
MPEG: A crisis, the causes and a solution - clouddrover
http://blog.chiariglione.org/2018/01/28/
======
ohazi
The idea that private companies were responsible for the majority of the
innovation that led to these video compression standards is a complete
fabrication.

The majority of the work was done by the grad students of the professors who
are on the standards committee. Private companies then race to patent or buy
up anything that's tangentially related during the draft period, so that they
can sign on and receive royalties after standardization. Many of these
companies are owned by or have board members who are standards committee
members. The whole thing is a giant racket.

Licensees were getting tired of this, so they started to do the same thing,
and now you have multiple patent pools, no clear guidance on which ones are
legit, and even fewer people who are willing to play along.

~~~
ecesena
And so what do you think is the solution? Do you think that "Only by becoming
a Technical Committee can MPEG [...] stay competitive in the market." is true,
or what could be a valuable alternative?

~~~
jchw
It seems like there's an answer: the market actually wants free standards
because they're realizing it's more beneficial to them than any other outcome.
So money and effort is being pumped into developing free video encoding
standards. It seems there is an incentive for the foreseeable future to
continue to improve video codecs simply because it saves on bandwidth and disk
space costs, and improves user experience.

Though obviously, everything's too good to be true. Just like MPEG seems to be
hitting the end, some day the AOM will hit the end, too. The world changes.
Something else will emerge and impact the business model. It may be worse, or
maybe it'll be a return to norms. Could just be another one of those things
that cycles every so often.

With audio codecs, it doesn't look like we ever really needed much in the way
of commercial entities, since Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the
competition for a long time now.

~~~
CharlesW
> _…Vorbis and Opus have been outperforming the competition for a long time
> now._

Sorry to be pedantic about one bit of an otherwise-fine post, but AAC is
comparable to Opus at any given bitrate[1]. Plus, even the most esoteric
flavor of AAC has the enormous advantage of 7+ years of ubiquity[2].

[1] See the multiple charts at [http://opus-
codec.org/comparison/](http://opus-codec.org/comparison/), for one presumably-
unbiased source.

[2] All versions of Android support HE-AACv2 playback, iOS introduced support
for HE-AACv2 playback in iOS 4 (released 2010), macOS introduced support for
HE-AACv2 playback with iTunes 9.2 (released 2010), Adobe Flash Player
introduced support for HE-AACv2 in 2007, All versions of Windows Phone support
HE-AACv2 playback, all open source players support HE-AACv2 playback via FAAD2

~~~
hajile
That comparison appears to says that the difference in quality between opus
and he-aac is the same as the difference between he-aac and vorbis.

Opus is definitely better, but we have basically hit the wall in audio
compression (we'll need a serious breakthrough to go much farther). There also
isn't as much interest in audio codec research because even very large raw
audio files pale in comparison to fully compressed video.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Incremental improvements are happening in opusenc, current status (as of 1.2
and 1.3-beta) is that musical content is generally transparent at ~96kbps VBR,
with a few needing ~128kbps and a tiny minority needing ~160kbps.

The developers are slowly reducing the required bitrate for transparency, it
wouldn't surprise me if they reach transparency at ~64kbps VBR in a year or
two.

~~~
ksec
Oh god, let define a few thing.

Generally Transparent = MP3 LAME @ ~ 128kbps. That is the good old standard.

There has been PR and marketing materials, much like Video Codec making
claiming they are 50% better then H.264 or AVC or whatever. AAC or MP3Pro even
claim to be MP3 128kbps quality at 64Kbps. Of course which never happened even
after years of fine tuning.

Opus is the first and only codec in years, or decades that had better music
quality then MP3 @ 96Kbps. Even AAC cant do that, at least not in majority of
cases.

I have come to the conclusion that Audio compression has come to end of the S
curve, with diminishing returns. It literally took us all the years till all
MP3 patents has expired to get an Audio codec that is better at it with 20%
less bit rate.

I very much doubt we could have 64Kbps VBR to sound better without many more
breakthroughs.

~~~
KozmoNau7
>Generally Transparent = MP3 LAME @ ~ 128kbps. That is the good old standard.

Says who? And which version of LAME? That encoder has seen huge improvements
over the years. We should not define audio transparency by an outdated and
flawed format. We should define audio transparency by whether it is
distinguishable from a lossless source or not.

