
The Fight for Patent-Unencumbered Media Codecs Is Nearly Won - bzbarsky
http://robert.ocallahan.org/2018/01/the-fight-for-patent-unencumbered-media.html
======
pmontra
HEVC is basically mandatory in new TV sets in Europe as part of the new DVB-T2
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVB-T2)

The new digital TV standard frees some frequencies for 5G. Most channels will
broadcast with HEVC Main 10 (bits). There is also a Main 8 which will probably
not be used for long and people should be careful about what they buy.

At least we won't have HEVC on the Internet.

~~~
tzahola
iOS 11 also encodes videos into HEVC, and photos into HEIC, which is basically
HEVC still frames. Considering the network effect of iOS devices, this fight
is hardly won.

~~~
clouddrover
The VP9 decoder installed base is about double HEVC's:

[https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-
vp...](https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/10/21/why-we-are-supporting-vp9-and-av1)

So to me that bodes well for future AV1 support in all kinds of devices.

~~~
scarface74
It doesn't matter. No one is going to support a video format that's not
compatible with iOS.

Adobe effectively lost the war with Flash on mobile the day that Apple decided
not to support it. Even though it was available for Android.

~~~
clouddrover
Both YouTube and Netflix support VP9:

[https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-
en...](https://medium.com/netflix-techblog/more-efficient-mobile-encodes-for-
netflix-downloads-625d7b082909)

And YouTube doesn't do 4K encoding in H.264 anymore. If you want 4K video from
YouTube you need VP9 support (or AV1 when YouTube starts AV1 encodes):

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-
tv-4k-wont-p...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/17/09/21/apple-tv-4k-wont-
play-4k-youtube-videos-because-of-missing-google-codec)

~~~
scarface74
The subject of the article was the "fight for patent-unencumbered media codecs
is almost won". To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon
patent protected formats. Netflix is still having to deal with patents and now
they had to dedicate more resources to support an additional format.

Large content providers like YouTube or Netflix really don't care about the
patent and have the resources for storage and encoding multiple formats. Where
patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free formats.

They still have to support patented formats and now they have to spend money
on encoding and storage on yet another codec if the want to use VP9. What's
the benefit of supporting two formats? One that is supported everywhere and
one that isn't it?

~~~
clouddrover
> _To "win" that fight means that content providers can abandon patent
> protected formats._

And that's what's happening. VP9 is royalty-free and AV1 will be royalty-free.

> _Where patents hurt are smaller entrants that would benefit from patent free
> formats._

So it's good that both YouTube and Netflix support VP9 and AV1. It helps make
royalty-free video formats commonplace on the web.

> _What 's the benefit of supporting two formats?_

It's worth it for the bandwidth saving. VP9 significantly outperforms H.264.

~~~
scarface74
_And that 's what's happening. VP9 is royalty-free and AV1 will be royalty-
free_

Who are these content providers that are "abandoning" H.264?

 _so it 's good that both Netflix and YouTube support VP9 and Av1_

Good for _who_? End users don't care if content is encoded in a patent free
format. They just care about the content being available on their platform.

~~~
clouddrover
> _End users don 't care if content is encoded in a patent free format._

This is a tired argument. The same argument was attempted when VP8 was new,
and when VP9 was new, and now again with AV1. I'm sure the same, worn-out
ground will be revisited when AV2 comes along.

End users don't care that TCP\IP is royalty-free or that HTTP and HTML are
royalty-free or that any of the other commonly used formats and protocols are
royalty-free. They don't care because they don't understand the issues.

Developers care. Builders care. _I_ care. I want to implement video on the
internet for any use case without having to consult a lawyer just to
understand the licensing implications of doing so. VP9 and AV1 make that
possible. VP9 and AV1 normalize video on the internet by making it royalty-
free like all the other internet formats and protocols.

