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Really? Can you contribute code to H.264? Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?
Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open. WebM is now what I would consider to be open as is Theora and Dirac http://diracvideo.org/ .
So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.
So yes it really is a bit of a reach IMHO.

When the hell did having to accept contributions become a requirement to be open? Is this some new "open" you're making up, because that isn't a requirement of Free Software or Open Source Software, and the right to refuse contributions is frequently exercised. This is why people fork projects. Go ahead and "fork" H.264, make up your own new standard without infringing on its patents. That is encouraged by the patent system, and it's even taught in public schools. Of course you all know this already, the real problem is finding a reason for anyone to give a damn about your fork when even $free isn't enough to 'sell' it.

A valid argument _might_ be that I cannot freely distribute your open source, licensed H.264 implementation without myself paying royalties. That would break rule #1 of the OSD which is necessary because if I can't give _your_ software, in _whole_, to other people, it's not really "open".

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The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

Yah. It says that, right up front so you don't accidentally confuse it with Free Software which requires that I be able to give your stuff away for free. Hey, at least that IS consistent with the meaning of "free".

Really? Can you contribute code to H.264?

H.264 is a standard, not a specific code base. You are free to contribute code to any implementation of that standard which accepts code contributions.

Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?

Sure, you just have to pay a license fee. No hoop jumping required.

Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open.

Open source software is not necessarily free. In the same way, you are free to implement H264 but you have to pay a license. This is really no different than the requirement of the GPL to publish source code of any changes you make to a GPL'ed codebase. You pay back in the form of source code rather than a fee and that source is a product of your efforts and time (time == money).

WebM is now what I would consider to be open as is Theora and Dirac http://diracvideo.org/.

I would consider WebM to now be open source but that does not necessarily make it an open standard. Where is the specification? Do I have to use the GPL'ed code base in order to implement it or use clean room techniques to reverse engineer a spec.

So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.
So yes it really is a bit of a reach IMHO.

Well, I don't consider WebM to be open as far as a standard goes and there is no hardware support for it. For end users, WebM is seen as yet another proprietary format that no hardware or commercial software supports.

Really? Can you contribute code to H.264? Can you use the spec in your own software and publish it with out a large amount of jumping through hoops?
Really H.264 may have been public but I would not call it open. WebM is now what I would consider to be open as is Theora and Dirac http://diracvideo.org/ .
So no I do not feel that H.254 meets the definition of open as far as development goes.
So yes it really is a bit of a reach IMHO.

I don't want to sound like a repeating record but the Dirac codec produced by BBC R&D is royalty free and extremely good.

I am sure if you look you will find more but start with these links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_(codec)

http://diracvideo.org/

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dirac/files/

and if you can watch the promo too.

http://dirac.kw.bbc.co.uk/download/video/maybefinal/

why are we still debating this?

Dirac strikes me as another codec worth following. It's available to all developers, high-quality, and in production use by the BBC during the Olympics (they said so in their Dirac promotional video). VLC has support for playing back Dirac streams. I'd guessing other players do as well.

I expect Theora and Dirac to be of interest to all who want high-quality free video codecs.

What interests me is the fact that in these discussions about Theora being an old and antiquated codec, nobody seems to know about Dirac, which is a modern video codec quite comparable to H.264 developed by the BBC.

Dirac is specifically designed to be free in the sense we love, and they have specifically checked to make sure it doesn't violate any patents, etc.

It is supported in recent versions of FFMPEG, and since VLC 0.9.2. Support for it is maturing quite fast, and I don't understand why Mozilla didn't include support for it in their HTML5 video implementation.

Since Opera implements <video> with GStreamer, it should already support Dirac if you have the support installed.

I've been trying to follow dirac since they used it to transfer the olympics HD streams internally but I am finding it difficult. Their project page is teeming with interesting pages but the updates to it are few and far between. Their wiki page has had only minor additions in the last few months and their git log is moving at a snails pace. They have a forum on sourceforge but similarly it is rather quiet.

