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They’re paying to use Dolby’s encoding schemes. It’s not the idea of “stereo audio” that’s patent encumbered, it’s some of the encoding schemes that can output

by SllX 4y ago

They’re paying to use Dolby’s encoding schemes. It’s not the idea of “stereo audio” that’s patent encumbered, it’s some of the encoding schemes that can output stereo audio (much less so these days, patents are expiring and all of MP3’s have). Same with surround audio and spatial audio and HDR: Dolby has an encoding scheme that works well and gets the desired result, is high quality, usually higher quality than the alternatives, and they market it well. I’ll welcome anyone that wants to enter the space that thinks they can do better, but Dolby is good at what they do, and Google often has massive commitment issues for new projects (although notably, not usually when it comes to codecs). I suspect what will happen is YouTube will develop their own HDR and audio codecs, and it’ll just be used on YouTube and almost nowhere else. That’ll be enough to drive client support, but it’ll be one more HDR format in addition to HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, and it’ll be one more set of audio codecs in addition to like the half dozen to a dozen they already decode, and ultimately this will be to increase the quality of YouTube while minimizing their licensing costs. That’s fine.

kasabali 4y ago
> I suspect what will happen is YouTube will develop their own HDR and audio codecs It is stated in the article they're backing HDR10+. Not sure about the audio.
- SllX 4y ago
  Yeah there’s some supposition in the article so I’m not clear if it’s HDR10+ or an extension of it, just that Google wants to do something to break Dolby’s bank and they’ve got a heist crew with something to prove (i.e. Netflix, Samsung, Meta, et al.) and a placeholder name for the audio stuff (“Immersive Audio Container”). The distinction hardly matters since it’ll just be one more format (or set of formats) for manufacturers to support.
- m0RRSIYB0Zq8MgL 4y ago
  For audio they are working on something new called Immersive Audio Container https://aomediacodec.github.io/iac/ https://aomediacodec.github.io/iac/
suzumer 4y ago
Youtube already has it's own HDR video codec with VP9. Also, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision aren't HDR formats, they're formats for storing dynamic metadata that can help TVs better display HDR video. The article seems to misinterpret what their purpose is. HDR video can be presented just fine without HDR10+ or Dolby Vision.
- SllX 4y ago
  Thanks!
- CharlesW 4y ago
  > HDR video can be presented just fine without HDR10+ or Dolby Vision. To see HDR content at its full dynamic range, you'll need an HDR-capable device or display. Viewers watching on non-HDR devices/displays will see an SDR¹ video derived from the HDR source. ¹ "Standard dynamic range" or "smooshed dynamic range"
  - jmole 4y ago
    > To see HDR content at its full dynamic range, you'll need an HDR-capable device or display. Not exactly - you need an HDR Mastering display to see HDR content at full dynamic range. There are essentially no high volume consumer-level devices, with the exception of maybe Apple's XDR lineup (MBP, iPad, iPhone, Pro Display) with the capability of displaying non-windowed HDR content at full brightness. Everything else relies on tone mapping, even the latest 2022 OLED & QDOLED TVs.
    - suzumer 4y ago
      Even HDR mastering monitors can only reach 2000 to 4000 nits [1], whereas PQ gamma goes up to 10000 nits. This is why most hdr streams contain metadata containing mastering display peak luminance. [1] https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/dp-v3120 https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/dp-v3120
    - CharlesW 4y ago
      Good info, thanks! Can you elaborate on why you qualified this with "non-windowed"?
klabb3 4y ago
> and ultimately this will be to increase the quality of YouTube while minimizing their licensing costs. Yes, I can also imagine they have specific requirements on the file format like quickly skipping to timestamps, highly variable bitrate, handling text and graphics well etc. I imagine their requirements to be so general that it'll benefit anyone, especially those that do streaming. In either case "just one more standard" (or relevant xkcd) is an unavoidable obstacle for every new standard, and does not mean the project will fail. I have lots of critique against Google but this is one thing they are positioned to do well, and have a decent track record. And given how the competition operates, is frankly refreshing.
- SllX 4y ago
  Agreed.
PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
> I’ll welcome anyone that wants to enter the space that thinks they can do better, "Do better" is tricky to define. By some metrics, Ambisonics, a decades-old, license free technology, "does better" than Atmos does. But by others, it does worse. Which metrics are important?
- SllX 4y ago
  Content is King here. Do you have source material and do you have playback devices or software out in the world? Google has both with YouTube, Chromecasts and Android phones and TVs. They’re one of the few power players that can unilaterally change up their codec and metadata suite, but only as far as YouTube goes. So “do better” means getting enough content behind a tech stack and still delivering a satisfying experience to the customer. If they can meet or exceed what Dolby delivers, I think that would be great! Even if they only match Dolby, that’s still pretty good.
  - justinclift 4y ago
