Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise implementations of this specification where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any implementation of this specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under the License for this specification shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
Copyright (c) 2010, Google, Inc. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
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Neither the name of Google nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Subject to the terms and conditions of the above License, Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this implementation of VP8, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8. If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that this implementation of VP8 or any code incorporated within this implementation of VP8 constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under this License for this implementation of VP8 shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
[again, All Rights Reserved and massive wiggle room]
Whoever said this is a GPLv3 style license is false.
No one said it was true. Each evolution of the iPhone HW requires new software for it to work. The difference is the stepped evolution and balanced released across all iPhones for 3 years compared to diverse and complex ecosystem that Google has unfortunately unleashed and it now trying to corral.
There is no Android user that has that confidence in their device like iPhone users. When Froyo hits will the HTC Dream get that day... or ever? What about the Moto Droid? And so on.... I think you'd be hard pressed to find an iPhone 3G or 3GS user than doesn't think that they will get v4.0 by the time the G4 iPhone hits the market, and those that are unsure are exactly the "techtarded" consumer base that Android is having trouble wrangling in because of their complex setup that offers little to no consumer security.
I'm not sure what the point is, though. Yes, iPhone 3G users will get iPhone OS 4. Every iPhone 3G user I know (of which I only know 2 -- most of them upgraded to the 3GS) is cursing the fact that their phones won't use much of iPhone OS 4's new features. One of them even cursed the lack of multitasking coming to the 3G and is getting an HTC Incredible since his 2 years qualify him for another subsidy.
Of course Apple is doing a better job at keeping their unified hardware with unified software. It's both a blessing and a curse for Apple.
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PS: I had the worst time the other day pushing video clips via Dropbox to a friend with a Moto Droid. The codec support sucks! even using H.264 with AAC using different encoders resulted in very different results, from nothing playing, to just audio, to just video. Apple has a long history of stingy codec support but I know if I work within their spec sheet listing the video will play fine.
It's interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. We had batch encoded our 22,000 videos (using mencode) with apparently some quirky parameters. iPhoneOS wouldn't play it, WebOS and Android would. We needed to tweak the b-frame parameter to get it to work. I still have problems getting QuickTime to play back some of my custom-encoded h264 rips, such that I installed VLC to get it to work.
Every iPhone 3G user I know (of which I only know 2 -- most of them upgraded to the 3GS) is cursing the fact that their phones won't use much of iPhone OS 4's new features.
The first two iPhones only have a 128MB RAM and if you look at the stats there is little room left for additional apps. The 256MB in the 3GS has plenty of room left for backgrounding some apps without issue so these 3G users shouldn't have been the least bit surprised as this was an expected outcome when they finally offered multitasking.
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It's interesting, I had the exact opposite experience.
Do you an Android video player and Mac OS X encoder recommendation?
It also mentions the similarities in between WebM and H.264 and the probable difficulties with patents. Like the case of VC-1, just because something was released as "open" doesn't necessarily mean that it's patent-unencumbered. We'll see if Google's confidence is justified. He also mentioned that as a "spec" it is very ill-defined for others to reliably implement.
It also mentions the similarities in between WebM and H.264 and the probable difficulties with patents. Like the case of VC-1, just because something was released as "open" doesn't necessarily mean that it's patent-unencumbered. We'll see if Google's confidence is justified. He also mentioned that as a "spec" it is very ill-defined for others to reliably implement.
Keep in mind the bias of the source. The guy has spent years of his life working on an h264 encoder.
All of the modern codecs are extremely similar. They all work off the same fundamental ideas (except Dirac which is wavelet-based).
If MPEG-LA (of which Apple is a major member) wants to deal with the PR nightmare and risk the complete overhaul of software patents (which is long overdue), then they're welcome to go to war with Google over the patents. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot and having everyone muttering "Appholes" under their breath when they're forced to pay per download of Firefox, Opera, etc because MPEG-LA has some overly general, ridiculous software patent.
In a lot of ways, I hope they try. The image of Google trying to make everything free for users and Apple wanting everyone to pay for something ridiculously obvious would go a long way to further damaging Apple's brand.
This is quite a "strawman" fantasy you are spinning here.
