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The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won
- anilgulecha 9y agoThis is great - taking a whole industry out of IP/patent litigation. The patent-revoke clause for members is converse to the idea of virality in GPL.
- stupidcar 9y agoThis situation seemed almost hopeless 10 years ago. Very glad to see things have changed so much for the better.
- Joeboy 9y agoI wonder how much this is enabled just due to patents expiring. Patents (theoretically anyway) last 20 years, so you'd expect 10 years to see off a lot of them. I don't know so much about video, but in the end the solution to mp3 patent encumbrance was mostly to just wait for the patents to expire.
- phonon 9y agoAll the important MEPG-2 patents are gone, which is a big help.
- pmontra 9y agoHEVC is basically mandatory in new TV sets in Europe as part of the new DVB-T2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2 The new digital TV standard frees some frequencies for 5G. Most channels will broadcast with HEVC Main 10 (bits). There is also a Main 8 which will probably not be used for long and people should be careful about what they buy. At least we won't have HEVC on the Internet.
- Kalroth 9y agoUltra HD (4k) Blu-rays use HEVC as well, so we will definitely not get rid of that standard any time soon.
- StillBored 9y agoAre UHD disks going to be anymore than the modern version of laserdisk? It seems to me that even bluray is basically dead at this point. The younger generation isn't buying huge stacks of movies to fill out the 200 disk shelves they got for christmas, and the older generation frequently doesn't even have a bluray players. Random (couple year old) link about bluray vs dvd sales numbers. https://www.avforums.com/threads/dvd-and-blu-ray-sales-statistics.2004986/ https://www.avforums.com/threads/dvd-and-blu-ray-sales-stati...
- toast0 9y agoOptical disks are becoming more relevant for me as Netflix's catalog shrinks because content owners want to launch their own streaming. If I want to watch something today and in 6 months, I better buy it on disc, because who knows if it'll still be available later. Also, the minivan can play blu-rays, but streaming netflix on I-5 in central california doesn't seem likely to work.
- StillBored 9y agoWell, i'm in the same boat with respect to netfix and disks. But my usecase tends to be more along the lines of watching the movies on my tablet in the gym (which requires time shifting them if you will). That isn't possible with UHD blurays at the moment, and I've sworn off buying DRM encumbered products. Just one of my reasons is that exactly 100% of the HDDVD's I purchased that were warner brothers products have bitrotted (its apparently true of nearly all of them if you believe other peoples posting) despite the fact that the disks from other studios continue to play. Some people have gotten the disks replaced with blurays, but WB didn't even respond to requests I made. So, I won't buy DRM encumbered video products. I might rent them, but they can kiss off if the price is more than redbox or similar.
- krautsourced 9y agoAny word on the current state of encoding speeds? From what I remember of VP9, it was very, very slow in comparison to e.g. H.264/H.265.
- galad87 9y agoEncoding speed right now is: either you have a computer cluster or you'll die before the encoding is done. But it will probably get better.
- cesarb 9y agoIf they haven't tried optimizing encoding speed yet, how can they be sure there isn't some misfeature in the standard that will hinder high-speed encoding? Like IIRC with some old On2 codec, where the order of the tokens in the encoded stream was not ideal for an optimized implementation.
- ComputerGuru 9y agoThey don’t care. It’s Google, Netflix, and Amazon and their concern is recurring bandwidth, not onetime cpu costs. http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/AV1-A-Status-Update-120214.aspx http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Ar... "We will be satisfied with 20% efficiency improvement over HEVC when measured across a diverse set of content and would consider a 3-5x increase in computational complexity reasonable."
- xoa 9y agoI can see their point (and that of any other content provider) in that context, but I'm sure they do care. It would be fine even if it required a dedicated hardware encoding bloc, but lack of reasonable RT encoding (including low wattage) would create a significant technical impediment to full general adoption, so I can't believe that optimization hasn't been at least somewhat considered. There is of course still plenty of real time streaming that's important, though in those cases reduction in quality would often be an acceptable tradeoff. However, Apple and Google both have a quite reasonable and absolute need for real time (or a close enough cheat), high quality offline encoding on mobile systems within the physical constraints of a handheld form factor. End users will also want to (again, quite reasonably) be able to immediately share what they make without the need for a lengthy reencoding stage or trip through a middleman. So if there wasn't at least a timeline for 4k+ RT on iPhone or Android devices I can't see how HEVC wouldn't stick around for a very long time. That a live stream has already been demonstrated should mean that this has been considered and they do care though, and thus won't be a problem. Ideally of course at least the high end of current generation devices would be capable of AV1 recording through software updates, which would enable moving on much more rapidly from HEVC. For that at least though I think it'd be an acceptable tradeoff to have those become legacy if that's what it takes to get us into a patent-unencumbered future afterwards. A pity software patents couldn't have just been eliminated entirely but I guess that remains politically infeasible for now.