    That's a good point. If support for playing Ambisonics was added to (say) vlc, and easy-to-use conversion tools from Atmos to Ambisonics also existed, that'd probably go a long way to increasing it's adoption.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
    Ambisonics hardware was on sale in the late 1970s and early 80s, but few people at that time had multi-speaker setups, which meant that the companies making it went defunct. Libre and gratis ambisonics encoding and decoding software has existed for more than a decade. It is the domain of enthusiasts rather than regular consumers.
    - SllX 4y ago
      Makes sense, and this is actually the first I've heard of ambisonics. From your description, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing there will ever be tons of content for, so not tons of demand either. But a small demo-scene-like thing can be neat too.
Melatonic 4y ago
This could put pressure on Dolby to release their older stuff for free (no licensing) which would be a huge win for everyone. But I agree about Google - the whole point of Dolby is to have a high quality standard that is the industry choice for consistency. That does cost money (mainly in licensing their stuff or chips that use their encoder) but the way I see they have to make profit somehow. Is it overpriced? Probably. Is older standard dolby digital (and dolby digital plus) 5.1 surround sound still pretty damn good? Yep - and it should be free. They have 20 years of newer, superior stuff to make money from!
- SllX 4y ago
  AC-3’s (Dolby Digital) patents all expired in 2017. I’m not sure about E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus), but my understanding is producers just move onto new sound technology. It’s not that DD and DD+ don’t both sound great, it’s that people move with advances in sound production to stay on or near the state of the art. If you want to write an AC-3 encoder/decoder, go for it, but that’s not much help for folks that want to use AC-4, TrueHD and Atmos.
  - Melatonic 4y ago
    Well the reason I mention those two older formats is that those are the encoders you need to use a TON of older but still very useable hifi equipment. As far as I know if you want to get good quality sound to anything that uses TOSLINK (very common connector not just on older equipment) or the single orange digital audio cable (that looks like an orange RCA port) too. I specifically bought an older Roku 4K model that has the dolby digital plus encoder chip built in (and a TOSLINK output) so that I can keep using my still very nice sounding Yamaha receiver from the early 2000's. They only had the TOSLINK and DD chip for a brief period in the Roku 4K (current one does not have it and the oldest ones do not either). Basically what this means is that Netflix can have the latest and greatest audio on their stream (whatever is the best of the best in 5.1 currently) and this little chip will nicely re-encode it on the fly down to the best quality format my receiver can handle. If you do HDMI passthrough to Toslink or similar it will not work as theres no chip to re-encode. Even a ton of modern motherboards have TOSLINK and lots of new equipment as well so its a worthwhile way to get a baseline quality 5.1 audio that still holds up very, very well for home systems today. DD+ with a good receiver and large speakers will blow away most of the cheaper Atmos systems. You could also theoretically do this with most computers or a laptop with the right hardware and a little software digital encoder but the issue is that most of the time the way they have instituted DRM means that the browser is not going to even have access to 5.1 in the first place or your device (like any Nvidia graphics card for example - even if the HDMI output can include high quality audio) is going to just get 2.1 audio.
daveslash 4y ago
Speaking of Stereo Audio vs Encoding Schemes, there was a great article posted here a while back about diving into audio formats on 35mm movie film [0]. There's a photo showing the analog stereo wave-form alongside two digital tracks: Dolby and Sony [1]. So the audio is physically printed onto the film in 3 different formats (1 analog, 2 digital) and it's up to the projector to decide which one is needs/has-the-hardware-for. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919904
m1nes 4y ago
To complement what you say, you also have to consider that there are an absolute myriad of processes, people and companies within the audiovisual industry where the Dolby workflow is almost inseparable from what they do and what they work with. People and companies that have made investments, sometimes of many zeros and many hours, to be able to work this way. Dolby is more than a standard or spitting six channels of raw audio out of speakers. That's just the end product, because it's not just standard itself. It is, for example, the hardware that is in cinemas and home theaters (encoders, decoders, Dolby RMU...), the certification processes that Dolby does in cinemas and recording and mixing studios, the mixing technicians who work with all that and send the final mixes with the netflix/hbo/whatever specifications, vendors, integration partners, speaker manufacturers... There are also plugins that work in DAWs like Pro Tools, the ecosystem (Dolby Atmos Renderer, Dolby Atmos Production Suite), just to scratch the surface. One thing is to publish a standard and another the ecosystem around that standard. It is interesting that there are new standards, but given Google's history with its long term attention span I have my doubts that this will materialize into anything more than an internal asset for google.

