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New VP8 Codec SDK Release Improves Performance
An anonymous reader writes "Google released a new version of the VP8 codec SDK on Thursday. They note a number of performance improvements over the launch release including 20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed, an over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in VP8 'best' quality encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still or slow moving source video. In other WebM news, Texas Instruments has a demo of 1080p WebM video playing on their new TI OMAP 4 processor, in both Android and Ubuntu."
Because the people in control of mp4 are pricks.
MP4 is not free. Its encumbered by patents.
WebM/VP8 on the other hand, Google says its not encumbered by patents and the MPEG people say it is patent encumbered.
Until such time as the MPEG people can show proof that WebM/VP8 is in fact patent encumbered, I not inclined to believe them.
Doubtful. H.264 is still subject to patent trolling and royalties later on. And as long as that's the case it shouldn't be the standard we use. The only made it free in one respect which is streaming. As far as I can tell they didn't make any guarantees about the ways that matter.
H.264 isn't free. Never has been and never will be. It's only free to end users, not to the people that actually produce the software. Meaning that after you paying via the copy of the software you use, they're magnanimously choosing not to charge you again for the streaming.H.264/MPEG-4 AVC - Patent licensing
Because MKV and MP4 are containers, whereas VP8 is a codec... I'm more than half convinced that you're just trolling.
Neither is SSIM: the unfortunate truth is that all the current objective and quantifiable measures of encoding quality have only a vague relation to the subjective visual quality. There is no reliable metric for comparing the quality of output between two encoded files other than a large sample size double-blind test. All those 'quality' graphs you see in encoder comparisons aren't very useful except in the most stark cases.
MKV and mp4 are containers, not CODECs (and neither are they encoders or decoders).
Everyone? FireFox can't use it, because it requires a "paid" license and they're a "free" browser.
That they didn't make the announcement on no royalties until AFTER WebM hit the scene. Before that, there weren't royalties, but it was a "grace period" thing that they could rethink the license terms every 5 years. They can still do that with regards to license costs for encoders and decoders.
That this happened after WebM came out is not a coincidence. They finally had some competition. The plan was likely to try and make AVC the one and only standard, then start charging more streaming royalties (there were streaming royalties when it first came out). However they realized if they kept that ambiguous, WebM might take over.
Also initially I think they figured they could brow beat Google in to playing along, because they are under the belief they have patents that cover all video compression. However you know Google did their homework both before they bought On2 and after they got the technology and before they released WebM. They checked, and Google is precisely the organization that is good at the data mining and searching needed to determine if any patents applied. They likely either found that none did, or that if any did they were subject to prior art, or that Google had patents that they could use against AVC.
Whatever the case, AVC is now free to stream forever, but not completely free. So now we have two choices and that isn't a bad thing. For commercial software/hardware, AVC is probably the better choice since it seems to be higher quality. You buy the license, life is good. For free software, WebM is the way to go as the license is explicit that you can do as you please, no royalties.
But it doesn't need to. For one, all you have to do is be "good enough". This idea that every last bit has to be wrangled out of codecs is silly these days. Storage and bandwidth are cheap. So long as it is good enough, meaning performs like similar codecs (AVC, VC-1 and so on) it is fine. Remember that streaming Flash video was VP6 for a long time, and much of it still is.
However what it offers is a free option, truly free. Encoders, decoders, streaming, all have no royalties and never will. That is important. If you think AVC is free just because of x264 all that means is you aren't doing your homework. Go have a look, you have to pay to have encoders and decoders.
WebM is useful, if for no other reason than it puts pressure on MPEG-LA not to be dicks about patent licensing. However that aside, it may well be the smart choice for streaming out web based video (once it gets integrated in to browsers) since you don't have to worry about issues in the future.
So you'll notice that WebM is getting built in to hardware, just like AVC. Means soon portable/embedded devices will be able to decode it too. Ok so just another format right? Well sort of. You have to pay per decoder (up to a maximum) for AVC and VC-1 and so on. You don't for WebM. So a company is developing really cheap devices, they don't want to pay that royalty. It adds unit cost. Maybe they decide not to, and instead use WebM because it doesn't cost anything. Sure it saves only a few bucks per unit in licensing but that can add up to $5-10 when you are talking sale price and that can be a big deal in cheap devices. Maybe they sell streaming kiosk/info devices that are $40 where the best a competitor does with AVC is $50 or $60.
