Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

VP8 Codec Coming To FFmpeg

Posted by kdawson on from the small-fast dept.

Jim Buzbee writes "Interested in Google's VP8 codec? Well, so were the FFmpeg guys, so they went ahead and wrote their own native decoder in only 1,400 lines of unique code. They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."

7 of 218 comments (clear)

  1. Hmmm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is anyone else worried by..

    They were able to keep the line-count low by relying on heavy reuse from the existing H.264 codebase."

    I bet the MPEG-LA will see that as proof that it violates their patents.

    1. Re:Hmmm... by MrHanky · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No, and it never will. Apple's support for "open standards" is limited to only support for such standards when they depend on proprietary formats like AAC, mp3, h.264, etc. No support for Vorbis, Theora, VP8 or anything that can be implemented freely without a patent license. You wouldn't want free software to be able to compete, would you?

    2. Re:Hmmm... by BZ · · Score: 5, Informative

      > Can the same be said of VP8?

      Not yet. Of course the format is less than 2 months old, and there _were_ several hardware companies who committed to implementing support for it at launch.

      Also, note that mobile phones don't support "hardware decoding of H.264". They support hardware-acceleration of operations needed to decode a particular profile of H.264: the Basic profile. The one that has lower quality output than VP8 does.

      So if you start bringing the hardware accel issue into the picture, then your quality metrics are suddenly in VP8's favor...

      All of which is to say that the situation is complicated. ;)

    3. Re:Hmmm... by Virak · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The post the parent linked to goes into extensive detail about the technical aspects of the codec, has a real world comparison, a proper one, and is overall an excellent article. In contrast, the article you linked to uses poor quality source videos, JPEG for their comparison images, and by their own admission didn't even manage to use the same frame for both codecs in the images, among other problems. If you're calling that a "real article", you are in no position to be calling someone else a troll.

      And enough of these fucking asinine claims about the x264 developers being out to get your poor, precious VP8 that crop up every time someone posts that link. They don't work for MPEG. They don't make obscene mounts of money off of all the people using their free (as in both sense of the word) open source software. They're not secret Chinese agents working to destroy the West from within through the patent system. There is absolutely no motive for them to lie about this sort of thing. VP8 is simply not as good of a codec, and no amount of baseless accusations will change this.

    4. Re:Hmmm... by GameboyRMH · · Score: 5, Insightful

      5 years behind? In what way? Maybe PC gaming?

      Free browsers are leading the pack. Free media players are at least on par with their commercial equivalents (I'm being very generous here, I have yet to see any commercial player like VLC or Mplayer). Free OSes are now comparable in terms of usability to commercial ones, and in technical terms are years AHEAD of commercial OSes. Vorbis and Theora are comparable to their best closed counterparts. VP8/WebM has totally closed the gap with H.264, for those who like to split hairs about Theora.

      I use all free software on all of my computers (apart from most of my games, the OS on my gaming PC, and some of the stock apps on my PDA) and I sure don't feel like I'm missing anything.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    5. Re:Hmmm... by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps in some, but lets not forget that some FOSS projects are either the best, or very close to the best in their class. A few that come to mind: Apache, PostgreSQL, Linux, BSD, Asterisk, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenSSH... and that's just a 10 second brainstorm. All of those are either clearly the best in their breed, or at least comparable to the top end product.

      --
      I hate printers.
  2. Re:What does that tell you about the patent trolls by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I think that it has been well understood, for some time, that VP8 is, by design, largely H.264-esque. Based on that "technical analysis of VP8 by an x264 developer" article that ran on slashdot shortly after Google's announcement, it would appear that the development strategy went more or less like this:

    1. Examine H.264
    2. Where the technique in question is not patent-encumbered, or patent encumbrances can be worked around, implement like H.264 did. Unless you have good reason to believe the contrary, your brilliant innovation probably isn't, and the guys who build decode silicon/write DSP firmware are not handing out prizes for novelty for its own sake.
    3. Where the technique in question is patent-encumbered, and the encumbrance cannot be compatibly worked around, implement the least-worst alternative.
    4. Get purchased by Google.

    Obviously, from a standpoint of legal defense and market acceptance, a codec of breathtaking novelty and power, looking like an algorithmic refugee from the comp-sci genocides of the 32nd century, would be preferable. Unfortunately, such isn't available by any known means. H.264 more or less represents the present consensus on best available technique in the field; but is heavily patent encumbered. The only real reason to deviate from it is to avoid patents. Assuming that they did, in fact, perform steps 2 and 3 correctly, they will have achieved approximately the best available result at the lowest possible cost.