- clouddrover 9y agoIt's strange that the Alliance for Open Media hasn't put out a press release about Apple joining or added Apple's logo to the "about us" page: http://aomedia.org/press-releases/ http://aomedia.org/press-releases/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/ AOMedia seemed to do that quite quickly when Facebook joined. Maybe Apple asked them not to, but I don't see why Apple would.
- apayan 9y agoI found this odd too, so I was skeptical of the claim, but I found this sentence on the home page[1] that mentions Apple as a founding member: > Founding members are Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and NVIDIA. A similar sentence exists on AOM's about page[2]. [1]: http://aomedia.org/ http://aomedia.org/ [2]: http://aomedia.org/about-us/ http://aomedia.org/about-us/
- roca 9y agoIt's also been widely reported in tech news and Apple has not denied it.
- kingosticks 9y agoThis might be a bit off-topic but what is Cisco's interest here?
- ZeroGravitas 9y agoVideo conferencing. The Thor codec tech they contributed is all about focusing on that use case, real-time encoding etc. They also previously contributed the h.264 plugin to Mozilla (they already pay the capped royalty amount so it's effectively free for them) to ensure their hardware components would be able to interoperate with popular browsers using WebRTC.
- shmerl 9y agoAh, that's unexpected. Apple decided to do a good thing for a change? Better late than never. May be it's an indicator of general attitude change towards free codecs, and they'll now support Opus in the browser too (in OGG container). That would remove the last barrier for avoiding pointless audio storage duplication (same for video obviously).
- phkahler 9y agoDid they finalize AV1 by the end of the year like they said would happen? I haven't seen a performance comparison in a long time either, but it was looking good last I checked.
- legulere 9y agoThe Wikipedia article says January 2018: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1
- vinceguidry 9y agoIf I can't buy it from the iTunes store, then the fight isn't won. Once archival started becoming important to me, I've been setting about building workflows and acquiring hardware. I'm curious to see just how much of my collection will be pirated because the content industry can't be arsed to sell me a useful digital copy.
- TheCoelacanth 9y agoFor archival use, isn't buying video from iTunes already a non-option because of DRM?
- vinceguidry 9y agoWell, yeah, that's why I would be pirating. All my music is currently in various formats, as they were bought from various outlets, my process would involve acquiring new files that don't have any restrictions on playback, hopefully all close to the same quality and bitrate. As I'm certainly not going to repurchase it all in CD form and rip them, which is currently how the labels seem to think is the only way you should be allowed to keep such an archive, I'm just going to pirate it.
- DanBC 9y ago> I'm certainly not going to repurchase it all in CD form and rip them, which is currently how the labels seem to think is the only way you should be allowed to keep such an archive In the UK the labels faught to keep this illegal. Currently, it's not lawful to rip a CD you bought and own. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-quashes-regulations-copy-cds-musicians https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-q...
- rayiner 9y agoIs this model better? When a company develops technology with the purpose of selling the technology, it’s incentives are predictable. But what are the incentives where technology is bankrolled by companies that don’t make money from the technology, but through something else they sell? Facebook is funding these codecs because it helps their business of data mining your personal information. How is that a better state of affairs? There is no free lunch. At least when the cost of a patent license gets bundled into your Blu-Ray player, you know what you’re paying.
- thefounder 9y agoWell, having to buy a new player every year just because the codecs change is not really great so I believe open codecs are better than proprietary ones. Even worse you can't buy a license to play the content on the device of your choice(i.e your PC). I hope Dolby will get the same medicine.
- ko27 9y agoYou can basically apply your logic to every single patent free item in the human history.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- shmerl 9y agoIt is better because shared resources are going into improving the technology, instead of lining the pockets of parasitic patent trolls. It should be obvious. TL;DR: patents here slow down progress, not speed it up. > At least when the cost of a patent license gets bundled into your Blu-Ray player, you know what you’re paying. Rather you know what you are being ripped off for. It doesn't make it proper.
- rayiner 9y agoHEVC and AV1 are developed the same way: a joint effort by a consortium of companies and experts. Both cost money to make, and in both cases the consortium members expect some return on their investment. In the case of HEVC, which is a joint effort by the ITU and ISO, it’s a straightforward exchange of technology for money. How is that more “parasitic” than Facebook funding the technology to help people upload their personal data to its platform, which they then monetize through ads? The simple exchange of goods and services for money is a really wonderful thing. Patents allow companies to do that, instead of having to give away technology and trying to monetize their users through less up front means.
- grandinj 9y agoI don't think the patent issues are at all resolved or easy. Variousparties hold patents and have no intention of designing a product around them and simply exist to extract rent from others. They will wait till the format gains traction and then sue the players with the biggest bank accounts. Most companies understand this, and will accordingly take it slow, preferring to deal with the known risk of existing codecs.
