It's royalty free until 2016 for end-users. Corporations must license it now -- Mozilla would need to pay millions of dollars to license it. Apple, Google, and Microsoft already have paid the money which is why it's not a big deal for them.
But no company seriously supporting "the open web" can support h264 only, which is NOT truly free and is virtually guaranteed in 2016 to cost end users money.
If h264 is ubiquitous and entrenched in 2016, as Apple would like it to be, why would MPEG-LA leave hundreds of millions of dollars sitting on the table? It's only temporarily royalty free for end-users to foster its adoption, then once it's widely adopted they'll be looking to cash in. The companies that are part of MPEG-LA do not develop these technologies out of the goodness of their hearts. The entire purpose of MPEG-LA is to make money from people using their technology.
This is just anti-iso propaganda. In 2016 there will be a vote. It is "virtually guaranteed" that h264 will remain free for end users (not the other way around). I doubt that they could even get away with per user licensing. If they tried it, everyone would jump ship. It is self regulating in this respect. I'm sure that Firefox could afford the license with their Google search money. If not, I'm sure the ISO may make an exception for Firefox. If firefox is resisting, it is because they want something that is free instead of open. Personally I think that is the wrong stance because it probably doesn't reflect the opinion of the majority of their users. The corporate licensing is just a way to pay for its development. If google wants to present an alternative format then great, but Firefox should still support the whole web... which means they should support h264 in addition to any other formats.
The interesting thing with firefox is that they could piggyback on the Operating Systems h264 license by using the Operating Systems APIs like every other program that plays video does. So this is just a problem for some distributions of Linux.
Keep in mind the bias of the source. The guy has spent years of his life working on an h264 encoder.
I think that that's readily apparent, and doesn't dismiss his article.
More interesting is that he has spent a lot of time looking at other codecs and documenting what he's found. It also sounds like he truly wishes there to be another viable competitor to H.264. Why wouldn't he want other choices? His is at least a technical expert's look into the codec which is more interesting than all of the political commentary.
You didn't even believe that brian g had read anything to back up his "blatant troll" opinion. I'd be more interested in hearing what you think about his research into WebM. Read the article and then let us know whether he has a point.
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.
Yes, that's Apple 1, Microsoft 75, of around 1,135 patents. I think that anyone thinking Apple is pushing H.264 to get rich off the patent is "patently" absurd.
That's a really great and informative post. Does this mean the iPad and the iPhones that have come out or are coming out will not be able to support this WebM format? Did Apple jump the gun?
Yes. The earliest Apple can introduce this would be in the Spring of 2011.
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.
Agreed. Apple just doesn't want to rely on Flash performance on the Mac OS, and wants a good user experience on the iPhone OS. All of their decisions about it (whether you agree with them or not) can trace back to these. They've changed the underlying technology and codecs plenty of times. Much to some users dismay. They are always chasing whatever tech they think will enhance the experience on their platform.
So I'm more interested in how WebM compares TECHNOLOGICALLY with H.264. It would be great if it is really comparable. But just being open and free doesn't automatically make it better. Especially for mobiles.
I would also have like it if Google had let the community contribute to the spec before they froze it. This doesn't seem to be the case unfortunately.
Broadcom's chipset for mobile video acceleration (which the vast majority of phones use) will support WebM acceleration by Q3 this year.
AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm (the largest mobile SoC vendor) are all collaborating on HW acceleration as well for WebM.
So how long before we can expect that "most" phones out there will be able to use this codec without putting a drain on the battery? I hope that Google and others plan to transition their content slowly to allow for this.
This also seem pretty fast. As in Google buying up the IP and then releasing it "warts and all" without any review by the community. They've basically said the spec is "done" and "as is". And the more software and hardware support they pile on, the harder it will be to make any changes to that spec without breaking something. I worry with Google's "release it now as BETA and see how it does" tendency.
"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".
As others previously stated h264 is open, just not free. "open" doesn't mean free passage, otherwise that would mean I could go to a open store, grab any product on their store shelf that's 'open' to anyone to buy, then go to the check out line and not pay anything for that product.
