5 ms·

And now the VP* series of codecs are soon to be gone and replaced by VC1.

niftich 10y ago
I think you mean AV1 from the Alliance for Open Media, instead of VC1, standardized by the SMPTE and designed by Microsoft.
- mtgx 10y ago
  Designed by Microsoft?! Where did that come from? I know Microsoft is also a member of the AOMedia but as far as I know Google, Mozilla, and Cisco made the biggest contributions with their VP10, Daala, and Thor codecs. Also, isn't AV1 mostly VP10? Are you confusing it with AVI? (by the way, one of the reasons why the AV1 name is stupid - Daala or Thor would work much better. Or even VP10 as a continuation of VP9, which has already gained significant support).
  - clouddrover 10y ago
    > Designed by Microsoft?! VC-1 was designed by Microsoft. Microsoft originally tried to license it under royalty-free terms but was thwarted by various patent holders who formed a patent licensing pool to charge fees for VC-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1 http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/VC1/Pages/Intro.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/VC1/Pages/Intro.aspx
    - clouddrover 10y ago
      And for some historical context for Microsoft's position on codecs in HTML5 video, see these posts on the IE blog by Dean Hachamovitch from 2010 and 2011: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/04/29/html5-video/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/04/29/html5-video/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-video-questions-for-the-industry-from-the-community/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/02/02/html5-and-web... I don't think Microsoft's approach with HTML5 video codec licensing can be faulted. You really do have to be careful about the licensing issues and it's more complicated than in an ideal world it should be. Today Microsoft Edge supports VP9 video (by default only when hardware acceleration is available). Hopefully AV1 can establish itself without any serious patent licensing problems and the complicated licensing around web video will be a thing of the past.
  - gcp 10y ago
    You are confusing AV1 with VC1. Re-read the post you're replying to.
    - mtgx 10y ago
      I think the guy I replied to confused the codecs first. AV1 is the codec being developed by AOMedia, not VC-1. VC-1 doesn't fit into the story here, so I don't know where that came from.
      - niftich 10y ago
        VC-1 comes from the earliest ancestor post, which first confused the two.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
- Klathmon 10y ago
  Speaking of AV1, how realistic is it that they will be able to get a codec out without any patent issues? I can't see any of the entrenched players going out easily, how likely is an oracle-like attack and years of litigation over a few lines of code here? (I absolutely hate that this is something I'm worried about)
  - gribbly 10y ago
    That would likely be the only potential obstacle for AV1 when it comes to becoming the 'de facto' standard video codec. The video encoding patents are many, and of course written to be as broad as possible. That said, AV1 will be built on VP10, which is the last of the VPX series of codecs, which in turn have been royalty free for their entire existence (VP7-VP10), to this we can add h264 functionality which are covered by Cisco patents (a core member of AOM) and some features from Daala which are considered non-patented. Hopefully the AOM consortium has done their due diligence, and thus will be able to effectively fight patent litigation threats which will most likely occur, what speaks in favour of this are the impressive lineup of AOM, with Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, Amazon, Intel, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, etc, many of which own patents related to video encoding, as well as a very strong motivation to rid themselves of video royalties once and for all, both regarding distribution and hardware implementation. >(I absolutely hate that this is something I'm worried about) You and me both. We have great royalty free audio codecs (FLAC, OPUS), good enough royalty free image codec (JPEG, could potentially be replaced by a superior royalty free codec based upon AV1), it would be great if we could have the same for video as well.
yrro 10y ago
Assuming you mean AV1 instead of VC-1: will my new graphics card (AMD RX 480) be able to accelerate AV1 decoding with a software update, or am I cursed to always be stuck with software when decoding the latest video codec? :)
- clouddrover 10y ago
  AMD is a member of the Alliance for Open Media (http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/) so it's possible they'll add AV1 acceleration in a driver update. VP9 acceleration was added with a driver update. But even if they don't, software decoding will work fine. A couple of days ago I tried out 1080p VP9 YouTube videos in Firefox on a 10 year old Windows XP desktop system and the playback was fine. That system might struggle with 4k resolution video but I didn't try it (the system wasn't connected to a 4k display anyway).
  - markdog12 10y ago
    Note that even if you don't have a 4k display, a 4k video will still play and look much better (if your system can keep up). I always play 4k videos on my 1080p display.
tornadoboy55 10y ago
Which is why H265 will again become the dominant codec despite it being so heavily licensed. Hardware acceleration can't be built-in if the standards are a moving target. And you do need hardware acceleration. Since YouTube started serving VP9 instead of H264, its become a huge, huge battery hog (h264ify fixes this, but switching to VP9 is extremely user-hostile by Google). Same goes for pretty much all platforms running on battery: if you can't accelerate it, its dead. And since these days mobile (laptops/smartphones) is all that counts.. yeah.

