Thor – A Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec

Post by Animats » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 7:31 PM UTC

TD-Linux wrote: post #52

Animats wrote: post #49

The MP4 patent situation needs another close look. MP4, which was first standardized in 1998, ought to come out of patent soon, if it hasn't already. There are a few remaining patents in the MPEG-LA package, but they're mostly for stuff you don't need on the Internet, such as interlaced video, font loading, error tolerance for broadcast, and VRML. This hasn't been looked at hard since 2011[1] and it's time for a new…

If by MP4 you are referring to H.264, there are still many years remaining on most of the patents. MPEG-LA publishes patent lists, if you're interested to look. You are right in that there are many other encumbered technologies that have patents expiring soon. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and several container formats are included. Notably, this is almost all of the technologies required to make a DVD.

Post by walterbell » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 7:35 PM UTC

joepie91_ wrote: post #57

manachar wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, because some forget this part of patent law, the encouragement towards innovation was to encourage people to share and build on a communal set of ideas. The temporary monopoly on ideas was the carrot to get people to register their ideas in a central location (patent office) rather than lock ideas behind closed doors and secrecy. Too many people think the carrot of the temporary monopoly was the point of…

Copyright was built with a similar purpose - enriching the public domain - and has failed in a similar manner. Both patents and copyright are failed experiments. They weren't meant to 'benefit creators' or 'guarantee an income', and they cannot take that role in a healthy society.

Post by Sir_Cmpwn » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 7:37 PM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #54

TD-Linux wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is currently quite a bit slower, but the goal is to make a codec fast enough for real time communication use. VP9 is still about 9x slower than x264, but yields the same quality at half the bitrate. You can set VP9 to run a lot faster, but you'll lose some of the bitrate advantages. Still, VP9 is practical for a lot of applications, such as Youtube.

VP9 being 9x slower than x264 is hard to believe. Do you have a citation?

Post by mschuster91 » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

ChrisLomont wrote: post #55

knowaveragejoe wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because it's prohibitively expensive and negates the possibility of its inclusion in free products. At least, according to the blog post.

Older codec were not prohibitively expensive otherwise the proliferation of video products using patented codecs would not exist. His complaint against H.265 will likely be fixed, and then it too will catch on, just as H.264 did, despite these same types of complaints against it.

Post by stephengillie » Tue, Aug 11, 2015, 8:02 PM UTC

tokenizerrr wrote: post #36

coldpie wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well put. It's crazy that they're pumping that much money paying lawyers in order to avoid using work that someone else has already done. They're forced to waste money and engineering talent in order to re-invent a technology due to our fucked up IP legal landscape.

Not just re-invent, since if you happen to invent something by yourself the same way as it happens to have been patented then you're still in trouble.