9 ms·
Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?
by KitDuncan 6y ago
Can we all just agree on using AV1 instead of another patent encumbered format?
- hirako2000 6y agoHow does x264 etc get away with it?
- clouddrover 6y agoThey don't get away with it. The are two separate issues: the software copyright license and the H.264 patent license. x264 itself is licensed under the GPL: http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html http://www.videolan.org/developers/x264.html But if you use an H.264 encoder or decoder in a country that recognizes software patents then you need to buy a patent license if your usage comes under the terms of the license: https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/ https://www.mpegla.com/programs/avc-h-264/
- p_l 6y agoThey are compliant with MPEG patent licenses - they distribute source code you have to compile yourself and for non-commercial use. If you build x264 or other open source implementation of h.264/h.265, and embed it for example in commercial video conferencing software/appliance, you have to pay patent licensing fees for that product. It's also why Firefox downloads a blob from Cisco to handle MPEG-4 video - Cisco covers the licensing for distribution et al.
- jiggunjer 6y agoHow much does Cisco pay (to MPEG?) for that?
- detaro 6y agoIf I understand correctly, around 10 million USD per year (according to https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avcweb.pdf https://www.mpegla.com/wp-content/uploads/avcweb.pdf that's the cap, and from what I've heard Cisco is selling enough actual products to hit that cap, so providing their software for free to everyone else doesn't cost them any extra in licensing fees, just hosting and such)
- mekster 6y agoWhy is Cisco being nice about it? (Besides why not?)
- toast0 6y agoI don't recall the specific timing of the release, so this might not line up, and I have no inside knowledge, just public information. Cisco has some products which use compressed video in a browser setting. It would be useful if all browsers supported a good codec. Individually downloaded codec plugins suck, because installing is iffy. Therefore, give something away which doesn't cost licensing money to make your existing licensed products more usable. And get some good feels on the interwebs.
- eqvinox 6y agoBecause it forces their competitors (in the video conferencing business) to take similar costs.
- brtech99 6y agoBecause several years ago, there was a fight over mandatory to implement video codecs in WebRTC. It was VP8 vs H.264. The biggest thing VP8 had going for it was no royalty payments. Cisco wanted H.264 because all of their devices supported H.264 and none supported VP8 and they already paid the royalties. So Jonathan Rosenberg, then CTO of the division of Cisco that managed this part of the business arranged to have Cisco cover the royalty payments for anyone implementing the WebRTC standards. That wasn't enough, and WebRTC requires both VP8 and H.264 as MTI codecs.
- gibolt 6y agoThat is such a nice service. Benefits everyone and near-zero cost for them.
- moonchild 6y agoCould firefox download x264 and compile it on-demand?
- ksec 6y agox264 is for encoding only.
- realusername 6y agoSoftware patents are not valid everywhere, x264 is brought up by VideoLAN in France, where software patents don't apply like in the rest of the EU.
- jacobush 6y agoThey sort of half not apply in Sweden too.
- anticensor 6y agoWhat do you mean by half valid?
- jacobush 6y agoSoftware patents are valid only if part of a larger invention, the algorithm itself cannot be patented. However, patent clerks have also from time to time registered algorithmic patents.
- pault 6y agoSo if a company in france writes open source software that infringes on a US software patent, and a company in the US bundles that source code in a product, is the US company liable for damages?
- pas 6y agoYes. The company distributing the work has to make sure it has licenses for any required parts.
- realusername 6y agoYes, that's exactly how it works, the US company is responsible for following the US laws.
- hirako2000 6y agoJust found av1 is about 20 to 30% more efficient than h265. I guess there was no reason to use patented algs, but h265 is now significantly more efficient than av1. I would still take freedom over patented software
- ch_sm 6y ago> Just found av1 is about 20 to 30% more efficient than h265 > […] but h265 is now significantly more efficient than av1. What did you mean?
- smiley1437 6y agoNot OP but I think he meant "h266 is now significantly more efficient than av1"
- sly010 6y agosecond h265 was probably meant to be h266
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- zionic 6y agoAV1 beats h.265 by 20-30%, h.266 beats h.265 by 50%. Honestly for that little of an improvement I'll go with AV1.
- freeone3000 6y agoReally? Because by that metric, H.266 is as far ahead of AV1 as AV1 is ahead of h.265.
- randall 6y agoThat's the direction everyone is going, so I think h.266 is an attempt to give vendors pause before moving to av1. AV1 will probably win in most circumstances (big tech) but is unlikely to win where there are big gains to be had by reducing file size (broadcasters with gigantic libraries). Broadcasters are also used to paying a lot and not getting much.
- otterley 6y agoNo, because the market is more than happy to pay a few cents or dollars per device to get better compression and lower transmission bandwidth. This observation has held true consistently in the 3 decades since compressed digital media was invented.
- jimktrains2 6y agoIt's not that the market is happy to pay more, it's that there is essentially no choice.
- inscionent 6y agoA captive market is a happy market, no?
- rbinv 6y agoNot for consumers, obviously?
- otterley 6y agoThis is not a captive market. If someone were to invent a free codec that performed similarly and had both software and hardware reference implementations, the market would adopt it very quickly. This is a market that is voluntarily paying for perceived value.
- jimktrains2 6y agoPlease show me where I can pick between similar consumer devices where there supported codecs are easy to find, or, better yet, I can pay extra for non free codecs.
- otterley 6y agoThe few HNers who actually care about these things do not make a market that vendors think is worth serving, most likely because it would be unprofitable. There’s not going to be a market if sellers don’t find it profitable.
- donatj 6y agoHonestly, the first step in this is getting the ffmpeg av1 library to a good usable place. It's currently so slow as to be near unviable. I'd happily switch when it becomes a usable option.
- zionic 6y agoIsn't that largely dependent on hardware acceleration from CPU manufacturers? Or is ffmpeg always software encoding?
- oefrha 6y agoFFmpeg isn’t “always software encoding”, that statement doesn’t make much sense since FFmpeg/libavcodec is more of an interface and you can add support for any external encoder/decoder, hardware accelerated or not. However, FFmpeg’s builtin encoders and the most popular external encoders including x264 and x265 are all software encoders. There are hardware accelerated encoders from GPU vendors, e.g. the nvenc encoder for H.264 and H.265 is available for use on Nvidia GPUs if your FFmpeg is compiled against CUDA SDK. It’s a lot faster than x264 and x265 on comparable settings but results are usually a bit worse. You were probably thinking about hardware decoding though.
- donatj 6y agoI'm curious why hardware encoding is generally worse? All my experiments with it (h264/h265) have lead to significantly lower quality output to the point that I've avoided it for any final outputs, but I always assumed I was doing something wrong.
- oefrha 6y agoI’ve written various applications on top of FFmpeg but never looked into encoder technicalities, so I don’t know if and why GPU encoding has fundamental limitations. I heard nvenc has vastly improved on RTX cards; I’m still rocking an old GPU so can’t verify that, but presumably that means there’s no fundamental weakness and GPU encoding is just playing catch up?
- MayeulC 6y agoI wonder what would happen if ffmpeg made the choice to not implement a decoder for it. Or maybe just not a encoder? Can we agree not to work on such projects? I feel that the lack of a good open-source encoder/decoder would spell the death of most codecs nowadays. That would also teach Fraunhoffer about it. Of course, everyone is free to scratch their itch. And the bigger the void, the more itchy it gets. Luckily, we still have AV1.