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MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

blog.chiariglione.org

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Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#121

Post by kuschku »

dahauns wrote: post #120
kuschku wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll recommend reading the other pages on Fraunhofer's site explaining their goals and why they were created, and how they differ from the other German research societies . But of course, government funding is today one of the largest sources still.

I don't need to, I'm fully aware of the differences between Fraunhofer and the others (basically PPP, applied sciences etc.). I simply posit that (software) patents actually aren't needed for that. Or to be more specific: economic exploitation of their patents - nowadays, I could e.g. imagine them to offer their considerable patent pools for defensive purposes, to "disarm" patent minefields in problematic fields. Of…

Well, then you missed an important part.

The use of patents by Fraunhofer is to ensure that the research is actually real-world usable (and the government isn't just wasting their grants) and that it is worth it to the industry, while at the same time ensuring that the industry helps in funding the research that it will make profit fron

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#122

Post by dahauns »

kuschku wrote: post #121
dahauns wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't need to, I'm fully aware of the differences between Fraunhofer and the others (basically PPP, applied sciences etc.). I simply posit that (software) patents actually aren't needed for that. Or to be more specific: economic exploitation of their patents - nowadays, I could e.g. imagine them to offer their considerable patent pools for defensive purposes, to "disarm" patent minefields in problematic fields. Of…

Well, then you missed an important part. The use of patents by Fraunhofer is to ensure that the research is actually real-world usable (and the government isn't just wasting their grants) and that it is worth it to the industry, while at the same time ensuring that the industry helps in funding the research that it will make profit fron

Sorry, read my edit. IMO it's an incredibly reductionist view that it's only worth something to the industry if someone can make (most of?) money via patents from it.

And another edit: One could argue that's a side effect from the modern anglo-american tradition of patenting (that has seemingly spilled over to continental europe) that almost completele ignores "Erfindungshöhe", stripping patents of their inherent technical merit leaving exploitability as the only measurement.

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#124

Post by kuschku »

dahauns wrote: post #122
kuschku wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then you missed an important part. The use of patents by Fraunhofer is to ensure that the research is actually real-world usable (and the government isn't just wasting their grants) and that it is worth it to the industry, while at the same time ensuring that the industry helps in funding the research that it will make profit fron

Sorry, read my edit. IMO it's an incredibly reductionist view that it's only worth something to the industry if someone can make (most of?) money via patents from it. And another edit: One could argue that's a side effect from the modern anglo-american tradition of patenting (that has seemingly spilled over to continental europe) that almost completele ignores "Erfindungshöhe", stripping patents of their inherent tec…

That's a valid view — but that's specifically what separates Fraunhofer from the others.

The Helmholtz-, Leibniz- and Max-Planck-Societies exist to do science for science's sake. They build stellerators and map the oceans, because it provides knowledge.

The Fraunhofer soxiety exists to turn theoretical research into something companies can directly implement. That is what separates it from all the others. It is supposed to provide finished templates and blueprints with its patents, so you can license something, and have it ready to use.

That is why Fraunhofer didn't just develop an algorithm for mp3 and aac, but developed production ready encoders, decoders, hardware en- and decoders, 5.1 decoders and stereo, even simple ones for mono. They created the source code, heavily documented, and the algorithms, and blueprints for building them in hardware.

So that companies can license it, just integrate it, and are done.

That is why the Fraunhofer society exists, because our economy of small to middle businesses can not compete in R&D with giants unless we do all the R&D in such a research institution licensing ready-made solutions to your small companies.

And yes, the US-view on patents with regards to not needing implementation detail and no requirement for Schöpfungshöhe (in fact, the US system even has the opposite of that) is severely damaging this concept.

