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Apple Delays QuickTime 6 Over Proposed MPEG-4 Licenses
znu writes: "Apple announced at the QuickTime Live! conference today that there's a public preview of QuickTime 6 with full MPEG-4 support ready to ship, but the terms of the proposed MPEG-4 license are holding it back. For those who haven't been following this, MPEG wants $0.25 per encoder/decoder for MPEG-4, up to $2 million per company per year. Apple is fine with that. But MPEG also wants content distributers to pony up $0.02/hour for any content that's distributed for profit. Apple feels that determining just what is "for profit" will be problematic, and that this pricing will seriously inhibit MPEG-4 adoption.
You are encouraged to complain to MPEG LA about this situation."
Will the greed ever end? The 25 cents per encoder/decoder is bad enough, but then charging by the hour as well??? Give me a break
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
CNET's had a nice, objective article online since early this afternoon.
mailto:<?=implode("@", array("chris", implode(".", array("php", "net"))))?>
2 Million per company per year! My god, shows how much big companies like apple can throw around. That's more than the my companies total profit for the year. LOL.
Yet another corporation trying to rake in money for informational exchange -- truly a bizarre idea if you think about it, right? Money for information...
I think, therefore, I'm smarter than our president.
apple should develop another completely open codec and dont pay the greedy bastards at mpeg la a dime!!
What we really need is a nice, free, high quality and open source standard. Then, anyone can use it without paying the license fees, and it will be able to run on any platform. Whereas music files have converged to mainly MP3 and OGG Vorbis files, videos are heavily divided between MPEG, QuickTime, DiVX & AVI, RM, and ASF. It is really annoying to use so many different players to play simple videos, I use at least four different ones regularly. Plus, I haven't found anything that can play RM except for RealPlayer, which is unfortunate since some of them have not been displaying correctly on my computer.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Sounds like the same accounting nightmare than governs licensing between the record companies and radio stations.
The site seems to be all about MPEG-2...
But you can send them a message here explaining that a per-use licence is morally wrong and will stifle early adoption of MPEG-4
smile, it makes everyone else wonder what you're up to
divx is free:)
or will they try to charge for the playa too?
--
What is the sound of this sentence?
Apple Press release
MPEG-4 licensing plan
Plan for fees
--Metrollica
I know this isn't Google but do these numbers sound low to anyone else? Think of all the pron sites that encode using these, yet they only total a little over 400 000.
On second thought theres that + sign. I spose it's all in the details.
... and contribute to work on vorbis/tarkin instead ...
i think this is the first time i have ever seen a thread that didn't have someone post about being the one to post before any others had the chance to.
sorry for the OT, just in shock.
If the internet has taught anyone anything over the last 20+ years it is that closed standards, or standards that require licencing do not work . Standards are developed (or at least should be) as means to an end. Packet switching is a means to send data. Data Comression is a means to transfer data more effectively. HTML is a means to simplify and "standardize" web content.
Companies that have "crate patented standards and get rich off the licencing" as part of their buisiness plan should be shunned by those who are seeking to make money by providing entertainment or information.
I personally a mystified that things like this MPEG insanity can and have survived. Open standards have reigned supreme on the internet, and nearly everywhere else, but somehow these proprietary video compression algorithms live on.
I don't pretend to be an expert on video codec's and the like, but I would like to believe that some sane individuals could develop an open video compression system and stop all of this idiocy
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
Apple has to have dumped tons of cash into this project, even if MPEG-4 is based on QuickTime. So, in this economy, how long can Apple keep a leash on a potential money-maker?
- The Amazina Llama
Or if you need work-safe goat:
p g
http://homepage.mac.com/genesismac/gapingbowl.j
Excuse me, did you suggest we tell them its morally wrong?
.. and what about the evil doers?
BAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!!
Oh yeah!! That'll stop 'em!
Why dont we tell RIAA that what they're doing is immoral too
It seems to me that nickle and diming the customers on a per-stream basis for what they download is a very quick way to kill VoD on the internet. Seems like the Television Network approach would be much better suited. "This content comes from our sponsors."