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
If this new codec gets better, or even to the same level of quality and ease of use as H.264, Apple will support it. It's almost a guaranteed thing based on their history and their actual goals. If both were equal and this one was free (assuming the H.264 owners started asking for money), then Apple would go with it and ditch H.264 rapidly.
What's more likely is that over the next five years or so this codec acts as a sop to the purists at Mozilla and the EFF and gets gradually better and better until it arrives at feature and quality parity with H.264.
I think by that time though, FireFox might be history (depending on how fast this thing can get good), and H.264 will be so widespread it will always be with us. The only thing that can really kill H.264 adoption is a markedly *better* codec, that's also free. This isn't likely to be that codec.
Do you an Android video player and Mac OS X encoder recommendation?
I use the regular Android video player. I don't have any specific encoder recommendations. I only use command-line encoders because I encode in batch on servers. I use mencoder/x264 mostly. Toyed with ffmpeg for 3gp.
Funny how the author glosses over the very serious issue of H264 royalties - "Oh Mozilla is just too cheap to pay?" H264 licensing is $5 million dollars a year (for software with wide distribution. Not exactly chump change. There are also issues with filming in H264 - cameras that do so (even some very expensive one) don't include the license to use that footage commercially, which is a way for MPEG LA to extort money out out of independent filmmakers.
H264 is really only "open" to those with extremely deep pockets.
This is quite a "strawman" fantasy you are spinning here.
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
I realize "strawman" is a neat word, but please use it correctly. Somebody had asked what would occur when MPEG-LA "realize" VP8 is infringing on their patents.
This should somewhat obviously fall in the realm of speculation. But thank you for your observation that this is, indeed, speculation.
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What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
I do enjoy how you took me to task for my "hot air" in my "strawman" in answering someone's question based on speculation, but here you are inventing random facts that don't even make much sense. Google is doing this because VP8 is a far better codec than VP3/Theora, which is the main criticism for not supporting Theora. Yes, it is in Google's interest for there to be a free, no-strings-attached codec. It should be in everyone's interest except for the companies who stand to gain from h264 adoption by being part of the MPEG-LA patent pool, like Apple and Microsoft.
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I think by that time though, FireFox might be history (depending on how fast this thing can get good), and H.264 will be so widespread it will always be with us. The only thing that can really kill H.264 adoption is a markedly *better* codec, that's also free. This isn't likely to be that codec.
Speaking of strawmen...no one mentioned killing h264. I believe I thought I made it explicitly clear that h264 and WebM would coexist.
I fully expect the iPod/iPhone to never support WebM, though, because Apple is pushing h264 hard as they're part of the patent pool for it. Sites will need to maintain both h264 and WebM versions to hit all clients.
Apple has many reasons for pushing H.264. Many have been publicly stated. Being part of the patent pool is not one of them and it's silly of you to throw that out there.
Of the 1,135 patents from 26 companies in 44 countries, Apple owns 1. In contrast Microsoft owns 75 and Dean Hachamovitch has stated that, "Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264". So please stop spreading that meme as the basis of it is just ridiculous.
Thanks, I'll read through it later this week. The source has to be handled with care though as the x264 developers have a vested interest in seeing H2.64 succeed as they allegedly are in the process of trying to commercialize the x264 encoder. Plus, one of their developers has been caught pants down recently bad-mouthing the OGG container to which the original developer of OGG issued a very detailed rebuttal.
This doesn't mean that what is written in the link you provided is false, of course. But the background should be taken into account.
Apple has many reasons for pushing H.264. Many have been publicly stated. Being part of the patent pool is not one of them and it's silly of you to throw that out there.
Of the 1,135 patents from 26 companies in 44 countries, Apple owns 1. In contrast Microsoft owns 75 and Dean Hachamovitch has stated that, "Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264". So please stop spreading that meme as the basis of it is just ridiculous.
Don't think you understand -- I'm not talking about making money from the patent pool/MPEG-LA. That money is chump change to Apple and MS (and Google).
There are other benefits, such as patent indemnity. They're basically part of a large alliance so there's little risk exposure. If h264 violates someone's patent, MPEG-LA gets sued...not Apple. In reality, MPEG-LA just invites that company into the patent pool to start collecting money also rather than engage in lawsuits.