- shmerl 9y ago> I don't think the patent issues are at all resolved or easy. Same applies to any codec, including HEVC. I.e. patent trolling can always happen and HEVC users aren't immune to it either. So AVC1 wins being actually officially free.
- grandinj 9y agoHEVC has been around longer, and has been widely deployed, so the risk is much smaller.
- shmerl 9y agoPatent trolls can decide to attack any time they feel like it. Free codecs actually are in somewhat better position, because they do due diligence to work around known related patents. And attack from unknown / invalid can always happen. So overall HEVC is nowhere less risky, and on the contrary, many explicitly declare upfront, they want money for it which is its major downside.
- Andrex 9y ago"HEVC has been around longer, and has been widely deployed, so the risk is much smaller." Isn't this the opposite of what you said in the parent? "They will wait till the format gains traction and then sue the players with the biggest bank accounts."
- grandinj 9y agoLet me try again: HEVC has been deployed by big players with deep pockets. Therefore, any patent trolls that might have targeted it have already been lured out of the woodwork. A new codec like this however, has an unknown risk attached, because no one knows how many trolls might be lurking out ther e.
- keldaris 9y agoPeople can congratulate themselves as much as they want, but the fight won't be won until VP9 is actually (technically, not legally) superior to HEVC in terms of the available implementations. Right now, VP9 encoding speeds are ludicrous and the resulting quality, as far as I know, isn't meaningfully better than what x265 produces. Having the luxury of not caring about software patents in the least, I'll stick to x265, thanks.
- mtgx 9y agoApparently no one in this thread read the article.
- nodja 9y agoWhat are you on about? The title is a little clickbaity, but the article is talking about AV1, it's a sort of hybrid between Daala, VP10 and Thor. Nothing to do with VP9 (well not directly). Daala is an attempt to avoid patents by avoiding techniques used by current encoders. VP10 uses google's patents that the MPEG LA tried to fight but backed down once the DOJ got in the middle, and Thor uses Cisco's patents. What you should get is something similar to the opus codec. A patent free state of the art codec. Preliminary tests that I know of (early 2017) showed it only slightly better that HEVC, but the goal is to have 50% better compression rate than HEVC/VP9, if they're going to achieve it or not, I have no idea.
- keldaris 9y agoMy comment was prompted by the fact that the majority of comments in this thread relate to HEVC vs. VP9. It was my mistake to post it as a top level comment rather than a reply to one of the pertinent comments in the thread. You're right in saying that I'm in effect responding to a point that is tangential to the contents of the actual article.
- acd 9y agoWe should abolish software patents. Reason software builds on Mathematics and you cannot patent Mathematics. We all build on others previous work.
- mikebenfield 9y ago> We should abolish software patents. Maybe so. > Reason software builds on Mathematics and you cannot patent Mathematics. This is not a convincing reason. All engineering builds on mathematics; this is not specific to software.
- craigsmansion 9y agoThe argument is that software is mathematics, not build on or makes use of mathematics. It's a small but very important distinction.
- erk__ 9y agoSoftware is not patentable in most of Europe [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_European_Patent_Convention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_patents_under_the_Eur...
- wmf 9y agoBut codecs are implemented in hardware. Gotcha!
- bo1024 9y agoNot sure if you intended this, but that is exactly the basis for the old legal workaround. To be patentable, an invention must be "fixed in a tangible medium of expression" (or something like that). So the first software patents tried saying "we are patenting the following algorithm ... running on a hardware computer!" Amazingly they got away with it and have been getting away with it ever since. Hm, I wonder if you could argue that running the algorithm on a virtual machine doesn't violate the patent....
- wmf 9y ago
- malchow 9y agoI recently needed to choose between doing nightly cloud backups of my family's iOS photos in HEIC or JPG, and chose HEIC. Did I choose incorrectly? Which is more future proof? Isn't it surprising that Apple is on board with AV1 so shortly after it moved iOS devices from JPG to HEIC?
- einarfd 9y agoThe reason for the traction of unencumbered media codecs lately is that MPEG LA got greedy with the license terms for HVEC, and now the cost of licensing HVEC/H265 is more than a lot of big licensor's are interested in paying. This was not true during the H264 period, and the reason there wasn't nearly as much push for open codecs then. So in a roundabout way we can thank the shortsightedness of MPEG LA, for the coming era of open codecs.
- trevorhinesley 9y agoI think I know what Pied Piper's crisis will be on the next season of Silicon Valley :)
- yuhong 9y agoI am also thinking of DRM. Thinking about it, part of the reasons music labels got big is for economy of scale when mass producing CDs for example. Of course, such economy of scale was not needed anymore with the move to digital distribution. This didn't work well with the current debt-based economy where shareholders depends on stocks always going up for things like retirements and companies treat people as "consumers" to be extracted from. I assume that Hollywood has similar problems, right?