4 ms·

So, then can you enlighten us a bite more? Personally i have read pretty much every kind of "myth" about mpeg licensing. One blog post i remember was "according

by buster 17y ago

So, then can you enlighten us a bite more? Personally i have read pretty much every kind of "myth" about mpeg licensing. One blog post i remember was "according to their terms you (theoretically) would have to pay when a friend sends a video with copyrighted material to you" which more or less sounds like "wherever there is mpeg video they have the right to demand fees" (because even your holiday movie may contain a copyrighted soundtrack). According to http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties-what-you-need-to-know.html http://www.streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalti... there are "royalties for pay-per-view or subscription video". And this is just what is happening in the internet all over the place. Firefox can't even know if you look a "free" broadcast or just paid for an online stream, so they just have to pay to support this codec? And in the end, it's not at last the uncertainty about the codec. MPEG-LA could just have said "Alright guys, browsers are free of charge, go ahead with HTML5, we'd like to see our codec in HTML5". Afaik, they didn't. Because there probably is quite a good amount of money to be earned from fees. Screw that H.264 stuff, support theora or dirac and problems are solved.

ubernostrum 17y ago
Well, you'll notice I was talking about the point of view of a browser vendor, because H.264 licensing is irrelevant to that use case: the right thing to do is delegate to the operating system's media framework, and let codec support and licensing be the OS vendor's problem. But since you mention it: MPEG-LA could just have said "Alright guys, browsers are free of charge, go ahead with HTML5, we'd like to see our codec in HTML5". Afaik, they didn't. Personally I'm against having HTML5 specify any codec of any sort. HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 are each over ten years old now, and HTML5 won't be broadly usable as a replacement for at least another year or two; given the rate of development in video codecs, mandating one in a spec with that sort of expected lifespan would simply be stupid. But it's worth pointing out that MPEG-LA is currently exempting H.264-encoded online video from royalties (so long as it's provided free of charge to users -- hence YouTube and other video sites don't have to pay every time a video is played), and will continue to do so until at least 2015 (by which point the whole question of software patents may be moot), so rushing to draw lines in the sand now is -- as I already said -- rather premature.
- buster 17y ago
  Last time i checked there a lot of video services out there with subscription/premium service. Vimeo has premium subscription. Ok, so you don't want to specify the codec. Technically a good reason. But think about it, what will happen then? MS will support wmv by default, Apple will support Quicktime by default, Mozilla theora. This is a freaking nightmare for every enduser! Now on a desktop you can probably tell the user to install the correct decoder (my family/mother/older people certainly would never be able to do that!). But on a phone? So Windows Mobile 7 will ship with "hardcoded" wmv support? iPhone with quicktime? As i told you, this is not technical, it's political. Now i don't know you, but when you have ever worked in a bigger revenue driven software company every f*cking decision is first made by money. It doesnt matter if something is technically the best solution as long as another solution provides a "benefit" in terms of money, marketshare, whatever the manager thinks will drive the competition away. MS in particular has proven to be driven by such decisions in the past, why would they change now?
  - ubernostrum 17y ago
    Last time i checked there a lot of video services out there with subscription/premium service. Vimeo doesn't charge to watch videos, so far as I know, and that's what triggers the licensing exemption. But think about it, what will happen then? MS will support wmv by default, Apple will support Quicktime by default, Mozilla theora. If HTML5 were to mandate Theora support, that part of the spec would simply be ignored by browser vendors who don't want to support Theora. Thus the mandate or lack of mandate in the spec produces no practical difference whatsoever in the end result: Apple's browsers would do H.264, Mozilla's browsers would do Theora, etc., etc. But on a phone? Again, it seems unlikely that anyone other than Mozilla will bother with Theora on mobile devices. Apple and Nokia have already taken pretty clear stances against supporting Theora, for example, so what good would it do to put a mandate in the spec? It'll just be ignored. As i told you, this is not technical, it's political. You seem to have a misunderstanding of how web standards actually work; without buy-in from the companies which will implement them, the standards might as well not exist at all. That's why HTML5 currently doesn't mandate a video codec; originally it required Theora support, but several major players basically said "if you leave that in there we're just going to ignore it". Since this is a recurring problem with what you seem to be saying, what's your solution? Any approach to video codecs must take into account the fact that browser vendors can't be forced to ship an implementation of any particular codec, and will make their own decisions independently of what you might like them to do. As far as I can see right now, delegating to the operating system's media framework is the only way to get the sort of broad support that's needed, since those frameworks have to ship with a wide range of codecs already. (and, honestly, the manual codec install really only turns out to be an issue with Theora; Windows and OS X both ship pretty much everything else out of the box)