But yes, a modern version of lame (3.98 or newer) will be transparent around
V5 VBR, which is ~130kbps. _BUT_ \-- and this is a huge twerking 'but' \-- the
MP3 format suffers from pre-echo. There is nothing you can do about it. It is
lessened at higher bitrates, but you can never completely get rid of it. There
is also the problem of the SFB21 defect, which can severely bloat the
allocated bitrate on content that is heavy in high frequencies:
[http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch](http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=LAME_Y_switch)

Newer formats such as AAC, Vorbis and Opus do not share these limitations. I
don't know where you read that AAC is worse than MP3, because that is simply
objectively false, as shown by every listening test you can care to dig up.
Did you mistakenly use FAAC (probably the worst AAC encoder out there) or
something?

~~~
ksec
I never said AAC is worst, but AAC 96Kbps cant beat MP3 128Kbps in majority of
cases.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Yes it can. It absolutely can, and does.

[https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png](https://i.imgur.com/zxwOBMJ.png)

I know it's one listening test out of many, but they all agree. AAC (with a
good encoder, such as Apple's) at ~96kbps is better than MP3 at ~130kbps.

------
sfink
Wait... someone at MPEG actually _believed_ their own bullshit? That a massive
campaign of extortion, intentionally complex legal maneuvering, and outright
intimidation is actually beneficial to technological progress in some way?
(Sure, it's beneficial to some of the companies involved in the licensing
extortion scheme; I don't think anyone disagrees with that.)

Or is this guy just an incredibly skilled troll with 30 years of experience in
pulling the wool over people's eyes? I don't think so, though. He really seems
to think that imposing massive amounts of friction on a system somehow makes
it work better.

Wow. Just wow.

I mean, I'm not unsympathetic to the argument that patents can promote
advancements by funneling money to inventors, however weak it starts sounding
when you look at actual events in certain spheres. But the claim seems to be
that nobody is going to bother to research improvements in an interesting,
impactful technical area because they'll no longer be able to (1) invent
something, (2) hire an army of lawyers, then (3) profit. Er, okay. Let the
people who will only work with that sort of path go do their ICOs instead.

~~~
jcranmer
When people first started discussing which codecs to use on the web a decade
ago, the argument made for the MPEG-LA stuff was that a) we're better, b)
we're reasonably priced, c) we're already everywhere in hardware, and d) you
don't have to worry about the patents because we've got you covered.
Ultimately, they won on that basis. However, when HEVC rolled around, that
argument was destroyed by the multiple patent pools, and the consumer groups
for the patents were pissed off enough to make competitive alternatives.

I suspect that he believes that the perpetual funding stream of ever-better
patents is needed to fund the research for ever-better codecs (which, as you
say, is disputable but not unreasonable). I also suspect that he would argue
that some of the problems of the protection racket amounts to a necessary evil
(a protection racket does give you a viable means to combat submarine
patents). However, the AV1/HEVC situation undermines these arguments, and this
is someone who realizes the gravy train is running out of rails and is
desperate to keep it from derailing instead of bailing while he still can.

~~~
djsumdog
So how does this work out fee/patentwise in the OSS world? I know ffmpeg/libav
can play HEVC/x265 streams (or at least mpv can). Can it not encode to HEVC?
Or do the fees start to apply when you start distributing content? Or is it
like mp3 where fees are only attached to hardware encoders/decoders (which
gets all iffy because where do you draw the line between hardware sold for
encoding/decoding that has software codecs on it vs general purpose OSes with
the same codecs?)

And doesn't Firefox have some special deal with Cisco to use their x264
decoder on the web?

