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Google Makes $120 Million VP8 Video Codec Open Source to perhaps replace H.264

michael zaletel

michael zaletel

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VP8 Could replace H.264 on the web and beyond with this announcement.

Full Article:
http://www.informationweek.com/news...jhtml?articleID=224900400&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_All

Excerpt:

As has been widely anticipated since Google first announced its intent to acquire video technology company On2 last summer, Google released On2's VP8 video codec as royalty free, open-source software. Video codecs encode and decode video data.

Another major video codec, H.264, is backed by Apple and Microsoft. But it is unacceptable to the open source community for fear of future patent licensing demands. Both Apple and Microsoft have contributed patents to MPEG-LA, the group overseeing H.264 licensing.

-michael zaletel
 
Awesome I can't wait until this starts moving forward. This is great news for consumers who like video on the web. And with Youtube, this is going to get serious traction in the marketplace.
 
VP8 violates several H264 patents. Its entire Intra Prediction is lifted straight from H264. They did not even bother to rename any of it.

Apple has one patent in H.264 right now. Microsoft has around 65. The patent pool is made up of a lot of companies. Panasonic has a lot of patents in it.
 
Google definatly has the resources to do this and even smaller companies, like Sun has given a lot of stuff away. Mostly their own, but they still had to pay a lot for development

I'd say its future is looking surprisingly ...........
 
Stacey Spears said:
VP8 violates several H264 patents. Its entire Intra Prediction is lifted straight from H264. They did not even bother to rename any of it.

Apple has one patent in H.264 right now. Microsoft has around 65. The patent pool is made up of a lot of companies. Panasonic has a lot of patents in it.
Click to expand...

Stacey... So do you think the extremely high-powered attorneys that work for Google just didn't know what they were doing when they green-lighted the $120 Million purchase of the On2 technologies primarily for it's VP8 video compression technology?

http://techcrunch.com/2009/08/05/go...ssion-technology-company-on2-for-106-million/

-michael zaletel
 
So do you think the extremely high-powered attorneys that work for Google just didn't know what they were doing when they green-lighted the $120 Million purchase of the On2 technologies primarily for it's VP8 video compression technology?
Click to expand...

I don't know.

Here is a really good analysis of VP8. http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377
 
I didn't look, but if VP8 uses parts of h.264, the only thing that can lead my thought process to is: RED Ray. Could that be a patent-free codec that might, just might, burst into this super high-stakes game, and do so in a shock and awe move from from Jim? I wouldn't think "they" are keeping a close eye on RED, and it seems RED Ray has been kept under un-violated wraps, for now. It doesn't sound like anyone outside of a very small group of RED employees have had access to it. Then, would it be as effective at small resolutions? Or is it designed and most effective with 4k only?
 
There's a lot of he said, she said going on with technology patent disputes right now. Look at all the lawsuits back and forth with so many companies regarding various smart phone patents going on right now.

-michael
 
wow this is crazy good news, thanks for the heads up michael
 
It would be great if this codec brings in greater quality at lower bitrates. We might finally have high quality HD streaming on the internet.

It better be, for $120 million is a lot of cash. Especially when a few geeks have come up with x264 for $0. To succeed, it VP8 must offer a step up as significant or more than x264 was to Xvid/Divx.
 
People who are clever with it can make shedloads of cash from Open Source, you have access to a free pool of developers that can give you free resources. You then charge for a commercial versoin of your product with profit measures attached.
http://www.zenoss.com/
Zenoss is probably a good example of this.
 
This move makes absolutely no sense. The only thing "wrong" with H.264 is that it requires patent licensing, but it's absolutely inconceivable that VP8 doesn't run afoul of many of the very same patents (here's the 56 page list). Just when Internet video was finally settling down on some standards, Google seems to be trying to start a format war that won't, even if VP8 somehow wins, solve the patent problem at all, but that will horribly inconvenience everyone -- particularly owners of mobile/set-top devices that have hardware-based H.264 decoding and might have to throw them in the trash if VP8 starts catching on.
 
Chris Kenny said:
This move makes absolutely no sense. The only thing "wrong" with H.264 is that it requires patent licensing, but it's absolutely inconceivable that VP8 doesn't run afoul of many of the very same patents (here's the 56 page list).
Click to expand...

Ah, software patents. Destroying innovation in computers and technology since 1962!

