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Graphics Patents

Another Patent Pool Forms For HEVC 68

Posted by Soulskill from the money-to-be-squeezed dept.
An anonymous reader writes: A new patent pool, dubbed HEVC Advance, has formed for the HEVC video codec. This pool offers separate licensing from the existing MPEG LA HEVC patent pool. In an article for CNET, Stephen Shankland writes, "HEVC Advance promises a 'transparent' licensing process, but so far it isn't sharing details except to say it's got 500 patents it describes as essential for using HEVC, that it plans to unveil its license in the third quarter, and that expected licensors include General Electric, Technicolor, Dolby, Philips and Mitsubishi Electric. The group's statement suggested that some patent holders weren't satisfied with the money they'd make through MPEG LA's license. One of HEVC Advance's goals is 'delivering a balanced business model that supports HEVC commercialization.' ... HEVC Advance and MPEG LA aren't detailing what led to two patent pools, an outcome that undermines MPEG LA's attempt to offer a convenient 'one-stop shop' for companies needing a license." Perhaps this will lead to increased adoption of royalty-free video codecs such as VP9. Monty Montgomery of Xiph has some further commentary.
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Another Patent Pool Forms For HEVC More

Another Patent Pool Forms For HEVC

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  • How is hardware VP9 support developing? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm involved in developing a service with video functionality and we would love to switch from h264 license hell to VP8/9 (the amount of time and money we've spent on legal on this issue is infuriating, to say the least). The main problem isn't that it is lagging somewhat on quality/bitrate, but the availability of hardware decoding support across common mobile devices. Especially on mobile devices hardware decoding is required, not only for performance but at least as much for power usage. Anyone have any
    • WebM has a royalty-free hardware VP9 decoder and encoder. I don't know if any SOCs are incorporating it yet but Tegra X1 has 4k VP9 support supposedly.

  • So You are Saying (Score:4, Interesting)

    by wisnoskij ( 1206448 ) on Saturday March 28, 2015 @12:56PM (#49361599) Homepage
    That to use a simple, SINGLE, encoding algorithm like HEVC takes licencing thousands of patents?

    • Re:So You are Saying (Score:4, Informative)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Saturday March 28, 2015 @08:19PM (#49363131)

      To answer your question: Yes. Whatever you think of patents (personally I despise software patents and think they're a cancer on our industry), these are not single algorithms, nor are they in any way simple. This is very sophisticated software. At least scan through the Wikipedia entry linked in the summary to get a rough idea of the complexity of these monsters.

      Modern video formats are comprised of a vast collection of different algorithms and techniques, and part of the encoding process is determining how best to apply those various techniques to create the best compression while maintaining a specific desired perceptual quality. It's perhaps best to think of a video codec as a family of many different video encoding, decoding, and storage techniques.

      • ... these are not single algorithms, nor are they in any way simple. This is very sophisticated software. At least scan through the Wikipedia entry linked in the summary to get a rough idea of the complexity of these monsters.

        I actually read through some of the patents Nokia was threatening VP8/9 with and they really are not sophisticated at all, they are just written in the most confusing possible way. For example, the following paragraph is from a Nokia patent [stackexchange.com] that basically describes the selection of neighboring pixels:

        selecting a first reference video pixel in the first video block and a second reference video pixel in the second video block, the first reference video pixel and the second reference video pixel being other than the first boundary video pixel and the second boundary video pixel and the first reference video pixel and the second reference video pixel being placed closer to a central portion of each of said video blocks than the respective boundary video pixel, in such a way that the reference video pixels and the boundary video pixels are situated on a straight line, the straight line being transverse to the boundary, drawn from the first reference video pixel to the second reference video pixel, wherein the first and the second boundary video pixels are located between the first and the second reference video pixels on the straight line,

        I was planning on busting all of the Nokia patents myself, but then I got busy :p

        • I actually read through some of the patents Nokia was threatening VP8/9 with and they really are not sophisticated at all, they are just written in the most confusing possible way.

          Oh, don't misunderstand... I'm betting that what was patented is actually not all that complex in principle. And naturally, being patents, they're written as broadly and confusingly as possible. That doesn't mean the software as a whole is not extremely sophisticated. Try reading an open source video or audio codec and you'll see how complex it really is in practice.

