> First the bad news, and it really is quite bad: The spec sucks balls > (loads of copied C code with no explanation, and the C code isn't well > commented either), and if anything it doesn't steer around the > gigantic patent pool of the MPEG consortium as well as Ogg/Theora > does. In that sense you'd think nothing really changed. Good choices > for the infrastructure (Matroshka as container format, and Vorbis as > audio format), but with a crappy spec and no further technical reason > to believe that VP8 is any more safe from litigation than Theora, that > would seem to be the end of the road. Horrible news.
Yeah I read Diary Of An x264 Developer too [http:// x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377], however, if anyone has incentives to invest in codex spec and impl it would be Google. They are after all pushing 2bn YouTube video's daily. > But that's not actually what seems to be happening, so here comes the > great news: Somehow google convinced a boatload of companies that > somehow they've got a handle on the patent issues. As I understand it, VP8 specifically avoids venturing near some of the h.264 patents (B-frames, 8×8 transform...). That had got to be part of the trade-of, slightly inferior corners but open source and free from litigation. > microsoft promised WebM would work *IF* the codec is installed. If a > service pack or automatically installed patch doesn't do this, that's > not much help. Yeah agreed, slightly scary. But hopefully Microsoft will have figured out how to load codecs and updates automatically and in a non-invasive way. > + For *future* mobile devices Google's got AMD, ARM, NVidia, > Broadcom, Freescale, *AND* Qualcomm on board. Colour me impressed. > That's a big share of smartphone silicon. (Salient point: Oracle and > therefore java is also on board!) Also note, Intel is missing from the puzzle. > + Technically, even though spec-wise WebM sucks, it *IS* a pragmatic > format, amongst other things 'hardcoding' the video and audio codecs. > With enough interest the horrible spec will be overcome by a number of > open source implementations, and with enough implementations, the spec > will become managable. We should also point out that WebM isn't inferior on all points, i.e. it appears to be significantly more suitable for live streaming than h. 264. > Interesting times. If I were a betting man I'd probably still put my > money on H.264 (regrettably!) but I'd be very hesitant. It's an uphill battle, but I'm counting on VP8 to attract attention from the right people; and also see an analogy to GIF vs. PNG - especially if/when MPEG-LA starts to milk their cash cow in 2016. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
