4 ms·

If you read the license for VP8, it specifies that you get a royalty-free patent license for anything Google owns or has the right to license to you free of cha

by mdasen 16y ago

If you read the license for VP8, it specifies that you get a royalty-free patent license for anything Google owns or has the right to license to you free of charge for any of the technologies that VP8 uses. However, that license is instantly revoked if you take any action against a VP8 user. I'm guessing that On2 might have a patent library to potentially defend against MPEG-LA. I'm guessing that Google had highly qualified patent attorneys go over VP8 before buying On2 (and Google's Mike Jazayeri says, "We have done a pretty thorough analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies prior to the acquisition"). VP8 is a huge threat to H.264. Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, and Opera have instantly committed to it for HTML5 video. If MPEG-LA fails against it, Apple will likely come on board as well since it's an open technology (vs. Flash which is closed) and the fact that chip makers look like they'll implement it (Broadcomm has already committed for its mobile chips). So, MPEG-LA is clearly going to fight against it. Theora was more of a curiosity (no offense intended)* - an older video codec (based on VP3, IIRC) that didn't have the support of major companies or chipset makers. VP8 is being pushed hard by heavyweights. Google is not indemnifying users of VP8, but they're going to defend it. I'm sure Google has a decent patent library that they'd be more than happy to use to strike against not just MPEG-LA, but also its constituent members. It's important to remember that a corporation is made up of shareholders. If Google has a patent that many shareholders infringe on, they can strike at those shareholders to get them to pressure MPEG-LA not to go after VP8. Shareholders ultimately control companies including MPEG-LA. I'm sure Google could make life more difficult for those shareholders. *The Theora developers have done an awesome job, but they're working from a base specification that's, well, old.