Content companies and hardware companies and software companies don't join
AOMedia for the fun of it. They join because it's the practical choice:

[http://aomedia.org/about-us/](http://aomedia.org/about-us/)

~~~
notyourday
There may be a few hundred thousand of developers that do but there are
hundreds of millions of users that just want their stuff to work.

Profit is in the users, not in the developers

~~~
clouddrover
But you've got to produce before you can consume and you've got to deliver to
the consumer. AV1's licensing reduces costs and AV1's lower bitrate delivers
better picture quality earlier with less bandwidth.

The choice isn't AV1 _or_ users. It's AV1 _and_ users.

~~~
scarface74
If there is a demand, content will come, I doubt the difference in cost made
by the licensing fees are going to mske a difference.

~~~
scarface74
_No, but potential for bandwidth caps with fees for going in light of the
removal of network neutrality legislation might tip the balance in the favor
of the codec that looks better at a lower bitrate._

What does that have to do with patents and why people should care?

------
grandinj
I don't think the patent issues are at all resolved or easy. Variousparties
hold patents and have no intention of designing a product around them and
simply exist to extract rent from others.

They will wait till the format gains traction and then sue the players with
the biggest bank accounts.

Most companies understand this, and will accordingly take it slow, preferring
to deal with the known risk of existing codecs.

~~~
shmerl
_> I don't think the patent issues are at all resolved or easy._

Same applies to any codec, including HEVC. I.e. patent trolling can always
happen and HEVC users aren't immune to it either. So AVC1 wins being actually
officially free.

~~~
grandinj
HEVC has been around longer, and has been widely deployed, so the risk is much
smaller.

~~~
Andrex
"HEVC has been around longer, and has been widely deployed, so the risk is
much smaller."

Isn't this the opposite of what you said in the parent?

"They will wait till the format gains traction and then sue the players with
the biggest bank accounts."

~~~
grandinj
Let me try again: HEVC has been deployed by big players with deep pockets.
Therefore, any patent trolls that might have targeted it have already been
lured out of the woodwork.

A new codec like this however, has an unknown risk attached, because no one
knows how many trolls might be lurking out ther e.

~~~
roca
You could have said exactly the same thing about VP9. Tons of FUD over its
patent status, but nothing stopped its adoption.

You could say exactly the same thing about any new codec before it's widely
adopted.

As I said in my post, AV1 is more strongly protected than previous codecs
because anyone who sues over AV1 can't use it themselves, so only pure patent
trolls can sue over AV1.

Anyway this is only a short-term concern. Probably as soon as this year
Google, Netflix and others will start deploying AV1 and we'll see what
happens.

------
stupidcar
This situation seemed almost hopeless 10 years ago. Very glad to see things
have changed so much for the better.

~~~
Joeboy
I wonder how much this is enabled just due to patents expiring. Patents
(theoretically anyway) last 20 years, so you'd expect 10 years to see off a
lot of them. I don't know so much about video, but in the end the solution to
mp3 patent encumbrance was mostly to just wait for the patents to expire.

~~~
phonon
All the important MEPG-2 patents are gone, which is a big help.

------
einarfd
The reason for the traction of unencumbered media codecs lately is that MPEG
LA got greedy with the license terms for HVEC, and now the cost of licensing
HVEC/H265 is more than a lot of big licensor's are interested in paying. This
was not true during the H264 period, and the reason there wasn't nearly as
much push for open codecs then. So in a roundabout way we can thank the
shortsightedness of MPEG LA, for the coming era of open codecs.

~~~
skgoa
Reminds me of the old OPEC strategy of not making oil too expensive, lest they
push industrial nations to develop alternatives.