(PS: If you're going to be pedantic, MS has 65 in the pool, not 75 last I checked)
First Awesome: this means that we might have a way to have a free and open video format that can be played on mobile devices using HTML5. It's awesome that Firefox, Opera and Chrome will support it. It's awesome that it is coming to android sometime this year. It will be used by youtube, which should help speed up adoption. It can even be ran on IE9!!
It's confusing: Google made a serious partnership with Adobe to get flash built into chrome and mobile chrome on adroid. Playing flash 10.1 will be a competitive advantage for the Android platform. So why is Google pushing this format out there while courting adobe? Could it be that they just want to produce division in the open source community to try to keep Adobe (and android) at a competitive advantage?
I am not really sure about which one is right, and since google's new motto is "do some evil when it suits you" it could well be the second scenario. We need to settle this HTML5 video codec debate as soon as possible, or risk a continuos domination of flash.
It's confusing: Google made a serious partnership with Adobe to get flash built into chrome and mobile chrome on adroid. Playing flash 10.1 will be a competitive advantage for the Android platform. So why is Google pushing this format out there while courting adobe? Could it be that they just want to produce division in the open source community to try to keep Adobe (and android) at a competitive advantage?
Adobe is backing WebM also and Flash will support it in the next version. Adobe isn't in the codec game.
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We need to settle this HTML5 video codec debate as soon as possible, or risk a continuos domination of flash.
There is only one possible way to settle it: Adopt WebM. h264 is impossible to put in the standard.
"anybody to implement", provided they have the means to pay for it. That's not open.
It's a misnomer.
"open" is usually defined as "free of obstruction" or "affording free passage".
Asherian - Please, stop already. You're making a fool of yourself. We get it that you have a passion for this new codec. Feel free to make your case with facts, etc. However, "open" and "free" are not the same. Open can sometimes also be free, but has no obligation to be. You seem desperate to somehow wish the opposite, but wishing "open" to always mean "free" serves no purpose other than to make you look silly.
You've asked others to be practical here. The only web browser of significance that doesn't support H.264 is Mozilla (sorry Opera, you're insignificant). Apple is H.264 only, Microsoft is moving to H.264 only and Google is neutral by supporting everything. Nobody in their right mind is going to put out web content that will not play on both Microsoft and Apple's browsers, phones, etc. Further, without widespread hardware support, nothing will challenge H.264 on mobile devices. Period. Also, despite what you may think, nobody is going to go through the trouble of providing half baked hardware support either.
The only thing that could take movement away from H.264 at this point is MPEG-LA themselves by starting to charge money for streaming beyond 2016. Though they reserve the right to do so, that seems highly unlikely at this point. Kudos to Google for providing this option. However, the best this will do is serve as an insurance policy to keep streaming free for H.264.
Asherian - Please, stop already. You're making a fool of yourself. We get it that you have a passion for this new codec. Feel free to make your case with facts, etc. However, "open" and "free" are not the same. Open can sometimes also be free, but has no obligation to be. You seem desperate to somehow wish the opposite, but wishing "open" to always mean "free" serves no purpose other than to make you look silly.
Let's face reality. "open standard" is not a universal declaration. Some think "open" can mean "anyone can implement as long as you pay", others don't. The people who think being royalty-free is part of being an "open standard" includes, but is not limited to:
1) W3C (the standards organization behind the web -- so yes, the "open web" must be royalty free -- sorry)
2) The European Union
3) Danish Government
4) French Government
5) Spanish Government
6) Venezuelan Government
7) South African Government
8) New Zealand Government
9) Bruce Perens (if you don't know who he is, just step away from this discussion now)
10) Microsoft ("Let's look at what an open standard means: 'open' refers to it being royalty-free, while 'standard' means a technology approved by formalised committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis." - National Technology Officer for MS)
By far, the consensus is "open standards" are to be royalty-free. Any opinion that an "open standard" can charge $5M/yr for implementation is in the distinct minority.
Yes, Apple calls it an "open standard" in their marketing. Apple is being misleading in their marketing. Under no reasonable, generally accepted definition is h264 an open standard.