~~~
TD-Linux
ffmpeg just ignores patent licensing - you're responsible for paying the
appropriate licensing fees if you use it. The same applies to x264 and x265.
Generally the pools won't go after ffmpeg itself but rather companies shipping
it once they get big enough / have money. For example:
[https://github.com/mbebenita/Broadway/issues/124](https://github.com/mbebenita/Broadway/issues/124)

HEVC is currently literally impossible to license. One of the pools hasn't
decided on pricing yet. You basically have to set aside some cash and hope
it's enough to back-pay once they announce the pricing. But even with the
existing ones, you have to pay for encoders, decoders, _and_ videos encoded in
it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#P...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Efficiency_Video_Coding#Patent_license_terms)

------
clouddrover
> _AOM will certainly give much needed stability to the video codec market but
> this will come at the cost of reduced if not entirely halted technical
> progress. There will simply be no incentive for a company to develop new
> video compression technologies_

I don't think is correct. The driver for innovation in video compression
technologies will continue to be the practical problems of encoding and
distributing video. The quest for smaller video file sizes while maintaining
quality is what has driven the development of VP8 to VP9 and now to AV1.
Smaller video file sizes directly help reduce the costs of companies like
Google, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Apple, etc. and I don't see that changing any
time soon. There will be an AV2 eventually.

~~~
gok
Sure a company might want to fund development of a proprietary way to reduce
_their_ costs but why would they want to make that available to their
competitors in a global standard for free?

~~~
trothamel
Aren't the browser vendors the gatekeepers here? As long as there are browsers
that are given away for free, the decoders would be have to be made also. And
if the browsers refuse to add a decoder unless encoding is also patent-free,
then we have free codecs.

~~~
gsnedders
> As long as there are browsers that are given away for free, the decoders
> would be have to be made also.

Or have major platforms (realistically, Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android) ship
decoders at the platform level, and have them ubiquitous enough. This is,
ultimately, how we got H.264 decoders commonplace in browsers.

That said, Firefox held out for a long time with H.264, and only once it was
clear it was costing them users did they give in and add H.264 to the
whitelisted platform codecs exposed.

~~~
lawl
> _That said, Firefox held out for a long time with H.264, and only once it
> was clear it was costing them users did they give in and add H.264 to the
> whitelisted platform codecs exposed._

But even then MPEG (LA) didn't really make any money out of that because IIRC
they pulled a hack where Cisco is providing a decoder binary, which they
distribute. But the license fee has a cap which cisco was already almost at
anyways, so that didn't cost cisco much.

Then they have (had planned?) reproducible compilation. So the decoder is open
source, but you're not allowed to ship a binary that hasn't been compiled by
cisco, but you can always verify the binary cisco provides matches the source
code, as the resulting binary will be exactly the same if your compile it
yourself.

Cisco essentially sponsored an open-source royalty-free decoder here.

So yeah, they gave in, but MPEG got nothing from them.

Good. Fuck MPEG LA.

~~~
clouddrover
> _IIRC they pulled a hack where Cisco is providing a decoder binary_

OpenH264 is only used for WebRTC and, importantly, there's no AAC support
(which doesn't matter for WebRTC because you can just use Opus). Firefox uses
the OS platform's H.264 decoder for video element playback.

> _which cisco was already almost at anyways, so that didn 't cost cisco much_

It apparently cost Cisco quite a lot more in licensing fees but they
considered it worth it for the sake of integration with their video
conferencing hardware. See the comments to this blog post from Monty
Montgomery for some discussion on it:

[https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/61694.html](https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/61694.html)

[https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/61694.html?thread=439550#cmt...](https://xiphmont.dreamwidth.org/61694.html?thread=439550#cmt439550)

~~~
gsnedders
> OpenH264 is only used for WebRTC and, importantly, there's no AAC support
> (which doesn't matter for WebRTC because you can just use Opus). Firefox
> uses the OS platform's H.264 decoder for video element playback.

And Firefox supporting H.264 through the platform decoder came a while before
OpenH264 happened.

------
pjc50
If you read between the lines, this is an admission that patent licensing is
now simply too _complicated_ to make proprietary codecs viable. Especially
when enabling an extra compression "profile" requires extra licenses.

Also, that the indirect value of having an open-licensed codec to the big
players in AOM is far more than the possible license revenue.

~~~
shmerl
Between the lines he is just upset about admitting the defeat of patent
trolling school of thought in media codecs.

~~~
phkahler
I liked that he pointed to NPEs as a problem. I've never thought of MPEG-LA as
anything but a giant NPE.

------
leeoniya
> Companies will slash their investments in video compression technologies.
> Thousands of jobs will go and millions of USD of funding to universities
> will be cut.

that's quite a lot of FUD. hosting providers have very aligned incentives to
invest in better - and not necessarily proprietary - compression technologies,
as do ISPs who have to carry the packets.

