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And so what do you think is the solution? Do you think that "Only by becoming a Technical Committee can MPEG [...] stay competitive in the market." is true, or

And so what do you think is the solution? Do you think that "Only by becoming a Technical Committee can MPEG [...] stay competitive in the market." is true, or what could be a valuable alternative?

jchw 9y ago
It seems like there's an answer: the market actually wants free standards because they're realizing it's more beneficial to them than any other outcome. So money and effort is being pumped into developing free video encoding standards. It seems there is an incentive for the foreseeable future to continue to improve video codecs simply because it saves on bandwidth and disk space costs, and improves user experience. Though obviously, everything's too good to be true. Just like MPEG seems to be hitting the end, some day the AOM will hit the end, too. The world changes. Something else will emerge and impact the business model. It may be worse, or maybe it'll be a return to norms. Could just be another one of those things that cycles every so often. With audio codecs, it doesn't look like we ever really needed much in the way of commercial entities, since Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time now.
- CharlesW 9y ago
  > …Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time now. Sorry to be pedantic about one bit of an otherwise-fine post, but AAC is comparable to Opus at any given bitrate[1]. Plus, even the most esoteric flavor of AAC has the enormous advantage of 7+ years of ubiquity[2]. [1] See the multiple charts at http://opus-codec.org/comparison/ http://opus-codec.org/comparison/, for one presumably-unbiased source. [2] All versions of Android support HE-AACv2 playback, iOS introduced support for HE-AACv2 playback in iOS 4 (released 2010), macOS introduced support for HE-AACv2 playback with iTunes 9.2 (released 2010), Adobe Flash Player introduced support for HE-AACv2 in 2007, All versions of Windows Phone support HE-AACv2 playback, all open source players support HE-AACv2 playback via FAAD2
  - jchw 9y ago
    OK, fair enough: HE-AAC had been out-performing the leading open source audio codec for a while. Easy to forget primarily because even after many platforms supported HE-AAC, it wasn't necessarily common across all media. I really saw it explode on the internet around the time DASH streaming became more common, since adding new audio formats was much less expensive. That being said, I still think Opus is better now, since it is more versatile. I've yet to see anyone use HE-AAC in a real-time context, unless they're using it under a different name.
  - hajile 9y ago
    That comparison appears to says that the difference in quality between opus and he-aac is the same as the difference between he-aac and vorbis. Opus is definitely better, but we have basically hit the wall in audio compression (we'll need a serious breakthrough to go much farther). There also isn't as much interest in audio codec research because even very large raw audio files pale in comparison to fully compressed video.
    - KozmoNau7 9y ago
      Incremental improvements are happening in opusenc, current status (as of 1.2 and 1.3-beta) is that musical content is generally transparent at ~96kbps VBR, with a few needing ~128kbps and a tiny minority needing ~160kbps. The developers are slowly reducing the required bitrate for transparency, it wouldn't surprise me if they reach transparency at ~64kbps VBR in a year or two.
      - pizza234 9y ago
        Can you provide links to blind tests supporting these conclusions?
        KozmoNau7 9y ago
        https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png Etc. Discussion of 1.3-beta here: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115156.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115156.0.html Discussion of preferred bitrate and point of transparency: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115386.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115386.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114656.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114656.0.html I would highly recommend that you give it a go yourself. Take a FLAC source, encode Opus files yourself. The encoder is freely available from https://opus-codec.org/downloads/ https://opus-codec.org/downloads/ and integrates nicely into Foobar2000's converter function (Opus is already there as a profile, it will ask for the location of opusenc.exe the first time you use it). Use the ABX Comparator plugin for Foobar2000 (both available from http://foobar2000.org http://foobar2000.org) and run a few trials. After all, public listening tests are one thing, but to be absolutely sure a format/bitrate is transparent to you, individual testing is needed. I have run a number of tests myself (of Opus and other formats) and found general transparency at ~96kbps Opus, lower for some tracks. For those tracks that weren't transparent at that bitrate, the artifacts were generally benign and not that annoying (slightly increased noise levels, mostly).
oceanghost 9y ago
The alternative is... honest business practices.
- Feniks 9y ago
  That's an oxymoron.
  - RobertRoberts 9y ago
    No it's not. Business is a non-moralistic action. People can be immoral doing business, but business itself cannot. Also, I happen to know a few very moral and ethical business owners who would rather lose money than screw someone over or do a shady business deal. (and have done this)
  - andybak 9y ago
    Unless that comment is a mea culpa then one must conclude you must have had no life experience as anything other than an employee?
HNSucksAss 9y ago
The solution is OUTLAWING SOFTWARE PATENTS. Any other “patent reform” is a sham.