------
clouddrover
It's strange that the Alliance for Open Media hasn't put out a press release
about Apple joining or added Apple's logo to the "about us" page:

[http://aomedia.org/press-releases/](http://aomedia.org/press-releases/)

[http://aomedia.org/about-us/](http://aomedia.org/about-us/)

AOMedia seemed to do that quite quickly when Facebook joined. Maybe Apple
asked them not to, but I don't see why Apple would.

~~~
apayan
I found this odd too, so I was skeptical of the claim, but I found this
sentence on the home page[1] that mentions Apple as a founding member:

> Founding members are Amazon, Apple, ARM, Cisco, Facebook, Google, IBM,
> Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, Netflix and NVIDIA.

A similar sentence exists on AOM's about page[2].

[1]: [http://aomedia.org/](http://aomedia.org/) [2]:
[http://aomedia.org/about-us/](http://aomedia.org/about-us/)

~~~
kingosticks
This might be a bit off-topic but what is Cisco's interest here?

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Video conferencing.

The Thor codec tech they contributed is all about focusing on that use case,
real-time encoding etc.

They also previously contributed the h.264 plugin to Mozilla (they already pay
the capped royalty amount so it's effectively free for them) to ensure their
hardware components would be able to interoperate with popular browsers using
WebRTC.

------
krautsourced
Any word on the current state of encoding speeds? From what I remember of VP9,
it was very, very slow in comparison to e.g. H.264/H.265.

~~~
galad87
Encoding speed right now is: either you have a computer cluster or you'll die
before the encoding is done. But it will probably get better.

~~~
cesarb
If they haven't tried optimizing encoding speed yet, how can they be sure
there isn't some misfeature in the standard that will hinder high-speed
encoding? Like IIRC with some old On2 codec, where the order of the tokens in
the encoded stream was not ideal for an optimized implementation.

~~~
ComputerGuru
They don’t care. It’s Google, Netflix, and Amazon and their concern is
recurring bandwidth, not onetime cpu costs.

[http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Ar...](http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-
Articles/AV1-A-Status-Update-120214.aspx)

 _" We will be satisfied with 20% efficiency improvement over HEVC when
measured across a diverse set of content and would consider a 3-5x increase in
computational complexity reasonable."_

~~~
earenndil
It's not onetime CPU costs, at least for Google. Netflix and amazon don't
process _that_ much video (relatively), so they can afford slow encode times,
but youtube gets _tons_ of video uploaded every minute, they want fast and
cheap encoding.

~~~
Whitestrake
For each individual video, it is a onetime CPU cost, but not a onetime
bandwidth cost.

For ongoing operation of the platform, at scale, you might argue that it's an
ongoing CPU cost as more and more videos are added constantly, but the
bandwidth to distribute those videos goes up at an equal rate on average.

I don't know any actual numbers, but it seems very plausible to me that a vast
increase in CPU cost for a minor decrease of bandwidth cost could still be a
welcome trade-off.

If you're making an argument that availability of CPU power at that scale is a
concern, it seems like YouTube has the option of Google's cloud services as an
excellent candidate for massive, interruptible compute power.

~~~
earenndil
> vast increase in CPU cost for a minor decrease of bandwidth cost could still
> be a welcome trade-off

I don't think that this would be true, though. Recall the 80-20 rule. They
have to encode (CPU) a _lot_ of videos, which will get very few views
(bandwidth).

~~~
ComputerGuru
Not really. It’s the long tail. The most popular videos are (in addition to
likely being ultra resolution like vevo media’s) watched many (8-10?) orders
of magnitude more times than the least popular videos. Bandwidth matters, cpu
doesn’t.

It’s actually the same 80-20 rule. Eighty percent of the costs come fro
serving twenty percent of their videos:)

------
acd
We should abolish software patents. Reason software builds on Mathematics and
you cannot patent Mathematics.

We all build on others previous work.

~~~
wmf
But codecs are implemented in hardware. Gotcha!

~~~
bo1024
Not sure if you intended this, but that is exactly the basis for the old legal
workaround.

To be patentable, an invention must be "fixed in a tangible medium of
expression" (or something like that). So the first software patents tried
saying "we are patenting the following algorithm ... running on a hardware
computer!" Amazingly they got away with it and have been getting away with it
ever since.

Hm, I wonder if you could argue that running the algorithm on a virtual
machine doesn't violate the patent....

