VP8 Codec Coming To FFmpeg 218
Jim Buzbee writes "Interested in Google's VP8 codec? Well, so were the FFmpeg guys, so they went ahead and wrote their own native decoder in only 1,400 lines of unique code. They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."
Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anyone else worried by..
They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."
I bet the MPEG-LA will see that as proof that it violates their patents.
It gets worse (Score:5, Interesting)
Is anyone else worried by..
They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."
I bet the MPEG-LA will see that as proof that it violates their patents.
From tfa:
since H.264 (the current industry standard video codec) and VP8 are highly similar, we can share code (and more importantly: optimizations) between FFmpeg’s H.264 and VP8 decoders (e.g. intra prediction).
Re:What is the problem? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oy vay... how the heck did that get modded interesting?
Yes. VP8 is supposed to be free. And the code Google released is free. But the issues surrounding VP8 have absolutely nothing, zero, nada, to do with copyright law.
The question is: Does VP8 include technology/methods covered by patents contributed to the MPEG-LA H.264 patent pool? The fact that a huge amount of H.264-related code could be reused in their VP8 decoder strongly suggests that, at minimum, VP8 and H.264 are very similar, and that greatly increases the odds that this is the case, and that any codec implementing VP8 would violate one or more of those patents.
That's bad.
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The fact that a huge amount of H.264-related code could be reused in their VP8 decoder strongly suggests that, at minimum, VP8 and H.264 are very similar, and that greatly increases the odds that this is the case, and that any codec implementing VP8 would violate one or more of those patents.
That's bad.
OTOH, Google is a gigantic multinational with lots of money, lawyers and time to review the code, and they say it's free-and-clear of patent issues.
That's good.
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They're guessing. It's just that simple. Heck, Microsoft said the same thing when they released VC-1, and guess what? They were quite wrong, which is why there's now a patent pool for VC-1.
No, I'll be *very* surprised if someone doesn't produce patents that VP8 violates. The only question is whether Google will be able to get the patent holders to contribute to a pool the way MS did with VC-1, so that Google can offer free or cheap licensing.
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Well, besides being a free to use standard, what advantages does VP8 have over H.264?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it? The vast majority of mobile phones including Apples iPhone/iPod/iPad devices have hardware decoding of H.264. Can the same be said of VP8?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, and it never will. Apple's support for "open standards" is limited to only support for such standards when they depend on proprietary formats like AAC, mp3, h.264, etc. No support for Vorbis, Theora, VP8 or anything that can be implemented freely without a patent license. You wouldn't want free software to be able to compete, would you?
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
Free software should be able to compete and it does, unfortunately most free software is usually around 5 years behind the state of the art.
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most free software is usually around 5 years behind the state of the art.
But it fits so nicely with the state of my wallet.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps in some, but lets not forget that some FOSS projects are either the best, or very close to the best in their class. A few that come to mind: Apache, PostgreSQL, Linux, BSD, Asterisk, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenSSH... and that's just a 10 second brainstorm. All of those are either clearly the best in their breed, or at least comparable to the top end product.
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Free software should be able to compete and it does
Free software needs compatible hardware, and devices such as Nokia Maemo handsets aren't widely available in the United States, which is Slashdot's home country. One has to mail-order them without trying the screen or input, and even then, AT&T still won't give a discount on a SIM-only service plan.
unfortunately most free software is usually around 5 years behind the state of the art.
The Wii console was half a decade behind at launch (it's an overclocked GameCube with a Bluetooth receiver), yet you don't see free games competing with Wii games.
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[quote]The Wii console was half a decade behind at launch (it's an overclocked GameCube with a Bluetooth receiver), yet you don't see free games competing with Wii games.[/quote]
That's wrong, the Wii beat the PS3 and the Xbox360 to the motion control game, they made the rules.
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They demonstrated the marketability of a gimmick. Once they lose exclusivity of that gimmick, they have nothing else to compete on except for price.
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That and the quality of the software.
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Well, once the others lose exclusivity on processing power, they'll have nothing to compete. Not even price.
There is an obvious flaw with that argument, that extends to yours. But, anyway, in general, markets are defined mainly by price.
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In that case they're _really_ in trouble.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Vorbis isn't any worse than the competition. Certainly better than mp3, and AFAIK with better encoders than AAC. Quality isn't the reason why Apple refuses to support it. Denying competition is.
