
Open letter to Google: free VP8, and use it on YouTube  - tjr
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/google-free-on2-vp8-for-youtube/
======
elpuri
I'm nothing more than a layman what comes to things like these, but...

What's there for Google?

\- Google, Apple and Microsoft can afford the license and the fee is peanuts
to them. Most likely Flash will be history no matter what codec wins. \- If
Mozilla decides to stick with it's values and stay free (is anything else even
an option?) while the web goes h.264, I'd say a significant part of people
will migrate to other browsers. And come on who's going to migrate to IE and
Safari isn't that popular on PC, so that's even better for Google and it's
Chrome. How could a bigger browser market share be bad? One downside though
would be that some smart people who would be really valuable employees and
have strong personal values might get pissed off and not join Google.

\- "You owe it to the public" "if you care about free software". No matter how
much it sucks, the only entities Google owes something is it's creditors and
share holders. Sometimes same things benefit both the public and the share
holders which is just super, but isn't it a bit naive to ask a publicly listed
company not to take advantage of the situation just because it would be nice?
Again though there's the possible loss of love, of which effect on the
business as a whole I'm not competent to evaluate.

\- Mobile hardware support is important and it's going to get even more
important in years to come. I might be talking out of my ass here, but isn't
the world full of hardware support for h.264? If that hardware support is
something really generic like doing ICT really fast and can be applied to VP8
then this might not be that important.

~~~
halo
What if Google simply see a long-term strategic advantage in helping the web
have a free video standard? Especially a standard where they have a
significant amount of control over its codebase, tooling, and direction, as
well as avoiding the prospect of unknown patent licensing fees on the distant
horizon. I mean, Google likes web standards -- the fact they can easily search
content allows them to exist -- and audio/video content will make the web more
useful which will make their search engine more useful. If Google don't plan
to open up the codecs, it certainly makes you wonder why they bought On2.

People act as though the H.264 video tag is a foregone conclusion, but it
really isn't - it's still a long way from being viable. Web technologies have
never been about what developers want or what sites use but rather what
browsers implement, and today ~88% of web-browser marketshare doesn't support
the H.264 video tag (58% IE, 28% Firefox, 2% Opera). This is worse than Ogg
Theora where ~68% aren't supported, while Flash is unavailable on less than 1%
of browsers. Of course, this may change if Microsoft decide one way or
another.

Although mobile devices are going to be increasingly relevent in the coming
years, it's still a rounding error and users regularly update their handsets,
which means the current H.264 support isn't a particularly strong argument in
its favour. I suspect that mobile devices will converge towards whatever is
done by desktop browsers, as has been the historical trend.

------
mindslight
A similar approach would be to give a free pass to _software_ implementations
(including FPGAs), while charging royalties for ASICs. When a product designer
is already willing to pay for dedicated video silicon, a royalty just slightly
increases the price.

If this model turned out to be profitable, it would be a good precedent for
subsequent codecs seeking universal adoption while still paying for
investment.

~~~
novas0x2a
My understanding is this (correct me if I'm wrong...) is this is exactly the
business model that has killed Vorbis. Xiph originally created a floating-
point free reference implementation, and charged for the integer decoder. You
pretty much have to use the integer decoder for any sort of hardware
implementation, so the effect was the same.

With few users and a paid barrier to entry, few hardware vendors took the
leap. No hardware support means fewer people bothered to encode to Vorbis...
and the spiral to the bottom continued.

If you're trying to use the network effect to your advantage, you do exactly
what the MPEG-LA has done: the first couple of years are free, then everyone
pays. The only want to combat that is to do the same.

~~~
mindslight
Or the lack of Vorbis encoded media failed to prime the pump for widespread
adoption (whereas here, everyone is counting on youtube/follower adoption to
do so). Surely the forever-free aspect of the software decoder isn't what held
back widespread adoption - it was lack of Vorbis users (which was due to lack
of users .. etc)

Still, I'll amend my above plan to include some period of royalty-free
hardware. The real trouble is device manufacturers not wanting both On2 and
H.264 hardware (it's unfortunate that MPEG-LA won't just step up to the plate
with perpetual royalty-free software and make the whole issue moot)

~~~
ZeroGravitas
What's the story with Flash 10.1 for mobile phones? Did they just drop support
for all the VP6 encoded Flash video or are they decoding it in software?