There is no doubt AVC is here to stay. It has good quality, never mind the massive installed base and standards behind it. Professional (and consumer) cameras are using it for shooting video in the form of AVCHD and AVC-Intra. Blu-Rays are by and large encoded in it these days (you have a choice of MPEG-2, VC-1 or AVC) and so on. It isn't going to die. However WebM may become preferable when cost is key. No encoder, decoder, format, stream, or any costs of any kind ever for any application. That's worth something.
If I ran a video website, I'd seriously think of looking at moving to it once browsers got support. It would ensure that I don't get fucked with fees at some point in the future.
One year, in fact. The MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2 and 3 algorithms were all published in 1991. Patents last at most 20 years, so the last ones will be expiring in 2011.
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Google follows a really interesting pattern. As far as I can tell, all their software is reactive, rather than proactive.
It is the result of saying "Everyone's using X, but it sucks. We can do it better." They then take a very methodical, PhD-oriented approach to solving the problem. A few parts innovation, many parts simple engineering.
Now they have 10000 employees, but the basic formula hasn't changed. Is there software that Google has made that hasn't been a direct response to an existing product?
That said, I think there's definitely a case to be made that Google is the software industry's first adult. Software's awkward adolescent foibles are on their way out. No more 90s, no millions and millions of VC dollars being spent on Pets.com, no more Netscape and Microsoft working furiously on really terrible codebases adding incompatible nonstandard crap to the internet. No more Myspace, no more Geocities. No more paperclips bouncing around asking me if I'm writing a letter; I'm using Google Docs now.
Google approaches software the way a civil engineering firm would approach a skyscraper: they are actual engineers. They collaborate with academia. They write papers. They sit on the W3C and help create standards. They have architects, PMs, devs, testers, and even lawyers to support their projects.
In a way, this is a sad thing. It was a magical time, when a university student in Finland could just sit down, write a simple OS for x86, and watch half the internet run on it a few years later. When a kid from Texas could create a whole new genre of games in a few thousand lines of C. Sometimes I worry that I was born a couple years too late.
Halfway through my CS degree, I hope that the era of cowboy coders isn't entirely done. It would be a terrible shame if CS became just another engineering specialization. At the same time, Google's professionalism is a breath of fresh air.
Call me jaded, but the way the patent system is right now (meaning "fucked up"), as far as I am concerned, everything is subject to patent trolling until tested in court (and even then, sometimes another troll shows up later :-P)
Now considering that, why exactly should I assume that H.264 should be subject to patent trolling later and while WebM remains (patent) troll-free? Just because Google said so? Just because Google has an army of lawyers and money in the bank? Guess what, all of those arguments apply to H.264 too (the MPEG LA also says they have all the patents for it, they have lawyers and money in the bank from the license fees). And what Googles promises and their lawyers are actually worth, we will sadly see soon when the Android patent trials against Oracle gets started.
Also, since we already know that WebM and H.264 are technically very similar, I personally think that possible patent lawsuits coming from future patent trolls might be directed at both systems simultaneously, which would make any perceived advantage from WebM moot in that regard.
Now, WebM still has a lot of merit as an open and royalty-free web video codec. But as far as I am concerned, until either of them gets really tested in court against a patent troll, both codecs are still susceptible to litigation and H.264 may actually have an advantage in that regard as it has been on the market (and thus as a target for patent trolls) longer.
It is "free" in that sharing a file that has been encoded is free. Encoders are most certainly not "free." Decoders are not "free." So "everyone can use it for free" is simply wrong.
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Where are my mod points when I need 'em? D:
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
My Samsung 7 Series TV doesn't even support vorbis. :(
Nevermind; people may call you a traitor for your support of proprietary codecs but don't listen to them. You traitor.
