Breaking Open the Video Frontier, Despite MPEG-LA

JimLynch writes "Did you know that nearly every video produced for Web viewing has been, at one point or another, in MPEG format no matter in what format the video is ultimately saved? According to Chris 'Monty' Montgomery, nearly every consumer device outputs video in MPEG format. Which means that every software video decoder has to have MPEG-licensed technology in order to process/edit video." An interesting snippet: "But there's hope on the horizon. Besides the codecs and formats from the Xiph.Org Foundation, the new WebM format announced by Google in May will ideally provide consumers and developers with another alternative. Montgomery has thrown Xiph.Org support behind WebM, because Google's financial muscle (not to mention their free license) will have a real chance to break the hold MPEG-LA has on the market."

Comments

Not nearly every...

[sznupi]

"Nearly every consumer device outputs video in MPEG format" - not really, since there's a LOT of devices outputting in MJPEG. At least "still" - since this way of saving video seems to be, for some time now, on its way out in newer ones.

Not saying that the situation isn't suboptimal anyway, of course. And TBH I'm not sure if WebM can change much - Microsoft (yes, them out of all companies...) VC-1 codec was probably also meant to bypass MPEG-LA; didn't really work well.

Re:Not nearly every...

[forkazoo]

Of course it has worse compression...but "a really huge bitrate for lousy quality" goes too far. DV is, in its essence, very similar to MJPEG (the latter probably slightly better usually) - is DV really "lousy quality"? And with a "really huge bitrate" MJPEG might be really fine for most stuff.

That's beside the point of curse how it is on its way out; perhaps except in Nikon cameras, so far.

Don't get me wrong - there's a time and a place for MJPEG. But, DV is on of the trivially easy examples for showing how much better modern technologies perform, considering that HDV works in exactly the same bitrate and tape format, and squashes a *lot* more pixels into the image. HDV isn't even particularly modern technology -- just more modern than DV. When you eliminate tape's need for a constant bitrate and move to a modern file based workflow, many of the AVCHD devices pathologically conpress full 1080p HD into a much lower bitrate than DV while looking just fine for most uses. Seriously, if the AVCHD devices used a bitrate as high as DV, the quality of the output would start to compete with the more expensive professional gear.

Though, the real future is in something like RedcodeRaw. A codec that focuses on being very good at storing sample data from the sensor is one thing that apparently hasn't been much explored in open standards, but it would offer the best performance. When somebody comes out with a DSLR that shoots video in a high bitrate, well-documented sensor-oriented format, they'll own a lot of production overnight.

Jesus, WAKE UP SLASHDOT EDITORS!

[Anonymous Coward]

More bullshit linkbait blog articles from JimLynch. He's been banned from posting in the message bases on a couple other websites (ArsTechnica, Endgadget) due to repeatedly posting links to his poorly written, copy-and-paste blog articles to drive ad impressions. So how long will it take Slashdot to stop taking submissions from this leech?

Or I suppose if I buy a $9.95 "BE AN INTERWEBS MARKETING WIZARD" book at Borders, I can submit whatever crap I want on slashdot too?

WebM is not the solution

[Endymion]

Many people in the Free Software press seem to be putting a lot of faith behind WebM. There seems to be this belief that Google can come in and magically make the entire video codec situation go away. WebM might be able to find a home in a few niche markets, but the hopes that it will displace H.264? It's laughable.

I love Free Software, and generally strive to run as near to 100% Free as I can on my own systems. Yet even I can recognize that the video codec war is not one that will be winnable by fiat and propaganda. The critical-mass of users are those that are buying cameras that output H.264 today, and possibly various managers, that are going to be arguing "nobody got fired for using MPEG".

The video codec war is not winnable right now, but the container and codec implementation wars might be. Striving to replace Flash with x264/ffmpeg implementations in the browser is a huge win, and one that can be realistically accomplished. Sure, it'd be great if people used a free codec like Theora/WebM (make it a prominent option! advertise it!), but not supporting H.264 at all will have one effect, and it's not the one we Free Software advocates will like: people will see the player as broken, and move to alternatives that are "not broken". Your parents, boss, and other non-technical people don't care about the alphabet soup of codecs; they just care about "software that works".