------
shmerl
The crisis is simple, MPEG rarely cared to make royalty free standards, except
may be in the case of DASH. So this is now haunting MPEG tech in a big way,
since free codecs are replacing patent encumbered ones for various technical
and financial reasons. DASH counter example itself demonstrates it, since it's
adopted by big users just fine.

 _> The situation can be described as tragic._

I'd call the situation liberating. Tragic for parasitic patent aggressors, but
great for actual technology progress. Choose what you prefer.

 _> AOM will certainly give much needed stability to the video codec market
but this will come at the cost of reduced if not entirely halted technical
progress. There will simply be no incentive for a company to develop new video
compression technologies knowing that it assets will be thankfully – and
nothing more – accepted by AOM for use in its video codec._

That's false, because instead of patent trolling, proper company would be
adding resources to the common pool, benefiting in result from it. I guess the
author finds the concept of collaboration to be foreign, but it actually
pushes progress much faster than patent driven pocket lining.

 _> Can something be done?_

MPEG can fix it going forward, and push for royalty free / patent unencumbered
technology only.

~~~
clouddrover
> _MPEG rarely cared to make royalty free standards, except may be in the case
> of DASH_

DASH is not royalty-free:
[http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/DASH/Pages/Intro.aspx](http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/DASH/Pages/Intro.aspx)

~~~
shmerl
_> DASH is not royalty-free_

It is, the above is just a list that trolls are assembling to intimidate
others. They have it on many thigns, including established royalty free
codecs. If they sue someone with it and prove in court they actually own
patents on DASH - then it will be another story. Until then - intimidation
doesn't equal ownership.

In this industry, such intimidating tactics (very protection racket and mafia
like) are commonplace. Check the story how Qualcomm and some others tried to
intimidate Opus project.

~~~
clouddrover
You can't just dismiss it and hope that it is. The MPEG LA has been successful
with their other patent pools. They've got a good chance of being successful
with this one as well.

That's what happened to VC-1. Microsoft tried to release VC-1 on royalty-free
terms but the MPEG LA formed a patent pool and then it was no longer royalty-
free.

~~~
shmerl
_> You can't just dismiss it and hope that it is._

Probably not. The better way is to do a review and have ready rebuttals of
fake patent claims. I didn't exactly look into how it was done for DASH, but
its big users like YouTube and Netflix should have done it.

 _> The MPEG LA has been successful with their other patent pools._

And completely unsuccessful with many others. There was the same type of list
put out by MPEG-LA trolls for VPx, and I remember there was research published
that debunked it all. So there is zero trust in anything that MPEG-LA say, but
surely having concrete defense is a good thing.

~~~
clouddrover
> _There was the same type of list put out by MPEG-LA trolls for VPx_

No. They didn't succeed in forming a patent pool for VP8 or VP9. It was one of
their "pools in formation" but was never established. The DASH patent pool is
beyond that stage.

~~~
shmerl
Which doesn't make it any more valid. But I agree that big players like Google
and others should spend resources on preventive defense and debunk all that in
advance.

And if they'll fail, there should be some concerted effort to make a patent
unencumbered alternative.

------
snvzz
The article completely glosses over the existence of the Alliance for Open
Media[1]. They mention it and go straight into "Can something be done?". To
me, the real question: Why should we care about MPEG anymore?

It is indeed true that the MPEG approach is dead. Once AV1[2] is out, the
open, royalty-free codecs will be the better performing codecs for both audio
(Opus[3]) and video.

So yes, if MPEG is dead, its components are free to join AOMedia, as long as
they leave their silly RAND ideas behind.

[1] [http://aomedia.org/](http://aomedia.org/).