Or does paying for a open product mean it's not really open?
As of yesterday, his stats look dead-on-balls accurate.
I think you are misreading things. He said:" Originally Posted by Chris_CA
Don't you mean all "Android devices that are updated with this when it is available" since over 65%% of Android devices cannot run the current (2.1 OS)?
35% are still stuck with version 1.5."
He's claiming that 65% of Android devices CANNOT upgrade.
The graph you inserted shows the actual use - with some not being able to upgrade, but not all.
You guys both got it wrong. You thought that "didn't upgrade" means "cannot upgrade".
But the two are not the same. For example, the HTC Hero just got an upgrade to Android 2.1 today. So while most all Heros are still in the "didn't upgrade" space, none of them (as of a few hours ago) are in the "cannot upgrade" space.
While the original guy was overly broad in stating that all the Android phones will get all the new features, he was correct if he meant that all the new phones will get/be upgraded.
And most of the Android phones are new(er) phones, given that the growth rate is accelerating. I think that Google will try to standardize on 2.2 ASAP.
I have no faith that any Android-based devices will be getting updates 3 years after their launch right when the update is available. The Moto Droid got version 2.1 last month(?) while the Nexus One had it the first week of January? Imagine if Apple did that with the iPhone.
Its a whole different world with Android vs. Apple.
While it is true that some older devices will not be upgraded immediately or at all, this was true with computers since just about forever. I don't think that most people even care about reinstalling a phone OS. They like thier phone just the way their nephew (or whoever) set it up for them, and aside from maybe asking their nephew to download and install an app they heard about, they don't want changes.
But for the folks who want the latest and greatest OS that their old phone won't support? Traditionally, those guys sell their phone on eBay and buy the coolest newest phone.
All of the relevant parties here (Google, Apple, Adobe, W3C et al) need to figure out a proper solution once and for all.
Whilst this topic has been very interesting (and I have to say, Asherian appears to be someone who knows their onions), as an end user I don't really give a toss. I just want the web to work, on every device I have.
This seems to invite a lot of opportunities for fragmentation, which I don't think the web is about. Whilst the techies agrue, the consumers could well lose out.
Its a whole different world with Android vs. Apple.
Correct.
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
As others previously stated h264 is open, just not free. "open" doesn't mean free passage, otherwise that would mean I could go to a open store, grab any product on their store shelf that's 'open' to anyone to buy, then go to the check out line and not pay anything for that product.
Or does paying for a open product mean it's not really open?
What about an "open bar" at a wedding? Does that prove your point?
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
Google is essentially offloading all Android testing to the carriers and you won't see updates until SQA and more certifies the OS as being improved and no caveats to their infrastructures.
How good is VP8? Is the file format actually better than H.264 in terms of compression, and could a good VP8 encoder beat x264? On2 claimed 50% better than H.264, but On2 has always made absurd claims that they were never able to back up with results, so such a number is almost surely wrong. VP7, for example, was claimed to be 15% better than H.264 while being much faster, but was in reality neither faster nor higher quality.
How good is On2’s VP8 implementation? Irrespective of how good the spec is, is the implementation good, or is this going to be just like VP3, where On2 releases an unusably bad implementation with the hope that the community will fix it for them? Let’s hope not; it took 6 years to fix Theora!
How likely is VP8 to actually be free of patents? Even if VP8 is worse than H.264, being patent-free is still a useful attribute for obvious reasons. But as noted in my previous post, merely being published by Google doesn’t guarantee that it is. Microsoft did similar a few years ago with the release of VC-1, which was claimed to be patent-free — but within mere months after release, a whole bunch of companies claimed patents on it and soon enough a patent pool was formed.
We’ll start by going through the core features of VP8. We’ll primarily analyze them by comparing to existing video formats. Keep in mind that an encoder and a spec are two different things: it’s possible for good encoder to be written for a bad spec or vice versa! Hence why a really good MPEG-1 encoder can beat a horrific H.264 encoder.