Then they can go as far as to order merchandise for that show. "Click here to purchase a Transformers: Robots in Disguise Optimus Prime Toy for your kids." The can reward me for watching commercials. "Click now and we'll give you $1.00 off your next burger." They can even do things like broadcast a show live, just like TV does today for free. But if you want to see earlier episodes, you have to pay for a subscription to access them.
The idea of saying 'your time on the net is metered' scares me. Using the Internet for entertainment is a luxury, not a need. If the market thinks the price is unfair, then programs like Morpheus will suddenly reign supreme.
"Derp de derp."
Can someone explain what the DiVX codec is if its not mpeg4? I was told it was a modified mpeg4 codec?
or is this just a myth ?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I agree. One must not exclude loopback support which can be very handy at certain times.
Tarkin is very very much in the planning phase right now, so if you've got any knowledge of video compression or wavelets in general, now's the time to hop on! If you've got the time to learn wavelet encoding and read a bunch of papers, this will be a great project. I don't have time personally to do much more than follow the mailing list (which has seen a lot of traffic in the last few days) but there's a lot of people on this project who really know their stuff. It's a good chance to learn from them.
That said, the definitions for the project aren't certain at all right now. No one knows if it's going to be for streaming video or just plain compressed video. There's even been talk of using it as a professional editing standard, but that's not likely to be a focus. Right now, Tarkin is so new it's scary. It's going to be an exciting project to follow, but don't expect anything too soon.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
I wholeheartedly second that!
Quicktime movies not working under linux is the lnly reason I still have a version of windows lying around.
Don't Panic
DivX ;-) [MS MPEGv3] != DivX (divx.com) Understand?
You Linux zealots who say it's "ready for the desktop" and whatnot sure find a lot of reasons to leave Windows "lying (sic) around" on your HDs
If they are going too much greedy then use all that amount of money to develop their own system, or in a joint venture with other companies.
Migx
Probably the exact reason why they don't produce it for Linux. You've got Windows lying around.
mod up
quicktime sucks anyway with this sorenson shit - a codec you can smoke in a pipe...
Do you realize that sorenson is not the only codec that quicktime can use?
Personally, I've been using the open source vp3 codec for a lot of the videos I've encoded lately.
In my opinion, it beats the free version of sorenson at moderate bit rates, and as the source code is available, someone should be able to plug it into one of the Quicktime frameworks that run under [Free,Open,Net]BSD or Linux.
I mean, I know its illegal and all, but who cares? :D
Changing a few words and a whole new world of hypocrisy is opened up and a whole new meaning to expression corporation tax.
"The marketplace recognizes the role that intellectual property rights play in the development of these technologies, and the good news is that the market understands the need for it to be respected and paid for."
"The citizens recognizes the role that taxation play in the development of these public services, and the good news is that the populous understands the need for it to be respected and paid for."
Or
"The serfs recognizes the role that levies play in the development of my kingdom, and the good news is that they understand the need for me to be respected and paid for."
Could it be better,
Ripping DVD's to DivX is actually incouraged since it is literally opposite to the interests of profit.
Is there a company named MPEG? What am I thinking, critizising articles here on slashdot?! Oh well, "Greed is good".
Meanwhile, Microsoft is raking in all those licensing fees for Windows Media Player.
Yep. All those "warez" guys are actually Linux users. Not a single one of those "appz" are Windows or MacOS.
Did you tryied Crossover plugin? Or a very new version of wine? Works great for me.
I dont know if I agree with the patent but it seems pretty moronic to license the encoder AND the decoder.
It seems with any format(audio,video,file compression) you want it out there and popular. Then only license the encoder, and the decoder is no charge. People will use the format a lot more, imho.
Apple is not in this alone. Apple is a founding member in the Internet Streaming Media Alliance, or ISMA, which is standardizing MPEG-4 for streaming. At the Fourth ISMA forum last week, the move by MPEG-LA to apply a per stream license fee was seen as pretty brain-dead.
