WebM

[rpg.314]

http://www.webmproject.org/

Google is handing out patent licenses gratis.

AMD, nv, broadcomm, qualcomm, (may be more) will be adding hw decode.

Flash will have it within a year.

Youtube will be transcode everything into webm.

Mozilla is handing out nightlies with webm baked in, so may be there are no more patents in the background.

Is H.264 on web dead?

 

[rpg.314]

Is H.264 on web dead?

Maybe not.

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

 

[Scott_Arm]

This is HUGE. Wow.

 

[rpg.314]

It's hardly any better than the present situation we have with H.264.

 

[Novum]

AMD, nv, broadcomm, qualcomm, (may be more) will be adding hw decode.

Did they say this in the talk?

It's hardly any better than the present situation we have with H.264.

If Google can prevent the patent trolls from sabotaging it, I think it will be a major success.

 

[Jawed]

Useful technical stuff:

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

Both the bitstream http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ and software http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ licences include this:

Subject to the terms and conditions of the above License, Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this implementation of VP8, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8.

I dare say Google should go the whole hog and say that it will defend all licensees against patent actions.

Jawed

 

[pcchen]

It's hardly any better than the present situation we have with H.264.

If it's really "free" then maybe. But I really doubt that. I think what we need for now is a streamlined way to pay for H.264. For example, Windows 7 has a built-in H.264 decoder, and every Windows 7 user shouldn't need to pay for another H.264 decoder ever, because the license fee is already paid through Microsoft.

The problem with other codecs is, there is really no way to know whether it's patent free or not. It's very difficult to know whether a proprietary codec used any 3rd party patent, but once it's open sourced or made into an open standard, a lot of patent holders will start looking into it. I seriously doubt that it's possible to build a competitive video codec today without the need to license any 3rd party patent.

 

[archie4oz]

Useful technical stuff:

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

Both the bitstream http://www.webmproject.org/license/bitstream/ and software http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/ licences include this:


I dare say Google should go the whole hog and say that it will defend all licensees against patent actions.

Jawed

They're doing a smashing job protecting their other partners from IP litigation; <cough>HTC</cough>. Revisiting VC-1, does Google have a better track record than MS?

 

[rpg.314]

Did they say this in the talk?

http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-web-media-project.html

 

[rpg.314]

I dare say Google should go the whole hog and say that it will defend all licensees against patent actions.

Google has not offered patent indemnity and I don't think they will.

Considering the patent mess that vp8 is going to be, I think Google just wasted ~$120M plus a whole lot of time and effort and brand image if they aren't going to do anything more to make sure vp8 remains patent free.

 

[nutball]

Surely the patent "poison pill" clause in the license will pretty much guarantee that Apple and MS won't touch this with a barge-pole?

 

[rpg.314]

Surely the patent "poison pill" clause in the license will pretty much guarantee that Apple and MS won't touch this with a barge-pole?

They could in the short term. None of them is shipping any vp8 stuff.

 

[nutball]

Useful technical stuff:

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

If justified, the comments there don't look very promising for VP8.

 

[MfA]

He doesn't mention a single patent number, I think it's safe to say he didn't even bother to check any patents before claiming infringement ... which is a bit lacking in diligence for someone with that level of public visibility.

PS. of course I'm making huge assumptions here, but I'm just a near anonymous nobody :/

 

[Jawed]

If justified, the comments there don't look very promising for VP8.

To be honest, if you compare the x264 implementation to any other for h.264, you'd come to a similar conclusion: everything else is crap. On the other hand, x264 still does crap (e.g. trellis still increases blocking problems despite assertions to the contrary) and x264 has improved substantially over the last 3 years.

It'd be interesting if any such comparison would include a 3-year-old version of x264.

In the end, though, it seems the people who were working on VP8 were pretty poor programmers. Though the ratty state of the "specification" appears to be a classic case of closed-source, in-house, make-do methods.

How long before Google stops using x264 to make YouTube encodings in favour of this? I think Google's using x264.

Jawed

 

[rpg.314]

He doesn't mention a single patent number, I think it's safe to say he didn't even bother to check any patents before claiming infringement ... which is a bit lacking in diligence for someone with that level of public visibility.

PS. of course I'm making huge assumptions here, but I'm just a near anonymous nobody :/

I don't think those guys are into patent digging.

 

[rpg.314]

How long before Google stops using x264 to make YouTube encodings in favour of this?

When they have transcoded every video on youtube to VP8 and flash has vp8. About a year after that.

I think Google's using x264.

Yup. That's what everybody uses.

 

[Jawed]

That's what everybody uses.

Would be nice if it was true. iPlayer's encoding is awful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/08/bbc_iplayer_goes_h264.html

Don't know the current state of play.

Jawed

 

[MfA]

I don't think those guys are into patent digging.

That's fine, but then they have to be a little less forward with making accusations of patent infringement.

 

[Rys]

At this point I'm more worried about the state of the spec and the current sample implementations. While it's nice that it's free and everything, as a base to start doing some meaningful work for the greater good it appears (I haven't had a close look, I'm just going by the analysis linked above) to be a bit of a disaster.