------
lmkg
I'm given to understand that the h.264 format is encumbered by patents from a
number of different companies. This makes me wonder if VP8 is similarly
confuddled. Does On2 own all of the VP8 patents in the clear, or would making
the format completely unencumbered require coordination with, and permission
from, other companies?

~~~
steveklabnik
I thought that VP8 was basically On2's secret sauce, and that they had made
all of it.

From their site: (<http://www.on2.com/index.php?599>)

    
    
         And with no patent-pool royalty hassles, VP8 licensing terms are flexible and affordable to ensure maximum ROI potential. 
    

So, it'd seem like just them.

~~~
lftl
This definitely doesn't mean VP8 is free and clear. It just means that On2
doesn't have any patents that they were actively enforcing on VP8.

It's quite likely that any number of H.264 or other random patents apply just
as well to VP8, especially given the USPTO's penchant for handing out patents
that cover even the most basic of ideas. This is Apple's stated reason for
refusing to implement Theora. In this vein, it should also be noted that
there's no guarantee that licensing H.264 actually covers you for every
patent.

~~~
zokier
>In this vein, it should also be noted that there's no guarantee that
licensing H.264 actually covers you for every patent.

I'd assume that if someone would be foolish enough to sue a h264 licensee,
MPEG-LA (or it's members) would be quick to counter-sue them to oblivion.

~~~
steveklabnik
What would they counter-sue over?

~~~
blasdel
They have the nuclear option -- refuse licenses of the in-pool patents to
anyone licensing an out-of-pool patent. Most of the patents involved are
unusable independently -- you have to license a chain of predecessors.

There's a reason why patent owners just join the pool when they discover
they're eligible for a nice easy income stream.

~~~
danbmil99
MPEG-LA can't do that because the pool has a rule of non-discriminatory
licensing. That's one of the (flimsy) bases for their antitrust exemption.

------
cdibona
I thought open letters came after closed ones :-) Seriously, the merger just
closed, we're only just starting the integration of the two companies.

------
radley
It's immature to expect Google/YouTube to provide two (or more?) copies of
every video just to satisfy the open source community, particularly one that
would only be compatible within their own browser.

They're probably moving in that direction anyway and will release the codec as
an open standard. It is also likely Adobe will support it in Flash to maintain
maximum compatibility. The real question is whether Apple will bite...

~~~
cracell
Google already maintains a large number of copies of YouTube videos, one for
each quality level and now they've been adding h.264 and they may have some
special ones for different devices I don't know about. Asking for one more in
a codec that they own is not much to ask.

And this is not related to open source but rather open web. The internet has
been successful because of open technologies, meaning technologies that can be
freely implemented and worked with by anyone without asking for permission
from someone.

Regardless of what direction Google is moving in giving them some developer
feedback doesn't hurt and Flash supporting the codec would be a good thing as
well (The more support the better).

~~~
DarkShikari
_Google already maintains a large number of copies of YouTube videos, one for
each quality level and now they've been adding h.264 and they may have some
special ones for different devices I don't know about. Asking for one more in
a codec that they own is not much to ask._

Not quite true. They have the following from what I've seen:

1) fmt=6 FLV with ffmpeg ~350kbps (legacy)

2) fmt=18 H.264 Baseline ~500kbps, now with x264 (iPhone support + current
default)

3) fmt=22 720p H.264 High with x264, ~2.2mbps

4) fmt=somethingorother 1080p H.264 High with x264, ~4.5mbps

Note that options 3) and 4) don't exist for the vast majority of videos, and
thus likely don't cost much disk space. Option 1) is being phased out. Their
primary default is 2), a _single format_ that works in Flash, on iPods, on
iPhones, and on many mobile devices. They could have saved 30-50% on bandwidth
by offering an H.264 High stream for PC viewers, but _they didn't_ because it
would have required they keep around a separate stream.

Any argument that Youtube should keep around a separate format for some
Purpose X has to confront the fact that Google has thrown away staggering
quantities of bandwidth explicitly to avoid offering a separate format.

~~~
blasdel
Is it correct that (1) is VP6, not h.263?

