WebM Exciting New Video Standard with VP8, Vorbis, Matroska

[CruNcher]

Yes i read it and yes i understand what you wrote above but in the END you madeup a Final conclusion that reads:

Finally, the problem of patents appears to be rearing its ugly head again. VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Though I am not a lawyer, I simply cannot believe that they will be able to get away with this, especially in today’s overly litigious day and age. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents.

This is a Final conclusion on your side a final statement that says "They wont get away with this Patent Violation"

And this from the Mouth from someone like you is everything mass media waits for to make up a story from. And the Stock Market reacting.

I thought MPEG directly would attack but not in my "darkest dreams" i would have thought that you would be the initial reason that starts this all, and everyone of the other side hops behind searching cover for it :P

[MfA]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Since when is "VP8 is copying H.264" opinion?

That's not the opinion part, though I would argue that for intra prediction they are both copying from MVC.

And no matter what the situation, copying creates risk of patent problems. In the messy world of video coding, things are basically patented until proven otherwise, not the other way around.

Nothing can be proven concerning patent infringement outside a court of law plus 20 years of time. Every single line of code creates risk of patent infringement. Hell, a lot of x264 encoder algorithms aren't part of the patent pool and not invented by the x264 programmers either (trellis to name but one). Can I extend that same reasoning to x264 right down to the any sane person bit?

Before the 20 years is past you have to make educated guesses and you can't do that without looking at the actual patents ... which you have not done.

[valgor]

Here is a the same source as in my Schro vs Theora comparison ( http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...94#post1380594 ) converted to VP8:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?klgwnb3wz1z

command line:
ffmpeg -r 24 -s 640x368 -i /tmp/ed640x368.yuv -vcodec libvpx_vp8 -vpre 360p -vb 1M /tmp/ed640x368-pre_360p-1M.webm

As I do not know how to produce VP8 video with constant quality, I just used ffmpeg preset with adjusted bitrate to get a file size similar to Schro and Theora files.

[PatchWorKs]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Can you actually read what I said before writing about it?

I never said there was a patent violation.

I said there might be one. There is a risk of one. It might exist. It's possible. It may or may not be the case. How many different ways do I have to put it before people realize that it's not a foregone conclusion?

Again: but it's also possible that h264 violates On2 patents ?

[Dislikeyou]

Originally Posted by valgor

Here is a the same source as in my Schro vs Theora comparison ( http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...94#post1380594 ) converted to VP8:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?klgwnb3wz1z

command line:
ffmpeg -r 24 -s 640x368 -i /tmp/ed640x368.yuv -vcodec libvpx_vp8 -vpre 360p -vb 1M /tmp/ed640x368-pre_360p-1M.webm

As I do not know how to produce VP8 video with constant quality, I just used ffmpeg preset with adjusted bitrate to get a file size similar to Schro and Theora files.

I have noticed this in your video (But also in some other webm videos i seen today):



It only lasts for 1 sec or so.. i think it is during encoding .. similar problem to h.264 ffmpeg -mt encoding with 8 threads..

[kosmonaut]

Originally Posted by PatchWorKs

Again: but it's also possible that h264 violates On2 patents ?

I think that is very, very unlikely. Astronomically unlikely.

One of the things some people are missing is that skepticism about WebM is not all about pro-H.264 or anti-Google feelings. Much of my concern about VP8 stems from (negative) experience with On2, and my confusion with so many FOSS advocates now accepting On2 marketing material as reliable.

I am a huge Google fan (with an Android phone in my pocket) but I remain very suspicious of anything with On2's fingerprints on it. FWIW.

[PatchWorKs]

...but i'm not talking about code quality, performances, market approach or even customers assistance, i'm talking about patents.

On2 was on the market for years before h264, don't you think they owns "some" patents for video encoding techniques ? (check their history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On2)

If so, it's possible that now Google owns some "submarine patents" (as someone called for Xiph works) that may put MPEG-LA (or associates) in troubles...

The certain fact is only that (expecially software) patents are bad.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by PatchWorKs

...but i'm not talking about code quality, performances, market approach or even customers assistance, i'm talking about patents.

On2 was on the market for years before h264, don't you think they owns "some" patents for video encoding techniques ?

MPEG-LA existed long before H.264 as well.

It's a bit tricky to get patents on standards without being part of the standardization process, and it usually involves nefarious submarining.

[PatchWorKs]

According to this BusinessWeek page MPEG-LA was founded in 1996.

The Duck Corporation (the previous On2 name) operates since 1990...

I believe Google lawyers knows their chickens.

EDIT: early On2 video codecs was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueMotion

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by PatchWorKs

According to this BusinessWeek page MPEG-LA was founded in 1996.

The Duck Corporation (the previous On2 name) in 1990...

I believe Google lawyers knows their chickens.

MPEG-LA is just a group of companies; the companies have been around much longer than the licensing organization itself.

Also, wow, does that bring back memories. "Duck Truemotion"!

[kosmonaut]

Originally Posted by PatchWorKs

According to this BusinessWeek page MPEG-LA was founded in 1996.

The Duck Corporation (the previous On2 name) in 1990...

I believe Google lawyers knows their chickens.

You may be right, On2 may in fact have some patents. And I absolutely agree that software patents are evil to begin with.

That said, MPEG-LA may date from 1996, but remember, it is only a patent pool. The individual companies in the pool likely have patents going back much, much earlier than 1996. We are talking about all the heavy hitters here, after all.

According to MPEG-LA, the list of patents in the H.264/AVC patent pool is 56 pages long! MPEG-2's is merely 37 pages long.

Needless to say, it's likely to be a big mess.