I think you mean AV1 from the Alliance for Open Media, instead of VC1, standardized by the SMPTE and designed by Microsoft.

mtgx 10y ago
Designed by Microsoft?! Where did that come from? I know Microsoft is also a member of the AOMedia but as far as I know Google, Mozilla, and Cisco made the biggest contributions with their VP10, Daala, and Thor codecs. Also, isn't AV1 mostly VP10? Are you confusing it with AVI? (by the way, one of the reasons why the AV1 name is stupid - Daala or Thor would work much better. Or even VP10 as a continuation of VP9, which has already gained significant support).
- clouddrover 10y ago
  > Designed by Microsoft?! VC-1 was designed by Microsoft. Microsoft originally tried to license it under royalty-free terms but was thwarted by various patent holders who formed a patent licensing pool to charge fees for VC-1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1 http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/VC1/Pages/Intro.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/VC1/Pages/Intro.aspx
  - clouddrover 10y ago
    And for some historical context for Microsoft's position on codecs in HTML5 video, see these posts on the IE blog by Dean Hachamovitch from 2010 and 2011: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/04/29/html5-video/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/04/29/html5-video/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-... https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/02/02/html5-and-web-video-questions-for-the-industry-from-the-community/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ie/2011/02/02/html5-and-web... I don't think Microsoft's approach with HTML5 video codec licensing can be faulted. You really do have to be careful about the licensing issues and it's more complicated than in an ideal world it should be. Today Microsoft Edge supports VP9 video (by default only when hardware acceleration is available). Hopefully AV1 can establish itself without any serious patent licensing problems and the complicated licensing around web video will be a thing of the past.
- gcp 10y ago
  You are confusing AV1 with VC1. Re-read the post you're replying to.
  - mtgx 10y ago
    I think the guy I replied to confused the codecs first. AV1 is the codec being developed by AOMedia, not VC-1. VC-1 doesn't fit into the story here, so I don't know where that came from.
    - niftich 10y ago
      VC-1 comes from the earliest ancestor post, which first confused the two.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
Klathmon 10y ago
Speaking of AV1, how realistic is it that they will be able to get a codec out without any patent issues? I can't see any of the entrenched players going out easily, how likely is an oracle-like attack and years of litigation over a few lines of code here? (I absolutely hate that this is something I'm worried about)
- gribbly 10y ago
  That would likely be the only potential obstacle for AV1 when it comes to becoming the 'de facto' standard video codec. The video encoding patents are many, and of course written to be as broad as possible. That said, AV1 will be built on VP10, which is the last of the VPX series of codecs, which in turn have been royalty free for their entire existence (VP7-VP10), to this we can add h264 functionality which are covered by Cisco patents (a core member of AOM) and some features from Daala which are considered non-patented. Hopefully the AOM consortium has done their due diligence, and thus will be able to effectively fight patent litigation threats which will most likely occur, what speaks in favour of this are the impressive lineup of AOM, with Google, Microsoft, Cisco, Netflix, Amazon, Intel, AMD, ARM, Broadcom, etc, many of which own patents related to video encoding, as well as a very strong motivation to rid themselves of video royalties once and for all, both regarding distribution and hardware implementation. >(I absolutely hate that this is something I'm worried about) You and me both. We have great royalty free audio codecs (FLAC, OPUS), good enough royalty free image codec (JPEG, could potentially be replaced by a superior royalty free codec based upon AV1), it would be great if we could have the same for video as well.

yrro 10y ago

Assuming you mean AV1 instead of VC-1: will my new graphics card (AMD RX 480) be able to accelerate AV1 decoding with a software update, or am I cursed to always be stuck with software when decoding the latest video codec? :)

clouddrover 10y ago
AMD is a member of the Alliance for Open Media (http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/) so it's possible they'll add AV1 acceleration in a driver update. VP9 acceleration was added with a driver update. But even if they don't, software decoding will work fine. A couple of days ago I tried out 1080p VP9 YouTube videos in Firefox on a 10 year old Windows XP desktop system and the playback was fine. That system might struggle with 4k resolution video but I didn't try it (the system wasn't connected to a 4k display anyway).
- markdog12 10y ago
  Note that even if you don't have a 4k display, a 4k video will still play and look much better (if your system can keep up). I always play 4k videos on my 1080p display.

tornadoboy55 10y ago

Which is why H265 will again become the dominant codec despite it being so heavily licensed. Hardware acceleration can't be built-in if the standards are a moving target. And you do need hardware acceleration. Since YouTube started serving VP9 instead of H264, its become a huge, huge battery hog (h264ify fixes this, but switching to VP9 is extremely user-hostile by Google). Same goes for pretty much all platforms running on battery: if you can't accelerate it, its dead. And since these days mobile (laptops/smartphones) is all that counts.. yeah.