by buster 17y ago

ubernostrum 17y ago

Well, you'll notice I was talking about the point of view of a browser vendor, because H.264 licensing is irrelevant to that use case: the right thing to do is delegate to the operating system's media framework, and let codec support and licensing be the OS vendor's problem. But since you mention it: MPEG-LA could just have said "Alright guys, browsers are free of charge, go ahead with HTML5, we'd like to see our codec in HTML5". Afaik, they didn't. Personally I'm against having HTML5 specify any codec of any sort. HTML 4 and XHTML 1.0 are each over ten years old now, and HTML5 won't be broadly usable as a replacement for at least another year or two; given the rate of development in video codecs, mandating one in a spec with that sort of expected lifespan would simply be stupid. But it's worth pointing out that MPEG-LA is currently exempting H.264-encoded online video from royalties (so long as it's provided free of charge to users -- hence YouTube and other video sites don't have to pay every time a video is played), and will continue to do so until at least 2015 (by which point the whole question of software patents may be moot), so rushing to draw lines in the sand now is -- as I already said -- rather premature.

buster 17y ago
Last time i checked there a lot of video services out there with subscription/premium service. Vimeo has premium subscription. Ok, so you don't want to specify the codec. Technically a good reason. But think about it, what will happen then? MS will support wmv by default, Apple will support Quicktime by default, Mozilla theora. This is a freaking nightmare for every enduser! Now on a desktop you can probably tell the user to install the correct decoder (my family/mother/older people certainly would never be able to do that!). But on a phone? So Windows Mobile 7 will ship with "hardcoded" wmv support? iPhone with quicktime? As i told you, this is not technical, it's political. Now i don't know you, but when you have ever worked in a bigger revenue driven software company every f*cking decision is first made by money. It doesnt matter if something is technically the best solution as long as another solution provides a "benefit" in terms of money, marketshare, whatever the manager thinks will drive the competition away. MS in particular has proven to be driven by such decisions in the past, why would they change now?
- ubernostrum 17y ago
  Last time i checked there a lot of video services out there with subscription/premium service. Vimeo doesn't charge to watch videos, so far as I know, and that's what triggers the licensing exemption. But think about it, what will happen then? MS will support wmv by default, Apple will support Quicktime by default, Mozilla theora. If HTML5 were to mandate Theora support, that part of the spec would simply be ignored by browser vendors who don't want to support Theora. Thus the mandate or lack of mandate in the spec produces no practical difference whatsoever in the end result: Apple's browsers would do H.264, Mozilla's browsers would do Theora, etc., etc. But on a phone? Again, it seems unlikely that anyone other than Mozilla will bother with Theora on mobile devices. Apple and Nokia have already taken pretty clear stances against supporting Theora, for example, so what good would it do to put a mandate in the spec? It'll just be ignored. As i told you, this is not technical, it's political. You seem to have a misunderstanding of how web standards actually work; without buy-in from the companies which will implement them, the standards might as well not exist at all. That's why HTML5 currently doesn't mandate a video codec; originally it required Theora support, but several major players basically said "if you leave that in there we're just going to ignore it". Since this is a recurring problem with what you seem to be saying, what's your solution? Any approach to video codecs must take into account the fact that browser vendors can't be forced to ship an implementation of any particular codec, and will make their own decisions independently of what you might like them to do. As far as I can see right now, delegating to the operating system's media framework is the only way to get the sort of broad support that's needed, since those frameworks have to ship with a wide range of codecs already. (and, honestly, the manual codec install really only turns out to be an issue with Theora; Windows and OS X both ship pretty much everything else out of the box)