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

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

#81

Post by cfluffy »

halosghost wrote: post #11

Actually, I'm still rooting for Daala (from Xiph.org, the same folks that did so well with Opus). It's still a long ways away from being finished, but their work is awesome and I've been following it for a while now! Either way, having another effort competing to make a great format is not a problem. Here's hoping it goes well!

I'm betting on Daala and Thor. Both the teams involved are motivated by the same goal to make a royalty free codec. I think the odds are good that the IETF standards process will result in combining the best ideas of Daala and Thor and reviewing them from and patent point of view. If the guys doing VP10 wanted to work with us in an open way, that would be great too.

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

#82

Post by astrange »

DarkLinkXXXX wrote: post #70
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can anecdotally agree with him. I ran a service that did a lot of media encoding and VP9 is very, very slow to encode.

Could that be due to lack of hardware support?

There are probably some issues with missing SIMD, but no further hardware support would be helpful.

It's purely an implementation issue - you don't get software as good as x264 just by paying for it.

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

#83

Post by TD-Linux »

russtrotter wrote: post #58

Wasn't Ogg Theora created under just the same principles? I'm not smart enough in all things codec to know how it stacks up technically, but best I can tell, it's unencumbered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora

Yes, Theora is also royalty free. NETVC's goal is to surpass the quality per bit of existing codecs though, which Theora doesn't do.

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

#84

Post by mappu »

DarkLinkXXXX wrote: post #70
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can anecdotally agree with him. I ran a service that did a lot of media encoding and VP9 is very, very slow to encode.

Could that be due to lack of hardware support?

Comparing x264 to hardware-accelerated encoders (QuickSync, NVENC, VCE), the speed/quality/bitrate tradeoff is massively in favour of the cpu-only x264. So i think hardware encoding could help VP9, but it's not a magic bullet (unless your CPU is busy with other work simultaneously).

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

#85

Post by greglindahl »

happyscrappy wrote: post #73
smithkl42 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…

Tesla(edit:SpaceX) is not bothering to file patents because it is just a blueprint for countries like China who quickly build knockoffs on someone else's R+D dime.

You are confusing Tesla and SpaceX. SpaceX is not filing for patents.

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

#86

Post by ChrisLomont »

mschuster91 wrote: post #67
ChrisLomont wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Older codec were not prohibitively expensive otherwise the proliferation of video products using patented codecs would not exist. Because audio and movie pirates don't care what codecs they use, and VLC has supported pretty much everything you throw at it, patents be damned. What do you think most early iPod adopters filled the disks with? Surely no legally bought music, lol.

There are many more products besides the few that skirt the law.

>What do you think most early iPod adopters filled the disks with?

The first iPods shipped with decoders for several patented codecs, including mp3.

This supports my claim that the codecs were not prohibitively expensive to make gadgets that include royalty payments to codec patent holders.

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

#87

Post by xiphmont »

derf_ wrote: post #28
halosghost wrote: post #11

Actually, I'm still rooting for Daala (from Xiph.org, the same folks that did so well with Opus). It's still a long ways away from being finished, but their work is awesome and I've been following it for a while now! Either way, having another effort competing to make a great format is not a problem. Here's hoping it goes well!

Hello, I'm the Daala tech lead. One of the things that made Opus a success was the contributions of others. We certainly don't have a monopoly on good ideas. We'll take pieces of Daala and stick them in Thor and pieces of Thor and stick them in Daala, and figure out what works best. Some of that experimentation has already begun: https://github.com/cisco/thor/pull/8 https://review.xiph.org/874/ https://www.ietf.org/p…

Yeah, we're going to have to start arguing on what to name the hybrid soon, since 'Vopus' is already taken.

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

#88

Post by ZeroGravitas »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #86
mschuster91 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Older codec were not prohibitively expensive otherwise the proliferation of video products using patented codecs would not exist. Because audio and movie pirates don't care what codecs they use, and VLC has supported pretty much everything you throw at it, patents be damned. What do you think most early iPod adopters filled the disks with? Surely no legally bought music, lol.

There are many more products besides the few that skirt the law. >What do you think most early iPod adopters filled the disks with? The first iPods shipped with decoders for several patented codecs, including mp3. This supports my claim that the codecs were not prohibitively expensive to make gadgets that include royalty payments to codec patent holders.

Apple refused to release QuickTime 6 until the MPEG-LA licensing for MPEG-4 was changed. This supports the claim that codec licensing has always been a contentious area.

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

#89

Post by adultSwim »

smithkl42 wrote: post #21
jngreenlee wrote: post #2

"We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents. Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world." This burden is becoming far too great, when this is the…

Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…

Are we saying you can no longer commercially develop a video codec?

If it's so good for the industry, the patent holders could just choose to make it free. Everyone else could choose to :gasp: pay.

I actually agree with your point. I just want to make it clear what that means. When it comes to patents, to me a compression algorithm is the closest thing in software to a mechanic device. At that level could patent equivalent ideas as hardware. Are we saying no more patents on mechanical inventions or hardware?

For a long time I've thought that the patent office letting crummy patents through as being a separate issue than having patents at all. It also never made sense to separate out software patents from anything else.

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