And so what do you think is the solution? Do you think that "Only by becoming a Technical Committee can MPEG [...] stay competitive in the market." is true, or what could be a valuable alternative?

jchw 9y ago

It seems like there's an answer: the market actually wants free standards because they're realizing it's more beneficial to them than any other outcome. So money and effort is being pumped into developing free video encoding standards. It seems there is an incentive for the foreseeable future to continue to improve video codecs simply because it saves on bandwidth and disk space costs, and improves user experience. Though obviously, everything's too good to be true. Just like MPEG seems to be hitting the end, some day the AOM will hit the end, too. The world changes. Something else will emerge and impact the business model. It may be worse, or maybe it'll be a return to norms. Could just be another one of those things that cycles every so often. With audio codecs, it doesn't look like we ever really needed much in the way of commercial entities, since Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time now.

CharlesW 9y ago
> …Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time now. Sorry to be pedantic about one bit of an otherwise-fine post, but AAC is comparable to Opus at any given bitrate[1]. Plus, even the most esoteric flavor of AAC has the enormous advantage of 7+ years of ubiquity[2]. [1] See the multiple charts at http://opus-codec.org/comparison/ http://opus-codec.org/comparison/, for one presumably-unbiased source. [2] All versions of Android support HE-AACv2 playback, iOS introduced support for HE-AACv2 playback in iOS 4 (released 2010), macOS introduced support for HE-AACv2 playback with iTunes 9.2 (released 2010), Adobe Flash Player introduced support for HE-AACv2 in 2007, All versions of Windows Phone support HE-AACv2 playback, all open source players support HE-AACv2 playback via FAAD2
- jchw 9y ago
  OK, fair enough: HE-AAC had been out-performing the leading open source audio codec for a while. Easy to forget primarily because even after many platforms supported HE-AAC, it wasn't necessarily common across all media. I really saw it explode on the internet around the time DASH streaming became more common, since adding new audio formats was much less expensive. That being said, I still think Opus is better now, since it is more versatile. I've yet to see anyone use HE-AAC in a real-time context, unless they're using it under a different name.
- hajile 9y ago
  That comparison appears to says that the difference in quality between opus and he-aac is the same as the difference between he-aac and vorbis. Opus is definitely better, but we have basically hit the wall in audio compression (we'll need a serious breakthrough to go much farther). There also isn't as much interest in audio codec research because even very large raw audio files pale in comparison to fully compressed video.
  - KozmoNau7 9y ago
    Incremental improvements are happening in opusenc, current status (as of 1.2 and 1.3-beta) is that musical content is generally transparent at ~96kbps VBR, with a few needing ~128kbps and a tiny minority needing ~160kbps. The developers are slowly reducing the required bitrate for transparency, it wouldn't surprise me if they reach transparency at ~64kbps VBR in a year or two.
    - pizza234 9y ago
      Can you provide links to blind tests supporting these conclusions?
      - KozmoNau7 9y ago
        https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://www.opus-codec.org/comparison/ https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png Etc. Discussion of 1.3-beta here: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115156.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115156.0.html Discussion of preferred bitrate and point of transparency: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115386.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,115386.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114656.0.html https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,114656.0.html I would highly recommend that you give it a go yourself. Take a FLAC source, encode Opus files yourself. The encoder is freely available from https://opus-codec.org/downloads/ https://opus-codec.org/downloads/ and integrates nicely into Foobar2000's converter function (Opus is already there as a profile, it will ask for the location of opusenc.exe the first time you use it). Use the ABX Comparator plugin for Foobar2000 (both available from http://foobar2000.org http://foobar2000.org) and run a few trials. After all, public listening tests are one thing, but to be absolutely sure a format/bitrate is transparent to you, individual testing is needed. I have run a number of tests myself (of Opus and other formats) and found general transparency at ~96kbps Opus, lower for some tracks. For those tracks that weren't transparent at that bitrate, the artifacts were generally benign and not that annoying (slightly increased noise levels, mostly).

oceanghost 9y ago

The alternative is... honest business practices.

Feniks 9y ago
That's an oxymoron.
- RobertRoberts 9y ago
  No it's not. Business is a non-moralistic action. People can be immoral doing business, but business itself cannot. Also, I happen to know a few very moral and ethical business owners who would rather lose money than screw someone over or do a shady business deal. (and have done this)
- andybak 9y ago
  Unless that comment is a mea culpa then one must conclude you must have had no life experience as anything other than an employee?

HNSucksAss 9y ago

The solution is OUTLAWING SOFTWARE PATENTS. Any other “patent reform” is a sham.