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funny enough, vorbis is big in gaming. The various versions of the unreal engine have been using it for music, iirc.
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"State of the art" is the current knowledge, right now. By the time something is patented an implemented in hardware it's already old. By the time it's ubiquitous it's already in hardware, and already past old. When free software takes on something, it's usually because it's either popular or important.
To put it another way, if free software took on state of the art, there would be millions of unused, useless code bases and a mond-boggling number of wasted development hours.
I would argue that the useful
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Free software should be able to compete and it does, unfortunately most free software is usually around 5 years behind the state of the art.
This is a strange thing to say in a thread related to ffmpeg, which is free, and IMHO is one of the most advanced encoder/decoders out there period.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
5 years behind? In what way? Maybe PC gaming?
Free browsers are leading the pack. Free media players are at least on par with their commercial equivalents (I'm being very generous here, I have yet to see any commercial player like VLC or Mplayer). Free OSes are now comparable in terms of usability to commercial ones, and in technical terms are years AHEAD of commercial OSes. Vorbis and Theora are comparable to their best closed counterparts. VP8/WebM has totally closed the gap with H.264, for those who like to split hairs about Theora.
I use all free software on all of my computers (apart from most of my games, the OS on my gaming PC, and some of the stock apps on my PDA) and I sure don't feel like I'm missing anything.
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You wouldn't want free software to be able to compete, would you?
It can compete. It's called Android, and it's competing rather well [osnews.com]
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No, and it never will. Apple's support for "open standards" is limited to only support for such standards when they depend on proprietary formats like AAC, mp3, h.264, etc. No support for Vorbis, Theora, VP8 or anything that can be implemented freely without a patent license. You wouldn't want free software to be able to compete, would you?
MP3, AAC and H.264 are not proprietary. They are maintained by international standards bodies and developed by consensus.
This does not mean that they are free, Free, or GPL compatible and these would be genuine complaints but you weaken them by using the inaccurate complaint that they are proprietary.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Calling the MPEG-LA a cartel would be more accurate than calling it "an international standards body".
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Nobody called them that. They are a licensing group. They did not develop the formats in question.
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MP3, AAC and H.264 are not proprietary. They are maintained by international standards bodies and developed by consensus.
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not to defend apple's logic, but if they pay a license to someone, then that someone takes on the responsibility and risk for future patent infringement lawsuits. Apple, in good faith, licensed the technology from a party who was understood to own the IP. Granted, this doesnt necessarily totally shield Apple but its much better than an open source codec that has no buffer. If someone decides that VP8 infringes on their patent, then they would sue anyone that used a product based on the patent..
all the be
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Paying your protection money to them does ensure than none of the MPEG-LA members will sue you(at least over any patent that they have contributed to the MPEG-LA pool for the technology in question); but it confers no protection against any nonmember with a patent that they believe is being infringed upon(given that this group includes a little old mom 'n pop operation they call "AT&T" this isn't exactly a theoretical risk)...
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Oh please. Apple will include anything that lets them sell substantially more hardware. If Vorbis or Theora would sell millions of units, they'd rapidly be well-supported across Apple's hardware line. The fact of the matter is that the standard codecs you
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Sure. And they will sell more hardware if free software is locked out from the open web, so they gang up with Microsoft to lock out the free competition. Apple wants an MPEG-LA license-dependent html5, and refuses to support free and open standards. That's how they hope to kill Mozilla.
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No, and it never will. Apple's support for "open standards" is limited to only support for such standards when they depend on proprietary formats like AAC, mp3, h.264, etc. No support for Vorbis, Theora, VP8 or anything that can be implemented freely without a patent license. You wouldn't want free software to be able to compete, would you?
AAC is not a proprietary format. It is a ISO standard. Perhaps you wanted to say FairPlay.
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The format can hardly be called "free" when the codec requires a patent license.
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There is a difference between a specification and a standard.
The patent-encumbered AAC, MP3, H.264, etc. are actual standards, governed by a recognized standards body. Vorbis, Theora, and VP8 are self-published specifications, much like Windows Media. The fact that Vorbis, et al. are more open than Windows Media does not make them a "standard". Until it is recoginized and ratified by an actual standards body, it isn't a standard; it's yet another vendor specification.