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You've asked others to be practical here. The only web browser of significance that doesn't support H.264 is Mozilla (sorry Opera, you're insignificant). Apple is H.264 only, Microsoft is moving to H.264 only and Google is neutral by supporting everything.
I guess you missed the news today that IE9 will play WebM video also (provided the system codec is installed).
Safari is the only browser that won't. Put Safari (won't play WebM) vs Firefox (won't play h264) -- who has the biggest marketshare here?
Your point just backfired. (PS: for your dig on Opera...Opera's market share is 2.30, but Safari's is only 4.72. Firefox is at 24.59%. Chrome is at 6.73% and growing very fast. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/new...rket-share.ars)
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Sorry, but you needed a dose of reality.
I enjoyed contributing to this thread, hopefully clearing the issue up for some people. But now that we've got the self-righteous fanboys coming in on the high horses, it's time to take my leave.
If MPEG-LA (of which Apple is a major member) wants to deal with the PR nightmare and risk the complete overhaul of software patents (which is long overdue), then they're welcome to go to war with Google over the patents. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot and having everyone muttering "Appholes" under their breath when they're forced to pay per download of Firefox, Opera, etc because MPEG-LA has some overly general, ridiculous software patent.
Actually how much of a major member of the MPEG-LA is Apple, have a look the AVC/H.264 AVC Patent Portfolio license, Apple has one patent listed, even Microsoft has over 40 in there.
Comments
VP8 Bitstream Specification License
Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise implementations of this specification where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by implementation of this specification. If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that any implementation of this specification constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under the License for this specification shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
[There is so much wiggle room in that statement]
http://www.webmproject.org/license/software/
Software License
Copyright (c) 2010, Google, Inc. All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
- Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
- Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
- Neither the name of Google nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.Subject to the terms and conditions of the above License, Google hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer this implementation of VP8, where such license applies only to those patent claims, both currently owned by Google and acquired in the future, licensable by Google that are necessarily infringed by this implementation of VP8. If You or your agent or exclusive licensee institute or order or agree to the institution of patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that this implementation of VP8 or any code incorporated within this implementation of VP8 constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, or inducement of patent infringement, then any rights granted to You under this License for this implementation of VP8 shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed.
[again, All Rights Reserved and massive wiggle room]
Whoever said this is a GPLv3 style license is false.
No one said it was true. Each evolution of the iPhone HW requires new software for it to work. The difference is the stepped evolution and balanced released across all iPhones for 3 years compared to diverse and complex ecosystem that Google has unfortunately unleashed and it now trying to corral.
There is no Android user that has that confidence in their device like iPhone users. When Froyo hits will the HTC Dream get that day... or ever? What about the Moto Droid? And so on.... I think you'd be hard pressed to find an iPhone 3G or 3GS user than doesn't think that they will get v4.0 by the time the G4 iPhone hits the market, and those that are unsure are exactly the "techtarded" consumer base that Android is having trouble wrangling in because of their complex setup that offers little to no consumer security.
I'm not sure what the point is, though. Yes, iPhone 3G users will get iPhone OS 4. Every iPhone 3G user I know (of which I only know 2 -- most of them upgraded to the 3GS) is cursing the fact that their phones won't use much of iPhone OS 4's new features. One of them even cursed the lack of multitasking coming to the 3G and is getting an HTC Incredible since his 2 years qualify him for another subsidy.
Of course Apple is doing a better job at keeping their unified hardware with unified software. It's both a blessing and a curse for Apple.
PS: I had the worst time the other day pushing video clips via Dropbox to a friend with a Moto Droid. The codec support sucks! even using H.264 with AAC using different encoders resulted in very different results, from nothing playing, to just audio, to just video. Apple has a long history of stingy codec support but I know if I work within their spec sheet listing the video will play fine.
It's interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. We had batch encoded our 22,000 videos (using mencode) with apparently some quirky parameters. iPhoneOS wouldn't play it, WebOS and Android would. We needed to tweak the b-frame parameter to get it to work. I still have problems getting QuickTime to play back some of my custom-encoded h264 rips, such that I installed VLC to get it to work.
Whoever said this is a GPLv3 style license is false.
Who said it was GPLv3? It's a BSD license.
