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H.264 and VP8 Compared
TheReal_sabret00the writes with a snippet from StreamingMedia.com: "VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself."
480x360 and some really old video, seriously? If you're going to compare then at least compare with HD resolution, and even then you should probably compare with all low, medium and high bitrates.
However, it looks like H.264 kicks VP8's butt with high motion video. Some of the VP8 pictures were quite blocky too.
How do you know that some of the differences (lacking certain block sizes, for example) are precisely to avoid certain patents?
Just because it is similar does not mean that it infringes patents. Look at inventions in the past (like the first steam engine, avoiding a patent by Watt).
I think we need not worry about this in the long term. In the short term people are accustomed to the fact that their 9 month old phone doesn't have the latest technology - it's a phone, and they got it for cheap on contract. When their contract is up they go for the hot new stuff, which next week will include VP8 compatibility on Android phones and iPhones, which are both of the platforms that drive tech today. RIM will come around to whatever's hot because they don't want to lose share. As for the desktop, who needs it? Desks are not comfortable and they're not mobile. We move about now. We go where the work is, or we work wherever we happen to be.
Since I'm posting I might as well throw in some gems I've gleaned from the news. The ringtone hopes of phone vendors of being media content providers is pretty much dead. In the 2009 numbers online distribution has surpassed physical distribution for the first time (and we're not going back). Most audio is now bought online. One in four tracks purchased is bought through iTunes now. Amazon MP3 at about 1% is still in the top 10, but it's not going to be the wunderkind of media distribution once hoped.
If iTunes gets serious traction on video sales we're on our way to an iTunes culture. From my POV that would be unfortunate.
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The comparison seems to use sorenson squeeze (based on MainConcept if I am not mistaken).
I don't believe it can mach x264's capabilities and speed.
Using x264 for comparison would be much fairer.
The comparison is done by Jan Ozer. He's billed as a "video codec expert" but I don't think he has the technical expertise to, for example, make use of x264. His previous H.264 versus Theora comparison wasn't very impressive either. The x264 developers described Ozer's Theora versus H.264 comparison as "one of the worst articles they had ever seen".
No, patents are broken. They're intended to work for limited times, but a number of strategies for extending them have arisen that make them indefinitely persistent. They're broken. Even in the best case they prevent progress. Look at the early example of the steam engine. The late movement to change them from first invention to first to patent promises to bring innovation to a grinding halt.
Even Tesla's invention of radio was for a long time blocked by Marconi's patents and only recognized after his death. Patents not only are broken, they have always been. Patents prevent progress, and the prevention of progress is the opposite of the purpose and justification for patents.
Patents are patently bad. The US Constitution grants to Congress the power to grant patents and copyrights - but it does not require Congress to do so. We can fix this.
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The company had been around since the early 1990's. They were well aware of video patents, and monitored patent filings quite closely. Many of their features were adopted on the day that the statutory 1 year gap between publication of a method and possible patent filing expired. Much of the VP8 codec is actually prior art for the patents in the H.264 pool. On2 codecs have been used in Theora, Flash and Microsoft video products. If MPEG LA goes after them, it seems likely MPEG LA will lose more than they win - especially since all of us will be against them. Additionally, they'll be in court facing off with their patents against Google, and I hear Google has a few folks who know how to look stuff up like prior art. Heck, Google probably did this looking up before they decided to spend a hundred million dollars on buying the company just to give away its technology. It seems likely Google did look some stuff up before they decided to transcode their entire YouTube library to VP8. They're diligent like that.
And so having done the math, MPEG LA is investigating creating a patent pool to support VP8. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It seems unlikely they'll find success in this, but they will try.
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Yes, but it's not – as has been pointed out already, VP8 uses *more* power to decode, not less.
The immediate problem with this article is that it uses the Sorenson encoder rather than the state-of-the-art x264 encoder for h.264. If x264 was used, the h.264 encodes would demonstrate higher quality and the quality conclusions would most likely be more in favor of h.264. Since x264 is both the best h.264 encoder, and FOSS, it is the ultimate benchmark for any new video codec implementations, and that should be used. The point of VP8 however is that it is now the best free video codec, replacing Theora in that category (which is still being improved and will probably remain relevant in some niche scenarios still). The quality of VP8 is likely not going to surpass h.264, even with open source tinkering, but it will still revolutionize the web through html5 video, it will achieve widespread software support in a matter of a few months, and your devices will pick up support in a year or so (the next generation hardware). VP8 is free, and good enough to be in the ballpark of h.264 even if it is not as good. And that is a huge win.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
The H.264 video on this comparison site is encoded using Baseline Profile, which is really only for low-power mobile devices, and is not representative of what H.264 is actually capable of. Switching to Main or High Profile gives us CABAC coder (10-20% improvement), bi-directional frames (20-40% improvement), adaptive 8x8 DCT (3-5% improvement). A MP or HP H.264 will blow VP8 out of the water every time. The fact that H.264 manages to look better in most cases despite being encoded using Baseline Profile (and Sorenson Squeeze, which doesn’t seem to have ever been compared to other H.264 encoders and probably is not as good as x264) is a pretty damning assessment of how good VP8 actually is—that is to say, not very.
[insert witty comment here]
No, the MPEG-LA is forming a patent pool because they want to scare people away from VP8 or at least into paying protection money to the MPEG-LA "just in case".
Try asking the MPEG-LA what specific patents they think you need to license to use VP8. They won't tell you. This is somewhere between FUD and extortion.
And BTW "the x264 developers" are one guy who doesn't know much about patents because his project ignores them. Ask yourself whether he knows more than the people at Google who approved spending $120M on On2, which will be almost entirely wasted if it turns out VP8 requires MPEG-LA licensing.