The spec consists largely of C code copy-pasted from the VP8 source code — up to and including TODOs, “optimizations”, and even C-specific hacks, such as workarounds for the undefined behavior of signed right shift on negative numbers. In many places it is simply outright opaque. Copy-pasted C code is not a spec. I may have complained about the H.264 spec being overly verbose, but at least it’s precise. The VP8 spec, by comparison, is imprecise, unclear, and overly short, leaving many portions of the format very vaguely explained. Some parts even explicitly refuse to fully explain a particular feature, pointing to highly-optimized, nigh-impossible-to-understand reference code for an explanation. There’s no way in hell anyone could write a decoder solely with this spec alone.
...
Intra Prediction
Intra prediction is used to guess the content of a block without referring to other frames. VP8’s intra prediction is basically ripped off wholesale from H.264: the “subblock” prediction modes are almost exactly identical (they even have the same names!) to H.264’s i4×4 mode, and the whole block prediction mode is basically identical to i16×16. Chroma prediction modes are practically identical as well. i8×8, from H.264 High Profile, is not present. An additional difference is that the planar prediction mode has been replaced with TM_PRED, a very vaguely similar analogue. The specific prediction modes are internally slightly different, but have the same names as in H.264.
Honestly, I’m very disappointed here. While H.264’s intra prediction is good, it has certainly been improved on quite a bit over the past 7 years, and I thought that blatantly ripping it off was the domain of companies like Real (see RV40). I expected at least something slightly more creative out of On2. But more important than any of that: this is a patent time-bomb waiting to happen. H.264’s spatial intra prediction is covered in patents and I don’t think that On2 will be able to just get away with changing the rounding in the prediction modes.
This is just brutal:
Quote:
Before I go into specific components, a general note on code quality. The code quality is much better than VP3, though there’s still tons of typos in the comments. They also appear to be using comments as a form of version control system, which is a bit bizarre. The assembly code is much worse, with staggering levels of copy-paste coding, some completely useless instructions that do nothing at all, unaligned loads/stores to what-should-be aligned data structures, and a few functions that are simply written in unfathomably roundabout (and slower) ways. While the C code isn’t half bad, the assembly is clearly written by retarded monkeys.
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.
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.
Speaking of strawmen...no one mentioned killing h264. I believe I thought I made it explicitly clear that h264 and WebM would coexist.
Maybe it's just the way you write, but I detect a very distinct attitude here.
I'm thinking from looking at the thread that you are doing pretty well dominating the whole discourse (mostly by talking to yourself) so I'll leave it at that. You obviously have an agenda and a very specific view of the facts that you can't be shaken from so there's not much point in even engaging you in debate.
For what it's worth, I think I used the "strawman" term correctly and "hot air" is much more descriptive of your contributions than mine. I also think it's pretty clear what I meant, regardless of how you're picking my words apart.
So, I bow out and you win! Yay!
But remember that "winning" an argument is not always the same thing as being correct. It might make you feel better, but it doesn't prove much. It certainly doesn't mean you are necessarily right.
What about an "open bar" at a wedding? Does that prove your point?
And that means?
Someone paid for that open bar, the guests no, but probably the brides parents. Just as the end user's don't pay to use h264, but the companies incorporating it in their web browsers do.
Comments
It's royalty free until 2016 for end-users. Corporations must license it now -- Mozilla would need to pay millions of dollars to license it. Apple, Google, and Microsoft already have paid the money which is why it's not a big deal for them.
But no company seriously supporting "the open web" can support h264 only, which is NOT truly free and is virtually guaranteed in 2016 to cost end users money.
If h264 is ubiquitous and entrenched in 2016, as Apple would like it to be, why would MPEG-LA leave hundreds of millions of dollars sitting on the table? It's only temporarily royalty free for end-users to foster its adoption, then once it's widely adopted they'll be looking to cash in. The companies that are part of MPEG-LA do not develop these technologies out of the goodness of their hearts. The entire purpose of MPEG-LA is to make money from people using their technology.
