So if I release an iPhone game (commercial) with video in it encoded in one of the formats mentioned... Them I'm violating? I guess so!
No, you can't do that with H.264
61–70 of 79 posts
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#62Interesting. Is there precedent showing that these clauses are enforceable? After all, I can write whatever I want in a contract, but that doesn't mean it'll hold up in court.
Even if these clauses weren't enforceable, their sole existence causes a rather shady impression. What are the business practices behind such licences? It's usually a good idea to restrain from cooperating with such companies. Unless, of course, the market forces you to do that - which is the only reason they get away with such excessive licence conditions for a nowadays state-of-the-art technology.
Shady? Don't the involved parties want to protect their own interests as much as they can?
The way I read the MS and Apple licenses is that they are just covering their asses, there is a greater than zero percent chance that there could be new MPEG fees that would make it unpalatable for them to continue to support it. I suspect that neither MPEG nor Apple or MS or Adobe or really anyone wants that to happen. At the same time the MPEG folks don't want to just take a one time fee and potentially leave money on the table. It's somewhat open ended, that's unsettling but how do you price that stuff? You could do it per use but everybody seems to find that unacceptable, you could charge a percentage of profits but not many companies would go for that, you could have a one time flat fee but that will usually be too large, so you kind of have periodic re-evaluation. For most users, it seems like it's simply an issue between them and their vendor, not MPEG.
Look at MP3, it is patented. Thomson has gone after companies and collected money on the patents. Nobody seems to care at all and it appears to be much more nebulous, they may or may not try to get you to pay them, it's not clear to me who is sued and why. That's shady...
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#63H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience. I've seen the articles that claim that the two are basically the same, but it just isn't true - you can cherry-pick cases that look close, but those cases are a minority. That said , the world needs an open-source video codec, and I'm glad that Mozilla i…
H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience. Would it hurt user experience as much as not having ads or never being able to charge for accounts? Because that's what using the free version of h.264 implies.
I don't disagree, and I'd love a free open-source video codec that compared favorably with H.264. I wouldn't be surprised if we have one soon. But we don't yet.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#64The problem with these write-ups about how bad H.264 is (or will be in 2011) is that it will not reach the right people in time; the masses. The people who clicked through to an article with H.264 in the title already know about the ins and outs. The companies that implement and support H.264 also know all about the license, and they have most likely gotten some pretty sweet deals for getting this thing as widely dep…
There are obvious problems with H.264, but I don't believe MPEG LA's plan is to sue regular people for not complying with the license agreement when they did that video that one time. Not because I think they're not evil enough to do it, but because that kind of money-making scheme just doesn't scale. Also, whenever they've sued one or two people, people's eyes will open and they'll just use an other codec. No big de…
Why wouldn't it scale to sue people? As long as one lawyer can make more money than he costs, they could employ more lawyers? Also, a lot of people might just be scared and pay licensing fees through their automated web form, without the need of a lawyer.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience. Would it hurt user experience as much as not having ads or never being able to charge for accounts? Because that's what using the free version of h.264 implies.
I don't disagree, and I'd love a free open-source video codec that compared favorably with H.264. I wouldn't be surprised if we have one soon. But we don't yet.
I would be surprised, actually. With vague software patents covering nearly everything related to video encoding ("Method for the computation of the sum of two integers"), it's a legal minefield. If people could freely implement their own ideas, then we would definitely have something better. But thanks to software patents, this is not possible.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#66Well, so how much does the licensing actually cost? On their website MPEG LA mentions there are certain thresholds to "minimize the impact on lower volume users" ( http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx ). If you're running an consulting business using this format is it so weird to pay a little (or maybe nothing?) to use it? I'm pretty sure you can find outrageous (and oftentimes unlawful) things in…
From wikipedia (but it actually happened!): In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs. Edit: I am completely opposed to web sta…
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs
h.264 is not in the HTML5 standard and nobody is trying to get it put there. The reason it is a hot topic is that it is what people are actually using, not because of web standards.
HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle
The point of the spec is to document what is shared in common across browsers. Mandating something that was not going to be shared in common would have turned the spec into a work of fiction.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#67H.264 is a far superior codec to Theora. For a large site, distributing video in Theora would significantly increase bandwidth costs, and would hurt user experience. I've seen the articles that claim that the two are basically the same, but it just isn't true - you can cherry-pick cases that look close, but those cases are a minority. That said , the world needs an open-source video codec, and I'm glad that Mozilla i…
I wonder if there are any recent published tests that show this claimed difference?
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#68Well, so how much does the licensing actually cost? On their website MPEG LA mentions there are certain thresholds to "minimize the impact on lower volume users" ( http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx ). If you're running an consulting business using this format is it so weird to pay a little (or maybe nothing?) to use it? I'm pretty sure you can find outrageous (and oftentimes unlawful) things in…
"I do things with video on web, so irrelevant, that they won't notice me" is not the solution to these things. At least not if you want to be a web entrepreneur? If the only widely adopted format on web becomes h264, which would already be the case if Mozilla wasn't resisting (which most of you attacked), then you have no other option than to use this format. And pay, unless your plan is to be unnoticeable. And video…
If the only widely adopted format on web becomes h264...
It already is, thanks to Flash.
...which would already be the case if Mozilla wasn't resisting (which most of you attacked)
It already is and Mozilla is doing very little to stop it considering they continue to fully support Flash. What the are actually doing is hindering the adoption of the tag, because their implementation doesn't support the formats that are actually in use.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
If people are willing to download malware to look at porn, why wouldn't they download a new video codec?
On the iPhone, they can't. On the desktop, it's more likely that they'll click the back button than download a codec, install it, relaunch their browser and navigate back to your site.
How do all the Vista and XP users view H.264 videos? Oh yeah, by installing a plugin.
Re: No, you can't do that with H.264
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
From wikipedia (but it actually happened!): In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs. Edit: I am completely opposed to web sta…
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - this does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible. You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft a…
>You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the "standards".
Nope I thought it was the WHAT-WG and the HTML WG at the W3C. Yes major corporations have direct influence on these groups but so to do the OSS friendly browser corps and to some extent web designers and users.
Google are already using h264 in HTML5 on YouTube for capable browsers aren't they? Are they sending Theora/Vorbis streams at all? Seems clear where they are going then.