This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 10:25 UTC (Wed) by KotH (guest, #4660)
In reply to: This is a badly researched article. by DonDiego
Parent article: Swift and predictable reactions to WebM

Badly researched doesnt really cover it.

It's realy unnerving to see how much FUD is spread over LWN when it comes to video coding. Please, if you want to write about video coding, then talk to the guys who actually do work on it. Talk to the guys from FFmpeg, VLC, MPlayer, Xine, XviD, x264,...

Then, about the article. Yes, Jason might be biased. Yes, he is an x264 developer. But if you read his blog post you'll see that he tries to have a balanced, technical analysis of VP8 compared to h.264. He isn't attacking it, neither does he bash it. And he definitly does not claim that VP8 violates any patents (he writes that the claim that VP8 is patent free is dodgy at best). And unlike most of the people who do compare different video codecs, he actually knows how to do a fair comparison without bias towards one or the other, even accounting for suboptimal implentations.

I wonder what the "long line of multimedia projects and companies announcing support for VP8 and WebM" is. FFmpeg (for those who don't know, it's the one single project that matters most when it comes to video coding as _every_ OSS video software uses FFmpeg somewhere and a lot, if not most comercial software does too) did not announce anything, neither was it "in the know before the deal was made". Also, FFmpeg did not get any patches until after the public anouncement. Some of the simpler patches were quickly commited, the rest will at least take a few weeks until all of them are ready to be included.

I also think that google should be a lot more open on whos work they are building on. For example, the container of webm is matroska, just relabled as webm. But with no word are they thanked for the great work they have done to create this container. They are simple forgotten in all the hype creation machinery.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 12:23 UTC (Wed) by liljencrantz (guest, #28458) [Link]

For the "long line of multimedia projects and companies announcing support for VP8 and WebM" that you're wondering about, look no further than the WebM home page:

Adobe
AMD
ARM
Brightcove
Broadcom
Collabora
Digital Rapids
Encoding.com
Grab Networks
iLinc
INLET
Kaltura
Logitech
MIPS
Mozilla
Nvidia
Ooyala
Opera
Qualcomm
Skype
Sorenson
Telestream
Texas Instruments
Verisilicon
ViewCast
Wildform

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 13:57 UTC (Wed) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] (4 responses)

I also think that google should be a lot more open on whos work they are building on. For example, the container of webm is matroska, just relabled as webm. But with no word are they thanked for the great work they have done to create this container. They are simple forgotten in all the hype creation machinery.

Perhaps you'd like them to say something like this on their "about" page?

What is WebM?

WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.

WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 17:36 UTC (Wed) by Sho (subscriber, #8956) [Link]

While I agree with you, it's worth mentioning that Google worked together with the Matroska folks on WebM, and that the Matroska website has posted a notice of full support, as have individual Matroska developers in their blogs.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 18:15 UTC (Wed) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, I would like to see that. All I can see now is

is WebM?

an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.

fines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files
video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams 
ed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the 
a container.

No mention of Matroska.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 26, 2010 18:37 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Must be some problem with your browser or something. It clearly does mention Matroska and links to it even.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 27, 2010 8:54 UTC (Thu) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link]

There is clearly a broken interaction between their stylesheet and your browser.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 27, 2010 3:39 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (4 responses)

> And he definitly does not claim that VP8 violates any patents (he writes
> that the claim that VP8 is patent free is dodgy at best)

Right, he doesn't make any concrete claims that could be refuted, he just speculates and suggests. That's called FUD.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 27, 2010 9:37 UTC (Thu) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link] (3 responses)

>Right, he doesn't make any concrete claims that could be refuted, he just speculates and suggests. That's called FUD.

Yes, because clearly anyone trying to point out any problem somebody might have, but without investing millions in a full solution and handing it over on a silver platter with dinner and a movie, is engaging in FUD.

Please, now you're just being offensively paranoid.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 27, 2010 10:12 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

Cut the rhetoric, please. I didn't see anyone asking for a full solution on a silver platter, except you in this comment. And I'm afraid that I agree with roc; he doesn't point to patents which are infringed, and say "I think you infringe this patent". Instead, he says, "well, this is very similar to H.264 (which we know is patent encumbered), but slightly different. Ergo, the patents we know about might affect it, so you can't claim you don't need a patent licence to use it without being on dodgy legal ground".

It's no different from me saying "well, we know Microsoft have software patents on Windows and Office, and Linux with GNOME and OpenOffice.org is awfully similar to Windows and Office. Ergo, the patents we know about might affect it, so you can't claim you don't need a patent licence to use it without being on dodgy legal ground."

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 29, 2010 10:20 UTC (Sat) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

He didn't point out any specific problems, that's why it's FUD.

If he said something like "VP8 infringes patent #1234567 on flux capacitor tuning", that would have identified a problem specific enough to be refuted, and would not have been FUD.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted Jun 1, 2010 11:27 UTC (Tue) by nye (subscriber, #51576) [Link]

Do you have any idea of the kind of work you are demanding? It's fairly obvious that you are strongly biased here, so there is probably no convincing you, but let's try to take this into another domain which may be more comfortable.

Let's imagine we're talking about, say, performance. One individual has undertaken to provide a review of another's work, though it is of no benefit to them. Looking over it, they point out several sections and say: 'I think this technique might not be too good. Perhaps you could research this bit and see if you might improve it. Right now it would cost me a lot of time to look into it for you myself, and I could well be wrong, but I hope this pointer is of some use'. Is that FUD? 'He pointed out an area which looks suspicious, but didn't fully analyse or benchmark it! That monster!'.

This is a badly researched article.

Posted May 31, 2010 22:26 UTC (Mon) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Would you please care to disclose your own involvement in video codec development, or other multimedia projects, or explain that there is no involvement?

Thanks.