Every iPhone 3G user I know (of which I only know 2 -- most of them upgraded to the 3GS) is cursing the fact that their phones won't use much of iPhone OS 4's new features.
The first two iPhones only have a 128MB RAM and if you look at the stats there is little room left for additional apps. The 256MB in the 3GS has plenty of room left for backgrounding some apps without issue so these 3G users shouldn't have been the least bit surprised as this was an expected outcome when they finally offered multitasking.
It's interesting, I had the exact opposite experience.
Do you an Android video player and Mac OS X encoder recommendation?
Interesting. Can you link to the technical explanation? I haven't had the time to occupy myself with this topic deeply yet.
One link I found is here: The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
It also mentions the similarities in between WebM and H.264 and the probable difficulties with patents. Like the case of VC-1, just because something was released as "open" doesn't necessarily mean that it's patent-unencumbered. We'll see if Google's confidence is justified. He also mentioned that as a "spec" it is very ill-defined for others to reliably implement.
One link I found is here: The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
It also mentions the similarities in between WebM and H.264 and the probable difficulties with patents. Like the case of VC-1, just because something was released as "open" doesn't necessarily mean that it's patent-unencumbered. We'll see if Google's confidence is justified. He also mentioned that as a "spec" it is very ill-defined for others to reliably implement.
Keep in mind the bias of the source. The guy has spent years of his life working on an h264 encoder.
All of the modern codecs are extremely similar. They all work off the same fundamental ideas (except Dirac which is wavelet-based).
If MPEG-LA (of which Apple is a major member) wants to deal with the PR nightmare and risk the complete overhaul of software patents (which is long overdue), then they're welcome to go to war with Google over the patents. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot and having everyone muttering "Appholes" under their breath when they're forced to pay per download of Firefox, Opera, etc because MPEG-LA has some overly general, ridiculous software patent.
In a lot of ways, I hope they try. The image of Google trying to make everything free for users and Apple wanting everyone to pay for something ridiculously obvious would go a long way to further damaging Apple's brand.
This is quite a "strawman" fantasy you are spinning here.
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
If this new codec gets better, or even to the same level of quality and ease of use as H.264, Apple will support it. It's almost a guaranteed thing based on their history and their actual goals. If both were equal and this one was free (assuming the H.264 owners started asking for money), then Apple would go with it and ditch H.264 rapidly.
What's more likely is that over the next five years or so this codec acts as a sop to the purists at Mozilla and the EFF and gets gradually better and better until it arrives at feature and quality parity with H.264.
I think by that time though, FireFox might be history (depending on how fast this thing can get good), and H.264 will be so widespread it will always be with us. The only thing that can really kill H.264 adoption is a markedly *better* codec, that's also free. This isn't likely to be that codec.
Do you an Android video player and Mac OS X encoder recommendation?
I use the regular Android video player. I don't have any specific encoder recommendations. I only use command-line encoders because I encode in batch on servers. I use mencoder/x264 mostly. Toyed with ffmpeg for 3gp.
H264 is really only "open" to those with extremely deep pockets.
This is quite a "strawman" fantasy you are spinning here.
There is no indication at all that Apple or MPEG-LA would be interested in suing Google over the patents, so all your imaginings about how people would feel about that and what motivations Apple has are just hot air.
I realize "strawman" is a neat word, but please use it correctly. Somebody had asked what would occur when MPEG-LA "realize" VP8 is infringing on their patents.
This should somewhat obviously fall in the realm of speculation. But thank you for your observation that this is, indeed, speculation.
What *is* happening, is that people involved with the industry are thinking of suing over Ogg/Theora, which is the main reason Google is doing this at all. They have a vested interest in having an open source codec available and they know Ogg/Theora is possibly in violation.
I do enjoy how you took me to task for my "hot air" in my "strawman" in answering someone's question based on speculation, but here you are inventing random facts that don't even make much sense. Google is doing this because VP8 is a far better codec than VP3/Theora, which is the main criticism for not supporting Theora. Yes, it is in Google's interest for there to be a free, no-strings-attached codec. It should be in everyone's interest except for the companies who stand to gain from h264 adoption by being part of the MPEG-LA patent pool, like Apple and Microsoft.
