4 ms·

If this is the truth and they are going to switch completely over to WebM on YouTube, I have one big question. What does Google gain from having control over th

by macrael 16y ago

If this is the truth and they are going to switch completely over to WebM on YouTube, I have one big question. What does Google gain from having control over the video format that they wouldn't get from h264? The only operative difference between the two codecs is that WebM is free. Surely, to justify being responsible for the enormous amount of money the world will spend to switch from one to the other, they have a better reason than "it's free."

TomOfTTB 16y ago
Not being at another company's mercy seems like reason enough to me. Right now Google is a company that's sunk hundreds of millions into Android and it's all at risk because Oracle bought Sun. I'd imagine that wake up call made them look at other vulnerabilities in their product line.
- macrael 16y ago
  But what company are they at the mercy of for online video? The whole point of the open standard that is H264 is for a group of companies not to be at each other's mercy. It seems riskier to switch to a new format created by one company than to go with the standard everyone else backs. I think there must be another answer.
  - TomOfTTB 16y ago
    MPEG LA can still change the terms whenever they please and theor recent behavior has been troubling (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100430/0232599255.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100430/0232599255.shtml)
    - danbmil99 16y ago
      This. Look who are major patent holders at MPEG-LA: Microsoft and Apple. Do you trust your blood enemies to a gentleman's agreement? MPEG-LA has been decidedly vague and "don't worry, be happy" about their long-term royalty plans. One might assume they would never increase the price, but can you be sure? In fact, MS and Apple could even pull out of MPEG-LA at some point and charge exorbitant fees. Google simply does not want to be at any risk for that sort of FUD in the marketplace. I think that, combined with their ideological DNA (Patents BAAD, open source GOOOD) explains the decision pretty well.
      - thomasz 16y ago
        > This. Look who are major patent holders at MPEG-LA: Microsoft and Apple. Do you have a source for that? I've read quite a few times that at least Microsoft pays more for licenses than they get back.
        danbmil99 16y ago
        http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p... Microsoft: US patents: US 6,563,953 US 6,735,345 US 7,289,673 and a number of foreign filings, likely of the same IP. Apple: US 7,292,636 US 7,548,584 US 7,551,674 US 7,339,991 doesn't matter if they pay in, the point is they are patent holders, and have a say in licensing terms.
  - vegai 16y ago
    Perhaps they have an idea on their hands that they project will make them craploads of money. Google TV might be one such product. Perhaps they project that H264 might want a share of that money anyhow it can, so they decided to cut it off right away.
noibl 16y ago
> The only operative difference between the two codecs is that WebM is free. by moving many features of the codec into postprocessing, the video format becomes scalable; a decoder can do “less work” while still playing back the file, albeit at a lower quality. -- http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/292 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/292 I have naively taken that to mean that the trade-off of resolution for battery life can be handled in the decoder; that fewer encodings need to be stored on the server to target the same wide range of devices, vs. h264. I would love to know whether this is true, and what other practical differences there are between the two codecs from the POV of content producers. edit: VP8 ... Technically, it produces output on par with H.264 High Profile, while maintaining a low decoding complexity on par with H.264 Baseline. -- http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#vp8 http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#vp8
- wmf 16y ago
  I have naively taken that to mean that the trade-off of resolution for battery life can be handled in the decoder; that fewer encodings need to be stored on the server No. The reason YouTube encodes different versions is mostly for bandwidth, not battery life. Postprocessing doesn't do anything about bandwidth; a 1 Mbps stream is 1 Mbps.
  - noibl 16y ago
    > The reason YouTube encodes different versions is mostly for bandwidth No. For example, to support iPhone prior to v4, they have to encode using the Baseline profile because that's all those devices support. The less complex h264 profiles are designed for CPU-limited devices, not just bandwidth savings -- indeed the most obvious way to save bandwidth is to use the CPU more.

by macrael 16y ago

TomOfTTB 16y ago

Not being at another company's mercy seems like reason enough to me. Right now Google is a company that's sunk hundreds of millions into Android and it's all at risk because Oracle bought Sun. I'd imagine that wake up call made them look at other vulnerabilities in their product line.

macrael 16y ago
But what company are they at the mercy of for online video? The whole point of the open standard that is H264 is for a group of companies not to be at each other's mercy. It seems riskier to switch to a new format created by one company than to go with the standard everyone else backs. I think there must be another answer.
- TomOfTTB 16y ago
  MPEG LA can still change the terms whenever they please and theor recent behavior has been troubling (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100430/0232599255.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100430/0232599255.shtml)
  - danbmil99 16y ago
    This. Look who are major patent holders at MPEG-LA: Microsoft and Apple. Do you trust your blood enemies to a gentleman's agreement? MPEG-LA has been decidedly vague and "don't worry, be happy" about their long-term royalty plans. One might assume they would never increase the price, but can you be sure? In fact, MS and Apple could even pull out of MPEG-LA at some point and charge exorbitant fees. Google simply does not want to be at any risk for that sort of FUD in the marketplace. I think that, combined with their ideological DNA (Patents BAAD, open source GOOOD) explains the decision pretty well.
    - thomasz 16y ago
      > This. Look who are major patent holders at MPEG-LA: Microsoft and Apple. Do you have a source for that? I've read quite a few times that at least Microsoft pays more for licenses than they get back.
      - danbmil99 16y ago
        http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.p... Microsoft: US patents: US 6,563,953 US 6,735,345 US 7,289,673 and a number of foreign filings, likely of the same IP. Apple: US 7,292,636 US 7,548,584 US 7,551,674 US 7,339,991 doesn't matter if they pay in, the point is they are patent holders, and have a say in licensing terms.
- vegai 16y ago
  Perhaps they have an idea on their hands that they project will make them craploads of money. Google TV might be one such product. Perhaps they project that H264 might want a share of that money anyhow it can, so they decided to cut it off right away.

noibl 16y ago

> The only operative difference between the two codecs is that WebM is free. by moving many features of the codec into postprocessing, the video format becomes scalable; a decoder can do “less work” while still playing back the file, albeit at a lower quality. -- http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/292 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/292 I have naively taken that to mean that the trade-off of resolution for battery life can be handled in the decoder; that fewer encodings need to be stored on the server to target the same wide range of devices, vs. h264. I would love to know whether this is true, and what other practical differences there are between the two codecs from the POV of content producers. edit: VP8 ... Technically, it produces output on par with H.264 High Profile, while maintaining a low decoding complexity on par with H.264 Baseline. -- http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#vp8 http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html#vp8

wmf 16y ago
I have naively taken that to mean that the trade-off of resolution for battery life can be handled in the decoder; that fewer encodings need to be stored on the server No. The reason YouTube encodes different versions is mostly for bandwidth, not battery life. Postprocessing doesn't do anything about bandwidth; a 1 Mbps stream is 1 Mbps.
- noibl 16y ago
  > The reason YouTube encodes different versions is mostly for bandwidth No. For example, to support iPhone prior to v4, they have to encode using the Baseline profile because that's all those devices support. The less complex h264 profiles are designed for CPU-limited devices, not just bandwidth savings -- indeed the most obvious way to save bandwidth is to use the CPU more.