I can crap in a box and call it a "st
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MPEG-LA charges for encoding as well as decoding.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
> Can the same be said of VP8?
Not yet. Of course the format is less than 2 months old, and there _were_ several hardware companies who committed to implementing support for it at launch.
Also, note that mobile phones don't support "hardware decoding of H.264". They support hardware-acceleration of operations needed to decode a particular profile of H.264: the Basic profile. The one that has lower quality output than VP8 does.
So if you start bringing the hardware accel issue into the picture, then your quality metrics are suddenly in VP8's favor...
All of which is to say that the situation is complicated. ;)
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
And do you know WHY it should be able to (I know you do because you brought it up- this is for the crowd that don't get what I'm about to mention here...)?
This is because not a single one of the mobile devices out there with an A8 SoC really use "dedicated hardware" to decode h.264 or any of the other codecs you care to mention for video or audio.
What do they use?
A high-performance DSP chip. Not. Dedicated. Hardware.
The same goes for anything with a Snapdragon or similar SoC. In fact, most devices don't use dedicated anything because you'd ned a bunch of special silicon for MPEG 1/2/4, MP3, WMA, etc. When you think about it, throwing a bunch of DSP muscle at the problem is cheaper than the dedicated hardware for all but a narrow range of applications.
All one has to do write a DSP program for the codec in question and go for most devices.
The "dedicated hardware" line is less of a real argument and more of a straw man argument that keeps getting trotted out every time some competing codec comes along.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
With Google behind it now, VP8 will likely exceed anything MPEG-LA can create. Google, despite doing some boneheaded things at times, does have some of the brightest minds working for them.
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question is, how many of these devices do the hardware decoding by way of a DSP( or maybe GPU).
i suspect many of the high end at least do so, and so could have support coded.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
No it isn't
Right now H.264 is free as in beer to every Windows, Mac, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Android, WinMo, and Palm WebOS users on the planet. And probably a good deal more people that I am leaving out.
For the vast majority of them that is free enough.
To make this work Google is going to have to get VP8 out on a lot of devices convince a lot of developers to produce video in that format.
Will it happen? Maybe one can really hope.
The other solution will be if we can ever get software patents overturned.
BTW which I am all for.
But to even state that just being free is good enough goes 100% counter to history.
MP3 isn't free Vorbis Ogg is. You just don't see much music in Ogg format do you?
You have to have the support in devices to make a format fly.
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Take a trick from other companies:
"Youtube, now with VP8 technology inside enabling superior playback and user experience with reduced download requirements making it fast, better and nicer to the planet". Then auto-install a Firefox plugin that you can't remove and job's done!
Alternatively, just encode some stuff in it on YT and wait for everyone to upgrade anyway.
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Yes but I do not see YouTube throwing away iPhone, IE, and Safari users just to push VP8.
Yes it will help but YouTube will always support H.264 as well.
I know it sounds like I am not for VP8 but that really isn't the case.
I just have been around long enough to know how things work.
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yeah but I've seen digital cameras advertise they can make videos that are "ready for youtube". Google can require that devices need to support VP8 before they can say they are "youtube compatible".
Of course other devices would still work with youtube, but people using those devices would have to wait while their videos are transcoded (with the loss of quality that comes with transcoding), while users of "youtube compatible" marked devices that support VP8 can have their videos uploaded faster and at full q
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Maybe but again they will always support H.264 because of the devices that don't support it.
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Yea in theory you are right but let's take a hard look at your arguments.
"If you're using software on a different platform, then you're not covered by it. "
What percentage of people is that? Let's make it even a bit more honest what % of people using Linux and or BSD have not downloaded FFmpeg or some other package that adds H.264 support?
And if you have already paid for OS/X, Windows, Android or... you have already paid. H.264 free to you as far as you can tell.
Is it really free? Well to be honest it may b
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
so you're saying an x264 development blog by an x264 developer is going to be biased against vp8, has been quoted a million times, and has no real world tests (there are real world tests out there). color me surprised! /sarcasm.
Here a real article, trollop. [streamingmedia.com]
Saying that H264 is better or worse than vp8 shows straight up ignorance because they both have specific scenarios which they cater to. To avoid recognizing that is a lie.
