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MotionCam is great! They’ve been flying under the radar of RED lawyers (patent for compressed raw video) - long may it continue

mirsadm 3y ago
I'm the dev of MotionCam. AFAIK the app is not infringing on that patent because I use my own form of lossless compression.
- pas 3y ago
  If RED has a patent granted with a claim on compressed RAW data streaming/storage, then it doesn't matter which algorithm. (Though of course one could argue it's too broad, but it's not cheap to make this argument.)
  - mirsadm 3y ago
    I am not a lawyer but I believe their patent is regarding visually lossless compression of RAW data. MotionCam uses a form of bit packing to compress frames in real time losslessly. AFAIK that is not the same thing and does not infringe on the patent. Again I could be wrong and if I turn out to be wrong I can always disable compression entirely or just run it through zstd. I doubt their parent extends to just compressing some integers because zipping a RAW frame would not be possible which is clearly nonsense.
    - pas 3y ago
      > visually lossless compression Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to determine what detail can be omitted without future viewers potentially noticing the difference? > zipping a RAW frame would not be possible why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-patentable, right?
      - mirsadm 3y ago
        > Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to determine what detail can be omitted without future viewers potentially noticing the difference? I have not looked into it too deeply but it appears to be based on wavelet compression (more or less a copy of JPEG2000). They are able to achieve much better compression ratios. I am restricted to lossless compression (and in real time on a mobile device). > why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-patentable, right? What I mean is that it is unlikely that any form of compression of RAW video data is encompassed by their patent. But who knows.
        dharma1 3y ago
        Perhaps it could also be argued their patent covers cameras and their manufacturers, not 3rd party software that users can install on their phones? Also don’t think MotionCam has enough users for their lawyers to care. Either way thank you for your software, it’s dope
    - eurekin 3y ago
      Just chiming in to say thank you for doing such a product. Have you ever consider reaching out to any mirrorless manufacturer (maybe some form of a partnership?) about recording it's camera's sensor data? I have a Nikon and I'm still salty my Z 6I doesn't have real RAW :)
      - mirsadm 3y ago
        Thank you :) No I have not, it is likely not possible to do that anyway. MotionCam works fairly well because smartphones these days are very fast and have very fast storage. I imagine dedicated cameras are mostly made up of specialized hardware that is fairly restricted.
- heartbreak 3y ago
  Gosh why didn’t Sony’s attorneys think of that.

mirsadm 3y ago

I'm the dev of MotionCam. AFAIK the app is not infringing on that patent because I use my own form of lossless compression.

pas 3y ago
If RED has a patent granted with a claim on compressed RAW data streaming/storage, then it doesn't matter which algorithm. (Though of course one could argue it's too broad, but it's not cheap to make this argument.)
- mirsadm 3y ago
  I am not a lawyer but I believe their patent is regarding visually lossless compression of RAW data. MotionCam uses a form of bit packing to compress frames in real time losslessly. AFAIK that is not the same thing and does not infringe on the patent. Again I could be wrong and if I turn out to be wrong I can always disable compression entirely or just run it through zstd. I doubt their parent extends to just compressing some integers because zipping a RAW frame would not be possible which is clearly nonsense.
  - pas 3y ago
    > visually lossless compression Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to determine what detail can be omitted without future viewers potentially noticing the difference? > zipping a RAW frame would not be possible why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-patentable, right?
    - mirsadm 3y ago
      > Does it mean they apply some kind of human perception model (like audio codecs apply a psychoacustic one) to determine what detail can be omitted without future viewers potentially noticing the difference? I have not looked into it too deeply but it appears to be based on wavelet compression (more or less a copy of JPEG2000). They are able to achieve much better compression ratios. I am restricted to lossless compression (and in real time on a mobile device). > why? I mean it's just a big blob, if there's a lot of similar substrings in it, it might give a few percent compression ... also, nonsense doesn't mean non-patentable, right? What I mean is that it is unlikely that any form of compression of RAW video data is encompassed by their patent. But who knows.
      - dharma1 3y ago
        Perhaps it could also be argued their patent covers cameras and their manufacturers, not 3rd party software that users can install on their phones? Also don’t think MotionCam has enough users for their lawyers to care. Either way thank you for your software, it’s dope
  - eurekin 3y ago
    Just chiming in to say thank you for doing such a product. Have you ever consider reaching out to any mirrorless manufacturer (maybe some form of a partnership?) about recording it's camera's sensor data? I have a Nikon and I'm still salty my Z 6I doesn't have real RAW :)
    - mirsadm 3y ago
      Thank you :) No I have not, it is likely not possible to do that anyway. MotionCam works fairly well because smartphones these days are very fast and have very fast storage. I imagine dedicated cameras are mostly made up of specialized hardware that is fairly restricted.
heartbreak 3y ago
Gosh why didn’t Sony’s attorneys think of that.