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Cisco Developing Royalty Free Video Codec: Thor
An anonymous reader writes: Video codec licensing has never been great, and it's gotten even more complicated and expensive in recent years. While H.264 had a single license pool and an upper bound on yearly licensing costs, successor H.265 has two pools (so far) and no limit. Cisco has decided that this precludes the use of H.265 in open source or other free-as-in-beer software, so they've struck out on their own to create a new, royalty-free codec called Thor. They've already open-sourced the code and invited contributions.
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
Cisco says, "The effort is being staffed by some of the world's most foremost codec experts, including the legendary Gisle Bjøntegaard and Arild Fuldseth, both of whom have been heavy contributors to prior video codecs. We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents."
Why couldn't they contribute to Theora since that was the entire point of it was to be a royalty free video codec.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
The Daala team has also experimented with integrating some Thor's features into Daala. It's likely that the codec developed by the IETF Internet Video Codec working group will be built from the best features of Daala, Thor and any additional contributions.
I checked with a couple of compression and video processing patent pools and the computer says no.
There is no way not to infringe on pretty much any kind of video compression tech by now
http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
Doesn't it all come down to math? That is, the algorithms being used for compression is just math. How can these patents remain valid?
Wasn't Thor evil?
Theora, based on VP3, is roughly H.263-class technology comparable to Sorenson Spark (FLV) and MPEG-4 ASP (DivX and Xvid). H.264 and VP8 are a generation ahead of it in rate/distortion performance at Internet bitrates, and Thor is intended to be a generation ahead of H.264.
Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft are all companies that hold lukewarm Open Source support, and often have pilfered from open source and the public domain for extended periods of time before giving back.
Cisco has a dog in this race though, they make Video conferencing equipment. If they can make "their" codec a royalty-free standard instead of h.265 , that means they save potentially millions of dollars per year that would otherwise disappear into a patent pool they have no interest in.
Marvel shares a parent company with Pixar, which has released OpenSubdiv as free software and just announced plans to do the same with Universal Scene Description. On that basis, I can think of companies more evil than Disney, such as The Tetris Company co-founded by Alexey "free software should never have existed" Pajitnov.
...precisely until the moment that Cisco decides it isn't free any more.
The propriety codecs like H.264 and HEVC are developed by the same companies which manufacture almost all the world's video hardware ---
Studio production. Theatrical distribution. Home video. Industrial applications and so on. In this pond, even Cisco is a very small fish,
If Mitsubishi is not on board, if Philips, Samsung, and a half dozen or so other global giants in manufacturing are not on board, your brightly polished license-free codec is going nowhere.
Really sad that one has to work *around* a patent - so much for patents encouraging innovation, at least not the 'get-around-it' kind.
AC comments get piped to
If that works well, it is an extremely good advertisement for Cisco.
Cisco is a company that is run by MBAs and powered by crappy offshored Indian labor. These clowns are not interested in anything except their next quarterly earnings report.
So... why are they creating an open source codec? Lets see...
Maybe they want everyone everywhere to be watching streaming video all the time, and so all of the service providers will want bigger and faster cisco routers for all of the extra traffic.
...and Cisco will just be Thor losers.
If they want the extra traffic, they would have staid with MPEG-2
Can't -- MPEG-2 is patented.
From the summary:
We also hired patent lawyers and consultants familiar with this technology area. We created a new codec development process which would allow us to work through the long list of patents in this space, and continually evolve our codec to work around or avoid those patents.
I'm so glad that patents are doing their intended purpose of encouraging progress. Nothing fosters progress like taking a long, circuitous route instead of the straight and patently obvious one.
It all comes down to levers. Any machine made of metal or wood is a bunch of levers, arranged in some way to be useful. (Realizing that cranks and gears are simply levers that go all the way around).
If someone invents a NEW way of arranging levers to make something that does something USEFUL, they can apply for a limited-time"monopoly on that invention. If someone invents a NEW way of arranging of arranging goto statements to create a new thing that something something useful, they can similarly also apply for a patent.
Such is necessary because software is a large series of logic 'gates'. That exact same arrangement of gates can be built in C, silicon, PHP, or copper coils. A scissor is a scissor whether it's made in steel or in brass. An mpeg decoder is an mpeg decoder whether it's made in silicon or made in C - it's the same machine.
Because patents are issued by government bureaucrats, there is little incentive for the patent workers to do a good job, so we end up with bad patents, patents on "inventions" which are not new, and are not useful. That happens with "inventions" made with wood and"inventions made with C#.
The anti-patent activists have spread a misconception that "math can't be patented ", and therefore any use of math can't be patented. That's plain false. The actual text is "the laws of nature, including the laws of science and mathematics" are not patentable. In other words, you can't patent gravity, but you CAN patent an invention based on gravity, such as a new type of elevator. You can't patent magnetism, you can patent a new type of motor which uses magnetism. You can't patent multiplication, you can patent a new invention which uses multiplication to create some useful new thing (such as a better code ).
Does this have different goals than Google's VP9, or is it just Cisco trying to do the same thing?
I have a suspicion we'd all benefit more if Cisco had put their weight behind VP9 instead of introducing yet another codec, but we shall see.