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#125

Post by Retric »

jcranmer wrote: post #70
sfink wrote: post #47

Wait... someone at MPEG actually believed their own bullshit? That a massive campaign of extortion, intentionally complex legal maneuvering, and outright intimidation is actually beneficial to technological progress in some way? (Sure, it's beneficial to some of the companies involved in the licensing extortion scheme; I don't think anyone disagrees with that.) Or is this guy just an incredibly skilled troll with 30…

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…

I don't think we need better codecs, video resolution increases slower than hardware and networking speeds. So, complete stagnation is viable.

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#126

Post by pgeorgi »

rayiner wrote: post #117
icebraining wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also FLAC and Musepack, which I think are even older. Plus for video, Theora's initial release was in 2004.

Theora was the result of open sourcing a proprietary patented codec (VP3). Musepack is based on MPEG.

Ogg Tarkin predates Theora and tried some completely new ideas in a time when digital video wasn't as ubiquitous (and so there wasn't as much incentive to keep going when problems arose).

Tarkin also suffered from the patent minefield everybody else put up (so they couldn't go for the obvious solutions because these were already locked down for another 15 years)

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#127

Post by icebraining »

rayiner wrote: post #117
icebraining wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also FLAC and Musepack, which I think are even older. Plus for video, Theora's initial release was in 2004.

Theora was the result of open sourcing a proprietary patented codec (VP3). Musepack is based on MPEG.

I'm not sure about Theora, but Musepack was further developed already as a free software project.

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#128

Post by phkahler »

Retric wrote: post #125
jcranmer wrote: post #70

Earlier 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…

I don't think we need better codecs, video resolution increases slower than hardware and networking speeds. So, complete stagnation is viable.

>> So, complete stagnation is viable.

If you consider compression from an information theory point of view, for any given measure of "quality" there is theoretically a limit to compression. It's not clear where the limit is, or how close we are to it, but because it does exist stagnation is inevitable eventually.

As it gets harder to make gains it will become less of a business proposition and more of a research/academic thing.

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#129

Post by pgeorgi »

rayiner wrote: post #63
guelo wrote: post #11

Earlier 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…

> In many areas, engineers need to get paid to innovate.

What do you think: How many engineers can be paid for reducing Netflix's traffic by 10% simply by these lowered traffic costs, and not counting secondary effects as a larger user base because more people can watch the videos with their available bandwidth? Also YouTube, Amazon Video, public television, ...

Re: MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution

#130

Post by pizza234 »

CharlesW wrote: post #60
jchw wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like there's an answer: the market actually wants free standards because they're realizing it's more beneficial to them than any other outcome. So money and effort is being pumped into developing free video encoding standards. It seems there is an incentive for the foreseeable future to continue to improve video codecs simply because it saves on bandwidth and disk space costs, and improves user experience. T…

> …Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time now. Sorry to be pedantic about one bit of an otherwise-fine post, but AAC is comparable to Opus at any given bitrate[1]. Plus, even the most esoteric flavor of AAC has the enormous advantage of 7+ years of ubiquity[2]. [1] See the multiple charts at http://opus-codec.org/comparison/ , for one presumably-unbiased source. [2] All versions of An…

> See the multiple charts at http://opus-codec.org/comparison/, for one presumably-unbiased source.

Further nitpick: the page is very misleading. Audio compression has different targets, a crucial one being music.

The Opus official page has comparatively little test references for music, both of which are at 64/96kbps for AAC [1-4], which is significantly below the general audience listening standards (160+ kpbs).

This implies that the red line on the top right of the first diagram is literally made up.

Until further blind listening tests are performed, generic conclusions such as "Opus outpeforms the competition" are unfounded.

> It attempts to summarize results [...] and (when no data exists) show anecdotal evidence

This is borderline offensive for people who are serious about researching music quality. Any anectodal evidence [in this field] is garbage.

[1] http://listening-tests.hydrogenaud.io/igorc/results.html [2] https://people.xiph.org/~greg/opus/ha2011/ [3] http://listening-test.coresv.net/results.htm [4] http://opus-codec.org/static/comparison/GoogleTest1.pdf

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