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> Google’s proprietary VP9 codec That's an odd choice of phrase; it's unfortunate that a press release chooses to disparage alternatives without explanation.
The MP4 patent situation needs another close look. MP4, which was first standardized in 1998, ought to come out of patent soon, if it hasn't already. There are a few remaining patents in the MPEG-LA package, but they're mostly for stuff you don't need on the Internet, such as interlaced video, font loading, error tolerance for broadcast, and VRML. This hasn't been looked at hard since 2011[1] and it's time for a new…
You are right in that there are many other encumbered technologies that have patents expiring soon. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and several container formats are included. Notably, this is almost all of the technologies required to make a DVD.
> Google’s proprietary VP9 codec That's an odd choice of phrase; it's unfortunate that a press release chooses to disparage alternatives without explanation.
Here are some definitions of "proprietary" as used by members of the FOSS community when talking about standards:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4634957 (BrendanEich)
>"Proprietary" as in "sole proprietor" is appropriate for a project with zero governance, launched by Google after some incubation closed-source, dominated by Googlers.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9395992 (pcwalton, Mozilla employee and Rust core developer)
>In a competitive multi-vendor ecosystem like the Web, public-facing protocols that are introduced and controlled by a single vendor are proprietary, regardless of whether you can look at the source code. NaCl and Pepper, for example, are proprietary, even though they have open-source implementations.
i wonder how many orders of magnitude slower this one will be compared to x264. vp8/9 was like 9x slower last time i checked
It is currently quite a bit slower, but the goal is to make a codec fast enough for real time communication use. VP9 is still about 9x slower than x264, but yields the same quality at half the bitrate. You can set VP9 to run a lot faster, but you'll lose some of the bitrate advantages. Still, VP9 is practical for a lot of applications, such as Youtube.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or they could pay the people who invented it already. oh that's right. The whole point is they don't want to.
That's because it's prohibitively expensive and negates the possibility of its inclusion in free products. At least, according to the blog post.
His complaint against H.265 will likely be fixed, and then it too will catch on, just as H.264 did, despite these same types of complaints against it.
The MP4 patent situation needs another close look. MP4, which was first standardized in 1998, ought to come out of patent soon, if it hasn't already. There are a few remaining patents in the MPEG-LA package, but they're mostly for stuff you don't need on the Internet, such as interlaced video, font loading, error tolerance for broadcast, and VRML. This hasn't been looked at hard since 2011[1] and it's time for a new…
If by MP4 you are referring to H.264, there are still many years remaining on most of the patents. MPEG-LA publishes patent lists, if you're interested to look. You are right in that there are many other encumbered technologies that have patents expiring soon. MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 video, MP3 and AC3 audio, and several container formats are included. Notably, this is almost all of the technologies required to make a DVD.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amen. As Thomas Jefferson (correctly) described patents, they're a part of positive law, not natural law. In other words, their only justification is pragmatic, not moral. You can't "own" an idea the way that you can own a couch or a car. We allow for (temporary) patent protection because it's supposed to encourage innovation and help our economy. If it doesn't - and it's clearly reached the point where it hinders ra…
To be clear, because some forget this part of patent law, the encouragement towards innovation was to encourage people to share and build on a communal set of ideas. The temporary monopoly on ideas was the carrot to get people to register their ideas in a central location (patent office) rather than lock ideas behind closed doors and secrecy. Too many people think the carrot of the temporary monopoly was the point of…
Both patents and copyright are failed experiments. They weren't meant to 'benefit creators' or 'guarantee an income', and they cannot take that role in a healthy society.
"We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents. Our efforts are far from complete, but we felt it was time to open this up to the world." This burden is becoming far too great, when this is the…
The entire anti-patent argument has rarely elevated beyond attempts at justifying people's desire to have everything they want for free. Do you have something to contribute that will help, or do you simply believe you are owed access to every technology everyone has created because your want is that meaningful?
Didn't we already go through this with VP8/VP9/WebM?
VP9 is a good choice if you want a royalty free video codec right now. NETVC is shooting for the next generation. In addition, the goal is to get the video codec standardized at the IETF. NETVC participation is open to anyone though, so it is possible more players will show up.
What makes a codec "next generation"? I assume, broadly, it involves trading off more yet more computation for a tighter encode? (As nearly an embarassingly-parallel problem, video coding continues to get faster with more silicon even if serial performance is stagnant.) What kind of gains can we expect from the "next generation"?
All honest questions, BTW. Links welcome, though something focused on this question and not just a laundry list of features with no reference to the past would be preferred.