MPEG-4 is being rolled out for set-top boxes for Cable Companies. The MPEG-LA license fee would add a charge of almost $ 15.00 per box per month to your cable bill. This would just about double my cable bill. This will kill MPEG-4 if it is not changed.
The speculation is that this is Microsoft (a member of the license pool) trying to squelch competition, without leaving any fingerprints.
You are encouraged to complain
Complain? Why? The longer these greedy thieves continue there scratching and in-fighting the better. Let MPEG4 die a slow expensive death for all involved.
This will give time for competitors (Ogg Video) to prove themselves, without the "Intellectual Property" bull$hit.
Despite what they claim, vp3 is not open source. The license forbids modification of the software in any way that is incompatibile with the data format of the original codec, which (for example) completely rules out using any of the technology in it to form the basis of a new and better codec. It is also completely at odds with the Open Source definition, as found on opensource.org, and the free software definition, as found on gnu.org.
You may think I'm being pedantic, but the term "open source" gets devalued every time somebody uses it to describe a license that is not truly "open source". Next thing you know, the Sun Community Source License will start being accepted as "open source", which is even worse than the vp3 one. Then anything which provides the source but doesn't let you modify it.
The Open Source definition was written for a reason: to specify a minimum set of requirements for licenses that are open enough to allow the code to be used for anything, by anyone, in perpetuity. The vp3 license ain't it.
Stuart.
No one would use it for streaming!
What a fucking pedent.
Companies have to get it through their thick skulls that to achieve infrastructure-level ubiquity in the computer market your product either has to be free (beer) or licensed via a very simple, flat-rate scheme. The MPEG-4 license plan is destined to drive away companies, to everyone's detriment.
Better just use something that actaully exists like VP3. Tarkin is little more than a research project right now, and the direction is just using wavelets rather than the DCT.. the compression they'll achieve will at best be of the same ballpack as MPEG-4.
Tarkin's goal of an open source licence free CODEC is fine, but something like VP3 (source available, competetive compression, no licencing requirements - just a restriction that derived works still be able to decode VP3) is really good enough. If you look at the audio/video components of high quality A/V files then you'll notice that quality audio takes up at least as much - if not more - space as the video. Using conventional transform (DCT/wavelet) techniques to make video smaller is really a waste of time - the only break through will come from another approach (most likely overcomplete specification methods), and the overall savings in A/V file size are limited by the audio anyway.
... that all Slashdot moderators are Sadistics - they do it to inflict pain.
....
....
Now if we could implement a module that gives an electric shock to the poster every time he's modded down
Where are my moderator points when i need them
This ought to be good by now, the Darwin Open source streaming server running on BSD, Linux Solaris and that other system.
I love quicktime, but i cant seem to understand teh significance of this, because, 1 MPEG-4 or atleast a variant of this is already in circulation and wide spread use as both DIVx and WMA --legal issues aside--. What does fullblown MPEG 4 bring to this that we dont already have? does MS pay fees like this to MPEF LA? does DIVx (yeah right)?
The problem here is that MPEG is hurting the guy who is willing to pay. Its kinda like customers in a shop paying more for goods becasue the shop needs to cover the cost of shoplifters...
Its quite sad really.
The war with islam is a war on the beast
The war on terror is a war for peace
Have any of you visited MPEG-LA's website, specifically the contact page? Do so and take a look at the employees' pictures. Wow. MPEG-LA employs some goodlookin' women. Check out Courtney Ford. Oh hell yeah! Check please!
Raw 2-channel PCM audio = ~417kbit/s. That's about as uncompressed as it gets, and nobody ever uses uncompressed audio. Video is immense in comparison. Decent quality DivX video is going to be around 1000kbit/s, and an SVCD is around 2200.
What kind of "high quality A/V" files are you using, anyway?