[2]
[https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/](https://aomediacodec.github.io/av1-spec/)

[3] [https://opus-codec.org/](https://opus-codec.org/)

~~~
theandrewbailey
The article mentions AOM (and vaguely what it is) about 5 times, and even
dedicates a paragraph to AOM:

> Alliance for Open Media (AOM) has occupied the space left free by MPEG:
> outdated video compression standard (AVC), no competitive Options 1 standard
> (IVC) and no usable modern standard (HEVC). AOM’s AV1 codec, due to be
> released soon, is claimed to perform better than HEVC and will be offered
> royalty free.

------
sfink
This isn't just about being able to decompress video on your smartphone so you
can watch youtube without draining your battery, by the way. All compression
algorithms, whatever domain they operate in, are about understanding the
entropy stored in a stream of data and using that understanding to extract
just the useful information. (Lossy compression incorporates understanding of
our perceptual systems to only transmit what is necessary to transmit relevant
entropy from the source to our brains.)

The primary use is to display media streams with reduced network, CPU, and
battery usage. But it's a much more general field, replete with all kinds of
fascinating insight about the nature of visual/aural manifestations and human
perception. Anything you can remove yet still recover the relevant parts of
the original signal is an opportunity to understand how our brains, and the
world in general with its physical laws, work. There's a ton of interesting
and useful research that could be done -- but would you really want to look
into how texture is encoded, processed, and reacted to in our neurons when you
have to worry about various mafia-like patent licensing consortiums? The whole
licensing setup has a chilling effect on many different area of inquiry, even
apart from its impact on classic compression algorithms. (Though that is
harmed too -- if you come up with an incremental improvement that works really
well for some type of input, and you'd like other people to build on your
work, what do you do?)

------
merb
> Here are a few, out of close to 180 standards: MP3 for digital music (1992),
> MPEG-2 for digital television (1994), MPEG-4 Visual for video on internet
> (1998), MP4 file format for mobile handsets (2001),

well mp3 was mostly frauenhofer, not mpeg (yes they created the standard, etc.
but the most patentable work was done by the frauenhofer) also the date... on
1992 it was not (yet) called mp3. it's silly to actually name it in the mpeg
sense...

Edit: not a fan of mpeg, but if I would be them I would try to form a non
profit and actually try to collect money like that instead of being a super
duper not obvious big licensing company. I mean H.265 was released in 2013 and
it's still not as widely used as it could be and better fully open source
alternatives emerge quicklier than ever.

~~~
djsumdog
It was called MPEG2 Layer III, right? And the licensing around mp3 is why many
Linux distributions didn't offer mp3 in the default install, without adding
"non-free" repositories.

We also saw open standards emerge, like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC (although neither
were widely adopted by hardware vendors compared to Apple's AAC/ALAC)

~~~
auxym
According to wikipedia, the compression algorithm was originally called
MUSICAM.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Development](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Development)

~~~
LeoPanthera
You are misreading it. MUSICAM is an older codec technically very similar to
MP2, as used in digital radio in Europe.

------
ttoinou

       Standard 	MPEG-1 	MPEG-2 	MPEG-4 Visual 	MPEG-4 AVC 	MPEG-H HEVC
       Bitrate vs previous 		25% less 	25% less 	30% less 	60% less
    

The table at the end is hiding one factor : the computation cost of each new
codecs. Have we really found new better ways to compress videos, or is it just
Moore's law in action ?

~~~
matthewmacleod
It depends what you mean by "better".

More advanced video codecs have higher visual quality at lower bitrates, but
are more computationally expensive. All of these video codecs use the same
underlying ideas of 2d transforms, intra- and inter-frame compression, motion
compensation, entropy coding etc., but using more complex techniques to
preserve video quality.

I wouldn't say it's a simple as "Moore's law in action".

~~~
ttoinou
Better is increasing filesize/( (video quality)(computation cost) )

------
themihai
>> Companies will slash their investments in video compression technologies.
Thousands of jobs will go and millions of USD of funding to universities will
be cut.

I believe this is total BS. There are great open technologies(i.e http/http2)
and they didn't need a extortion cartel to police anyone who dares to use them
without to buy a license(if they could buy it in the first place). Codecs
should be open and they can be developed/sponsored by people who benefit
most(i.e. Media companies, internet companies, hardware companies etc)

------
danbmil99
I think it's worth noting that Google's initiative is an open source project,
with its roots back in the days of the Theora (ogg, xiph, vorbis) open source
codecs, with which av1 shares a common ancestry.

To argue there will be no innovation in this field without patents is similar
to saying there could be no innovation in Linux or Apache without restrictive,
object code only proprietary licensing.

