Making MPEG4-streams available - does one only need a license for the audio and video

[teko77]

Hi!



If one plans to make two applications:

1) Broadcast MPEG4 via DVB-T and DVB-C

and/or

2) Offer download-service of MPEG4-encoded material via the Internet,

does one only have to get a license for the audio and video parts
of MPEG4, or does one also have to get a license for the systems part of MPEG4?

What good would the system-part in effect bring in comparison to situation where one would only use the audio and video parts of MPEG4.
Are there any other parts that would be essential to the services mentioned above?


Thank you for any info,





Teko77

[ChristianHJW]

AFAIK there is nothing charged for using the MP4 container ( yet ), but this may change in future.

This means that in principal all you had to do was to encode your video streams with DivX5, use the MPEG4IP tools to mux it into a MP4 container and contact DivX Networks about a license for commercially streaming this content.

Now for audio its getting complicated, the only commercial MPEG4 audio encoder ( AAC ) i know of is the Ahead Nero plugin, and i have no idea if they have any plans to give licenses for commercially using their AAC encoder.

Now comes the critical part :

The MPEG4 licensing sheme dictates that you have to pay license fees for every broadcasted stream, unless you are willing to pay the maximum cap for that ( 1.000.000,- US$ ?? cant remember ), and i dont think DivX Networks license for using DivX5 to encode the material will cover that already, unless i am completely mistaken.

Now here is what i would do :

Have a look at Xiph.org !! Their Ogg streaming container, Vorbis audio and Theora video should be available soon ( at least they promised a working beta soon ), is completely patent and license free, and Theora ( ON2 VP3 ) video shouldnt look too bad at medium bitrates.They can offer icecast and shoutcast as streaming server apps ( only HTTP, no RTP with UDP protocol ), and they work fine for Ogg Vorbis ( audio ) already, so Theora video should just be a matter of time.

The matroska container we are currently working on would allow you to stream MPEG4 video and Vorbis audio without the Ogg container, but we dont have a streaming server yet ( and this will probably take a long long time ) and it wouldnt save you from paying both DivX Networks for using DivX5 commercially and neither the MPEG4 fees for streaming MPEG4 content, even if MP4 was not used as container.

Hope this helps a bit, but please be aware i am no expert in this field and you have to investigate a bit further if i got things correctly ....

[amirm]

The answer to your licensing questions is at http://www.mpegla.com .

Basically, there are fees for audio, video and file format (systems layer). Plus if you sell or transmit the contents, there will be additional fees. Again, the details are in the above URL which is the licensing agency for MPEG IP holders.

You can use one or more components. MPEGLA doesn't care (and hence the reason there are separate fees for each). For example, at Microsoft, we offer MPEG-4 video but not the rest (we helped invent this one so we have a larger commitment to it than the other pieces). This also answers your other question in that we store the video in our file format together with our audio codec so we only have to pay for the video royalties.

Amir
Microsoft