~~~
ubernostrum
Your quoted definition is for copyright, not patent. Which is why you can
write a Romeo-and-Juliet story and copyright that specific story, but not the
entire idea of a "doomed star-crossed lovers" story.

To be patentable in the US, an invention must be a "process, machine,
manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement
thereof". It must be at least partly new. It must be useful. And it must be
non-obvious.

Abstract ideas are generally not patentable in the US, and the Supreme Court
has declared that "this abstract idea, but implemented on a computer" is also
generally not patentable.

------
anilgulecha
This is great - taking a whole industry out of IP/patent litigation. The
patent-revoke clause for members is converse to the idea of virality in GPL.

------
vinceguidry
If I can't buy it from the iTunes store, then the fight isn't won. Once
archival started becoming important to me, I've been setting about building
workflows and acquiring hardware. I'm curious to see just how much of my
collection will be pirated because the content industry can't be arsed to sell
me a useful digital copy.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
For archival use, isn't buying video from iTunes already a non-option because
of DRM?

~~~
vinceguidry
Well, yeah, that's why I would be pirating. All my music is currently in
various formats, as they were bought from various outlets, my process would
involve acquiring new files that don't have any restrictions on playback,
hopefully all close to the same quality and bitrate.

As I'm certainly not going to repurchase it all in CD form and rip them, which
is currently how the labels seem to think is the only way you should be
allowed to keep such an archive, I'm just going to pirate it.

~~~
DanBC
> I'm certainly not going to repurchase it all in CD form and rip them, which
> is currently how the labels seem to think is the only way you should be
> allowed to keep such an archive

In the UK the labels faught to keep this illegal. Currently, it's not lawful
to rip a CD you bought and own.

[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-
court-q...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/17/high-court-
quashes-regulations-copy-cds-musicians)

------
yuhong
I am also thinking of DRM. Thinking about it, part of the reasons music labels
got big is for economy of scale when mass producing CDs for example. Of
course, such economy of scale was not needed anymore with the move to digital
distribution. This didn't work well with the current debt-based economy where
shareholders depends on stocks always going up for things like retirements and
companies treat people as "consumers" to be extracted from. I assume that
Hollywood has similar problems, right?

------
phkahler
Did they finalize AV1 by the end of the year like they said would happen? I
haven't seen a performance comparison in a long time either, but it was
looking good last I checked.

~~~
legulere
The Wikipedia article says January 2018:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AOMedia_Video_1)

------
shmerl
Ah, that's unexpected. Apple decided to do a good thing for a change? Better
late than never.

May be it's an indicator of general attitude change towards free codecs, and
they'll now support Opus in the browser too (in OGG container). That would
remove the last barrier for avoiding pointless audio storage duplication (same
for video obviously).

------
malchow
I recently needed to choose between doing nightly cloud backups of my family's
iOS photos in HEIC or JPG, and chose HEIC. Did I choose incorrectly? Which is
more future proof?

Isn't it surprising that Apple is on board with AV1 so shortly after it moved
iOS devices from JPG to HEIC?

------
trevorhinesley
I think I know what Pied Piper's crisis will be on the next season of Silicon
Valley :)

------
keldaris
People can congratulate themselves as much as they want, but the fight won't
be won until VP9 is actually (technically, not legally) superior to HEVC in
terms of the available implementations. Right now, VP9 encoding speeds are
ludicrous and the resulting quality, as far as I know, isn't meaningfully
better than what x265 produces. Having the luxury of not caring about software
patents in the least, I'll stick to x265, thanks.

~~~
nodja
What are you on about?

The title is a little clickbaity, but the article is talking about AV1, it's a
sort of hybrid between Daala, VP10 and Thor. Nothing to do with VP9 (well not
directly).