If ever there was a company that's good at avoiding and working around patents and licensing it's Cisco. Just ask the older /.'ers around here how they started.
I like it! *smash* another!
"You're Thor?"
The difference between physics and something that makes use of the physical law is that the law doesn't have to deal with anything other than said law, whereas a REAL DEVICE has to deal with ALL the laws, including any we haven't found yet.
This means that a REAL set of gears will have to deal with friction, torque, gear locking, grit and grind, lubgrication,vibration, carriage, rust, etc, etc, etc. Whereas a PROGRAM of a set of gears could have a billion teeth and never fail.
Likewise an algorithm is not having to deal with getting good production yields, interference, heat dissipation, feedback from nearby circuits, variations in capacitance on different paths, and so on, whereas an ASIC implementing said algorithm has to deal with all that and more.
Virtual objects therefore need no inventive step to make it work, whereas a real physical object DOES. If you don't, then your product may be more failure prone, more expensive, less productive or just plain not work because you never bothered with the other things, and someone else who implements an inventive step to deal with some or all of these problems has produced A BETTER "MOUSETRAP".
Algorithm patents are patenting the IDEA of catching mice. When the patent says "Catch mice", how the hell are you supposed to "build a better mousetrap"? If it ever is meant to catch mice, you'd be infringing on the patent and the invention is not yours.
So, yes, algorithms SHOULD NEVER be patented.
ASIC and circuit designs, or even mechanical/analogue products that make USE of those algorithms SHOULD be, since their production requires invention around the limited fidelity of the virtual world the algorithm is produced in compared to the reality the ASIC/whatever is reified on.
The animated gif is a testament to the importance of compatibility and adoption for a file format. It sucks at compression and quality, and doesn’t support any sound whatsoever.
How many expert committees and standards organizations and patent wars have revolved around implementing and promoting dozens of “superior” video formats (including codecs and containers and server/client software)? Despite all that effort and conflict, the animated gif reigned supreme as THE most widely used video format of the internet until the rise of Youtube (and it was arguably still competitive for awhile afterwards, and still hasn't gone away). Because it works absolutely everywhere, since the 90s.
The only company that could come up with something with more security holes and potential exploits than Adobe. Figures.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
The pro industry can get on whatever they like, it doesn't matter as to what people will use. That'll be whatever the big streaming services go for. Youtube, Netflix, Twitch, Amazon, these are the places that matter.
Hardware makers will get on board too. If Youtube needs a certain kind of acceleration to work well, smartphone processors will get it. Doesn't matter if the media industry says it should be something different, they want to sell new phones and something that'll do that is it working well with the streaming services people want.
Also there's the simple issue that they are fighting against existing codecs that already work well. H.264 gives a "good enough" result at speeds that modern Internet connections can cope with. So if new shit costs a lot more and/or has unacceptable restrictions, people just won't use it. Connections aren't getting slower. So you'll have a hard time convincing people to switch to save bandwidth if their bandwidth keeps going up and what they have now is "good enough".
Really, Google is the only company that matters. And maybe Netflix.
H.264 blew past Google and YouTube to become the dominant codec for HD distribution.
The geek is still fixed on web distribution through the browser and viewing video on his monitor.
But the action in HD is shifting to the app and the HDTV set.
That is where cable-cutting comes in, the smart tv, the set top box and dongles like the Amazon Fire Stick and Chromecast which bypass the browser and increasingly the computer itself.
Why can't the GPU do the work? Or do video codecs require special kinds of processing that GPUs are bad at?
See subject: Meet xenotransplant -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
* :)
(How come he says my program's good & works for him just fine?)
APK
P.S.=> Quotes in that regard - From yourself first, & then xenotransplant too:
"when will you write an application that actually works?" - by I4ko (695382) on Monday August 10, 2015 @04:10PM (#50287527) FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...
It does & very well, better than ANY of its kind & why's xenotransplant say otherwise here then?
"his hosts program is actually pretty good" - by xenotransplant (4179011) on Monday August 10, 2015 @03:34PM (#50287195) FROM -> http://tech.slashdot.org/comme... & post parent to it also
Well??
Il4ko, you need to learn how to operate a computer (get a faster one too - the program completes in 10-15 minutes here on a Core I7 4790k)... apk
It's not enough to make a good CoDec, a plan to propagate its adoption should be in the plans.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
There is a lot of stuff going on with HEVC:
1) Ultra HD Blu-ray is about to roll-out based on HEVC
2) ATSC 3.0 new digital broadcast standard with HEVC is being finalized
3) DVB and others are considering HEVC for digital broadcast
4) UHD/4K with HEVC is being deployed by OTT like Netflix as well as direct broadcast satellite like DirecTV and wireline like BT.
The HEVC Advance patent pool unlimited content royalties that was recently announced are giving content distributors a lot of concern. In the professional content world, it is understood that enabling technology intellectual property needs to be paid, but when you are talking about unlimited percentages of "all direct & indirect revenue" from content, not only is the cost too high, but the accounting is impossible.
Meanwhile from a bit rate versus quality level, VP9 is clearly not performing as well as HEVC.