------
hannob
tl;dr We were able to exploit the development of tech with patents for decades
and now we won't any more.

I'm only happy about this. And I seriously doubt this conclusion: "There will
simply be no incentive for a company to develop new video compression
technologies".

It seems the author of this text thinks the only way to have an incentive to
develop new technology is patent fees. This is outright ridiculous.

Companies like Google or Netflix obviously have an incentive to further
improve media codecs, because transmitted gigabytes translates into costs for
them.

------
revelation
You can buy a $50 SBC today with 4k HEVC decode HW blocks, enabled out of the
box. For me, that puts the technology deep into the _established_ box, and
last I checked, whoever is making the IP core for it neither the many
manufacturers shipping it are the least bit concerned. This post sounds like
scaremongering.

~~~
clouddrover
HEVC and VP9 were released at around the same time, but today VP9 has twice
the installed base of HEVC:

[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)

The simplicity of VP9's licensing versus the complexity HEVC's licensing
probably has a lot to do with that.

~~~
revelation
Ehh, this is counting 1.7 billion mobile users for VP9 but not HEVC because of
mobile Chrome installs. It's hard to take this serious when it's counting
software decoding on mobile (if Chrome will even decode it on a lot of those
phones, they know its pointless in SW.)

Meanwhile, nothing iOS supports VP9 HW decode. Until they come around, people
could give a fuck about installed base.

Then there is the stuff this article doesn't very well measure. Like DVB-T2 in
Germany using 1080p50 10 bit HEVC. That is expected to be around for a decade
or more. That is a whole lot of TV settop boxes.

~~~
vetinari
VP9 support is mandatory in Android. If you want to ship Play Store, that is.
So it is not due to mobile Chrome installs.

The amount of Android devices dwarfs iOS devices and Apple knows that it is
not viable position in long term. That's why they joined AV1. People in near
future would not give a fuck about the Apple, if they couldn't play their
Youtube or Netflix videos in 4K on them.

------
Animats
This is from the chairman of the Moving Pictures Experts Group. That's
different from MPEG-LA, the patent pool company.

------
emilfihlman
What am I reading? Someone whining because an outdated and antique idea of
having to pay for _standards_ is finally going away?

------
ksec
This is writing as someone who flavours HEVC, but still support the AOM
initiative, hopefully AV2.

1\. AOM was formed in 2015, and the idea of collaborating between Mozilla and
Google and others were very well known within the industry before the
formation of AOM. But let's just call it 2015, so three years later in 2018,
the head of MPEG, just a year ago ( 2017 ) has seen this a threat coming.

May I ask What was he doing between 2015 and 2017?

2\. >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.

Collectively Hundreds of millions? If there were only 10 companies paying the
max cap of 25M per year, that is $250M per year from HEVC and to MPEG LA
alone, excluding the other two groups and NPEs. And that is devices maker,
excluding content producers. Assuming a video codec has a life time of 10
years, that is a total of $2.5 Billion minimum. Do you not think wasting
hundreds of millions to save a few billion for the industry is a very good
deal?

I do not known how the US and Canadian University works, but at least what the
article said is true in terms of Universities funding in EU, Cooperate Sponsor
etc for the work. Well at least it was true in my era of studying.

And I do not have a solution to this problem.

And I guess I cant really blame MPEG, what was originally an outrageous amount
$25M now seems fair and reasonable compared to what others were asking. It is
likely the greed that every company has for their IP portfolio wanted more.

------
binarymax
Does anyone know what happened to Daala? It seemed like it was going great but
has been quiet for several years now.

[https://xiph.org/daala/](https://xiph.org/daala/)

~~~
mbebenita
Mozilla is an AOM member. A lot of the technology in Daala has been integrated
into AV1, along with Cisco's Thor.

~~~
ksec
Some of the technology*. Not all.

As a matter of fact only a few were made in AV1 because the two codec were so
different.

------
szczepano
I feel complete opposite to the author. I believe that open soruce patent free
codecs will drive innovation and produce better solutions in no time, more
then MPEG does over those years.

------
jokoon
Anecdote : some video gif on Reddit seems to display incorrectly... It's
twisted with some green cream all over.

Video decoding is weird because while the software might be sound, I have no
idea how the hardware supports it. I don't know if the hardware has to be
specifically built to handle a family of codecs, or if it is a kernel matter
or else...

------
MindTooth
> Companies will slash their investments in video compression technologies.
> Thousands of jobs will go and millions of USD of funding to universities
> will be cut.

[https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod](https://www.ted.com/talks/rob_reid_the_8_billion_ipod)

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arca_vorago
Does anyone know the state of Daala, which to me seems to be the proper foss
competitor to h.265?