Daala is an attempt to avoid patents by avoiding techniques used by current
encoders. VP10 uses google's patents that the MPEG LA tried to fight but
backed down once the DOJ got in the middle, and Thor uses Cisco's patents.

What you should get is something similar to the opus codec. A patent free
state of the art codec. Preliminary tests that I know of (early 2017) showed
it only slightly better that HEVC, but the goal is to have 50% better
compression rate than HEVC/VP9, if they're going to achieve it or not, I have
no idea.

~~~
keldaris
My comment was prompted by the fact that the majority of comments in this
thread relate to HEVC vs. VP9. It was my mistake to post it as a top level
comment rather than a reply to one of the pertinent comments in the thread.
You're right in saying that I'm in effect responding to a point that is
tangential to the contents of the actual article.

------
rayiner
Is this model better? When a company develops technology with the purpose of
selling the technology, it’s incentives are predictable. But what are the
incentives where technology is bankrolled by companies that don’t make money
from the technology, but through something else they sell? Facebook is funding
these codecs because it helps their business of data mining your personal
information. How is that a better state of affairs?

There is no free lunch. At least when the cost of a patent license gets
bundled into your Blu-Ray player, you know what you’re paying.

~~~
jkn
You could say the same of all Web technologies. Do you actually think it would
be better to have software patents and royalties on every Web standard?

For one thing, this would be catastrophic for open source projects (and indeed
commercial audio and video codecs have been a huge pain for open source
developers and users). Well, you're suggesting that free codecs are bad
because they profit Facebook, and you could say the same about open source
software, especially those that get contributions from Facebook.

I rather think that advertisers will always pay money to advertise, and when
some of that money goes to developing open and free technologies that's a good
thing.

There are many free lunches. You can get a universally supported free video
codec to use for your hobby project or for your company's product, without
having a Facebook account. It is always possible to find hidden costs in free
products, so what? You can do the same for paid-for products. The idea that a
Blu-Ray player won't spy on you because the manufacturer paid some royalties
is... flawed.

~~~
rayiner
> You could say the same of all Web technologies.

I don’t think CERN was trying to monetize anything. To the extent that web
technologies today are driven by companies like Google, then maybe that’s a
fair criticism too.

> Do you actually think it would be better to have software patents and
> royalties on every Web standard?

I don’t think it would necessarily be worse than having web technologies all
developed to further the agenda of advertising companies.

> It is always possible to find hidden costs in free products, so what?

The “so what” is that hidden costs are, all else being equal, worse than
transparent costs.

> The idea that a Blu-Ray player won't spy on you because the manufacturer
> paid some royalties is... flawed.

Paying someone up front doesn’t guarantee they won’t try to monetize you
indirectly, but not paying someone up front virtually assures that they will.
Compare Symbian to Android.

~~~
jkn
So on one hand a "bad" company advances its strategic interests by
contributing to a free and open technology. On the other hand, this technology
can bring general benefits beyond the company's interest.

The question is: does one outweigh the other? I think in many cases, for Web
technologies, the corporate interest is modest and the general benefit is
enormous, so it's definitely a win-win.

As for Android, the open platform part is a huge piece of tech that many have
found useful beyond the smartphone market. On smartphones the open source
project has enabled several ROM communities that ended up offering versions
free of any Google service. There is nothing comparable on the iOS side.

Even Android with Google services is a pretty good deal: for the most part you
get to choose what you share with Google (at the price of some features).

I think comparing to Symbian is difficult, Symbian never was in the same
league as Android and iOS was it? A better comparison would be with Windows
Phone or iOS. Apple has invested a lot in its privacy-friendly image, and I
trust they are doing a good job. But they are the outlier. Then you have
Microsoft... I don't know where Windows Phone standed privacy-wise, but they
sure got a lot of criticism regarding privacy violations in the desktop/laptop
OS. Although it's not free.

All in all I don't think Android is a good example to support your viewpoint.