[PatchWorKs]

Last post for me (i'm going to sleep):
Google backs open codec against patent trolls

Today, when The Reg asked if VP8 was vulnerable to patent attack, Google product manager Mike Jazayeri indicated this isn't a big concern for the company.

"We have done a pretty through analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies prior to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the technology and that's why we're open sourcing," he said.
...
"Developers should be provided with detailed explanations why Google believes that no one adopting WebM will have to fear allegations of patent infringement."

And an interesting 2006 link: On2 Receives Patent for Video Optimization Technology where VP6 and VP7 are clearly called TrueMotion...

I believe we're going to see a "cold war" patent strategy...

[CruNcher]

Originally Posted by Dislikeyou

From ON2 Website

:

just do --sharpness=6 and you get the same visual result as that x264 build @ low bitrates

[video_magic]

That is probably not even the same two frames which are being compared. Look at the positions of some of the people relative to other things and the proportions of them being shown!; I suspect that one of those frames is one or two frame-postions behind the other.

[Keiyakusha]

To be honest both of these images looks like crap to me, equally. But actually left one, which is h264 maybe more pleasant for my eyes, when in motion.

[valgor]

Originally Posted by Dislikeyou

I have noticed this in your video (But also in some other webm videos i seen today):

[...image...]

It only lasts for 1 sec or so.. i think it is during encoding .. similar problem to h.264 ffmpeg -mt encoding with 8 threads..

No, it seems problem with your decoder. I use mplayer and ffplay and I see no bugs. I even decoded this VP8 to png sequence with mplayer. No one image is garbaged.

[valgor]

Originally Posted by valgor

Here is a the same source as in my Schro vs Theora comparison ( http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...94#post1380594 ) converted to VP8:
http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?klgwnb3wz1z

command line:
ffmpeg -r 24 -s 640x368 -i /tmp/ed640x368.yuv -vcodec libvpx_vp8 -vpre 360p -vb 1M /tmp/ed640x368-pre_360p-1M.webm

As I do not know how to produce VP8 video with constant quality, I just used ffmpeg preset with adjusted bitrate to get a file size similar to Schro and Theora files.

Here is a screenshots tile, you can compare it with Schro, Theora and original source:

[dragsidious]

Originally Posted by MfA

As for Google there is really no advantage to them to show their competition where their patent portfolio is strongest or weakest ... they won't get into details for the same reason why Jobs/MPEG-LA won't publicly disclose any specific parts where the codec infringes. You have to keep your powder dry, the only time Google would be likely to go into details would be during NDA covered meetings.

Pretty much. Google going into details about everything would only serve to make their position weaker.

The thing to remember about law in general, that programmers tend to get really really wrong, is that it's designed to be interpreted. With software and languages definitions are set and languages are exact. The computer will react in a predictable manner to your input. Law stuff is not designed like that; it's ambiguous on purpose.

That is to say that you can have one group of people say that VP8 violates patents and another group say that it does not and both can be absolutely correct in their viewpoints; by all precedent and laws currently on the books. This is why in patent cases you can have a serious of court cases were one court says it's valid and another that says it's invalid. It's maddening.

--------------------------------------

As far as patent-specifics go....

There are several parts to every patent. There are things like the abstract, claims, dependent claims, and that sort of thing.

The only thing that really matters is the main claims of the patent. The abstract is mostly irrelevant except maybe to define some of the terms in the claims and the dependent claims are optional. It's the 'claims' that you have to violate to violate the patent. And you have to violate ALL of the items in the claim. If there are 10 numbered items in a patent claim and you violate 9 of them, but you skip step 5 (or whatever) then your in the clear; you do not violate the patent.

So it's technically possible that Vp8 may copy the items in the H.264 patents almost exactly, but just skip one step or do something a little bit different and then not violate the patent.

This leads to one of the major defenses that OSS has against patents: Publishing Patent Workarounds.

The idea is that you can make going after OSS projects unattractive by finding and publishing work arounds for patents that do get applied against OSS developers. The reasoning being that software is so flexible that often your going to find a way to do a algorithm slightly different and yet maintain compatibility or whatever. Most private software companies would keep these work-arounds secret since it's a advantage to for you to not have to pay patent licensing fees when all your competitors do have to pay fees.

If you are able to discover a work around and they you publish the work around then you could cost a company millions in dollars in licensing fees. With a obvious and published way to work around a patent then nobody would ever want to pay licensing for it. This way you can effectively destroy a patent without having to spend a single day in court.

If this happens enough times then patent holders are not going to want to risk their portfolio going after a low-profit and higher-risk OSS target and instead concentrate on proprietary software companies that are easy to keep quiet through NDAs.

That's the hope anyways.

-----------------------------------------------------

If your curious about how all this works and want details on how to read a patent and fight patents successfully then check out this presentation by 'Tridge'.
http://news.swpat.org/2010/03/transc...dgell-patents/

It's has transcripts and also links to mp4 and ogg video files of the speach.

This guy is one of the main developers behind Samba and has actually successfully driven off (or at least dealt with) patent attacks and threats by Microsoft (prior to the whole EU stuff)

[hajj_3]

Just thought i'd let people know VLC 1.1.0 pre-RC with WebM support has just been released: http://people.videolan.org/~jb/webm/ (18.0mb)

.webm files play

This is the same as 1.1.0 test 4 i believe, it has the problem with the cursor disappearing when you right click and some other bugs, i'm sure the official RC will have the known bugs fixed though.

[Dislikeyou]

Originally Posted by valgor

No, it seems problem with your decoder. I use mplayer and ffplay and I see no bugs. I even decoded this VP8 to png sequence with mplayer. No one image is garbaged.

I played this from Opera browser.. i added it to my webpage and played it from the browser.