by SllX 4y ago

kasabali 4y ago

> I suspect what will happen is YouTube will develop their own HDR and audio codecs It is stated in the article they're backing HDR10+. Not sure about the audio.

SllX 4y ago
Yeah there’s some supposition in the article so I’m not clear if it’s HDR10+ or an extension of it, just that Google wants to do something to break Dolby’s bank and they’ve got a heist crew with something to prove (i.e. Netflix, Samsung, Meta, et al.) and a placeholder name for the audio stuff (“Immersive Audio Container”). The distinction hardly matters since it’ll just be one more format (or set of formats) for manufacturers to support.
m0RRSIYB0Zq8MgL 4y ago
For audio they are working on something new called Immersive Audio Container https://aomediacodec.github.io/iac/ https://aomediacodec.github.io/iac/

suzumer 4y ago

Youtube already has it's own HDR video codec with VP9. Also, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision aren't HDR formats, they're formats for storing dynamic metadata that can help TVs better display HDR video. The article seems to misinterpret what their purpose is. HDR video can be presented just fine without HDR10+ or Dolby Vision.

SllX 4y ago
Thanks!
CharlesW 4y ago
> HDR video can be presented just fine without HDR10+ or Dolby Vision. To see HDR content at its full dynamic range, you'll need an HDR-capable device or display. Viewers watching on non-HDR devices/displays will see an SDR¹ video derived from the HDR source. ¹ "Standard dynamic range" or "smooshed dynamic range"
- jmole 4y ago
  > To see HDR content at its full dynamic range, you'll need an HDR-capable device or display. Not exactly - you need an HDR Mastering display to see HDR content at full dynamic range. There are essentially no high volume consumer-level devices, with the exception of maybe Apple's XDR lineup (MBP, iPad, iPhone, Pro Display) with the capability of displaying non-windowed HDR content at full brightness. Everything else relies on tone mapping, even the latest 2022 OLED & QDOLED TVs.
  - suzumer 4y ago
    Even HDR mastering monitors can only reach 2000 to 4000 nits [1], whereas PQ gamma goes up to 10000 nits. This is why most hdr streams contain metadata containing mastering display peak luminance. [1] https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/dp-v3120 https://www.usa.canon.com/shop/p/dp-v3120
  - CharlesW 4y ago
    Good info, thanks! Can you elaborate on why you qualified this with "non-windowed"?

klabb3 4y ago

> and ultimately this will be to increase the quality of YouTube while minimizing their licensing costs. Yes, I can also imagine they have specific requirements on the file format like quickly skipping to timestamps, highly variable bitrate, handling text and graphics well etc. I imagine their requirements to be so general that it'll benefit anyone, especially those that do streaming. In either case "just one more standard" (or relevant xkcd) is an unavoidable obstacle for every new standard, and does not mean the project will fail. I have lots of critique against Google but this is one thing they are positioned to do well, and have a decent track record. And given how the competition operates, is frankly refreshing.

SllX 4y ago
Agreed.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

> I’ll welcome anyone that wants to enter the space that thinks they can do better, "Do better" is tricky to define. By some metrics, Ambisonics, a decades-old, license free technology, "does better" than Atmos does. But by others, it does worse. Which metrics are important?

SllX 4y ago
Content is King here. Do you have source material and do you have playback devices or software out in the world? Google has both with YouTube, Chromecasts and Android phones and TVs. They’re one of the few power players that can unilaterally change up their codec and metadata suite, but only as far as YouTube goes. So “do better” means getting enough content behind a tech stack and still delivering a satisfying experience to the customer. If they can meet or exceed what Dolby delivers, I think that would be great! Even if they only match Dolby, that’s still pretty good.
- justinclift 4y ago
  That's a good point. If support for playing Ambisonics was added to (say) vlc, and easy-to-use conversion tools from Atmos to Ambisonics also existed, that'd probably go a long way to increasing it's adoption.
- PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
  Ambisonics hardware was on sale in the late 1970s and early 80s, but few people at that time had multi-speaker setups, which meant that the companies making it went defunct. Libre and gratis ambisonics encoding and decoding software has existed for more than a decade. It is the domain of enthusiasts rather than regular consumers.
  - SllX 4y ago
    Makes sense, and this is actually the first I've heard of ambisonics. From your description, it doesn't sound like the kind of thing there will ever be tons of content for, so not tons of demand either. But a small demo-scene-like thing can be neat too.