In the real world, studies have shown the two perform quite similarly, actually. Al
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
The post the parent linked to goes into extensive detail about the technical aspects of the codec, has a real [doom10.org] world [doom10.org] comparison [doom10.org], a proper one, and is overall an excellent article. In contrast, the article you linked to uses poor quality source videos, JPEG for their comparison images, and by their own admission didn't even manage to use the same frame for both codecs in the images, among other problems. If you're calling that a "real article", you are in no position to be calling someone else a troll.
And enough of these fucking asinine claims about the x264 developers being out to get your poor, precious VP8 that crop up every time someone posts that link. They don't work for MPEG. They don't make obscene mounts of money off of all the people using their free (as in both sense of the word) open source software. They're not secret Chinese agents working to destroy the West from within through the patent system. There is absolutely no motive for them to lie about this sort of thing. VP8 is simply not as good of a codec, and no amount of baseless accusations will change this.
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No, they'll just sue a couple prominent users of the technology, receive a squillion dollars in punitive damages and then everyone else cough up whatever licence fees bring them into compliance. It's obvious from various postings that VP8 is dangerously close to H264 in a number of
Re: (Score:2)
And, they're unlikely to sue...
The odds are good that many of those patents aren't valid ones- yeah, they got granted and all, but they're not patentable items all the same.
You sue, you lose the patent and any subsequent royalties from the rubes that did pay up. If they sue, they'll be facing off against Google itself. Don't think for a moment that they can't cope with a bit of a protracted patent infringement suit and come through okay in the end if the patents aren't viable.
And then there's the bit abou
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Just FYI, that test had so many issues with no encoder settings, not even the same frames, using lossy screenshots and so much other bull it originally deserved a troll moderation. It has fixed some of the more glaring errors but nobody takes that guy seriously.
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If by "real-world tests" you mean comparing the results of the defaults settings of a mediocre encoder, then sure that is a "real article". But it does not show that VP8 is as good of a specification as H.264. For starters, they used a baseline H.264 encoder. Jason Garrett-Glaser himself (the supposedly biased x264 developer) stated that the VP8 specification was very simular to H.264 Baseline Profile, and he expected well optimized encoder to have simular quality. The comparison you posted completely valid
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Hardware support typically means shader programs, DSP programs and the like.
The bulk of which is completely programmable.
They don't use "dedicated hardware" in the iPhone, Android, or similar- it's a TI DSP that does this work.
Qualcomm's Snapdragon has similar hardware.
Same goes for Samsung's A8 SoCs used in consumer gear.
In truth, the bulk of the stuff out there uses a DSP because it's cheaper than using dedicated silicon because you don't need special silicon for each and every task to decode. You only n
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Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't be surprised if the ace up Google's sleeve is a patent on something which is key in both H.264 and VP8.
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The scorched-earth policy of MPEG-LA's anti-lawsuit scheme applies to members only. If Google has patents that apply, then MPEG-LA already doesnt have the rights to use the bits covered by googles patents.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
But, if the original poster's speculation were true, it would put Google in the traditional role of a technology patent holder who holds a defensive arsenal of patents: if MPEG-LA makes a fuss about aspects of VP8 which they claim infringe MPEG-LA patents, then Google can threaten to retaliate by suing everyone in the world who is currently shipping an implementation of H.264 for infringement of the On2/VP8 patents (and so publicly demonstrate the fact that being an licensee of the MPEG-LA H.264 pool doesn't protect one from all patent claims, and provides no insurance or indemnity).
Stalemate. Mutually-assured-destruction stand-off. Result: VP8 available for royalty-free for use, without MPEG-LA interference.
But only if Google really have inherited some killer On2 patents as part of their acquisition. I hope they have - it would make sense of their strategy and confidence in VP8 if this kind of thing were going on in the background.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Even though it's speculation, I'm strongly suspecting that you're going to find that this is the case. Combine that very possible reality along with many of the patents not being actually patentable, for varying reasons including in re Bilski being upheld in some fashion, and any d
Empty threat (Score:3, Insightful)
But, if the original poster's speculation were true, it would put Google in the traditional role of a technology patent holder who holds a defensive arsenal of patents: if MPEG-LA makes a fuss about aspects of VP8 which they claim infringe MPEG-LA patents, then Google can threaten to retaliate by suing everyone in the world who is currently shipping an implementation of H.264 for infringement of the On2/VP8 patents (and so publicly demonstrate the fact that being an licensee of the MPEG-LA H.264 pool doesn't protect one from all patent claims, and provides no insurance or indemnity).
