codec quality

Posted Dec 12, 2007 18:46 UTC (Wed) by nettings (subscriber, #429)
In reply to: codec quality by DonDiego
Parent article: Specifying codecs for the web

i think nobody who has worked with theora will dispute that there are better codecs out there.
*but*: in terms of interoperability and accessibility (for people/organisations on very tight
budgets), there is no alternative to theora today.
its toolchain needs more polishing, but that is likely going to happen within weeks of its
adoption for a major standard such as html5.

with broadband becoming a commodity in many countries, the trade-off between freedom/cost and
compression efficiency is not an issue any more. and in the developing world, where bandwidth
is scarce, the money to license proprietary codecs is in even shorter supply.

that said, the an implementation formerly bbc-funded dirac codec has recently gone beta, so
there is hope for a free alternative down the road. it should be able to compete with
proprietary state-of-the-art codecs in terms of compression vs. quality.

to post comments

U.S. != world

Posted Dec 12, 2007 19:36 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (5 responses)

In many countries people are still paying for traffic. In most countries you still must pay for mobile traffic. And x264 is free.

Thus from my POV all this discussion looks like someone is trying to get solution for their problems for my money.

who'da thunk it?

Posted Dec 12, 2007 19:54 UTC (Wed) by nettings (subscriber, #429) [Link]

thanks for letting me know that US != world. being a german citizen, that is quite a
reassuring fact. :-D
bickering aside, you have misread the web page you were linking to. the implementation itself
is free (GNU GPL), but there are patents involved:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H264#Patent_licensing
which is an issue in the US, specifically, because of their software patent laws.
i guess you will find that your money is involved either way... 
but i'd rather consumers had to pay a little more to access content, than see independent
content creators threatened by bullying corporations or lobby organizations over patent
issues.

U.S. != world

Posted Dec 12, 2007 22:59 UTC (Wed) by lambda (subscriber, #40735) [Link] (3 responses)

Yes, and what you need to remember is that Europe != world. Many of the major developers in 
question happen to be located in the US (Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft, etc), and so they are
liable if 
they infringe on people's patents. The W3C is also in the US, and has a very strong policy
against 
standardizing on anything that requires royalties or has patents that might require royalties.

Furthermore, there has been a lot of pressure to allow software patents in the EU, so it's
possible 
that at any time, a legislative decision will mean that even in Europe, x264 will be illegal.

Yup.

Posted Dec 13, 2007 0:09 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] (2 responses)

Europe and U.S. together are less then 15% of world. Plus Eupore is not a single country. Thus any choice forced on the whole world will be wrong. To force Theora on the people who can happily use x264 and save money on bandwidth is wrong, to force H.264 on people who can not legally use it is wrong too. The aspiration to free all people are admirable but why should poorer people pay for freedom of wealthier people ?

But...

Posted Dec 13, 2007 0:48 UTC (Thu) by RobertBrockway (guest, #48927) [Link] (1 responses)

A central concept of the Internet is that content is independent of the location of the end
user (as a general rule).  What you are suggesting is to have the video codec dependent on the
location of the viewer.  That is setting a very bad precedent.

I think people need to sit up and take a good long hard look at the global patent system.  It
is in a mess.  It is too easy to patent processes that didn't require any significant R&D to
develop in the first place.  The patent system is expensive and so naturally favours large
corporations over small corporations or individuals.  There are so many patents that it is now
very difficult to be sure that no patent infringement is occuring.  I believe the patent
system is near collapse.  Throught these discussions it is important to keep in mind that the
patent system is not an immovable rock, which is how  many seem to view it.  A lot of "patent
reform" has occured in recent decades .

"central concept" does not work for video...

Posted Dec 13, 2007 5:59 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

It's simple question of logistics. For example RUtube is significantly more popular then YouTube. How come ? Two factors:

1. 30min limit instead of 10min limit
2. free or cheap Russian traffic instead of expensive foreign traffic

Theora will just exacerbate second problem. The solution for Google is to sign contracts with big Russian ISPs, but... if you do THAT surely you can provide different kind of video too ?

Logistics will dominate field of web-video for next 10-15 years and by the end of this period patents related even to H.264 will be close to expiration