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Oh, What a Lovely Standards War
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "You know something big must be afoot when people start to get worked up over video compression standards. Basically, the issue is whether the current de facto standard, H.264, will continue to dominate this field, and if not, what might take over."
Related, reader eihab writes "Nuanti, a company that develops Web browsing technologies, has produced a high-performance Ogg Theora decoder for Microsoft's Silverlight browser plugin. Nuanti's Highgate Media Suite will enable support for standards-based HTML5 video streaming with Theora in browsers that have Silverlight. It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
I wish there was a way to mod the original press release as +5, Epic Troll, because that's what it is with respect to Slashdot - it's going to be way more entertaining than the usual (and already somewhat tiresome) Google vs "do no evil" stories. But Microsoft's Silverlight used to enable support for Theora in pretty much all Windows browsers (and specifically IE of all things), while both Google and Apple stand by H.264 - oh my!
Hold on a second, I've got to fetch the popcorn...
If you're assuming browsers will directly support video playback without a plugin why would they not support H.264?
Free software that decodes H.264 cannot be distributed in countries that recognize MPEG LA members' patents. Slashdot is operated and hosted in one of those countries.
Not at all! H.264 continues (as it has in the past) to require license fees to be paid for _every_ encoder or decoder.
The recent news from MPEG-LA is about fees for distributing CONTENT - which they may charge for in the future, but have announced that that's remaining free for now.
Don't be deluded into thinking that this doesn't require you to pay for H.264 though - it's just that the charge is on the production and consumption ends, rather than in the middle.
Mike
MKV is a container. OGG is container. H.264 is a codec.
Basket vs Fruit.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
The problem is there is exactly zipola when it comes to hardware acceleration for Theora, and you can't just "use moar power!" when we are talking cell phones, netbooks, and mini-tablets. I have gotten nothing but grief for pointing this out, but if Theora is to have a chance it needs hardware acceleration by the big three-Intel, AMD, and Nvidia, and it needs it yesterday.
My GPU cost a grand total of $35 and came with H.26x, WMV 7-9, MPG 2 and 4, all accelerated out of the box. Even the cheapest onboard GPUs nowadays usually will give you H.26x, WMV, and MP4 acceleration out of the box. And building PCs I can tell you it does make a difference, even on powerful machines the playback is smoother and allows for more multitasking without video stutter.
So I would be suggesting to the FOSS community if they want Theora to get anywhere they better look at the specs AMD and Intel have released and start on hardware Theora decoding ASAP. If they get it going for those two Nvidia won't allow themselves to be left out and will get Theora acceleration if for no other reason to have a "me too!" bullet point on the GPUs. Then you will have hardware acceleration covered for most desktops and netbooks, which in turn will hopefully make the cell phone and other small Internet devices stand up and start to take notice.
But just saying Theora runs okay without hardware acceleration on your desktop won't cut it, when so much of the Internet is moving away from simply sitting at a desk all day. Both AMD and Intel have released specs on their GPUs, and isn't that what the developers have always asked for? Give us the specs and we'll take care of the rest? Well here is your chance, we need Theora acceleration if H.264 isn't to become the dominant format.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The price of admission is sending people to the four times a year MPEG meetings. The chips are the patentable intellectually property. The game is to get your IP into the standard by any means possible. When you are in the standard then you get profit participation in the MPEG-LA revenue stream.
When I was involved, the Japanese had a notorious reputation for sending lots of people and stacking the meetings. They would use procedural methods to extend the meetings into late night and then after others left they would use their numbers to force through their proposals.
Of course other players had other ways of stacking the deck. Remember that big corporations can afford to employ people full time to chair committees and that gives the extra clout (MicroSoft, apple, Sun, Philips,...).
This all means that smaller independent groups, like the one I worked for, had a very difficult time making any headway. No matter how good the technology, political considerations had a lot more impact.
The trick is that while MPEG is an open international body that supports "open standards", MPEG-LA is a foul black pit full of zombies, orcs and lawyers. In fact, the orcs and zombies are at the bottom of the heap, because the lawyer are the bad asses who run the show.
How are licenses fees set? Nobody knows. How are revenues divided? Nobody knows. How much is spent on MPEG-LA costs? Nobody knows. How do they decided to engage in legal action and who do target? Nobody knows.
It is a completely independent body with no oversight by any of the international standards bodies, or any government for that matter. It is only constrained by the software copyright rules in an individual jurisdiction.
It is a closed black box that can charge as much as it wants, and because it is an "international standard", it is almost impossible to compete with it based on cost or quality, and and you can't go after it using the legal system. (This one reason is why Ogg Theodora is not looked at as a meaningful option by the big players; it is not a standard, so it gives big companies headaches. Who is responsible if there is any trouble? What happens if a key person is hit by a bus? Having access to the source does not fully address all these legal issues.)
The reason that this such a bit deal is that large amounts of money are involved. I Googled around and I couldn't get a clue about total amounts, which is suspicious in itself. Remember, from the corporate viewpoint this is "free money", because the initial investment is small; a lab with some computers, some PHDs, a travel buget and some lawyers and the cost of their shark tanks. Very high rate of return over a long period of time.
And a shout out to all you libertarian morons out there: THIS IS A TAX!!! It is a tax collected by corrupt self serving insiders who have subverted the legal system. It restrains trade and stifles innovation. It is not subject to competition. Those who are taxed have no say in the matter. It is arbitrary, and you cannot escape it by taking your business elsewhere. It is all the things you claim to hate about government. How come you this behavior is good when done by business for greed and bad when done by governments, which are more accountable to the people?
Why is Snark Required?
Firefox is taking an ethical stand by not allowing a situation like Unisys / GIFs to happen where you have to get sign contacts and pay license fees to host some video on your sites. Also Firefox would effectively be closed source if it adopted H.264, just like Chrome is. (Chromium, the open source browser that Chrome is based on, DOES NOT support H.264).
Replying to myself, but holy crap.
FORTY SEVEN PAGES JUST TO LIST THE PATENTS.
Yeah, you're gonna need an army of lawyers for the "work around the H.264 patents" technique.