More on MPEG4

ratajik writes: "Salon is running a story about how MPEG-LA (the alliance of companies in charge of licensing MPEG4) are planning on charging .25 cents for each copy they sell, and a .02 cent an hour "use fee" for anyone viewing MPEG4. They have a interesting slant on how this will make open-source alternatives much more attractive, and will likely kill off use of the MPEG4 standard in the long run."

Comments

Standards and the great bandwagon

[Steven_Wostoen]

As often happens, MPEG-4 will undoubtedly be widely adopted for standardisation reasons alone. Unfortunately this fact can't be changed, so we all have to look at the pros and cons of this format and compensate accordingly.

The MPEG-4 video compression algorithm employs two base techniques: block-based motion compensation for reduction of temporal redundancy, and transform-domain, or DCT, coding for reduction of spatial-redundancy. The motion compensation technique is applied both in the forward (causal) and backward (non-causal) direction. The remaining signal (prediction error) is coded using the transform based technique. The motion predictors, or motion vectors, are transmitted together with the spatial information.

There are several problems with the motion vector implementation in MPEG-4, which could lead to less than optimal compression/quality ratios, but overall the new features included in the MPEG-4 format itself compensate for this loss somewhat, or at least, that's what the MPEG proponents hope. A lot of people will have no choice but to use the format, but if enough companies break away from it, it could lead to a situation where the acceptance threshold is reached for competing format.

Should be interesting times ahead.