The free Quicktime Streaming Server 4 has been released today and its open source companion the Darwin Streaming Server (has the same features, but it does run on Linux, BSD and Windows). It already supports Mpeg-4:
"MPEG-4 Support: now you can serve ISO-compliant hinted MPEG-4 files to any ISO-compliant MPEG-4 client, including any MPEG-4 enabled device that supports playback of MPEG-4 streams over IP. You can serve on-demand or live MPEG-4 streams, and reflect playlists of MPEG-4 files."
I'll bet they tried to mention MPEG-4 as many times as possible.
You can now also stream MP3's with it, set up your own radio station! The streaming uses the standard Icecast streaming format so any MP3-player that supports streaming should work.
The Drowned and the Saved - Primo Levi
Im just your average comp user. I dont know anything about video, streaming, licensing, or anything.. But I do know, if this means they have to charge to see all those hilarious clips i find around on other sites like punchbaby.com or apples trailer site, etc .. Then I just wont watch em. I couldnt imagine anyone paying for anything unless it was like $1 per movie like that Taiwan site is doing. Or unless they send me stuff on an actual physical medium. (CDROM etc)
So I'm wondering... why doesn't Apple just dump mpeg4 and spend less money support vorbis/tarkin? Developing a free, open-sourced video format would only be good for Apple, probably save Apple money, and hell, Apple is already doing Open Source work with OS X.
"lnly reason"?
BULLSHIT.
Quicktime is not hardly important enough for an entire OS. Jesus, at least *pretend* to have a better reason.
This is vile. Doesn't Slashdot have some kind of policy against this.
I know a lot of people just see QuickTime and MPEG4 as movie players and nothing else. This is not for them.
As a developer, I see QuickTime as a nice, clean way of handling any time-dependent data and metadata: movies are just one application. This aspect of QuickTime has been available for implementation free of charge forever.
Normally, it would make technical sense to move to MPEG4 as it becomes a standard. However, this licensing gives me pause.
The license forbids modification of the software in any way that is incompatibile with the data format of the original codec, which
n se _9-6-01.txt
(for example) completely rules out using any of the technology in it to form the basis of a new and better codec.
Bull, you can still extend the existing technology
and provide another propriatery format as long
as you provide support for vp3.2 format as well.
Read the license:
http://www.vp3.com/license/vp32_opensource_lice
(e) Notwithstanding Sections 2.1 (a), (b), and (c) above, no license
is granted to You, under any intellectual property rights including patent
rights, to modify the code in such a way as to create or accept data that is
incompatible with data produced or accepted by the Original Code. By way of
example but not limitation, a Modification that adds support for other
compression data such as MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 would be permissible, but only if the
resulting Larger Work continues to support playback of VP3.2 data.
Modifications that provide only playback or encode support are also permissible.
However, a Modification that adds support for encoding or playback of any non-
VP3.2 compatible files or bitstreams without complementary support for VP3.2
encoding or playback would not be permissible, and no license is granted for
such Modification(s).
DarkSkies.
The whole point of MPEG 4 is that it is dyamic (you can pick you codec combos like .MOV) media format for the web that is going to work in any media player.
This means web developers like me will no longer have to write scripts that alow people to select their media player of choice (and most people on the web don't even know what a media player is). As long as they have SOME sort of recent media player MPEG 4 should play.... at least that is the idea behind it.
this thing really needs a good licence that is not going to force users to pay. It will never get adopted is users have to pay 2 cents and hour. We NEED a standard like this for the web. Could you imagine where we would be if HTTP, FTP, etc never got adopted as standards and websites worked like Windows Media, Real Video, or QuickTime Movies.... it would be hell. the web would not be as big as it is...for sure.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
but this is the first I've seen i na long whiel on /.
With all the hub-bub about MPEG-4 did anyone notice that AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) will be in Quicktime 6? (see http://www.aac-audio.com/ for info)
My guess is that soon after its release Apple will add this format to iTunes and the iPod, allowing much more quality music than mp3 can produce.