Melatonic 4y ago

This could put pressure on Dolby to release their older stuff for free (no licensing) which would be a huge win for everyone. But I agree about Google - the whole point of Dolby is to have a high quality standard that is the industry choice for consistency. That does cost money (mainly in licensing their stuff or chips that use their encoder) but the way I see they have to make profit somehow. Is it overpriced? Probably. Is older standard dolby digital (and dolby digital plus) 5.1 surround sound still pretty damn good? Yep - and it should be free. They have 20 years of newer, superior stuff to make money from!

SllX 4y ago
AC-3’s (Dolby Digital) patents all expired in 2017. I’m not sure about E-AC-3 (Dolby Digital Plus), but my understanding is producers just move onto new sound technology. It’s not that DD and DD+ don’t both sound great, it’s that people move with advances in sound production to stay on or near the state of the art. If you want to write an AC-3 encoder/decoder, go for it, but that’s not much help for folks that want to use AC-4, TrueHD and Atmos.
- Melatonic 4y ago
  Well the reason I mention those two older formats is that those are the encoders you need to use a TON of older but still very useable hifi equipment. As far as I know if you want to get good quality sound to anything that uses TOSLINK (very common connector not just on older equipment) or the single orange digital audio cable (that looks like an orange RCA port) too. I specifically bought an older Roku 4K model that has the dolby digital plus encoder chip built in (and a TOSLINK output) so that I can keep using my still very nice sounding Yamaha receiver from the early 2000's. They only had the TOSLINK and DD chip for a brief period in the Roku 4K (current one does not have it and the oldest ones do not either). Basically what this means is that Netflix can have the latest and greatest audio on their stream (whatever is the best of the best in 5.1 currently) and this little chip will nicely re-encode it on the fly down to the best quality format my receiver can handle. If you do HDMI passthrough to Toslink or similar it will not work as theres no chip to re-encode. Even a ton of modern motherboards have TOSLINK and lots of new equipment as well so its a worthwhile way to get a baseline quality 5.1 audio that still holds up very, very well for home systems today. DD+ with a good receiver and large speakers will blow away most of the cheaper Atmos systems. You could also theoretically do this with most computers or a laptop with the right hardware and a little software digital encoder but the issue is that most of the time the way they have instituted DRM means that the browser is not going to even have access to 5.1 in the first place or your device (like any Nvidia graphics card for example - even if the HDMI output can include high quality audio) is going to just get 2.1 audio.

daveslash 4y ago

Speaking of Stereo Audio vs Encoding Schemes, there was a great article posted here a while back about diving into audio formats on 35mm movie film [0]. There's a photo showing the analog stereo wave-form alongside two digital tracks: Dolby and Sony [1]. So the audio is physically printed onto the film in 3 different formats (1 analog, 2 digital) and it's up to the projector to decide which one is needs/has-the-hardware-for. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919904 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30919904

m1nes 4y ago

To complement what you say, you also have to consider that there are an absolute myriad of processes, people and companies within the audiovisual industry where the Dolby workflow is almost inseparable from what they do and what they work with. People and companies that have made investments, sometimes of many zeros and many hours, to be able to work this way. Dolby is more than a standard or spitting six channels of raw audio out of speakers. That's just the end product, because it's not just standard itself. It is, for example, the hardware that is in cinemas and home theaters (encoders, decoders, Dolby RMU...), the certification processes that Dolby does in cinemas and recording and mixing studios, the mixing technicians who work with all that and send the final mixes with the netflix/hbo/whatever specifications, vendors, integration partners, speaker manufacturers... There are also plugins that work in DAWs like Pro Tools, the ecosystem (Dolby Atmos Renderer, Dolby Atmos Production Suite), just to scratch the surface. One thing is to publish a standard and another the ecosystem around that standard. It is interesting that there are new standards, but given Google's history with its long term attention span I have my doubts that this will materialize into anything more than an internal asset for google.