IgorPartola 16y ago
I think the more important thing is that nobody is supporting Theora. If the difference is "expensive, but takes 10% less storage once encoded" vs "free, but needs more storage", I think the choice is obvious. The bigger problem is that at this moment there is almost no device or browser I can play a Theora video on.
Mgreen 16y ago
-vs. Flash which is closed. Flash Player is not completely open sourced, because of H264( the patent pool of which, Apple is part of). Adobe pays the licensing fee for using H264 . Adobe has released enough code and specification to let anyone build a flash playing software. Completely open sourcing Flash Player wont be possible unless H264 is open and patent free. So if Apple really wants, they can build their own Flash Player without Adobe's approval. src: http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail.html http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail...
- tvon 16y ago
  So we can all safely assume that since Adobe has pledged support for VP8, there will be an OSS Flash player released soon?
  - Mgreen 16y ago
    Pledging support for VP8 doesnt mean they will stop supporting H 264. Will be a disastrous business move to do so with the current market penetration H264 has.
    - deleted 16y ago
      [deleted]
    - tvon 16y ago
      So include H264 in the standard binary release but provide the rest of the code as OSS.
- stcredzero 16y ago
  That's very interesting. What about a VP8 based Flash?
  - Mgreen 16y ago
    Adobe supports several video codecs in the player (including VP6). Because of the kind of reach H264 already has,I dont think Adobe will ever ditch H 264 for VP8(if that is what you mean by 'VP8 based Flash'). They already support VP6, and as you might have already heard, will support VP8 in the future.
bradleyland 16y ago
Until there are a large number of inexpensive VP8 hardware decoders in the market and deployed in devices, H.264 isn't going anywhere. The large number of H.264 decoders in the wild is akin to the large Flash player install base. The key difference is that you can't simply download a hardware VP8 chip.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Of course all those hardware devices only support H.264 baseline profile, which according to the x264 developer isn't as good a spec as the WebM one. Backwards compatibility cuts both ways. Which means you ethier double your encoding and storage costs or send the same, lower quality file to everyone. This must be what Steve Jobs means by holding back the platform. (And you can indeed "download a hardware VP8 chip" if you happen to have a Nokia N900, Palm Pre or Motorola Droid and want better quality video since they have a general purpose OMAP3 setup to do exactly this kind of thing, as already shown by Theora DSP work. And OMAP4 has already been announced by TI to have WebM built in so maybe TI themselves will do the work necessary.)
  - kierank 16y ago
    Of course all those hardware devices only support H.264 baseline profile No, a very large proportion of them support High Profile. It was only the very early mobile phones and iPods that used Baseline chipsets. Nowadays H.264 support is almost always H.264 High in hardware devices.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      Are we talking devices in people's pockets, or devices being sold right now? Because the former must overwhelmingly be baseline (just iPods and iPhones alone ensure that, and even the recently released iPad only does Main, not High Profile so it would be a surprise to see the upcoming iPhone 4G leapfrog it and totally fragment the platform), the latter will soon have WebM support and there will be a transition point in between. (btw on the OMAP3 in existing devices supporting WebM, the TI rep answered someone's question on their blog with: We are working at the moment on supporting VP8 across all our OMAP products and we will contact you directly with a schedule for your products based on OMAP3.)
akavlie 16y ago
Well, I wouldn't say Microsoft has committed to it. All the commitment they've given is that it will work in IE if it's installed on your machine -- just like any other external plugin. As for Apple, I'd be really surprised if they embrace it any time soon.
- devinj 16y ago
  Not any-- only whitelisted codecs work with the <video> element from what I understand. Sure, QuickTime (or whatever) can play it, but that's a different story.
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
I wouldn't be too confident about Apple getting on board. They can easily treat it in the same way they've treated other free, popular, better than the proprietary alternative codecs like FLAC and Vorbis and simply ignore it in the hope that it'll go away. They'll be under some amount of pressure as people will be able to view WebM in Safari via Flash which will make their browser a second class citizen compared with Chrome, Firefox and Opera. (A quicktime plugin will be released in a few weeks that will enable HTML5 in Safari as you currently can for Theora but Flash will probably quickly overtake it for installed base once it gets WebM support). Hey, I've just realised that Macs come with Flash pre-installed, which curretly includes VP6 and soon will include VP8. Wonder what Steve thinks about that?
- mdasen 16y ago
  I don't know why people are down-voting you. I shouldn't be that confident. Steve Jobs did reply to someone asking him about VP8 and Jobs just linked to the x264 author's post about VP8 (http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/21/jobs-responds-to-googles-webm-video-standard-announcement-as-patent-questions-begin-to-surface/ http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/21/jobs-responds-to-googles...). However, I think this situation might be different. MP3 and AAC had better hardware decoding support than Vorbis. That affects Apple a lot. Theora (to my knowledge) doesn't have chipsets made for it. On a mobile device, you kinda need hardware decoding for both processing time and battery life. With Google's weight behind VP8 and Vorbis, Broadcomm has committed to implementing it in their chips. Qualcomm is also on board with WebM. So, that might assuage Apple's concerns. In terms of patents (which is one way Apple argued against Theora): I think this situation might be different as well. First, it looks like it'll be implemented by a large number of rich companies quickly (Google, Qualcomm, AMD, Broadcom. . .). When people pushed Apple for Theora support, who was implementing it? Who has implemented it? Few. Having lots of rich companies in the same boat means more people to to defend against patent holders. And, to be fair to Apple, I don't really know of mobile devices that have implemented Theora. It's nice to have someone else go first and prove that it can be done. I mean, from what I know, Android doesn't support Theora. Anyway, with the weight and excitement, we're likely to see patents come to light, if any, sooner rather than later. Plus, Google wisely put a clause in the license saying that you lose rights to their patents if you take action against anyone using WebM. If there's enough weight behind WebM, it's going to be hard for people to pass up access to those patents. If WebM becomes web video, you're not going to want to sue a WebM user and then potentially be permanently banned from playing in the web video game. Think about it: 5 years down the line Qualcomm, Broadcom, and other chipset makers decide they can save a lot of money implementing WebM rather than MP3/AAC/H.264. Most web video has gone WebM. It's what people support. Then someone comes along with a patent. They're not going to want to be excluded from being able to push video to the millions of devices out there that are WebM devices. But yes, I shouldn't be so confident. I think I've made my case that Apple is more likely to support this than previous free stuff, but you make a good point.

by mdasen 16y ago

IgorPartola 16y ago

I think the more important thing is that nobody is supporting Theora. If the difference is "expensive, but takes 10% less storage once encoded" vs "free, but needs more storage", I think the choice is obvious. The bigger problem is that at this moment there is almost no device or browser I can play a Theora video on.

Mgreen 16y ago

-vs. Flash which is closed. Flash Player is not completely open sourced, because of H264( the patent pool of which, Apple is part of). Adobe pays the licensing fee for using H264 . Adobe has released enough code and specification to let anyone build a flash playing software. Completely open sourcing Flash Player wont be possible unless H264 is open and patent free. So if Apple really wants, they can build their own Flash Player without Adobe's approval. src: http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail.html http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2010/02/following_the_open_trail...

tvon 16y ago
So we can all safely assume that since Adobe has pledged support for VP8, there will be an OSS Flash player released soon?
- Mgreen 16y ago
  Pledging support for VP8 doesnt mean they will stop supporting H 264. Will be a disastrous business move to do so with the current market penetration H264 has.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - tvon 16y ago
    So include H264 in the standard binary release but provide the rest of the code as OSS.
stcredzero 16y ago
That's very interesting. What about a VP8 based Flash?
- Mgreen 16y ago
  Adobe supports several video codecs in the player (including VP6). Because of the kind of reach H264 already has,I dont think Adobe will ever ditch H 264 for VP8(if that is what you mean by 'VP8 based Flash'). They already support VP6, and as you might have already heard, will support VP8 in the future.

