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A very bad decision. First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Pr

by jwr 16y ago

A very bad decision. First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content. Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264 (which I hope won't happen), we'll get stuck for years with mobile devices that get poor battery life. Instead, we'll get promises of Great Things "just around the corner, in a couple of months". That's similar to the perpetual cycle of great, smoothly working Android devices which always exist in the future tense. Third, no one knows if VP8/WebM is immune from patents. It most likely isn't, it's just that nobody has laid claims yet. Most modern video processing techniques are patented in some way and sticking fingers in your ears won't make those patents magically go away.

pornel 16y ago
Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either: > Q: Are all AVC essential patents included? > A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target. The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one. If you look at list of supporters: http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.

by jwr 16y ago

pornel 16y ago

Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either: > Q: Are all AVC essential patents included? > A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target. The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one. If you look at list of supporters: http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.