>> You are encouraged to complain
> Complain? Why? The longer these greedy thieves
> continue there scratching and in-fighting the better.
> Let MPEG4 die a slow expensive death for all
> involved.
> This will give time for competitors (Ogg Video
> [xiph.org]) to prove themselves, without the
>"Intellectual Property" bull$hit.
Ogg is not a competitor to MPEG-4. They don't have anything video-related, just an audio codec (yes, I've heard that they want to make a video one, too, they haven't yet).
If MPEG-4 doesn't fly, then we will get MS-brand "Mpeg-4(TM)" with Windows XP and X-Box compatibility, and a free suite of crappy tools that work only on Windows XP, and have none of the long-term stability and integration with tools that QuickTime has built over the past decade. With MPEG-4, you have a free, open source encoder (from Apple), free streaming server (from Apple), and a free player for Mac and Windows (from Apple), as well as integration with all major content creation tools (through Apple's QuickTime, so your copy of Premiere 5 with QuickTime 5 can't do MPEG-4, but your copy of Premiere 5 with QuickTime 6 CAN do MPEG-4).
Believe me, you are much better to just agree with your fellow geeks in audio/video/multimedia. The place where the MPEG-4 standard body should make their money is from the people who make the tools. This makes the MPEG-4 standards-compliance a hidden cost of the tool, the person using the tool doesn't then have to pay again to maintain standards-compliance. In other words, CNN never has to choose between $0 for non-standard streams and $0.02/hr/stream for standard streams.
Ogg is not relevant to this discussion until they have a product. Mod anyone saying "Ogg" down. You guys are just making noise here. You're championing Ogg as the "ideal product" and it's easy to do because the product is entirely imagined. It suffers from no interactions with the real world. Fantasies are good, dreaming is good, but here and now, today, we are discussing a situation where the maker of the leading content-creation technologies (Apple) is holding back MPEG-4 from its legion of content-creator customers because the difference between the adoption of MPEG-4 with license fees on the tools and MPEG-4 with license fees on the tools and streams is going to be radical. Apple wants their customers to go whole-hog on MPEG-4 (they love standards), but they can't recommed something that's going to require a whole new accounting department to work with. The streaming server is free and open source; how can you get a per-stream accounting from the users?
Another issue is this: do you pay one price for your word processor, or do you pay per/word as you go? If you paid per/word, would you have to show all your words to somebody at some point to prove that you paid for them all? What if you hadn't paid for some? Do they confiscate those words? Do they demand payment for those words immediately, on their own terms? Do the words come off the Web while this is discussed? Per-stream charges are a nightmare.
"If you look at the audio/video components of high quality A/V files then you'll notice that quality audio takes up at least as much - if not more - space as the video"
Why else do you think they did ogg vorbis first? That way, they have a ready made, high compression, high quality audio track waiting when they get the video side done, rather than implementing both at once.
BlackGriffen
The one question I don't see anyone asking is didn't Apple see it coming? You can't tell me that they've been developing this for several years and just before they sent the shrink wrapped boxes to the store shelves someone said "gee, should we read the license for this technology just in case?" They MUST have known about it all along. Why didn't someone at Apple pursue this years ago so it would be resolved in time for the release? Now we have to wait, product in hand, because someone dropped the ball or was just sitting on their thumbs. And now we're supposed to feel sorry for them? Am I missing something?
At least Quicktime is useable. I still can't stand the fact that I can't save WMP files as anything else or export the files.
Personaly, Quicktime is highly efficient. True if you want to watch MPEGS full screen, you need to register, but as you so pointed out, there are hacks availible.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
loose-the-chickens-for-free-range-eggs dept
should be spelt
lose-the-chickens-for-free-range-eggs dept
unless of course they are feeling slightly slack
when will you learn to spell!
losers !
The .mp4 file format is the new ISO format for MPEG 4 files, and it is based on the QuickTime .mov (open) format. The MPEG 4 ISO specification also includes a video codec and an audio codec based on wavelet compression. These codecs, along with the MPEG 4 file format make up the MPEG 4 ISO.