The outcome of patent trials isn't 100% dependent on pesky facts, people can win and get injunctions because the other guy's lawyer was having a bad hair day or because the judge was too busy playing with his penis pump or any number of "human factors".
No sig today...
Well, MKV has been around for a while, and having an Xvid file within MKV was very common before being used to encapsulate h264. I really don't care what the public think when the discussion becomes technical. Being accurate never hurts, and if you want to look dumb when trying to have a tech conversation about digital video that's your problem...
So Android (no GNU there) is a micro blip on the radar? Where do you get your data, so I can avoid it?
Youtube isn't exactly "small" and uses MP4 with H.264, so no.
Anyone who wants to sell a decent device in the US as opposed to $5 player needs to pay royalties to the MPEG-LA, regardless of where it was built.
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Wow.
What Microsoft is saying is that they are going to provide codec support so every application on the planet doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and that endusers don't have to download codec packs from 3rd parties!
Mozilla could use the provided codec frameworks on each platform to provide h.264 support. The reason they will not is simply one of politics.
Choice is a good thing so let the endusers decide. First time they got to play and h.264 video give them the choice of using the internal codec frame work or not. And in a security warning if you wish.
If not I see a lot of folks going with Chrome.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
> after H.264 became eternally free for streaming
Except it didn't, except in some limited cases. Please read http://shaver.off.net/diary/2010/08/27/free-as-in-smokescreen/
H.264 may be eternally free for streaming, but not for encoding or decoding. Companies that want to encode video with H.264 to stream on their site still have to license the encoder. Browser vendors that want their browser to decode H.264 still have to license the decoder on a per-browser basis. So you can stream video that you've already got in H.264 to people with browsers that support H.264, but that hardly solves the other issues.
Important politics. They want an open web. Supporting web video through a proprietary codec goes against that goal. It amazes me how many miss that point.
Do I think WebM will be better able to defend itself against patent trolls just because Google has an army of lawyers and money in the bank?
Um... yes? Plus the due diligence they did to ensure it was not infringing before they bought it.
As far as I am concerned, this planet may not be habitable after an asteroid hits until it gets tested. However, if you are going to live your life in fear then you will never get anything done.
I agree with Google that the recording and playing back of moving images and sound is too fundamental to society and to the web to put a toll gate in front of.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Actually, due to a hole that existed in patent applications before 1995, some of the patents don't expire until 2017: http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
This idea that a CODEC is somehow different that all the other DLLs that Firefox leverages on a Windows system is laughable. It amazes me how many people don't get that.
Firefox loads *many* proprietary DLL's on Windows systems (and the OS/X equivs) in order to render web content.
You've turned it into a religion ONLY in the case of CODECS. Why are CODECS special?
"His name was James Damore."
I understand it.
But the statement that Firefox can to use h.264 is a flat out lie.
They can use it and they can use it without a paying a cent. The can just use the already installed codec system for each of the OSs. In fact that would be the correct way from the stand point of code reuse and software components.
It is silly to have 5 different programs on one OS all implanting h.264.
Firefox can implement h.264 they have chose not to to make a political statement! To put in any other way is a lie. And I do not care how important you think it is to make that statement it should not be wrapped with a lie.
What amazes me is how many people miss that point and are okay with that lie.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Anyone who wants to sell a decent device in the US as opposed to $5 player needs to pay royalties to the MPEG-LA, regardless of where it was built.
Oddly enough, enforcement seems to be very lax. Until recently licensing fees for DVD players would typically add up to $20-$30 per unit, yet it wasn't that hard to find $40 DVD players for sale here. There's no way a $40 retail price could support $20 worth of licensing fees, So they were clearly ignoring them, yet you could find such products in stores like Target and Walmart, not to mention amazon and all the other big-name online places.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
When they say they can't use it, they mean they can't ship it with their web browser.
Here you make the mistake again. There's a difference between "implement" and "support". Implementing H.264 would mean shipping code that decodes it. Supporting it would mean the former or using codecs installed on the system.
They have never said they can't leverage the installed codecs. They've said it's not the way to go for several reasons.