Chris Kenny said:
Just when Internet video was finally settling down on some standards...
Click to expand...

A standard that can only be legally used by commercial browser vendors? A standard that already requires licensing per browser download, and will most probably require content distributors (including most of us) to pay for licenses in a few years? Is that the kind of standard we want to be locked in to?
 
Stephen Gentle said:
A standard that can only be legally used by commercial browser vendors?
Click to expand...

This is simply not true. Both Windows 7 and OS X have built-in H.264 decoding. There is no reason browsers like Firefox couldn't simply use that. You think Apple actually built H.264 decoding into Safari? Of course not. It uses QuickTime. I'm sure Microsoft will similarly use system libraries for H.264 decoding in IE9. Firefox can use those libraries just as easily. There is no technical, legal or financial barrier to Mozilla supporting H.264 -- it's purely an ideological decision.

Stephen Gentle said:
A standard that already requires licensing per browser download, and will most probably require content distributors (including most of us) to pay for licenses in a few years? Is that the kind of standard we want to be locked in to?
Click to expand...

These might be valid points if VP8 actually avoided patent issues, but it won't. Some people seem to have the impression that the H.264 patent pool (and associated licensing arrangements) is the problem here, but it's not. The patents are the problem, and the patent pool is a way of making that problem manageable. With H.264, you pay a moderate fee and you're in the clear with patents. With VP8, you don't pay any fee, but any one of dozens of companies might decide to sue you for patent violation at any time.

Microsoft's VC1 was also supposed to be an H.264 alternative that didn't rely on any patents Microsoft didn't have rights to. Guess what? As soon as a VC1 was released, companies started coming out of the woodwork with patents that it violated, and patent pool had to be set up. The exact same thing is going to happen with VP8. Watch.
 
Chris Kenny said:
These might be valid points if VP8 actually avoided patent issues, but it won't. Some people seem to have the impression that the H.264 patent pool (and associated licensing arrangements) is the problem here, but it's not. The patents are the problem, and the patent pool is a way of making that problem manageable. With H.264, you pay a moderate fee and you're in the clear with patents. With VP8, you don't pay any fee, but any one of dozens of companies might decide to sue you for patent violation at any time.

Microsoft's VC1 was also supposed to be an H.264 alternative that didn't rely on any patents Microsoft didn't have rights to. Guess what? As soon as a VC1 was released, companies started coming out of the woodwork with patents that it violated, and patent pool had to be set up. The exact same thing is going to happen with VP8. Watch.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying at all that VP8 doesn't infringe on patents. It probably does (in fact, most software probably does, as the majority of software patents are usually very obvious 'inventions' anyway - see the patent lawsuit filed just recently against Apple by a company claiming to have invented the idea of selling music on the internet in 2001, for example).

But if VP8 does in fact infringe on patents, then that doesn't make H.264 a good choice, it just means that VP8 is also a bad choice.
 
Stephen Gentle said:
But if VP8 does in fact infringe on patents, then that doesn't make H.264 a good choice, it just means that VP8 is also a bad choice.
Click to expand...

As of right now, VP8 is a substantially worse choice, because there isn't a simple and reasonably cheap way to license the relevant patents, whereas there is for H.264.

All of this H.264 drama is a little alarmist anyway. It's licensed under similar or in many cases less restrictive terms that formats like MP3, MPEG-2 and Red Book Audio (Audio CD). Most of the things regular individuals and small business do require no licensing fees at all, and the costs are fairly trivial for anyone distributing content in the sort of volume that does require paying. There is very little practical reason to object to the H.264 licensing regime, but some who are ideologically opposed to it don't mind implying otherwise.
 
Chris Kenny said:
All of this H.264 drama is a little alarmist anyway. It's licensed under similar or in many cases less restrictive terms that formats like MP3, MPEG-2 and Red Book Audio (Audio CD). Most of the things regular individuals and small business do require no licensing fees at all, and the costs are fairly trivial for anyone distributing content in the sort of volume that does require paying. There is very little practical reason to object to the H.264 licensing regime, but some who are ideologically opposed to it don't mind implying otherwise.
Click to expand...

You say that now... Just wait until they start charging not only for the browser vendor, but also on anyone distributing video encoded in H.264... Just look back to all the mess with the GIF patents a decade ago...
 
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