~~~
DarkShikari
No, it's H.263. As far as I know, Youtube never used VP6. See
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132933> for some possible reasons why.

~~~
blasdel
Yeah, at least that has multiple independent implementations.

All the On2 stuff just has the one, especially since they only ever released
new incompatible codecs instead of improving their older products. Funnily
enough that applies just as much to Theora (née VP3), which right now is a
only an open standard in theory, not IETF-level reality. There's a few forks
of the original On2 code and a transliteration of the decoder to Java for
applets (Cortado). I guess people have been working on writing a new DSP
decoder, but the whole thing feels like an even worse recapitulation of the
ODF lie.

~~~
DarkShikari
This is IMO the core problem with proprietary-based "standards": even if the
formats _are_ opened, people rarely make independent implementations of them
and bugs often persist for years before being found.

------
sjs
Google uses Flash outside of Youtube. Google Translate and Analytics are two
that come to mind. I'm sure there are others.

~~~
blasdel
The default file uploader widget in almost all of their apps.

------
modeless
If they want to be taken seriously they should not make the claim that Theora
is as good as H.264 when that is clearly false. Theora is better than H.263,
but worse than H.264.

<http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo7.html>

Check out the last graph on the page: when measured using PSNR, Theora tweaked
to the max is roughly 50% worse than x264's default settings.

~~~
DarkShikari
Keep in mind that x264's defaults have quite a few psy optimizations that
dramatically decrease PSNR, since by default x264 optimizes for your eyes, not
the benchmarks.

This now applies somewhat to Theora as well (in current SVN); they ported over
a similar optimization to x264's Variance Adaptive Quantization, which
dramatically increases SSIM but lowers PSNR.

~~~
wedesoft
I noticed too, that H.264 has some special threatment to improve encoding of
uniform regions which frequently occur in artificial images.

Regardless of what video codec you use, the rate-distortion greatly depends on
the encoder software and how you use it. When you use MEncoder's
x264-compression for example you can tell it to do multi-pass encoding, more
accurate motion estimation, use less keyframes, more frames for pixel
prediction, ... . Many people don't even use multipass encoding when they
convert their videos.

Update: Here's an interesting website about work on the theora encoder
<http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo8.html>

------
troymc
Even if Google doesn't free VP8, Theora already exists and is used by another
of the world's most popular websites: Wikipedia. As more video gets added to
Wikipedia, developers of web browsers will have more incentive to support
Theora natively. (Note: According to an earlier comment by halo, about 32% of
web browsers support Ogg Theora already.)

~~~
MikeCapone
Q?: Is Theory still improving much? Is it possible to improve it a lot without
breaking backward compatibility, or would that require breaking legacy
support?

I'm all for Theora, but the (admittedly limited) anecdotal evidence that I
have is that it isn't quite competitive with h.264 (with a good encoder like
x264) at higher rez 720p and 1080p). I might be mistaken on that, though.

~~~
DarkShikari
_Q?: Is Theory still improving much? Is it possible to improve it a lot
without breaking backward compatibility, or would that require breaking legacy
support?_

The encoder still has a good bit of room to improve; it still lacks proper
pixel-domain RD optimization and could use some psychovisual improvements as
well. It is primarily crippled by the ancient VP3 specification though. In
theory it may eventually be able to eke ahead of Xvid, as while Xvid was a
very good MPEG-4 ASP encoder, it never had any significant psy optimizations,
so even though Theora as a video format is probably slightly worse, the
encoder should be able to surpass Xvid with psy optimizations in some cases.

The primary problem for adoption (not for quality) is its lack of _features_.
For many many use-cases, one needs fine-grained control over various
parameters, such as the buffer size, the maximum bitrate, the latency, and so
forth. The encoder is currently very inflexible, and with no alternative
encoding libraries, this leaves very little choice for many applications. For
practical purposes, it only has one speed mode: "slow as hell", which makes it
basically impossible to stream anything above SD.

~~~
MikeCapone
So if I'm reading this correctly, Theora could compete with Xvid, but h.264 is
out of reach?