MPEG-LA itself admits this. The licensors' lawyers know that paying protection to MPEG-LA doesn't indemnify them.
The licensees have no choice. They're like a shopkeeper in a town full of corrupt cops. Paying bribes to one cop doesn't mean they don't have to pay another bribe to a different cop next week, but you'd better believe they're going to pay the bribe each time anyway.
Stalemate. Mutually-assured-destruction stand-off. Result: VP8 available for royalty-free for use, without MPEG-LA interference.
That's absurd. Mutually assured destruction? It's more like Russia saying to the USA, "Disarm all of your ICBMs, or we'll nuke...Nigeria!"
The MPEG-LA doesn't care what happens to its licensees
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The patent issues covering VP8 and H.264 are unproven. It's possible that H.264 infringes on VPx patents as much as VPx infringes on H.264 patents.
They also reused code from previous VPx versions. Maybe the "infringing" code in VP8 is actually older than the patents on which it infringes?
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Well, it isn't violating more patents than the H.264 codebase itself....
wtf slashdot! (Score:2, Informative)
Jesus, do some investigation.
The ffmpeg VP8 implementation doesn't use a single function from their H.264 support. Not a single one!
There was some arm-waving speculation that it could use something in common made by people other than the ones actually doing the work. The code they are comparing includes a f@$@# encode. The full ffmpeg VP8 implementation is ~2740 lines. The VP3/Theora implementation which shares no codec functions is 2500 lines.
Re:Hmmm... (Score:4, Insightful)
They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."
I bet the MPEG-LA will see that as proof that it violates their patents.
They might, but that's not how patents work. MPEG relies on old math, when MPEG got together to write the spec they were deciding what the constants should be. For example, say they decided to use 20 taps in some filter, then one of the guys in the room went back to his company and said "patent using 20 taps in filter Y, stat!"* To avoid that patent all you need to do is use a different number of taps, say lets say 24 for concreteness.
ffmpeg decodes many different formats, so they use reusable code. It's not surprising that they have a function that just implements the age old function and takes a parameter for the number of taps you want.
*In some cases the constant was already patented, but because the MPEG process is "patent agnostic" there is no incentive to use some other non-patented constant and the guys owning a patent on that constant are in the room so they have every incentive to argue for using that constant.
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Well, it's complicated. I wasn't worried when you first asked the question. But by the end of your post, I was a little worried, because after your question, you made that interesting point about patents. So I guess it depends on what you meant b "is".
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Yep I thought the exact same thing. It doesn't really mean a thing but would a jury understand that?
Binaries that must be distributed before use (Score:3, Insightful)
Good idea? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is is really a good idea to advertise how similar VP8 and H.264 are? Send in the patent trolls.
Re:Good idea? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's better to hide it and hope the problem goes away.
codec? (Score:3, Insightful)
and wrote their own native decoder
It sounds like more of a dec than a codec.
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and wrote their own native decoder
It sounds like more of a dec than a codec.
And did they build it with ant? .......... get it "ant and dec" ....... oh never mind please yourselves.
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http://instantrimshot.com/ [instantrimshot.com]
Same codebase? (Score:3, Interesting)
What does "relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase" actually mean? For example, if you make some kind of new a superfast array sorting algorithm for 1 project and 'reuse' it elsewhere it does not mean both projects are the same. [Of course I haven't RTFA.]
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What does "relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase" actually mean?
It means exactly what it says: The developers added a VP8 decoder to FFmpeg, and only had to write very little of completely new code, while making extensive use of the code that already exists in FFmpeg. This way, VP8 decoder will improve when the rest of FFmpeg improves, and all codecs that share the same bits of code benefit from those improvements.
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It means that the code uses the same mathematical principals of video encoding/decoding that H264 does. Unfortunately, the USPTO being what it is today, these mathematical principals have been patented and are owned by various private entities. All this despite the fact that mathematics is not supposed to be patentable. Not that the USPTO actually cares about what is patentable and what is not anymore.
Basically, H264 largely
FFmpeg? (Score:2, Funny)
But what if you don't play Final Fantasy?
VP8 Disappointment (Score:2)
1400 lines (Score:2, Funny)
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All-in-all tho, H.264 is here to stay. Too much hardware support to choose anything else.