  • Great (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    More patent encumbered crap.

    we need to stop feeding this legal beast.

  • If enough of this sort of stupid continues, perhaps the backlash will be enough to finally kill the software patent beast.

  • Daala (Score:3)

    by mlkj ( 3794193 ) on Saturday March 28, 2015 @01:26PM (#49361691)

    May Daala [xiph.org] save us all.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Burz ( 138833 )

      Vorbis made it into a lot of products that were not Apple or MS, from Sandisk to Samsung.

      Daala is shaping up to be excellent as well, but its biggest competition may be VPx in the long run... Google announced they would start 18-month release cycles for major VPx codec revisions after 10. That creates a Chrome-like effect on the mindshare of early adopters, so it should be interesting. Of course, who is backing Daala? Mozilla... who may get dragged into release-cycle competition with Google on another produ

      • Google announced they would start 18-month release cycles for major VPx codec revisions after 10. That creates a Chrome-like effect on the mindshare of early adopters, so it should be interesting.

        I'm skeptical that that is a good thing: video encoding is a closed, well defined task compared to web browsing. It's also reached the stage where the changes are somewhat incremental. HEVC is a step on from H.264, but the gains aren't immense for instance. Also, modern codecs are encoder heavy which means that g

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Its a shame WebM sucks (Score:5, Informative)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday March 28, 2015 @02:09PM (#49361845)

      Has anybody tried the WebM encoders? They STINK, its either a bunch of CLI gobbledygook or its some half assed support in some other encoder.

      If you've talked to anyone on the pirating scene (the ones who actually know what they're doing), controlling x264 through command line is normal. Trying to use a GUI on an encoding test for an anime fansubbing group gets you laughed at.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          DaFuq? What does anime piracy have to do with shit, you like the majority eats Pokki and watches...sheeit, can't even name any of that crap for a comparison...uhhh...Battletech?

          Again look at the formats that HAVE taken off...what do they have in common? EVERYBODY CAN USE IT, sure there are tools that can use CLI, fuck I'm sure you can encode MP3s in CLI...but nobody give a fuuuck, the majority are using easy GUIs...of which jack and shit exists for WebM. Fuck even the last Handbrake I checked had HEVC support...no support for WebM.

          "Everybody can use it" isn't about creating, it's about consuming. If you want your format to take off you need it supported on consumer electronics devices. Again -- look at pirates. You know why h264 took so long to take off? It's because there weren't a whole lot of stand-alone devices that supported it several years back. Same with MKV container format. Been around for quite awhile, not supportted commercially. This is why the whole live action pirating community continued to put out Divx/AVI files like

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Anyone doing any kind of serious work with an encoder (bulk especially) would laugh at you for the "gobbledygook" comment. In order for people to be able to enjoy videos in a format, we need these tools to give them things to watch. Without efficient CLI commands, your codec is nigh on useless. And for personal use it's also largely irrelevant; users use what their camera does, which is probably calling that CLI command, or the even more technical APIs those interfaces expose. GUI work for video editing is

      • I think there are two distinct worlds, people who handle the distribution of video and content creators. For content creators, they need highly polished GUIs ... like those provided by Final Cut Pro and iMovie. There are also batch video conversion tools that are entirely oriented around the GUI.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      I've can't decide if you're a troll or just lack sane opinions, you seem to hate on most things except AMD for which you have a major boner. The average person doesn't use an encoder, ever. The only reason they care about decoding formats is because they download stuff off the Internet want their MKV to work on their gizmo, not just their computer. Both "DivX 3.11 ;-)" and MKV gained popularity that way.

      Ordinary users upload videos to YouTube, but they don't have any say in what codec/settings/resolution/bi

  • DVD patents expiring (Score:4, Informative)

    by crow ( 16139 ) on Saturday March 28, 2015 @02:04PM (#49361821) Homepage Journal

    At least the patents on DVDs are expiring if not already expired. The first DVD player was sold in 1996, and patents can be good for up to 20 years from the filing date, so it would seem that by late next year, all necessary patents should have expired. (Patents are only 17 years from the issue date, so any patents that were actually issued at the time of the first players would have expired.)

    I'm sure that they've added on patents for various RW formats, and probably for some new tricks in encoding, but that wouldn't impact playback.

    MP3 patents have mostly expired, though one US patent expires later this year.