If Cisco can show that Thor can perform nearly was well as HEVC, there are a lot of content distribution companies that will take it more seriously than they would have just a few months ago because of the HEVC Advance content royalty.
However the enabling factor would be if Cisco (and other Thor implementers) will indemnify users (i.e. content distributors) from any infringement by the use of their encoders/decoders.
Are they better than the merely foremost codec experts?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
A competing codec to VP8? Isn't that reinventing the wheel some?
CODECs cost a finite amount to develop, and the true cost of even the best barely runs into millions of dollars. Meanwhile the owners of IP earn a fortune from new cheaper easier better ways of encoding and distributing their materials. The logoc of this situation os that CODECs should be FREE-TO-USE in every way, BY LAW, and the cost of developing CODECs carried by the biggest IP beneficiaries, via a financial REWARD POOL paying the individuals who create create and perfect the CODECs.
NO CODEC royalties. NO CODEC licenses. Just a "for the good of customers and business" system of one-time payments to those working on the CODECs. This fundamental concept should link to the idea that primary research from all universities is ALWAYS in the public domain, paid for by governments for the good of all Humanity.
It is a LIE that HEVC is needed to put 4K movies on current dual layer Bluray disks. X264, the open-source H264 encoder, is so good, it can easily fit a well encoded 4K movie in the data limit of these disks. Indeed, X264 can trivially place an excellent HD copy of a movie on a SINGLE-LAYER DVD, so good is the encoder.
HEVC is invented NOT because it is needed, but because it requires everyone to buy new HARDWARE again. It is the SAME reason 3D on Bluray did NOT use SBS (side-by-side) encoding, but invented a whole new type of H264 encoding/decoding that required customers go out and buy new Bluray players. Home 3D actually FLOPPED because SBS was not chosen to be the standard.
Yes HEVC, IN THEORY has a clear advantage over H264 (although a mature H264 encoder like X264 will piss all over any early versions of HEVC encoders). The H264 3D CODEC also had THEORETICAL advantages over SBS, yet was the biggest mis-step home 3D ever made.
Today, everything should be H264 encoded by the OPEN-SOURCE X264 encoder. As HEVC rises, the industry idiots are more and more willing to allow H264 to have reasonable licensing terms. For the time being, HEVC can be left wholly to premium cable/satellite downlinks for the expensive pay 4K TV channels.
... they hammer this out eventually.
That was supposed to say "codec", not "code".
If you invent a _useful_ _new_ way of compressing video, you can in fact patent it. It doesn't matter if you implement your method in pure silicon (an asic), vacuum tubes, C, or copper relays. If it's new and and useful, it's patentable.
You can't patent the laws of physics, such as Newton's first law, and you can't patent multiplication. You can patent things that use gravity, and you can patent things that use multiplication. BTW, gears are for doing multiplication. If you could NOT patent anything that uses multiplication, you couldn't patent anything that uses gears.
Certain parties regularly point to patent applications that purport to have invented something that isn't new, and claim "therefore software patents should be outlawed". Well, patents on things that aren't new are ALREADY not legal. They exist - the patent office isn't perfect, but the law is that such are not valid. Similarly, non-useful "inventions" which are no more than wishes or concepts such as "time travel" or "compress video" are already not allowed. You have to invent a useful new way to doing time travel, or a useful new way of doing video compression, in order to have a legally valid patent.
> no invention is necessary
An invention is a novel (new) and useful thing. Is it your position that nobody has ever done anything new and useful with computers?
No it isn't.
A new word is a new and novel thing, but you can't patent words. The highest prime number is new and useful, but cannot be patented.
Invention is patentable, and invention is finding a way to get the job done. NOT the job being done or the idea of doing the job. Even if the job is entirely new and novel (e.g. Uber).
No, numbers aren't new. Prime numbers aren't new. A big prime number isn't new, it's existed since before humans.
Taxis aren't new. Uber is a taxi service, run much like many taxi services before it. When I was a kid, my uncle owned a cab, and contracted with a cab company to send him customers. It was pretty much exactly Uber, 35 years ago. Marketing the same old thing by applying a hippy image isn't new. See Ben and Jerry's ice cream as an example of prior art. All Uber did was apply an old style of marketing to an old product, exactly like Birkenstock and many others. Heck, even ILLEGAL taxis aren't at all new.
> NOT the job being done or the idea of doing the job.
The idea of doing the job is generally not useful, without a good way of getting it done.
> no maths can be patentented
Sorry, they lied to you. That's not what the law says. The anti-patent activists have spread a misconception that "math can't be patented ", and therefore any use of math can't be patented. That's simply false. The actual text is "the LAWS of nature, including the LAWS of science and mathematics" are not patentable. In other words, you can't patent gravity, but you CAN patent an invention based on gravity, such as a new type of elevator. You can't patent magnetism, you can patent a new type of motor which uses magnetism. You can't patent multiplication, you can patent a new invention which uses multiplication to create some useful new thing (such as a better codec.). "Addition is commutative" is a law of mathematics. "Compress video this way" isn't a law of anything, it's a suggestion which may a good suggestion may not.