This is just anti-iso propaganda. In 2016 there will be a vote. It is "virtually guaranteed" that h264 will remain free for end users (not the other way around). I doubt that they could even get away with per user licensing. If they tried it, everyone would jump ship. It is self regulating in this respect. I'm sure that Firefox could afford the license with their Google search money. If not, I'm sure the ISO may make an exception for Firefox. If firefox is resisting, it is because they want something that is free instead of open. Personally I think that is the wrong stance because it probably doesn't reflect the opinion of the majority of their users. The corporate licensing is just a way to pay for its development. If google wants to present an alternative format then great, but Firefox should still support the whole web... which means they should support h264 in addition to any other formats.
The interesting thing with firefox is that they could piggyback on the Operating Systems h264 license by using the Operating Systems APIs like every other program that plays video does. So this is just a problem for some distributions of Linux.
Keep in mind the bias of the source. The guy has spent years of his life working on an h264 encoder.
I think that that's readily apparent, and doesn't dismiss his article.
More interesting is that he has spent a lot of time looking at other codecs and documenting what he's found. It also sounds like he truly wishes there to be another viable competitor to H.264. Why wouldn't he want other choices? His is at least a technical expert's look into the codec which is more interesting than all of the political commentary.
You didn't even believe that brian g had read anything to back up his "blatant troll" opinion. I'd be more interested in hearing what you think about his research into WebM. Read the article and then let us know whether he has a point.
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.
Yes, that's Apple 1, Microsoft 75, of around 1,135 patents. I think that anyone thinking Apple is pushing H.264 to get rich off the patent is "patently" absurd.
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010...-with-webm.ars
Broadcom's chipset for mobile video acceleration (which the vast majority of phones use) will support WebM acceleration by Q3 this year.
AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm (the largest mobile SoC vendor) are all collaborating on HW acceleration as well for WebM.
That's a really great and informative post. Does this mean the iPad and the iPhones that have come out or are coming out will not be able to support this WebM format? Did Apple jump the gun?
Yes. The earliest Apple can introduce this would be in the Spring of 2011.
Where do you get your numbers?
Here -> Information Week - Android Versions Now Evenly Fragmented and here -> Android Developers - Platform Versions
Apple has a fragmented market also. If you look at OS stats, there's still tons of 2.x out there (mostly iPods).
And that is simply because those users simply choose not to update. The majority of Android users cannot update, even if they wanted to.
Just found this on my way out:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010...-with-webm.ars
Broadcom's chipset for mobile video acceleration (which the vast majority of phones use) will support WebM acceleration by Q3 this year.
AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm (the largest mobile SoC vendor) are all collaborating on HW acceleration as well for WebM.
Which means that h264 is already entrenched.
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.
Agreed. Apple just doesn't want to rely on Flash performance on the Mac OS, and wants a good user experience on the iPhone OS. All of their decisions about it (whether you agree with them or not) can trace back to these. They've changed the underlying technology and codecs plenty of times. Much to some users dismay. They are always chasing whatever tech they think will enhance the experience on their platform.
So I'm more interested in how WebM compares TECHNOLOGICALLY with H.264. It would be great if it is really comparable. But just being open and free doesn't automatically make it better. Especially for mobiles.
I would also have like it if Google had let the community contribute to the spec before they froze it. This doesn't seem to be the case unfortunately.
Just found this on my way out:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010...-with-webm.ars
Broadcom's chipset for mobile video acceleration (which the vast majority of phones use) will support WebM acceleration by Q3 this year.
AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm (the largest mobile SoC vendor) are all collaborating on HW acceleration as well for WebM.
So how long before we can expect that "most" phones out there will be able to use this codec without putting a drain on the battery? I hope that Google and others plan to transition their content slowly to allow for this.
This also seem pretty fast. As in Google buying up the IP and then releasing it "warts and all" without any review by the community. They've basically said the spec is "done" and "as is". And the more software and hardware support they pile on, the harder it will be to make any changes to that spec without breaking something. I worry with Google's "release it now as BETA and see how it does" tendency.