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Contributory infringement (Score:2)
The people using the free codec are in violation, not Google.
United States copyright law has legal theories called "contributory infringement" (A&M Records v. Napster) and "inducement to infringe" (MGM v. Grokster), and I see no reason why the logic behind these theories would not apply equally well to patent law.
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You misunderstand patent law. Patent law does not require that proof that VP8 is a derivative of H.264. Patent law only requires proof that VP8 uses processes and techniques that are substantially similar to those claimed in the patents for H.264.
OTOTH, in any lawsuit involving those patents, the H.264 patent holders will have to prove that those claims are novel (no prior art) and that even if they were novel, that were
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OTOTH, in any lawsuit involving those patents, the H.264 patent holders will have to prove that those claims are novel (no prior art) and that even if they were novel, that were not already obvious to someone skilled in the art. And since we're talking about Google, I'm pretty sure they won't have any trouble hiring competent legal counsel should such a lawsuit be brought.
The patent's issuance is prima facie evidence of novelty (and all the other elements that are required for a valid patent). A prospective defendant would have to refute that presumption. Hopefully the Supreme Court will make it easier to overturn software and business-method patents in the ruling for Bilski v Kappos...
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Actually, no, it's not prima facie evidence of anything other than the person that filed the application either got a rubber-stamp or was able to out-argue the examiner. Nothing more, nothing less.
As an example thereof, I need only point to any number of Amazon's patents, including the one they just got in this last month.
Having filed for a patent before in the past, I can assure you that while that what you say is supposed to be a requirement, even if you meet the criteria, you can have a protracted paper
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> requires proof that VP8 uses processes and techniques that are substantially similar to
> those claimed
Not even that. To be infringing, you have to be subject to _all_ the claims of the patent. "substantially similar" is not enough if there is one particular claim that doesn't apply to you.
A common way of working around a patent is to pick a particular claim from the patent and make sure that your work is not covered by that claim.
http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003769.html [xiph.org] has a
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To be infringing, you have to be subject to _all_ the claims of the patent.
Where did you get that information? As I always understood it, only one claim of a patent has to read on a product for the product to infringe, but all elements of that claim have to be present for that one claim to succeed
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> As I always understood it, only one claim of a patent has to read on a product for the
> product to infringe, but all elements of that claim have to be present for that one claim
> to succeed
Ah, indeed. I'd misunderstood where in the hierarchy of stuff in a patent "claim" sat, apparently. Thanks for the correction!
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Yep. One claim is all that is needed for a product to infringe, but all elements of that claim must apply in order for that claim to succeed.
As BZ is trying to say, a common workaround is to make your product so that one or more elements of each claim do not apply. This is not necessarily an easy thing to do however; it depends on how broad or narrow the given patent(s) is/are.
BTW--I am not a lawyer and this is not legal advice.
Re:What does that tell you about the patent trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Examine H.264
2. Where the technique in question is not patent-encumbered, or patent encumbrances can be worked around, implement like H.264 did. Unless you have good reason to believe the contrary, your brilliant innovation probably isn't, and the guys who build decode silicon/write DSP firmware are not handing out prizes for novelty for its own sake.
3. Where the technique in question is patent-encumbered, and the encumbrance cannot be compatibly worked around, implement the least-worst alternative.
4. Get purchased by Google.
Obviously, from a standpoint of legal defense and market acceptance, a codec of breathtaking novelty and power, looking like an algorithmic refugee from the comp-sci genocides of the 32nd century, would be preferable. Unfortunately, such isn't available by any known means. H.264 more or less represents the present consensus on best available technique in the field; but is heavily patent encumbered. The only real reason to deviate from it is to avoid patents. Assuming that they did, in fact, perform steps 2 and 3 correctly, they will have achieved approximately the best available result at the lowest possible cost.
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Imagine, if at the beginning of the computer revolution the patent offices around the world would have
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We are letting who do what now?
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Just doing business where ever they can. This isn't some kind of war against apple, where they have to blockade them in every area possible. Should they not allow the iPhone to do searches on google, throwing away money, just to spite apple?
HTML5 is the future, and google wants to be a head of the curve. But for now, the best way to send video over the internet is by using flash. So yeah, they're still going to make flash work as well as they can.
This is how businesses are supposed to operate. Maybe you've