I think by that time though, FireFox might be history (depending on how fast this thing can get good), and H.264 will be so widespread it will always be with us. The only thing that can really kill H.264 adoption is a markedly *better* codec, that's also free. This isn't likely to be that codec.
Speaking of strawmen...no one mentioned killing h264. I believe I thought I made it explicitly clear that h264 and WebM would coexist.
I fully expect the iPod/iPhone to never support WebM, though, because Apple is pushing h264 hard as they're part of the patent pool for it. Sites will need to maintain both h264 and WebM versions to hit all clients.
Apple has many reasons for pushing H.264. Many have been publicly stated. Being part of the patent pool is not one of them and it's silly of you to throw that out there.
Of the 1,135 patents from 26 companies in 44 countries, Apple owns 1. In contrast Microsoft owns 75 and Dean Hachamovitch has stated that, "Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264". So please stop spreading that meme as the basis of it is just ridiculous.
One link I found is here: The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
Thanks, I'll read through it later this week. The source has to be handled with care though as the x264 developers have a vested interest in seeing H2.64 succeed as they allegedly are in the process of trying to commercialize the x264 encoder. Plus, one of their developers has been caught pants down recently bad-mouthing the OGG container to which the original developer of OGG issued a very detailed rebuttal.
This doesn't mean that what is written in the link you provided is false, of course. But the background should be taken into account.
Apple has many reasons for pushing H.264. Many have been publicly stated. Being part of the patent pool is not one of them and it's silly of you to throw that out there.
Of the 1,135 patents from 26 companies in 44 countries, Apple owns 1. In contrast Microsoft owns 75 and Dean Hachamovitch has stated that, "Microsoft pays into MPEG-LA about twice as much as it receives back for rights to H.264". So please stop spreading that meme as the basis of it is just ridiculous.
Don't think you understand -- I'm not talking about making money from the patent pool/MPEG-LA. That money is chump change to Apple and MS (and Google).
There are other benefits, such as patent indemnity. They're basically part of a large alliance so there's little risk exposure. If h264 violates someone's patent, MPEG-LA gets sued...not Apple. In reality, MPEG-LA just invites that company into the patent pool to start collecting money also rather than engage in lawsuits.
(PS: If you're going to be pedantic, MS has 65 in the pool, not 75 last I checked)
First Awesome: this means that we might have a way to have a free and open video format that can be played on mobile devices using HTML5. It's awesome that Firefox, Opera and Chrome will support it. It's awesome that it is coming to android sometime this year. It will be used by youtube, which should help speed up adoption. It can even be ran on IE9!!
It's confusing: Google made a serious partnership with Adobe to get flash built into chrome and mobile chrome on adroid. Playing flash 10.1 will be a competitive advantage for the Android platform. So why is Google pushing this format out there while courting adobe? Could it be that they just want to produce division in the open source community to try to keep Adobe (and android) at a competitive advantage?
I am not really sure about which one is right, and since google's new motto is "do some evil when it suits you" it could well be the second scenario. We need to settle this HTML5 video codec debate as soon as possible, or risk a continuos domination of flash.
It's confusing: Google made a serious partnership with Adobe to get flash built into chrome and mobile chrome on adroid. Playing flash 10.1 will be a competitive advantage for the Android platform. So why is Google pushing this format out there while courting adobe? Could it be that they just want to produce division in the open source community to try to keep Adobe (and android) at a competitive advantage?
Adobe is backing WebM also and Flash will support it in the next version. Adobe isn't in the codec game.
We need to settle this HTML5 video codec debate as soon as possible, or risk a continuos domination of flash.
There is only one possible way to settle it: Adopt WebM. h264 is impossible to put in the standard.
"anybody to implement", provided they have the means to pay for it. That's not open.
It's a misnomer.
"open" is usually defined as "free of obstruction" or "affording free passage".
Asherian - Please, stop already. You're making a fool of yourself. We get it that you have a passion for this new codec. Feel free to make your case with facts, etc. However, "open" and "free" are not the same. Open can sometimes also be free, but has no obligation to be. You seem desperate to somehow wish the opposite, but wishing "open" to always mean "free" serves no purpose other than to make you look silly.
