If we accept EITHER h.264 or Ogg as even close to an acceptable standard for online video quality we're in trouble. We have a long long long way to go in this area before we can call any codec at online bandwidth "good". h.264 is just the first one that isn't HORRIBLE, and Ogg is better than the HORRIBLE pre-h.264 variants of mpeg-4.
Heck we don't even have an hd production codec (excluding the very high end stuff) that competes with digital betacam or in many cases DV in ANY area except boring ol' resolution. OF course, the usual advice about limitations being opportunities and finding the aesthetic power in problematic/limited/cheap and free technology applies to those of us inclined in such directions... Brook On Thu, Feb 4, 2010 at 10:20 AM, elbowsofdeath <st...@dvmachine.com> wrote: > > > Well I always have very mixed feelings about patents because of what a mess > can potentially be caused, especially for the web. Luckily some pragmatism > tends to occur otherwise we'd have been stuffed by previous patent woes such > as Amazon 1-click buy or BTs claim to hold a patent for hyperlinks. > > Open source stuff tends to get away with it because patent lawyers are > expensive and so there is often little point going after them. But yes it > certainly creates a murky area where stuff exists and may be in vary wide > use but cannot be completely relied upon from a legal point of view, > especially if you are a commercial entity. > > I think its easy for there is some confusion about patents, copyright and > open-source code. Its not like there is specific lines of code that make > h264 work that are protected & locked away, its that many different > techniques for making an efficient video compression system are protected by > a wide range of patents. This makes the task of creating an open alternative > harder, because even if you just start writing something from scratch its > hard to avoid using techniques for encoding that are patented. And mozillas > h.264 firefox woes go beyond simply the cost of licensing, to areas such as > whether its even possible to get a license that is compatible with the > opensource licenses they use for their browser. > > Im not sure that IE is a great example, as the main issues with that > browser were to do with it sucking, not sticking to various web standards, > and the legal trouble microsoft got in was mostly about using ts dominance > in the OS market to hamper fair competition in the browser market, an > important issue but not one directly related to patents or open source. For > sure some of the other browsers are better and find their way into more > devices because they are open-source, but conforming to proper standards is > probably more important, at least to web developers. > > Likewise whilst there probably would be some patent ugliness for open video > editing software looking to include h.264 encoding capabilities, thats not > whats actually holding back opensource video editing apps right now. If we > consider what has limited the evolution of online video in general, many > factors have nothing to do with patents. We had headaches with agreeing on > video standards which has become much less of a problem in recent years, but > we have ceded control in many other ways - by using flash to overcome > browser video format issues we reduced the number of potential developers > doing interesting things with video. By letting 3rd party commercial > entities host, distribute & attempt to monetize our videos, we gave up more > control and flexibility in how things evolved. All of these may well be > considered necessary and the pain:gain ratio worth it, but Id still argue > that its limited our wiggle room and we have no idea what innovations it may > have killed off. > > > Cheers > > Steve Elbows > > --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com <videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com>, > Jay dedman <jay.ded...@...> wrote: > > > > > They still gain in other ways by having h.264 as the standard, ie they > get larger payments from companies that distribute a lot of >video, sell > video, make hardware & software that encodes & decodes, etc etc. The end > user or small creator still ends up paying in >the form of a small chunk of > the cost of things they buy, or a small percentage of the cut that the video > host/distributor takes, but if >done right its such a small amount that > hardly anyone notices, and those who dont have the means of paying are not > chased by the >brain police or completely locked out of the online video > revolution. > > > > Yes, someone just watching video online or editing with commercial > > software will see no change. > > But if we wanted to create our own video editing software or > > transcoder, we would have to pay licensing fees to use H264. If H264 > > is the default standard, then any grassroots solution will necessarily > > be "illegal". > > > > This is why Firefox is pushing for Ogg/Theora to be widely adopted > > since they cannot afford to pay a licensing fee for each Firefox > > install. This is also why awesome video projects like > > http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ are created by somewhat shadow groups who > > put plenty of blood, sweat and tears into their projects...but cannot > > really by public about it. If H264 is the standard then it cuts out > > any player who cant pay. > > > > At the same time, the creators of H264 have every right to insist on > > payment for their team of engineers who create a beautiful codec. Just > > like a pharmaceutical company has every moral right to charge for > > medicine they research and produce. > > > > It's also like Microsoft's Internet Explorer. For a while it was the > > default browser because they pushed it onto all computers that were > > bought with Windows. The browser was free to the user, right? Who > > cares? Defacto standard. Of course we learned that a closed browser > > stifled innovation and added cost onto the cost of each computer > > bought. It took quite a battle legally and technically to get people > > to undestand that "OHHHH! if the browser is open, then thousands of > > developers will extend its usability, and make it all much cooler." > > And in order for this to happen, there cannot be a fee to play. > > > > > Will be interesting to see what Mozilla do with firefox, and the > youtube html5 test and ipad have stirred up a heck of a lot of online > >discussion about these issues recently, time will tell if this leads to > anything useful or remains mostly hot air. > > > > Yeah, its good for H264 to extend their freeness till 2016 since they > > can continue to get inside of all devices. But it also gives Mozilla, > > google, and others time to develop an alternative codec if they so > > choose. > > > > Jay > > > > -- > > http://ryanishungry.com > > http://momentshowing.net > > http://twitter.com/jaydedman > > 917 371 6790 > > > > > -- _______________________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/videoblogging/join (Yahoo! 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