So dodge the problem and make codecs an external, OS-level issue like they always have been, and win the battles that actually can be won.

Oh, and if you really want to make a political stand, here's an idea: instead of fighting stupid technical issues about what falls under the various MPEG patents with things that may or may not be infringing (WebM), fight the patent system itself. This whole stupid issue only exists because we stupidly allow software patents. That fight is way more important, and applies to a wide variety of topics, not just video.

Re:WebM is not the solution

[unix1]

You are looking at it too short-term. If the "fight" was being called today and everyone's flash plugin was to magically disappear, you may be right (what about IE users?); but this is a more long-term affair.

In fact, I don't see a one-sided game at all, if Google play their cards right. And, Google does hold some major cards - YouTube, Android, OHA partners, Firefox (Opera and Chrome are not major), and WebM. MS will allow WebM with an optional codec install for IE which can be handled on youtube.com - "user, to play youtube videos we recommend you install this codec", or "to get most out of youtube ... blah blah blah" - I don't know I'm not a marketing expert.

On the other side you'll have Safari (on iOS and OS X) and IE (partially, see above) who will support H.264. This is not exactly a clear-cut battle.

You'll also have recording devices like video cameras, cell phone cameras, etc., but as long as there's the Web in between those and significant part of the consumption of content most of the battle will be fought online, and relatively smaller portion offline.

But first, before any major moves, Google has to make WebM workable - i.e. fully optimized encoders, decoders, quality, etc.; then start making major moves towards its adoption. It seems to me like they are trying to make sure Flash (for video) hangs around long enough for them to accomplish this step. That's why, on the flip side, Apple would want to take out Flash as soon as possible.

Between a rock and a hard place

[Bruce Perens]

The magic time we had when we could possibly have gotten patent reform is past. 10 years ago, this would have been something being done for a non-profit community. Today it would be a grant to Billion-dollar Red Hat and multi-Millionare Mark Shuttleworth, at the expense of inventors. It's going to be really hard to get that to fly politically.

The problem is that Open Source distributions can't license the patents and remain Open Source. So, this is going to be a real killer for Open Source if we let it happen.

The fact is, anyone can install a plugin to play any format they like, and most browser users will, so this is not a matter of whether Open Source browsers support it or not. But browser developers and Open Source projects should continue to lobby for Open codecs, simply to protect themselves from being written out of the market by IP restrictions.

Re:The Snowball's Chance In Hell.

[arose]

H.264 licensees include the manufacturers of damn near every piece of video hardware sold on this planet.

Just don't expect that whatever license they have covers the user... Giving people the ability to use their videos commercially without paying off the MPEG-LA yet another time just might be a competitive advantage.

"Break" the hold?

[starseeker]

If the chilling effect of the MGEG-LA patents can be broken, a) I'll be VERY surprised and b) some lawyers didn't do their job right. The only thing that would break them is a judge in a court saying that WebM (or something else) doesn't infringe, and that judgment being upheld through appeal after appeal. By the time a fight of that magnitude was fought to a finish and open source programs were judged "free and clear", the patents would probably be approaching expiration date anyhow. There is a GARGANTUAN financial incentive for these MPEG-LA folks to ensure that no possible video encoding scheme can be regarded as "in the clear". Even a lawsuit without merit is a chilling threat to a small project, and while Google is not small how many resources are they willing to commit to a fight to the finish?

Remember the debate on video in browsers? A lot of the commercial players wouldn't consider any codec that claimed to be patent-free. Was that because they didn't want the risk of an unknown patent appearing and causing trouble? Maybe, but why wouldn't that risk apply for the MPEG-LA codecs as well? They don't claim to cover EVERY relevant patent, just the ones in their portfolio. Do they think the patent-free claims are wrong? Much more likely, but if that's the case why not burst the bubble by identifying the specific infringements (and then insisting people pay up)? Did they want to ensure that they controlled the keys to online video in order to make money with the patent licenses? The cynical side of me tends to think this is the case, in which case no patent-free solution (however legitimate or undoubted) would have stood a chance.