You've asked others to be practical here. The only web browser of significance that doesn't support H.264 is Mozilla (sorry Opera, you're insignificant). Apple is H.264 only, Microsoft is moving to H.264 only and Google is neutral by supporting everything. Nobody in their right mind is going to put out web content that will not play on both Microsoft and Apple's browsers, phones, etc. Further, without widespread hardware support, nothing will challenge H.264 on mobile devices. Period. Also, despite what you may think, nobody is going to go through the trouble of providing half baked hardware support either.
The only thing that could take movement away from H.264 at this point is MPEG-LA themselves by starting to charge money for streaming beyond 2016. Though they reserve the right to do so, that seems highly unlikely at this point. Kudos to Google for providing this option. However, the best this will do is serve as an insurance policy to keep streaming free for H.264.
Sorry, but you needed a dose of reality.
Asherian - Please, stop already. You're making a fool of yourself. We get it that you have a passion for this new codec. Feel free to make your case with facts, etc. However, "open" and "free" are not the same. Open can sometimes also be free, but has no obligation to be. You seem desperate to somehow wish the opposite, but wishing "open" to always mean "free" serves no purpose other than to make you look silly.
Let's face reality. "open standard" is not a universal declaration. Some think "open" can mean "anyone can implement as long as you pay", others don't. The people who think being royalty-free is part of being an "open standard" includes, but is not limited to:
1) W3C (the standards organization behind the web -- so yes, the "open web" must be royalty free -- sorry)
2) The European Union
3) Danish Government
4) French Government
5) Spanish Government
6) Venezuelan Government
7) South African Government
8) New Zealand Government
9) Bruce Perens (if you don't know who he is, just step away from this discussion now)
10) Microsoft ("Let's look at what an open standard means: 'open' refers to it being royalty-free, while 'standard' means a technology approved by formalised committees that are open to participation by all interested parties and operate on a consensus basis." - National Technology Officer for MS)
11) Open Source Initiative
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard
By far, the consensus is "open standards" are to be royalty-free. Any opinion that an "open standard" can charge $5M/yr for implementation is in the distinct minority.
Yes, Apple calls it an "open standard" in their marketing. Apple is being misleading in their marketing. Under no reasonable, generally accepted definition is h264 an open standard.
You've asked others to be practical here. The only web browser of significance that doesn't support H.264 is Mozilla (sorry Opera, you're insignificant). Apple is H.264 only, Microsoft is moving to H.264 only and Google is neutral by supporting everything.
I guess you missed the news today that IE9 will play WebM video also (provided the system codec is installed).
Safari is the only browser that won't. Put Safari (won't play WebM) vs Firefox (won't play h264) -- who has the biggest marketshare here?
Your point just backfired. (PS: for your dig on Opera...Opera's market share is 2.30, but Safari's is only 4.72. Firefox is at 24.59%. Chrome is at 6.73% and growing very fast. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/new...rket-share.ars)
Sorry, but you needed a dose of reality.
I enjoyed contributing to this thread, hopefully clearing the issue up for some people. But now that we've got the self-righteous fanboys coming in on the high horses, it's time to take my leave.
If MPEG-LA (of which Apple is a major member) wants to deal with the PR nightmare and risk the complete overhaul of software patents (which is long overdue), then they're welcome to go to war with Google over the patents. They'd be shooting themselves in the foot and having everyone muttering "Appholes" under their breath when they're forced to pay per download of Firefox, Opera, etc because MPEG-LA has some overly general, ridiculous software patent.
Actually how much of a major member of the MPEG-LA is Apple, have a look the AVC/H.264 AVC Patent Portfolio license, Apple has one patent listed, even Microsoft has over 40 in there.
Adobe is backing WebM also and Flash will support it in the next version. Adobe isn't in the codec game.
There is only one possible way to settle it: Adopt WebM. h264 is impossible to put in the standard.
There's also a chance that WebM will fall under h264 patents, so IT may be impossible to put into the spec.
The reality is that Apple doesn't really care which codec is used. As long as the codec works well and is open, Apple couldn't care less.
Whether Adobe Flash reads WebM or h264 or (far more likely) both is also irrelevant to Apple.