I realise that it only being developed by a few people at the BBC but the project has such promise that it leaves me wondering why there isn't a larger community behind it and whether it will ever pick up. I've tried asking in a few comments on their internet blog but they were not answered and they haven't written anything about dirac their for a long time.

Not that you should fear software patents, since they should be abolished, but yes, OGM and MKV are good completely legally open (in the U.S.) containers, Vorbis is much better than MP3 of course though I'm not sure about it vs. AC3, but what really needs more love are the actual video codecs. Theora is OKish but Dirac and others are where the future seems to be with open video codecs.

Dirac (see http://diracvideo.org/) probably has much more potential to become the next generation open video codec. From what I understand it is more cutting edge and than Theora due to e.g. the use of wavelets.

Guess I should also give the link. Dirac Video

Do you infringe any patents?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain, but we're pretty sure we don't.

We haven't employed armies of lawyers to trawl through the tens of thousands of video compression techniques. That's not the way to invent a successful algorithm. Instead we've tried to use techniques of long standing in novel ways.

No, but Theora and Dirac are. Theora is from the Xiph open source community (the same people that do cdparanoia, FLAC, Speex, and Vorbis). The FSF has recommended its use along with Vorbis audio for some time now. Dirac is from the BBC.

Read their site. From the FAQ:

Do you infringe any patents?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain, but we're pretty sure we don't.
We haven't employed armies of lawyers to trawl through the tens of thousands of video compression techniques. That's not the way to invent a successful algorithm. Instead we've tried to use techniques of long standing in novel ways.

What will you do if you infringe patents?

Code round them, first and foremost. There are many alternative techniques to each of the technologies used within Dirac.
Dirac is relatively modular (which is one reason why it's a conventional hybrid codec rather than, say, 3D wavelets) so removing or adding tools was relatively easy, even though this may mean issuing a new version of the specification.

Exactly, or better yet, use those decoders to transcode content into open ones and distribute them in that format. Distribute MP3 collections in OGG, and convert video to, well, sadly the best unfettered video codec right now that you can actually use seems to be Theora, because Dirac is still being implemented into players and such, and Snow is still in development last I heard. I think the only encoder available for Dirac is something that's pretty difficult to use.

HTML5 guys pushing ogg format really, really doesn't make sense.

Name another patent-free format, then.

Dirac, the CODEC of the future. In the same league or rivaling H.264/VC-1 but completely free from any patents requiring licenses and/or royalties.

These are directly from the FAQ at the Dirac website :

Do the BBC have patents in Dirac?
No. We did have patent applications in train which included some of the techniques involved in Dirac, but we let those parts that related to Dirac lapse. If we had allowed them to continue, users of the Dirac code would still have been covered in perpetuity by the licence: by letting them lapse, the BBC has no IPR interest in any implementation of Dirac by anyone, based on the Dirac software or not.

Do you infringe any patents?
The short answer is that we don't know for certain, but we're pretty sure we don't.
We haven't employed armies of lawyers to trawl through the tens of thousands of video compression techniques. That's not the way to invent a successful algorithm. Instead we've tried to use techniques of long standing in novel ways.

What will you do if you infringe patents?
Code round them, first and foremost. There are many alternative techniques to each of the technologies used within Dirac.
Dirac is relatively modular (which is one reason why it's a conventional hybrid codec rather than, say, 3D wavelets) so removing or adding tools was relatively easy, even though this may mean issuing a new version of the specification.

The BBC is not a company. It's primary goal is not to pay dividends to shareholders, it is to provide the best service to those who fund it, and nothing more. It is not commercial. The BBC has innovated a lot in the past, and if they did decide to go Ogg Vorbis and Theora, people would just go download the codecs. It's not a big deal.

The BBC was also instumental in the development of Dirac. From the FAQ at their Website:

Is the BBC going to stream video using Dirac?
A good question. Now we have version 1.0 of Schro, the BBC is exploring opportunities to adopt Dirac for operational use. We have real-time decoding, integration with players, a bytestream spec and a choice of transport stream formats.

Dirac is created by the BBC and released as OPEN SOURCE.

SchrÃdinger is a fast codec that can PLAY dirac files at resonable speeds.

Both are here.