bradleyland 16y ago

Until there are a large number of inexpensive VP8 hardware decoders in the market and deployed in devices, H.264 isn't going anywhere. The large number of H.264 decoders in the wild is akin to the large Flash player install base. The key difference is that you can't simply download a hardware VP8 chip.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
Of course all those hardware devices only support H.264 baseline profile, which according to the x264 developer isn't as good a spec as the WebM one. Backwards compatibility cuts both ways. Which means you ethier double your encoding and storage costs or send the same, lower quality file to everyone. This must be what Steve Jobs means by holding back the platform. (And you can indeed "download a hardware VP8 chip" if you happen to have a Nokia N900, Palm Pre or Motorola Droid and want better quality video since they have a general purpose OMAP3 setup to do exactly this kind of thing, as already shown by Theora DSP work. And OMAP4 has already been announced by TI to have WebM built in so maybe TI themselves will do the work necessary.)
- kierank 16y ago
  Of course all those hardware devices only support H.264 baseline profile No, a very large proportion of them support High Profile. It was only the very early mobile phones and iPods that used Baseline chipsets. Nowadays H.264 support is almost always H.264 High in hardware devices.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Are we talking devices in people's pockets, or devices being sold right now? Because the former must overwhelmingly be baseline (just iPods and iPhones alone ensure that, and even the recently released iPad only does Main, not High Profile so it would be a surprise to see the upcoming iPhone 4G leapfrog it and totally fragment the platform), the latter will soon have WebM support and there will be a transition point in between. (btw on the OMAP3 in existing devices supporting WebM, the TI rep answered someone's question on their blog with: We are working at the moment on supporting VP8 across all our OMAP products and we will contact you directly with a schedule for your products based on OMAP3.)

akavlie 16y ago

Well, I wouldn't say Microsoft has committed to it. All the commitment they've given is that it will work in IE if it's installed on your machine -- just like any other external plugin. As for Apple, I'd be really surprised if they embrace it any time soon.

devinj 16y ago
Not any-- only whitelisted codecs work with the <video> element from what I understand. Sure, QuickTime (or whatever) can play it, but that's a different story.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

I wouldn't be too confident about Apple getting on board. They can easily treat it in the same way they've treated other free, popular, better than the proprietary alternative codecs like FLAC and Vorbis and simply ignore it in the hope that it'll go away. They'll be under some amount of pressure as people will be able to view WebM in Safari via Flash which will make their browser a second class citizen compared with Chrome, Firefox and Opera. (A quicktime plugin will be released in a few weeks that will enable HTML5 in Safari as you currently can for Theora but Flash will probably quickly overtake it for installed base once it gets WebM support). Hey, I've just realised that Macs come with Flash pre-installed, which curretly includes VP6 and soon will include VP8. Wonder what Steve thinks about that?

mdasen 16y ago
I don't know why people are down-voting you. I shouldn't be that confident. Steve Jobs did reply to someone asking him about VP8 and Jobs just linked to the x264 author's post about VP8 (http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/21/jobs-responds-to-googles-webm-video-standard-announcement-as-patent-questions-begin-to-surface/ http://www.macrumors.com/2010/05/21/jobs-responds-to-googles...). However, I think this situation might be different. MP3 and AAC had better hardware decoding support than Vorbis. That affects Apple a lot. Theora (to my knowledge) doesn't have chipsets made for it. On a mobile device, you kinda need hardware decoding for both processing time and battery life. With Google's weight behind VP8 and Vorbis, Broadcomm has committed to implementing it in their chips. Qualcomm is also on board with WebM. So, that might assuage Apple's concerns. In terms of patents (which is one way Apple argued against Theora): I think this situation might be different as well. First, it looks like it'll be implemented by a large number of rich companies quickly (Google, Qualcomm, AMD, Broadcom. . .). When people pushed Apple for Theora support, who was implementing it? Who has implemented it? Few. Having lots of rich companies in the same boat means more people to to defend against patent holders. And, to be fair to Apple, I don't really know of mobile devices that have implemented Theora. It's nice to have someone else go first and prove that it can be done. I mean, from what I know, Android doesn't support Theora. Anyway, with the weight and excitement, we're likely to see patents come to light, if any, sooner rather than later. Plus, Google wisely put a clause in the license saying that you lose rights to their patents if you take action against anyone using WebM. If there's enough weight behind WebM, it's going to be hard for people to pass up access to those patents. If WebM becomes web video, you're not going to want to sue a WebM user and then potentially be permanently banned from playing in the web video game. Think about it: 5 years down the line Qualcomm, Broadcom, and other chipset makers decide they can save a lot of money implementing WebM rather than MP3/AAC/H.264. Most web video has gone WebM. It's what people support. Then someone comes along with a patent. They're not going to want to be excluded from being able to push video to the millions of devices out there that are WebM devices. But yes, I shouldn't be so confident. I think I've made my case that Apple is more likely to support this than previous free stuff, but you make a good point.