"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".
As others previously stated h264 is open, just not free. "open" doesn't mean free passage, otherwise that would mean I could go to a open store, grab any product on their store shelf that's 'open' to anyone to buy, then go to the check out line and not pay anything for that product.
Or does paying for a open product mean it's not really open?
As of yesterday, his stats look dead-on-balls accurate.
I think you are misreading things. He said:" Originally Posted by Chris_CA
Don't you mean all "Android devices that are updated with this when it is available" since over 65%% of Android devices cannot run the current (2.1 OS)?
35% are still stuck with version 1.5."
He's claiming that 65% of Android devices CANNOT upgrade.
The graph you inserted shows the actual use - with some not being able to upgrade, but not all.
You guys both got it wrong. You thought that "didn't upgrade" means "cannot upgrade".
But the two are not the same. For example, the HTC Hero just got an upgrade to Android 2.1 today. So while most all Heros are still in the "didn't upgrade" space, none of them (as of a few hours ago) are in the "cannot upgrade" space.
While the original guy was overly broad in stating that all the Android phones will get all the new features, he was correct if he meant that all the new phones will get/be upgraded.
And most of the Android phones are new(er) phones, given that the growth rate is accelerating. I think that Google will try to standardize on 2.2 ASAP.
I have no faith that any Android-based devices will be getting updates 3 years after their launch right when the update is available. The Moto Droid got version 2.1 last month(?) while the Nexus One had it the first week of January? Imagine if Apple did that with the iPhone.
Its a whole different world with Android vs. Apple.
While it is true that some older devices will not be upgraded immediately or at all, this was true with computers since just about forever. I don't think that most people even care about reinstalling a phone OS. They like thier phone just the way their nephew (or whoever) set it up for them, and aside from maybe asking their nephew to download and install an app they heard about, they don't want changes.
But for the folks who want the latest and greatest OS that their old phone won't support? Traditionally, those guys sell their phone on eBay and buy the coolest newest phone.
Whilst this topic has been very interesting (and I have to say, Asherian appears to be someone who knows their onions), as an end user I don't really give a toss. I just want the web to work, on every device I have.
This seems to invite a lot of opportunities for fragmentation, which I don't think the web is about. Whilst the techies agrue, the consumers could well lose out.
Its a whole different world with Android vs. Apple.
Correct.
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
As others previously stated h264 is open, just not free. "open" doesn't mean free passage, otherwise that would mean I could go to a open store, grab any product on their store shelf that's 'open' to anyone to buy, then go to the check out line and not pay anything for that product.
Or does paying for a open product mean it's not really open?
What about an "open bar" at a wedding? Does that prove your point?
Correct.
The iPhone is one manfacturer and Android is on many phones from many manufacturers.
Thisis one thing that is overlooked, especially with Macs/Windows. If you want to compare OS numbers, then compare MS and Apple.
If you want to compare hardware numbers, compare Apple to Dell, HP, etc. but not to MS since they don't make computers).
Keep in mind that once Android OS gets an update from Google, , it's up to the cell company to turn around and update their specific version of Android OS for their phones. If they decide not to update for older phones (and you have one), you lose.
Google is essentially offloading all Android testing to the carriers and you won't see updates until SQA and more certifies the OS as being improved and no caveats to their infrastructures.
Excerpt:
The questions I will try to answer here are:
- How good is VP8? Is the file format actually better than H.264 in terms of compression, and could a good VP8 encoder beat x264? On2 claimed 50% better than H.264, but On2 has always made absurd claims that they were never able to back up with results, so such a number is almost surely wrong. VP7, for example, was claimed to be 15% better than H.264 while being much faster, but was in reality neither faster nor higher quality.
- How good is On2’s VP8 implementation? Irrespective of how good the spec is, is the implementation good, or is this going to be just like VP3, where On2 releases an unusably bad implementation with the hope that the community will fix it for them? Let’s hope not; it took 6 years to fix Theora!
