Royalty-Free MPEG Video Proposals Announced 108
Posted
by
timothy
from the good-times-ahead-and-clear-sailing dept.
from the good-times-ahead-and-clear-sailing dept.
theweatherelectric writes "Rob Glidden notes on his blog that MPEG has recently 'announced it has received proposals for a royalty-free MPEG standard and has settled on a deliberation process to consider them.' There are two tracks toward royalty-free video currently under consideration by MPEG. The first track is IVC, a new standard 'based on MPEG-1 technology which is believed a safe royalty-free baseline that can be enhanced by additional unencumbered technology described in MPEG-2, JPEG, research publications and innovative technologies which are promised to be subject to royalty-free licenses.' The second proposed track is WebVC, an attempt to get the constrained baseline profile of H.264 licensed under royalty-free terms. Rob Glidden offers an analysis of both proposals. Also of interest is Rob's short history of why royalty-free H.264 failed last time."
Re:Failed? (Score:5, Informative)
He's saying that the attempt to define a royalty-free "baseline" subset of h.264 was unsuccessful, not that h.264 itself failed.
Just use WebM for the web (Score:3, Informative)
WebM is already royalty-free, and it out-performs h.264. Where is the problem?
Support: here is a performance comparison of the latest iteration of the WebM encoder hardware, showing also previous versions and a h.264 encoder for comparison.
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/11/time-of-dragonflies.html
If WebM is better anyway, already royalty-free, and WebM/HTML5 is supported by more browsers than h264/HTML5, then why on earth shouldn't people just go ahead and use WebM.
Where is the issue?
Re:Just use WebM for the web (Score:5, Informative)
[quote]Support: here is a performance comparison of the latest iteration of the WebM encoder hardware, showing also previous versions and a h.264 encoder for comparison.
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/11/time-of-dragonflies.html%5B/quote%5D [webmproject.org]
I hope you realize that the comparison you linked to compares ENCODER quality between two decoders (H264 and WebM) made by the same company? It says nothing about the abilities of WebM as a codec.
Try this one instead:
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 [multimedia.cx]
Re:Failed? (Score:5, Informative)
On August 26, 2010 MPEG LA announced that H.264 encoded internet video that is free to end users will never be charged for royalties.[10] All other royalties will remain in place such as the royalties for products that decode and encode H.264 video.[11]
Re:Failed? (Score:4, Informative)
The Wikipedia article you quote says
So there is a cost to "play" or "show" H.264 encoded content.
Re:Or you can just... (Score:4, Informative)
In fact, there have been submarine patent attacks on h.264 in the past, whereas WebM hasn't encountered any yet.
Yes, this is needed (Score:5, Informative)
From the point of view of technological progress, proposing the use of 20-year old technology is shameful, but it really is the only solution. (until software patents get abolished)
This was also suggested by Nokia during the html5 standard discussion of the video tag:
http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Use_software_and_functionality_from_20_years_ago [swpat.org]
And remember, this problem is caused not by trolls but by the MPEG-LA signatories: Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Télécom, Fujitsu, LG Electronics, Matsushita (Panasonic), Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia, Philips, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC).
Re:Or you can just... (Score:4, Informative)
At least with H.264 I can be certain that my business isn't going to be taken to court one day and I lose it all.
No you can't. They do *not* protect you from 3rd party patents that and it explicit states in the license agreement that its between you and the 3rd party, not them. MPEG-LA offer *zero* immunity or guarantees. In fact guess how many 3rd parties have come forward with claims on MPEG-LA licensed codecs? Now guess with either Theora or VP8?
It does not matter what you do, you are not safe from patent trolls. Paying one of em does nothing to remove the rest.
Re:MPEG or MPEG-LA? (Score:4, Informative)
MPEG has been around for a long time, they're the ones responsible for creating the actual IP. MPEG-LA is the patent trolls that have managed to cobble together a number of questionable patents to make people pay for h.264.