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Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

leonardo.chiariglione.org

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Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#11

Post by thinkingQueen »

mike_hearn wrote: post #4
wheybags wrote: post #2

As someone who hasn't had any exposure to the human stories behind mpeg before, it feels to me like it's been a force for evil since long before 2020. Patents on h264, h265, and even mp3 have been holding the industry back for decades. Imagine what we might have if their iron grip on codecs was broken.

Possibly, nothing. Codec development is slow and expensive. Free codecs only came along at all because Google decided to subsidize development but that became possible only 15 years or so after MPEG was born, and it's hardly a robust strategy. Plus free codecs were often built by acquiring companies that had previously been using IP licensing as a business model rather than from-scratch development.

Not sure why you are downvoted as you seem to be one of the few who knows even a little about codec development.

And regarding ”royalty-free” codecs please read this https://ipeurope.org/blog/royalty-free-standards-are-not-fre...

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#12

Post by dostick »

The article does not give much beyond what you already read in the title. What obscure forces and how? Isn’t it an open standards non-profit organisation, then what could possible hinder it? Maybe because technologically closed standards became better and nonprofit project has no resources to compete with commercial standards? USB Alliance have been able to work things out, so maybe compression standards should be developed in similar way?

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#13

Post by rwmj »

thinkingQueen wrote: post #9
wheybags wrote: post #2

As someone who hasn't had any exposure to the human stories behind mpeg before, it feels to me like it's been a force for evil since long before 2020. Patents on h264, h265, and even mp3 have been holding the industry back for decades. Imagine what we might have if their iron grip on codecs was broken.

Who would develop those codecs? A good video coding engineer costs about 100-300k USD a year. The really good ones even more. You need a lot of them. JVET has an attendance of about 350 such engineers each meeting (four times a year). Not to mention the computer clusters to run all the coding sims, thousands and thousands of CPUs are needed per research team. People who are outside the video coding industry do not un…

Who would write a web server? Who would write Curl? Who would write a whole operating system to compete with Microsoft when that would take thousands of engineers being paid $100,000s per year? People don't understand that these companies have huge R&D budgets!

(The answer is that most of the work would be done by companies who have an interest in video distribution - eg. Google - but don't profit directly by selling codecs. And universities for the more research side of things. Plus volunteers gluing it all together into the final system.)

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#14

Post by thinkingQueen »

roenxi wrote: post #10
thinkingQueen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would develop those codecs? A good video coding engineer costs about 100-300k USD a year. The really good ones even more. You need a lot of them. JVET has an attendance of about 350 such engineers each meeting (four times a year). Not to mention the computer clusters to run all the coding sims, thousands and thousands of CPUs are needed per research team. People who are outside the video coding industry do not un…

> It’s like saying ”where would we be with AI if Google, OpenAI and Nvidia didn’t have an iron grip”. We'd be where we are. All the codec-equivalent aspects of their work are unencumbered by patents and there are very high quality free models available in the market that are just given away. If the multimedia world had followed the Google example it'd be quite hard to complain about the codecs.

That’s hardly true. Nvidia’s tech is covered by patents and licenses. Why else would it be worth 4.5 trillion dollars?

The top AI companies use very restrictive licenses.

I think it’s actually the other way around and AI industry will actually end up following the video coding industry when it comes to patents, royalties, licenses etc.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#16

Post by baobun »

dostick wrote: post #12

The article does not give much beyond what you already read in the title. What obscure forces and how? Isn’t it an open standards non-profit organisation, then what could possible hinder it? Maybe because technologically closed standards became better and nonprofit project has no resources to compete with commercial standards? USB Alliance have been able to work things out, so maybe compression standards should be de…

Supposedly the whole story is told in their linked book.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#17

Post by bjoli »

thinkingQueen wrote: post #11
mike_hearn wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly, nothing. Codec development is slow and expensive. Free codecs only came along at all because Google decided to subsidize development but that became possible only 15 years or so after MPEG was born, and it's hardly a robust strategy. Plus free codecs were often built by acquiring companies that had previously been using IP licensing as a business model rather than from-scratch development.

Not sure why you are downvoted as you seem to be one of the few who knows even a little about codec development. And regarding ”royalty-free” codecs please read this https://ipeurope.org/blog/royalty-free-standards-are-not-fre...

At least two of the members of ipeurope are companies you could use as ann argument why we shouldn't have patents at all.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#18

Post by bjoli »

karel-3d wrote: post #15

I... don't understand how AI related to video codecs. Maybe because I don't understand either video codecs or AI on a deeper level.

It is like upscaling. If you could train AI to "upscale" your audio or video you could get away with sending a lot less data. It is already being done with quite amazing results for audio.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#19

Post by thinkingQueen »

rwmj wrote: post #13
thinkingQueen wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would develop those codecs? A good video coding engineer costs about 100-300k USD a year. The really good ones even more. You need a lot of them. JVET has an attendance of about 350 such engineers each meeting (four times a year). Not to mention the computer clusters to run all the coding sims, thousands and thousands of CPUs are needed per research team. People who are outside the video coding industry do not un…

Who would write a web server? Who would write Curl? Who would write a whole operating system to compete with Microsoft when that would take thousands of engineers being paid $100,000s per year? People don't understand that these companies have huge R&D budgets! (The answer is that most of the work would be done by companies who have an interest in video distribution - eg. Google - but don't profit directly by selling…

Are you really saying that patents are preventing people from writing the next great video codec? If it were that simple, it would’ve already happened. We’re not talking about a software project that you can just hack together, compile, and see if it works. We’re talking about rigorous performance and complexity evaluations, subjective testing, and massive coordination with hardware manufacturers—from chips to displays.

People don’t develop video codecs for fun like they do with software. And the reason is that it’s almost impossible to do without support from the industry.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#20

Post by eggspurt »

dostick wrote: post #12

The article does not give much beyond what you already read in the title. What obscure forces and how? Isn’t it an open standards non-profit organisation, then what could possible hinder it? Maybe because technologically closed standards became better and nonprofit project has no resources to compete with commercial standards? USB Alliance have been able to work things out, so maybe compression standards should be de…

From Leonardo, who founded MPEG, on the page linked: "Even before it has ceased to exists, the MPEG engine had run out of steam – technology- and business wise. The same obscure forces that have hijacked MPEG had kept it hostage to their interests impeding its technical development and keeping it locked to outmoded Intellectual Property licensing models delaying market adoption of MPEG standards. Industry has been strangled and consumers have been deprived of the benefits of new technologies. From facilitators of new opportunities and experiences, MPEG standards have morphed from into roadblocks."
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