"I like systems, their application excepted", George Sand (French)
You know, I don't really have a problem with them charging $.25 per codec. The developers of the MPEG-4 standard deserve to be compensated for their time,...
... they got their salary. It's wrong and imoral for them to keep cashing in. Apart from the generally amoral software industry, where else do you see this? Do Volvo keep wanting money each time you drive a car you bought from then? Does an Architekt get money each time you use a house he designed? Does Joe Schmo who build a road get any money when people use the road?
They have been
So more power to 'em, I say.
Well, I say greedy bastards, and hope the open source community comes up with something better.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Wow, people are all over the map on this one.
Simply put:
MPEG-LA is a company that represents the patent holders of technolgy used by all the parts of a multimedia standard known as MPEG-4.
MPEG-LA says that if you want to sell a codec that infringes on any of their _extensive_ patents, you need to pay $0.25 per copy sold, up to $1M per year.
MPEG-LA says that if you want to USE a codec covered by their patents, you have to pay $0.02/hr per stream.
Apple refuses to make QuickTime 6 available until the usage fee is removed.
IMHO:
This is awesome, Apple is standing up for the rights of the individual to create multimedia content and publish it royalty free. Sure, they're saving themselves some $ since they stream video too. But consumers will be the ones paying that $0.02/hr if it sticks, via their Digital Cable subscription, their DirectTV subscription, watching streaming movies on the net, etc...
The $0.25 per codec sold is fair. Many of you might not think the underlying patents are fair, but that's a different issue. If the patents are fair, then it seems fair to charge $0.25 a copy for any other products sold that infringe on the patents.
-pmb
I noticed this because I'm currently working with OpenGL, where instead of merely drawing objects on the screen, you have a 2d or 3d virtual world in which you can create and transform 3d objects, and then you calculate how those images would appear projected onto a 2d surface, in much the same manner that 3-dimensional objects in the real world get projected upon the 2-d film of a camera. (The name for this modeling system is, in fact, the synthetic camera model).
I'm not sure how well applying this type of approach to video will work, since in effect, the client would have to render the footage instead of merely displaying it, but it's an interesting concept nonetheless.
"Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons
After reading about their stupid policy of hourly rates for their MPEG 4. I called MPEG LA and left a complaint in the general mail box, I hope others will follow my example.
MPEG LA can be reached at:
303-331-1880
dwatford@mpegla.com
Don't put sticky tape on hairy places.
Before Apple held back QuickTime 6, quite a few other companies reacted with horror to the MPEG LA proposed licensing terms as well. Those critical include On2, an provider of open source compression solutions, and the Internet Streaming Media Alliance of which Apple, Cisco, IBM, and Sun are members, amongst others.
In this case, Apple is in the right in standing against what amounts to an internet tax on end-users.
MPEG 4 is an open industry standard, set in part by the International Standards Association. The alternatives to MPEG 4 (and we're not talking about Ogg here) that would take over in the near term if MPEG 4 failed would be RealVideo and more likely Windows Media Format. Would these be better from an 'open vs. proprietary' viewpoint? Not by half, and Ogg Video is only in the planning stages and too many years away from being viable to have any effect. So choose your Player, and choose wisely. Letting MPEG 4 fade away would only mean that 2 years from now we'd all be using Windows Media Player / Corona (except on open source systems for which MS would probably give us nothing)
Let's not blindly hate everything that isn't open source merely on the grounds of "Intellectual Property bull$hit" OK? I'm sure you wouldn't begrude book authors from getting something back for the efforts they put into writing, so don't begrudge others either.
All your 2 are belong to us!
Well, as Sorenson i have an Fellowship of the ring encoded in Sorenson 3.1 pro
(from MPEG2)
The Qualtiy is stunning!
3 hrs = 1000 mb almost near DVD quality. + stereo sound 44.1 khz
Sure beats DivX ass.