dump, but it is also true that some kind of super-clever encoding algorithm may exist that would be much better than existing encoders and still run fine on existing phone codecs. That is, the fact that they claim an algorithm produces correctly-formatted mpeg is not a disqualifying factor.

gavingmiller3• 15 years ago

I was involved on some contract work with effectively the same type of technology that Raystream is touting. We didn't hit the kind of compression ratios that Raystream are talking about, but we were able to compress video drastically while still maintaining video quality. That is, the technology is possible, and I've seen it with my own eyes. With that said, the company I was contracting to, could have easily spun the marketing to suggest we were getting 90% compression. To me, it looks like Raystream are making a lot of claims that are half-truths.

Looking at the uncompressed vs Raystream videos, it's difficult to tell if it's doing anything more than h264, x264, or neither. The conclusion being made by the OP may be true, it may not; likely they're exaggerating their marketing to look better than they truly are.

One of the marketing tricks they're using to make their technology look better than it is, is by not showing the videos side by side. Viewing them side by side, it's easy to see that Raystream's video lose quality in their color complexity, image sharpness, and some artifacting shows up if you know what to look for (I can do up some comparison images if anyone is interested.)

When we were testing our compression technology we would run our video through acid tests (difficult video to test the limits of the encoders.) We had a variety of acid tests, and depending upon encoder settings we could tweak each video to look good - however the problem was getting all of the acid test videos to look good at the same settings.

So while Raystream may be able to encode a promotional video that has very low complexity scenes, that doesn't mean this tech is any good at high complexity scenes. In fact, most of the scenes in the promo video our encoders would have had no trouble doing. Things like sports, live concerts, trees, or complex water (the surfer wasn't nearly complex enough, and the original quality of the humming bird wasn't good enough to produce a noticeable difference) were what we used to test our encoders.

I also notice they've got a "Live Streaming" section on their site. On demand content is easy to do, relative to live streaming. For on demand content you have no bounds like cpu, or ram, the biggest barrier is disk io and time to encode. Whereas live streaming is extremely complex. They claim they can do 1.7 Mbs live streaming; we were able to do 1.5 Mbs and less, but at that point the quality suffers significantly, and the video would infrequently go blocky for a frame or two. The only use case is for TVs that no one is going to get close to.

There comes a certain point with this type of technology where you can't stuff a 100 pieces of data, into a container that only holds 10 pieces of data. It doesn't matter how good your compression algorithm is.

stuinzuri2• 15 years ago

Well informed and well put on all points.

Side note: The example streams are progressive download. I pulled one down and had a look. It uses AAC for the audio codec. They are not listed on VIA's licening page. (http://www.vialicensing.com/licensing/aac-licensees.aspx) As a comercial company, they should be hip to this kind of stuff.

stuinzuri2• 15 years ago

Nor does it seem do they have an MPEG-LA license. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx

ascentofstan• 15 years ago

Revolutionary scrolling banner technology.

hackermom• 15 years ago

I don't think there's any hoax being played here, and I don't think they're fraudsters. I suspect someone simply discovered the various advanced settings of x264 and found out that they can maintain good video quality at "lower-than-common" bitrates, mistaking it all for a flash of brilliance on their own part. Everyone knows that f.e. YouTube aren't really doing everything they can with whatever h.264 encoder they've been using.

Aissen• 15 years ago

In 2001, a guy wanted to sell a revolutionary codec: I2BP. He claimed it could transfer 25 images/s and audio in 2ko/s. In France, he got press coverage, and funding. Here is the write up, in french: http://www.transfert.net/a6836 Of course, he was a fraud.

A web video company that is most likely a hoax

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