~~~
kibwen
Daala was contributed by Xiph/Mozilla (who are in the AOM) towards AV1.

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tinus_hn
The solution is to either abandon or severely limit software patents.

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themihai
Ohh so they take credit for dash already!:)))

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thinkloop
Does VLC pay for a licence for all of them?

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ST2084
No

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thinkloop
Do you know why/how?

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nandhp
Software patents are not recognized in Europe, where the VideoLAN organization
is based.

[http://www.videolan.org/legal.html](http://www.videolan.org/legal.html)

~~~
thinkloop
This must be an old topic for hn'ers, new to me, but this is incredible, we
keep complaining about how stifling software patents are, why hasn't there
been an explosion of innovation in Europe simply by having this benefit (has
there been?)? Are there studies and comparisons of what has come of this
policy?

~~~
haasn
Well, one question we could ask is why basically every single popular open
source multimedia project (FFmpeg, x264, MPC-HC/madVR, mpv,
avisynth/VapourSynth, MVtools/SVP, heck even LAME, .....) is made mostly by
european authors? Some projects are almost 100% european, some are partially
european with some russian and other non-american countries thrown in.

The only projects I can actually think of that are based in the US and made by
american authors are those by xiph.org, and they only get away with it because
their entire business model is developing royalty free alternatives to MPEG
codecs.

Even if multimedia patents might not affect big corporations much, they
definitely seem to strongly affect the open source community. I imagine if we
had similar dystopian laws here in the EU, our best and most beloved
multimedia software would plain not exist.

~~~
thinkloop
I wonder why compression seems to be extra sensitive to the existence patents.
What about all other fields, aren't there ripe opportunities for European
companies to be able to build software that Americans simply can't compete
against? Shouldn't there be a cottage industry that does exactly that? What
are some of the most stifling non-media patents?

~~~
pluma
While software patents impact every company's long-term survivability, short-
term survivability for startups strongly hinges on investors. European
investors are more risk averse and investments in Europe tend to be smaller
than in the US. American investors prefer to invest in US companies for
obvious reasons.

So a good portion of the startups you're imagining die early due to a lack of
investment or incorporate in the US at some point in order to have a better
chance of finding investors. And then some of the rest simply aren't as
growth-focused because they need to focus on short-term profitability to
survive, which means they'll likely end up silently dominating a particular
industry niche rather than making a big entrance on the global stage.

Software patents are only a problem if you can survive long enough to be sued.
If you're not exceptionally unlucky, you're more likely to go bankrupt before
that happens.

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ninjakeyboard
Assuming author will see, year of approval for mpeg2 is listed as 1004 at the
end of the article.

I worked in video for a several years - sorry to hear about your issues.

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tzahola
“At long last everybody realises that the old MPEG business model is broke,
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.”

Good.

“Can something be done?”

Yep. Search for a new job!

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kuschku
One big issue is that research is getting privatized.

In the past it was common that researchers would go to research institutes
such as the Fraunhofer institutes, and do research there. The research would
be published, patented, and licensed. From the fees, the Fraunhofer institutes
fund themselves.

Now this is being replaced by companies doing the research in-house, where
it's often kept as trade secret, or, if it's patented, never licensed to
competitors. This limits innovation.

I'm not sure how we can protect the German research societies, but it'd be a
shame to see this continue. Research done by companies is inherently unfair,
and gives them a competitive advantage.

In this case, of course, Google opened their codecs, but for example with
Waymo's self-driving technology, that won't happen. Ideally, every carmaker
could license the best selfdriving technology as soon as it exists.

This is relevant to this discussion because the Fraunhofer group has
previously created mp3 and AAC, and those patents have funded hundreds of
further openly available research projects

