Putting x264 developer's technical analysis of WebM into perspective

Post by jrockway » Fri, May 21, 2010, 3:31 AM UTC

javanix wrote: post #9

jrockway wrote: post #7

The technical analysis is sound -- technically, WebM is not as good as H.264. But considering it's mostly for cat videos, it doesn't really matter. The super high quality stuff will take an extra minute or two to download, but you won't have to pay a licensing fee for it. The movie and the hardware and software that play it will be much cheaper. A compromise, yes, but not a really difficult one.

The super high quality stuff will take an extra minute or two to download, but you won't have to pay a licensing fee for it. I'm not so sure about that. Yesterday's analysis seemed to predict some questionable usage of H.264 bits in the encoder.

Post by astrange » Fri, May 21, 2010, 4:58 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #8

barkingcat wrote: post #3

I doubt that anything is really final in google's hands. just look at how fast android is changing and evolving. Google will do what it needs to do to reach their goals, even if it means that they need to break backward compatibility. This is a company with so much resources it can probably design its own reference hardware implementation of vp8 at whatever stage of its evolution, regardless of backwards compatibilit…

the reviewer / x264 developer is thinking too small And, there is always a bit of "uh oh, my life's work is suddenly becoming irrelevant, even though it's technically better". One thing I've learned from reading HN is that good technical solutions rarely get you much. What you need is a good product. H.264 is a great technical solution, but a horrible product. VP8 is not as good technically, but it's exactly the prod…

Post by av500 » Fri, May 21, 2010, 5:05 AM UTC

jerf wrote: post #14

astrange wrote: post #12

> Another problem with Jason's analysis is that he is comparing a new and "raw" video format to an established and mature encoder like x264. VP8, and the libvpx codebase, is older than x264, as it said in the original article.

Maturity has a man-hour component, too.

Post by Locke1689 » Fri, May 21, 2010, 5:35 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #8

barkingcat wrote: post #3

I doubt that anything is really final in google's hands. just look at how fast android is changing and evolving. Google will do what it needs to do to reach their goals, even if it means that they need to break backward compatibility. This is a company with so much resources it can probably design its own reference hardware implementation of vp8 at whatever stage of its evolution, regardless of backwards compatibilit…

the reviewer / x264 developer is thinking too small And, there is always a bit of "uh oh, my life's work is suddenly becoming irrelevant, even though it's technically better". One thing I've learned from reading HN is that good technical solutions rarely get you much. What you need is a good product. H.264 is a great technical solution, but a horrible product. VP8 is not as good technically, but it's exactly the prod…

Post by SADASDSAD » Fri, May 21, 2010, 6:09 AM UTC

av500 wrote: post #16

jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that turns out to be the case, then everyone should go back to H.264. But honestly, I have a feeling that Google looked into this before they decided to use it for YouTube. Remember that patents cover exactly what they describe, not things similar to what they describe. Google could always also just buy the patent, if it turns out to be a problem. Basically, I am not ready to dismiss this yet. I trust Google's leg…

So far the only thing Google said is "they are very confident" which legally means nothing. They are not going to indemnify everybody that gets sued over VP8, are they?