New patents connected with xvid?

[temporance]

I was just browsing the USPTO patent applications (looking for something else) and discovered a few patents that are very similar to things recently added to xvid. (spooky!)

Thought people should be aware of these:

Chroma motion: 20030138048 (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220030138048%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030138048&RS=DN/20030138048) (IBM)
Trellis: 20030147561 (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220030147561%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030147561&RS=DN/20030147561)
VHQ: 20030063667 (http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220030063667%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20030063667&RS=DN/20030063667) (Sun)

These are only applications, and there is very likely to be prior art. And this is far from an exhaustive list of patents that might affect xvid - there are hundreds!! :scared:

[Teegedeck]

It's Ogg Vorbis that claims to be patent-free, not MPEG-4. I don't know of any patent-free video codec except for that other one-man ogg project 'Tarkin'.

[mf]

WARP is so radical I'd doubt there's any patents for it, and even if there are, Gldm's been working on it for a few years so I bet he has quite some "former art" to invalidate them in court.

About those patents:
20030147561 Doesn't look like trellis at all. Afaik, trellis involves dropping the coefficients that will cause the least rate distortion. The patent describes looks more like something with arithmetic coding, like RLE. But I don't know enough of those things :).

20030063667 Will be invalidated by using a different transform than using DCT, which is interesting :D. They should've been more general instead of specifying "discrete cosine transform" literally in the patent :rolleyes:.

[ProfDrMorph]

XviD never claimed to be patent-free. If they did they would also offer binaries on their official website because patent issues are the reason why official releases only consist of source code for educational purposes. ;)

[temporance]

Originally posted by Teegedeck
It's Ogg Vorbis that claims to be patent-free, not MPEG-4. I don't know of any patent-free video codec except for that other one-man ogg project 'Tarkin'. True. It's just interesting that these patents (and many similar ones) emerged at about the time the xvid team were working on these features. Of course, if they did rip-off xvid's ideas, the mailing list archive would be good evidence of prior art.

Edit: btw, what is WARP?

[mf]

Originally posted by temporance
Edit: btw, what is WARP?

♩♪ Dumm dee dumm.. Search button.. Dumm dee dum.. ♩♪

[MfA]

Warp is nice, and Im interested to see how well it does on lossless coding ... but dont expect miracles in other areas, Motion is an integral part of lossy video coding.

As for the patents, trellis searched quantization was published well before their filing ... and their LUT approach is hardly innovative.

The chroma based selection of intra coding, dunno if we were using it at the filing date already ... Im sure some people were using it, but it wouldnt have been published since its just too damn trivial.

VHQ ... hmmm dont think FFMPEG was using bit based search in may 2002.

[TheXung]

MfA is right, the only thing XviD might possibly claim as their own idea is chroma motion. The others came from research ideas.

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by mf
About those patents:
20030147561 Doesn't look like trellis at all. Afaik, trellis involves dropping the coefficients that will cause the least rate distortion. The patent describes looks more like something with arithmetic coding, like RLE. But I don't know enough of those things :).


"Insertion of noise for reduction in the number of bits for variable-length coding of (run, level) pairs"

Fifteen years ago, we called this "dithering." You added noise to the digitized audio stream to 1) make it sound better, and 2) make it compress better. Now they are applying the exact same technique to video and trying to patent it. This demonstrates the evils of software patents. The U.S. REALLY needs an amendment abolishing IP and software patents. Those two things have done more to hold back software development than anything else in the last decade. At least Europe is voting on that the 22nd. You should read some of the reports compiled to fight ePatents.

[mf]

Originally posted by TheXung
MfA is right, the only thing XviD might possibly claim as their own idea is chroma motion. The others came from research ideas.
*cough* chroma optimizer *cough*

[TheXung]

Originally posted by mf
*cough* chroma optimizer *cough*

ooops, forgot about that

[Prettz]

Originally posted by TheXung
MfA is right, the only thing XviD might possibly claim as their own idea is chroma motion. The others came from research ideas.
XviD invented chroma motion????

[sysKin]

Originally posted by Prettz
XviD invented chroma motion???? Nah of course not, there is nothing to invent.
*Not* using chroma for ME was an idea, not *using* it ;))

Radek

PS however, the way I saw software patents are made, chromaME might be patented, and non-chromaME might be too. Probably even not using ME at all is patented.
"Patent # 09987216363821 : video compression that ignores motion"
lol.

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by sysKin
Nah of course not, there is nothing to invent.
*Not* using chroma for ME was an idea, not *using* it ;))

Radek

PS however, the way I saw software patents are made, chromaME might be patented, and non-chromaME might be too. Probably even not using ME at all is patented.
"Patent # 09987216363821 : video compression that ignores motion"
lol.

Well, I don't know if it's patented or not (probably is), but video compression that ignores motion is called MotionJPEG. Just a series of JPEG encoded frames with no ME at all.