Does anyone know the state of Daala, which to me seems to be the proper foss competitor to h.265?
Daala was contributed by Xiph/Mozilla (who are in the AOM) towards AV1.
MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
101–110 of 153 posts
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#102Anecdote : some video gif on Reddit seems to display incorrectly... It's twisted with some green cream all over.
Video decoding is weird because while the software might be sound, I have no idea how the hardware supports it. I don't know if the hardware has to be specifically built to handle a family of codecs, or if it is a kernel matter or else...
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#103The idea that private companies were responsible for the majority of the innovation that led to these video compression standards is a complete fabrication. The majority of the work was done by the grad students of the professors who are on the standards committee. Private companies then race to patent or buy up anything that's tangentially related during the draft period, so that they can sign on and receive royalti…
And so what do you think is the solution? Do you think that "Only by becoming a Technical Committee can MPEG [...] stay competitive in the market." is true, or what could be a valuable alternative?
The solution is OUTLAWING SOFTWARE PATENTS.
Any other “patent reform” is a sham.
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#104Standard MPEG-1 MPEG-2 MPEG-4 Visual MPEG-4 AVC MPEG-H HEVC Bitrate vs previous 25% less 25% less 30% less 60% less The table at the end is hiding one factor : the computation cost of each new codecs. Have we really found new better ways to compress videos, or is it just Moore's law in action ?
Yes, the computation per pixel has increased ~2x per codec generation so codecs are taking advantage of (a fraction of) the gains provided by Moore's Law.
I remember that time when I tried to play a 4k video (x264 or x265, I am not certain) on my Mac Mini. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually ran smoothly, but the poor thing nearly melted.
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
This must be an old topic for hn'ers, new to me, but this is incredible, we keep complaining about how stifling software patents are, why hasn't there been an explosion of innovation in Europe simply by having this benefit (has there been?)? Are there studies and comparisons of what has come of this policy?
Well, one question we could ask is why basically every single popular open source multimedia project (FFmpeg, x264, MPC-HC/madVR, mpv, avisynth/VapourSynth, MVtools/SVP, heck even LAME, .....) is made mostly by european authors? Some projects are almost 100% european, some are partially european with some russian and other non-american countries thrown in. The only projects I can actually think of that are based in t…
I wonder why compression seems to be extra sensitive to the existence patents. What about all other fields, aren't there ripe opportunities for European companies to be able to build software that Americans simply can't compete against? Shouldn't there be a cottage industry that does exactly that? What are some of the most stifling non-media patents?
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#106“At long last everybody realises that the old MPEG business model is broke, all the investments (collectively hundreds of millions USD) made by the industry for the new video codec will go up in smoke and AOM’s royalty free model will spread to other business segments as well.”
Good.
“Can something be done?”
Yep. Search for a new job!
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a thousand times: Fuck the Fraunhofer Institute. There have been a lot of mistakes in the growth of the internet, but mpeg... Trying to own an entire space isn’t about making the world a better place. It’s about being in control. Me me me. Given how big video is now, and the interplay between available bandwidth and video quality, one wonders if certain bumps in the road would have…
I think it was interesting when they released the mp3 patents, every organization was broadcasting "mp3 is dead" when really the headlines should have been "mp3 encoding/decoding is now totally free." I'm convinced many big players wanted people to think mp3 was going away to push newer, patent encumbered formats.
Just for people who don't know, "they released" because the patents expired, not because they voluntarily gave them up.
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people first started discussing which codecs to use on the web a decade ago, the argument made for the MPEG-LA stuff was that a) we're better, b) we're reasonably priced, c) we're already everywhere in hardware, and d) you don't have to worry about the patents because we've got you covered. Ultimately, they won on that basis. However, when HEVC rolled around, that argument was destroyed by the multiple patent po…
So how does this work out fee/patentwise in the OSS world? I know ffmpeg/libav can play HEVC/x265 streams (or at least mpv can). Can it not encode to HEVC? Or do the fees start to apply when you start distributing content? Or is it like mp3 where fees are only attached to hardware encoders/decoders (which gets all iffy because where do you draw the line between hardware sold for encoding/decoding that has software co…
There's no special deal per se, Cisco released OpenH264 for everyone, and it can be used royalty-free as long as you only use the binaries (instead of the source): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenH264
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#109tl;dr We were able to exploit the development of tech with patents for decades and now we won't any more.
I'm only happy about this. And I seriously doubt this conclusion: "There will simply be no incentive for a company to develop new video compression technologies".
It seems the author of this text thinks the only way to have an incentive to develop new technology is patent fees. This is outright ridiculous.
Companies like Google or Netflix obviously have an incentive to further improve media codecs, because transmitted gigabytes translates into costs for them.
Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes. This is the lie of software patents. That somehow without thousands of lawyers and corrupt business contracts engineers will stop innovating. We don't need them.
In many areas, engineers need to get paid to innovate. Dating back to at least the standardization of CD-ROM, that was mediated through the use of patents. Note that until recently, there was almost no open source development of media codecs. Today, there is an advertising and entertainment industry generating huge surpluses that can also bankroll engineers to develop codecs. I’m not convinced that this is a better m…
> Note that until recently, there was almost no open source development of media codecs.
Vorbis was released in 2002. That's 16 years ago. That's hardly 'until recently'.