- How likely is VP8 to actually be free of patents? Even if VP8 is worse than H.264, being patent-free is still a useful attribute for obvious reasons. But as noted in my previous post, merely being published by Google doesn’t guarantee that it is. Microsoft did similar a few years ago with the release of VC-1, which was claimed to be patent-free — but within mere months after release, a whole bunch of companies claimed patents on it and soon enough a patent pool was formed.
We’ll start by going through the core features of VP8. We’ll primarily analyze them by comparing to existing video formats. Keep in mind that an encoder and a spec are two different things: it’s possible for good encoder to be written for a bad spec or vice versa! Hence why a really good MPEG-1 encoder can beat a horrific H.264 encoder.But first, a comment on the spec itself.
AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !
The spec consists largely of C code copy-pasted from the VP8 source code — up to and including TODOs, “optimizations”, and even C-specific hacks, such as workarounds for the undefined behavior of signed right shift on negative numbers. In many places it is simply outright opaque. Copy-pasted C code is not a spec. I may have complained about the H.264 spec being overly verbose, but at least it’s precise. The VP8 spec, by comparison, is imprecise, unclear, and overly short, leaving many portions of the format very vaguely explained. Some parts even explicitly refuse to fully explain a particular feature, pointing to highly-optimized, nigh-impossible-to-understand reference code for an explanation. There’s no way in hell anyone could write a decoder solely with this spec alone.
...
Intra Prediction
Intra prediction is used to guess the content of a block without referring to other frames. VP8’s intra prediction is basically ripped off wholesale from H.264: the “subblock” prediction modes are almost exactly identical (they even have the same names!) to H.264’s i4×4 mode, and the whole block prediction mode is basically identical to i16×16. Chroma prediction modes are practically identical as well. i8×8, from H.264 High Profile, is not present. An additional difference is that the planar prediction mode has been replaced with TM_PRED, a very vaguely similar analogue. The specific prediction modes are internally slightly different, but have the same names as in H.264.
Honestly, I’m very disappointed here. While H.264’s intra prediction is good, it has certainly been improved on quite a bit over the past 7 years, and I thought that blatantly ripping it off was the domain of companies like Real (see RV40). I expected at least something slightly more creative out of On2. But more important than any of that: this is a patent time-bomb waiting to happen. H.264’s spatial intra prediction is covered in patents and I don’t think that On2 will be able to just get away with changing the rounding in the prediction modes.
This is just brutal:
Before I go into specific components, a general note on code quality. The code quality is much better than VP3, though there’s still tons of typos in the comments. They also appear to be using comments as a form of version control system, which is a bit bizarre. The assembly code is much worse, with staggering levels of copy-paste coding, some completely useless instructions that do nothing at all, unaligned loads/stores to what-should-be aligned data structures, and a few functions that are simply written in unfathomably roundabout (and slower) ways. While the C code isn’t half bad, the assembly is clearly written by retarded monkeys.
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.
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.
Speaking of strawmen...no one mentioned killing h264. I believe I thought I made it explicitly clear that h264 and WebM would coexist.
Maybe it's just the way you write, but I detect a very distinct attitude here.
I'm thinking from looking at the thread that you are doing pretty well dominating the whole discourse (mostly by talking to yourself) so I'll leave it at that. You obviously have an agenda and a very specific view of the facts that you can't be shaken from so there's not much point in even engaging you in debate.
For what it's worth, I think I used the "strawman" term correctly and "hot air" is much more descriptive of your contributions than mine. I also think it's pretty clear what I meant, regardless of how you're picking my words apart.
So, I bow out and you win! Yay!
But remember that "winning" an argument is not always the same thing as being correct. It might make you feel better, but it doesn't prove much. It certainly doesn't mean you are necessarily right.
What about an "open bar" at a wedding? Does that prove your point?
And that means?
Someone paid for that open bar, the guests no, but probably the brides parents. Just as the end user's don't pay to use h264, but the companies incorporating it in their web browsers do.
My business always worked in the best interest of the final consumer. Why not every business works this way.