    So for any application using MPEG-2 or MP3, you shouldn't be facing a big patent hurdle. If you want the lower bitrates found with newer codecs, the pain will be with us for a while to come.

    • At least the patents on DVDs are expiring if not already expired. The first DVD player was sold in 1996, and patents can be good for up to 20 years from the filing date, so it would seem that by late next year, all necessary patents should have expired.

      This is HORRIBLE legal advice. Patent laws were different before 1996, that's why MP3 patents are still around (and will be until 2017) despite the fact that specifications were published back in 1991!

      In the United States, "patents filed prior to 8 June 1995

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by crow ( 16139 )

        There are other MP3 patents that don't expire this year, but their validity is in question.

        And the surviving patents are, in most cases, USA only.

  • What comes next? H.266? Is anyone working on it? Is it even possible?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kjella ( 173770 )

      What comes next? H.266? Is anyone working on it? Is it even possible?

      Of course it is, the question is if anybody will care. We know there are many better image compression routines than JPEG like JPEG 2000, JPEG-XR and WebP, but it's "good enough" nobody cares and it is now absolutely guaranteed patent free. Same with PNG, there are arguably better compression algorithms but it works. Everywhere but the US the MP3 patent has expired and in 2017 the last patent will expire there too. In 2018 the MPEG2 patents including AAC end, which I think will make AAC the de facto codec f

      • The problem is HW support. Video is so computing intensive that modern CPUs have trouble keeping the bandwidth. Even if you could run video encoding or decoding on a CPU, it probably is more efficient to run on HW. So, that is the reason why people stick to an old format for a long long time. H264 and MP3 are not going to disappear next week.

      • In 2018 the MPEG2 patents including AAC end, which I think will make AAC the de facto codec for lossy audio.

        I doubt that. Vorbis is at least as good as AAC and very popular: I think just about every game out there now encodes audio in Vorbis format and it's patent and royalty free and yet MP3 is still king. The thing is MP3 is good enough:

        http://listening-test.coresv.n... [coresv.net]

        If you're prepared to spend 30% extra on storage space (and a bit less on decoding power), MP3 is as good as the better codecs. Storage s

  • The group's statement suggested that some patent holders weren't satisfied with the money they'd make through MPEG LA's license.

    so there are 500 patents and at least one of the patent owners is an insufferable greedy asshole? what's next, are bears going to start shitting in the woods too?!

  • How do you call VP9 royalty-free in the same article as the rest of this info.

    There is not currently a patent pool for VP9. That doesn't mean it's in a better position than HEVC, given there could be a "freelance" patent pool for VP9 any day now.

    Any standard which becomes successful attracts leeches. VP9 is no exception.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Any standard which becomes successful attracts leeches. VP9 is no exception.

      So, if this is true for all codecs, then why would you choose the codec with an obvious case of licensing confusion and uncertainty, such as HEVC has now. Why wouldn't you choose the codec with clear licensing and merely the possible chance of licensing problems, as VP9 has now. In terms of licensing VP9 is plainly the better bet.

    • How do you call VP9 royalty-free in the same article as the rest of this info.

      There is not currently a patent pool for VP9. That doesn't mean it's in a better position than HEVC, given there could be a "freelance" patent pool for VP9 any day now.

      Any standard which becomes successful attracts leeches. VP9 is no exception.

      How do you call VP9 royalty-free in the same article as the rest of this info.

      There is not currently a patent pool for VP9. That doesn't mean it's in a better position than HEVC, given there could be a "freelance" patent pool for VP9 any day now.

      Any standard which becomes successful attracts leeches. VP9 is no exception.

      Carefully avoiding all known patents puts them into a better position, even if the position is just a smaller number of patents.

  • OK So I'm not into this very much. I use some splitters and re-encode ripped video on the odd occasion with Handbrake. What got me though with HEVC is that the requirements for playback needs a multi-core processor.
    I downloaded a 30 min video file (FTA torrent) and I was surprised with the smaller file size (about 30-40% improvement), but pissed off at not having a player for it. After searching around, I got VLC updated to play the file which looked promising at first. Unfortunately, it bombed out as it lo

  • It's really just a bunch of selfish caveman playing with these magical Toys the modern world has, and stubbornly fighting over territory. FFS the world needs to grow up, and this is why.

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