There are of course technical arguments (h264 is very very good) but why not allow something basic as a "baseline" that everyone could have and target? Basic (ancient) MPEG should either be free or close to it, so why not give it the go-ahead as a baseline with h264 as the better option for browsers that support it? If a website doesn't want the bandwidth hit of supporting patent-free formats, fine - but at least the option to target ALL browsers would be there with basic MPEG if the site wanted to incur the costs.

The MERIT of the video format is almost irrelevant if we're talking about a fully free baseline standard. I view performance comparisons as pretty much moot, as long as we're not talking about something absurdly bad - modern bandwidth and computers can do a lot of decent video using only basic MPEG. Who cares if it is twice or three times the size of h264 for the same quality if EVERYONE can view it? Any free standard would break the hold, which is why I don't expect to ever see one accepted universally.

That's the whole idea with open standards

[gig]

> Did you know that nearly every video produced for Web viewing has been, at one point or another, in MPEG format no matter in what format the video is ultimately saved?

That's the whole idea with open standards. Did you know nearly every photograph has been, at one point or another, in JPEG format? Duh. All the camcorders make MPEG-4, which is a standardized QuickTime container. All the editors edit MPEG-4. All the players play MPEG-4. That is the whole idea with MPEG-4. That is why Apple gave the container away. Before MPEG-4, it was the QuickTime container that was universal in that same way. It was standardized not just to make it vendor neutral, but also because it was practical and possible to update media and tools and players that used QuickTime containers to use MPEG-4 containers. It's not practical to switch to another container. That would be like trying to replace Unix on the Internet. No, we cannot even switch to WebM. That would be a bigger project than the Great Wall of China. WebM is not even standardized.

The codecs are a separate issue from the container. There are licensing fees for some commercial use of H.264. In theory, H.264 could be displaced as the consumer codec by something like Google VC-8. However, in practice, the patents on H.264 will expire before that could happen, and VC-8 is vulnerable to submarine patents which are much worse than H.264's patent pool.

Professional content producers are going to continue to make H.264 because that's what is in all the tools, and consumers are going to continue to make H.264 because that's in all their still and video cameras, and they're going to upload it directly and share it directly from the devices without transcoding, and they're going to watch it on their smartphones and media players and tablets and set-top boxes which all have hardware H.264 decoding and which cannot support software codecs. And they're going to watch it on their PC's, which even though they can support software codecs, also have hardware H.264 decoding in their GPU's and so get 10 times the battery life playing H.264 as any other codec. All of the activity I just mentioned is totally 100% royalty-free. Even the professional creatives and producers pay no royalties at all. It's only the sellers of video like Apple with iTunes and the sellers of video encoders like Apple with QuickTime Pro that pay royalties, and the royalties are very small and cannot go up more than 10% every 5 years, and they do not go to patent trolls, they go directly to the people at many different organizations who created and standardized the codec.

So in short, no matter what your politics, you are I and everyone else is stuck with MPEG-4 containers, that is all that has existed since the dawn of digital video. They just used to be called QuickTime containers. They are not going away any more than Unix is going away. And no matter what your politics, we are all stuck with H.264, because that is what was deployed as the consumer standard for video codecs 10 years ago, and it has universal deployment and it's how most Web video is displayed today and for some years now, even if you view it in FlashPlayer. It's all of YouTube and iTunes, it's Netflix and Hulu. It's Canon SLR's and Flip camcorders and iPods and Droid phones. It's WebKit and IE9. It's Mac, Windows, and Ubuntu. The small costs associated with some commercial use of MPEG-4 H.264 (selling video, selling encoders) are well worth what we get for it.