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Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

leonardo.chiariglione.org

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Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#161

Post by thwarted »

tsimionescu wrote: post #68
badsectoracula wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like the 90s argument against FLOSS: without the incentive for people to sell software, nobody would write it.

This is still the argument for software copyright. And I think it's still a pretty persuasive argument, despite the success of FLOSS. To this day, there is very little successful consumer software. Outside of browsers, Ubuntu, Libre Office, and GIMP are more or less it, at least outside certain niches. And even they are a pretty tiny compared to Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android, Office/Google Docs, or Photoshop. The browser…

>> That sounds like the 90s argument against FLOSS

> This is still the argument for software copyright.

And open source licensing is based on and relies on copyright. Patents and copyright are different kinds of intellectual property protection and incentivize different things. Copyright in some sense encourages participation and collaboration because you retain ownership of your code. The way patents are used discourages participation and collaboration.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#162

Post by riedel »

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.

MPEG-7 includes a binary XML standard [0] which is quite useful IMHO in comparison to others (I think it is used in DVB Meta data streams). But beyond patents it is even hard to find open documentation of BIM. I think the group was technically quite competent in comparison with other standard groups, but the business models around it really turn me off.

[0] https://mpeg.chiariglione.org/standards/mpeg-7/reference-sof...

EDIT: Here is the Wikipedia page of BiM which evidently made it even into an ISO Standard [1]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BiM

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#163

Post by dspillett »

maxst wrote: post #147
burnte wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think video over Internet could be a huge business.

In 1998, the idea seemed so ridiculous, TheOnion mocked it: https://theonion.com/new-5-000-multimedia-computer-system-do...

Picking 300MB as a ridiculous amount of data to download dates that nicely without needing to look at the article header.

Though using the codecs and hardware of that time I doubt the quality at even that size would be great. Compare an old 349MB (sized to fit two on a CD-R/-RW, likely 480p though smaller wasn't uncommon) cap of a Stargate episode picked up in the early/mid 20XXs to a similarly sized file compressed using h265 or even h264 on modern hardware.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#164

Post by mafuy »

mike_hearn wrote: post #115
sitkack wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You continue to make the same unsubstantiated claims about codecs being hard and expensive. These same tropes were said about every other field, and even if true, we have tens of thousands of folks that would like to participate, but are locked out due to broken IP law. The firewall of patents exist precisely because digital video is a way to shakedown the route media would have to travel to get to the end user. Code…

Codecs not harder than compilers? Sounds like an unsubstantiated claim! Modern video codecs are harder than compilers. You have to have good ASIC development expertise to do them right, for example, which you don't need for compilers. It's totally feasible for a single company to develop a leading edge compiler whereas you don't see that in video codecs, historically they've been collaborations.

With all due respect, to say that codecs are more difficult to get right than optimizing compilers is absurd.

The only reason I can think of why you would say this is that nowadays we have good compiler infrastructure that works with many hardware architectures and it has become easy to create or modify compilers. But that's only due to the fact that it was so insanely complicated that it had to be redone from scratch to become generalizible, which led to LLVM and the subsequent direct and indirect benefits everywhere. That's the work of thousands of the smartest people over 30 years.

There is no way that a single company could develop a state of the art compiler without using an existing one. Intel had a good independent compiler and gave up because open source had become superior.

For what it's worth, look at the state of FPGA compilers. They are so difficult that every single one of them that exists is utter shit. I wish it were different.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#165

Post by overfeed »

DragonStrength wrote: post #92
marcodiego wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. https://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-the-causes-and-a-solu... He is not a coder, not a researcher, he is only part of the worst game there is in this industry: a money maker from patents and "standards" you need to…

You missed the first part of that quote: > At long last everybody realises that the old MPEG business model is now broke And the entire post is about how dysfunctional MPEG is and how AOM rose to deal with it. It is tragic to waste so much time and money only to produce nothing. He's criticizing the MPEG group and their infighting. He's literally criticizing MPEG's licensing model and the leadership of the companies…

> There will simply be no incentive for companies to develop new video compression technologies, at very significant cost because of the sophistication of the field, knowing that their assets will be thankfully – and nothing more – accepted and used by AOM in their video codecs.

I don't think he fully considered the motivations of Alliance members like Google (YouTube), Meta and Netflix and the lengths they'll go to optimize operational costs of delivering content to improve their bottom line.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#166

Post by BizarroLand »

maxst wrote: post #147
burnte wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think video over Internet could be a huge business.

In 1998, the idea seemed so ridiculous, TheOnion mocked it: https://theonion.com/new-5-000-multimedia-computer-system-do...

I wonder if the 6000 series from nvidia will finally be able to deliver on the prognostication of being able to make toast with a PC?

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#167

Post by ronsor »

scotty79 wrote: post #59

> 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. Copyright is cancer. The faster AI industry is going to run it into the ground, t…

I hate copyright too, but this is about patents. Software patents are also cancer.

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#168

Post by DiggyJohnson »

scottLobster wrote: post #146
voakbasda wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know about you, but I became a software engineer to write code for myself and my own interests, not to get a job where all of my labor will be vacuumed up and exploited to maximize anonymous shareholder value.

That's all great and noble, but at the end of the day it's about who has the resources. If you can get the necessary resources yourself and have complete control over their allocation, congratulations you won the jackpot of life. Plenty of people, some of whom are smarter and better than you, tried to do the same and failed due to reasons beyond their control. Try to remain a good person and not waste the opportunity…

Why are you arguing so hard against someone that simply stated “I was interested in pursuing this topic as a career when I was in college but then I learned more about the field and decided to pursue something else”?

Re: Leonardo Chiariglione – Co-founder of MPEG

#169

Post by rs186 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #143
rs186 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, counting on governments to develop codecs optimized for fast evolving applications for web and live streaming is a great idea. If we did that we would probably be stuck with low-bitrate 720p videos on YouTube.

> Yeah, counting on governments to develop codecs optimized for fast evolving applications for web and live streaming is a great idea. Give universities the money, let them care about the details.

It seems that you have a massive misunderstanding of how this works.

University research labs, usually with a team of no more than 10 people (at most 20), are good at producing early, proof-of-concept work, but not incredibly complex projects like creating an actual codec. They are not known for producing polished, mature commerical products that can be immediately used in the real world. They don't have the resources or the incentive to do so.

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