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The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

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Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#31

Post by drmpeg »

userbinator wrote: post #17
jchw wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I think h264 is coming soon, too, though. Most of the remaining known h264 patents expire next year, with only one patent extending out further. I do believe that more modern codecs like h265 and AV1 have a lot to offer us, but having h264 be fully unencumbered by patents will be nice. By modern standards it is very well-supported in both hardware and software, computationally cheap to encode and decode, and st…

just that I think the h264 long tail will be one of the longest long tails of a video codec. I think MPEG-1 and 2 (from which MP3 comes) might be even longer.

MPEG-2 video is still very much alive. In the US, almost all terrestrial OTA broadcast (ATSC 1.0) and all SD channels on cable systems. Even Comcast VOD was all MPEG-2 (including HD) until they shut down the QAM version in 2023.

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#32

Post by duskwuff »

jchw wrote: post #14
Dylan16807 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> computationally cheap to encode and decode Well I'm not sure about decode, but as of a few years ago weren't h.265 and AV1 able to do much better compression than h.264 at almost all levels of compute? https://people.videolan.org/~unlord/SVT-AV1_BD-rate.png And h.266 encoders can probably go faster now too.

I would hope so! Otherwise the Pareto front wouldn't have moved in ~20 years which would be rather hard to believe. However, at the same time, h265, h266 and AV1 are all vastly more complicated, and will have less broad hardware acceleration support than h264, which, again, even if it is not optimally efficient use of compute, just doesn't require a whole lot by modern standards. So I'd argue there is really no reaso…

Once the patents expire, I expect to see H.264 become the JPEG of video codecs - it may not be the most efficient format available, but it's widely supported, relatively easy to encode/decode, and good enough quality for many use cases.

(MP3 is in a similar place. AAC and Opus are technically superior, but everything supports MP3.)

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#33

Post by snark_attack »

goalieca wrote: post #24
ronsor wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At which point, the continued march towards higher resolution and bandwidth video will probably limit their utility Just as the patent system intended: maximum extraction was enabled while the product was useful.

Now if only copyright didn't last forever..

[dead]

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#34

Post by Dylan16807 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #30
userbinator wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think video resolution will increase all that much in the future, except for niche uses, as the resolution of the human eye becomes a limiting factor.

I read "resolution" as pixel count more than DPI. As it becomes cheaper to capture and process higher res content, we're bound to push it to bigger displays (VR included). I guess the human eye will be the limit when we're at retina levels of DPI on a sphere.

Most videos are probably going to stay aimed near 30-40 degrees of width. So while we already can do 8k or higher pretty easily, 4k is enough for a huge amount of content. Even 1080p can hit "retina" at 30 degrees, if barely. And while that threshold for "retina" is flawed it's pretty good for video content.

We'll see how much 360 content shows up, but the size gap is so big it basically needs to be handled entirely differently. A 16x9 screen, 40 degrees wide, is only 2% of a sphere.

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#36

Post by joshspankit »

userbinator wrote: post #27
at1as wrote: post #11

Moving in the right direction, but unfortunately it's still quite a few years before H264 is off patent, globally: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M... At which point, the continued march towards higher resolution and bandwidth video will probably limit their utility

I don't think video resolution will increase all that much in the future, except for niche uses, as the resolution of the human eye becomes a limiting factor.

You may be underestimating the desire to earn through differentiation.

Assuming the product companies accept the plateau on resolution (I agree it’s likely), there are many ways to exploit the other stuff. Colour space, tacling each type of compression artifact, additional channels (probly not long until we have HDR RGBW), etc etc and those will each come with their committees made of patent-hungry companies seeing non-encumbered encodings as “undesirable”

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#39

Post by jbk »

at1as wrote: post #11

Moving in the right direction, but unfortunately it's still quite a few years before H264 is off patent, globally: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M... At which point, the continued march towards higher resolution and bandwidth video will probably limit their utility

Read the list of patents left: a lot of them are on SVC (no one uses this) and on higher profile.

For a lot of use cases, including Basic and Main profile, H.264 is already free.

Re: The Last MPEG-4 Visual Patent Has Expired

#40

Post by Teever »

ronsor wrote: post #19
at1as wrote: post #11

Moving in the right direction, but unfortunately it's still quite a few years before H264 is off patent, globally: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Have_the_patents_for_H.264_M... At which point, the continued march towards higher resolution and bandwidth video will probably limit their utility

> At which point, the continued march towards higher resolution and bandwidth video will probably limit their utility Just as the patent system intended: maximum extraction was enabled while the product was useful.

[the United States Congress shall have power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clause

The purpose of the system as it was originally conceived was not to provide maximum economic extraction -- the purpose was to promote the progress of science and useful arts.

It is not necessarily the case that the maximization of economic extraction coincides with the progress of science and useful arts.

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