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."

Comments

For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[symbolset]

MPEG LA, the group that formed a patent pool for H.264, does not protect their licensees against all patent infringement - but just against patent infringement suits by their licensors, and only then in the limited case of the specific case of patents included in the pool, and only then for limited times.

Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?

A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. The purpose of the License is to offer a convenient licensing alternative to everyone on the same terms and to include as much essential intellectual property as possible for their convenience. Participation in the License is voluntary on the part of essential patent holders, however.

So you are in no way more protected by using the restricted H.264 license than you are by using the open VP8 license in the US. In most of the civilized world there's no such thing as software patents, so the only issue is which one of these is technically best.

And now MPEG LA is trying to form a patent pool for VP8. Will wonders never cease? Patents are broken. Let us hope that Monday SCOTUS rules that software patents are void in RE Bilski.

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[Dahamma]

In most of the civilized world there's no such thing as software patents

Yeah, most of the civilized world except the US, EU, UK, Japan, South Korea, and others...

And there is no point in pretending software is not patentable in the EU - precedent has LONG been established that software solving a "technical" problem as opposed to a "business process" is patentable. Video and audio codecs are already among those issued. (a big part of that is that codecs are not necessarily "software" patents, in that they are fairly straightforward algorithms that can be implemented in "hardware"/firmware/etc as well as software).

Feel free to count the number of countries in this list, but I think it's over 25... http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avc-att1.pdf

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[symbolset]

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.

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[Arker]

Software patents are broken; patents for physical items are maybe a little jankety, but not completely broken (yet).

No, the whole system is broken.

Even when the patent system worked as the founders intended, it was debateable whether there was any benefit. Pretty much every major invention came more-or-less simultaneously to several different people, one of them got the patent, everyone else got screwed. But today it's ten times worse. The only function the patent office serves in 2010 is to help large corporations perpetuate an oligopoly where only the chosen few with large patent pools can enter entire markets.

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[symbolset]

Why switch to VP8 if everyone already does H.264 in software and in hardware and VP8 also becomes subject to MPEG LA patent licensing?

Because VP8 doesn't belong to MPEG LA. It is owned by Google, and Google has granted all of us not only a freely distributed, royalty free source code reference implementation from which we may derive our own implementations, but an eternal payment free license to use all of the Google patented technologies involved - forever. That is substantially different and advantagious in a number of ways. It extends the uses to which the platform can be put, from what the licensors allow to "whatever the heck you can think of". The difference is important. It's meaningful. It's impactful. It's valuable. In short, it's Progress. You remember Progress, don't you? It's what we had before software patents were the norm.

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[bit01]

I hear people make this sort of claim all the time on Slashdot, and I have yet to see evidence for it.

The onus is on you to show that this massive interference in the lives of billions of people is justified. The handwaving and wishful thinking that patent proponents usually engage in is not even remotely sufficient.

Creating a new object or technology costs a lot of money.

No it doesn't. Almost all technology development occurs in small increments that is adequately rewarded by first mover advantage. Like almost all business activities. The patent office just arbitrarily claims that some types of ideas can be restricted. e.g. I have the idea of starting hardware store in a growing small town. Why can't I patent that idea and stop any competition? I have never received an adequate answer from any slashdot patent proponent for that question.

Without the enticement of being able to reap the monetary rewards from a temporary, sanctioned monopoly on the invention, where is the motivation?

You are mentally deficient if you are going to seriously claim that a patent is the only motivation for invention. It's a common and typically dishonest claim by patent proponents. You might be able to claim that patents increase the motivation but of course patent proponents never do that because that'd show that the emperor has no clothes and also lay them open to the possibility that they might have to scientifically justify their position rather than handwave.

that intellectual property should not be protected by law just as physical property is.

Circular reasoning. It's property because it's property. Logic fail.

---

I own it therefore I get to decide what happens to it is a meaningless tautology. Ownership by definition is the right to control. The more interesting question is who owns it?

Re:For the patent FUDsters sure to follow....

[roca]

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.

Re:Bunk test

[Phroggy]

Once again someone is comparing a codec to H264 using some small as hell resolution.
Welcome to 2010, if it's not encoded at 1080p nobody cares.

On a cell phone, that's not true.

Re:Surely this is a moot point?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've skimmed those patents. One of them is a patent on the concept of streaming compression. I do not believe it is possible to create a codec that doesn't infringe on a few, because getting a patent is very easy, even if the idea is obvious and prior art is widely known. Throw a few hundred of those bad patents together into a pool, and the cost of systematically invalidating every single one in court would be so great that it becomes cheaper to settle.

Re:Surely this is a moot point?

[macemoneta]

Unless you're going up against Google, for example. They might consider it worthwhile to spend the money to invalidate a few hundred patents. In which case MPEG-LA would risk losing its revenue stream. There's risk on both sides of this battle, and I can't see either party entering into it lightly.

Re:Why use sorenson squeeze instead of x264

[Anonymous Coward]

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".

On2 was quite careful

[symbolset]

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.

In the US we have an inflated estimate of US

[symbolset]

Add India and Pakistan to China, and they're most of the civlized world. They're actually more than half of all the people in the world. None of them care about your list (Yes, I know Chinese patents are on your list - even the Chinese don't care about them - China has differring views on intellectual property that are difficult to describe here but can be summarized as: meh).

We forget sometimes in the US that our entire country is not as old as a decent British country house, nor a Taiwan temple, nor even a Chinese family land lease. Hell, the US is not even as old as most decent books. We are not most people and we're never going to be. Our inflated estimate of our importance is the cause of much misunderstanding in the wider world. The sooner we let it go the better.

We've got some decent insight on human interaction to share, but others may be rightfully suspicious of new ideas when they have a system that's similar that is proven to work over a span of 5,000 years. To those folk a quarter millenium is still just a "noble experiment", and frankly looking at what we're doing with it, we might not make it to a half millennium so who are we to say they're not civilized?

Re:Surely this is a moot point?

[Amanitin]

Patent reform:
make the PTO legally responsible for the validity of the patent.
If the patent is attacked in court and ruled invalid, the PTO will cover legal fees, and return submission and upkeep costs plus interest.
Nothing else will make them do their job right.

Re:What a horrible test file

[sprins]

VP8 is aimed *specifically* at this kind of resolution. It's why it's great for YouTube...

Youtube and the like are all moving towards HD. 480p is normal already, 720p and 1080p are becoming normal really fast on the web.

Re:What a horrible test file

[Draek]

For you. For 99% of the world's population however, Youtube's default resolution is quite acceptable.

Guess which market Google is aiming at.