[HN Gopher] A Future Without MPEG
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A Future Without MPEG
Author : Daemon404
Score : 60 points
Date : 2020-06-06 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.chiariglione.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.chiariglione.org)
| sabas123 wrote:
| Can somebody explain what it means to hold the IP or rights of
| any of these standards?
| alias_neo wrote:
| I presume it means you can require royalties from anyone who
| wishes to implement them. If you build a DVD player, you pay
| someone a royalty for those IPs, if you build a BluRay player,
| it's the same.
|
| Having the "standard" means having the lion's share of the
| market, which means more money.
| th3typh00n wrote:
| It means you can force people who actually develops products to
| pay you money for using your totally novel and not at all vague
| idea that you wrote down on a piece of paper 15 years ago that
| is so unimaginably revolutionary that nobody else could ever
| come up with something remotely similar.
| tialaramex wrote:
| In particular IP here ends up meaning patents. Patents are a
| particularly egregious right because though they were created
| with a specific trade in mind they were almost immediately
| perverted so as to keep only one side of the trade.
|
| So the idea of patents is, if Alice invents something really
| fucking amazing she explains the invention, pays the government
| some money and they publicise her explanation but she is
| entitled to control who uses the invention for a period of
| time.
|
| This is a trade because now Alice's invention is available to
| everybody, no chance Alice loses interest and it's lost for a
| thousand years before somebody else re-discovers it, but on the
| other hand Alice doesn't need to secure investors and risk the
| invention being a failure, she can demand terms like 10% of the
| profits from anyone taking those risks.
|
| But, it soon turned out you don't need a complete working
| invention. Alice describes half an invention, and then nobody
| else can use it without the other half, but even if they figure
| out the other half on their own they owe Alice! Alice doesn't
| even need to invent the whole thing, she can just describe the
| easy half, the government signs off and then when somebody
| smarter finishes it Alice gets rich!
|
| Today in most of the world people have found ways to argue that
| computer software, which is a work of literature and thus
| protected by Copyright (which has different problems we won't
| discuss here) can also count as an invention and be patented.
|
| So the _best_ outcome for an outfit like MPEG is that Bob
| invents a really clever technique that turns moving images into
| much less data than before, totally just as a single flash of
| inspiration somehow, and rather than keeping it secret, or
| using just in one MSDOS program in 1989 and then never again he
| _publishes_ it as a patentable invention, then MPEG
| incorporates it in a video standard called, say, MPEG Bob. And
| maybe everybody in the world cheerfully pays Bob $100 each for
| this amazing invention. Hooray.
|
| But very quickly the problem with MPEG is that Charlie gets a
| government patent for the invention of, say, dividing five into
| three equal integers and then hires a very good lawyer.
| Charlie's lawyer says it doesn't matter that this is nonsense
| and can't work, because $10M worth of lawyers say you owe
| Charlie for using this invention in MPEG Bob.
|
| In between these extremes there are lots of problems less
| intrusive than Charlie. The Springfield Higher Institute of
| Technology gets a patent on an idea you, an expert in the
| field, have been telling people about for years, but you never
| wrote it down so you can't prove it. Did they really invent it,
| or just hear it second hand? Either way, they demand $1 each,
| but they _are_ a university so maybe that 's good? Although it
| is billions of dollars, and it was really your idea if it was
| anybody's...
|
| Leonardo, the author of this piece and MPEG leader, is quite
| sure that patents are necessary, mostly because of the Bobs in
| this world though I suspect he'd be sympathetic to the
| Springfield Institute too, to him the existence of Charlie is
| an annoyance, that we should all try to find some way past,
| rather than a fatal flaw in the entire endeavour.
| vetinari wrote:
| It means that you can basically levy tax on compatibility.
| Anyone, who wants to make device or application compatible with
| standard has to pay a fee to you.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I don't really understand what the point of EVC is. From my
| understanding it's really _two_ standards, one royalty-free that
| 's slightly _worse_ than HEVC /H.265, and one patent-
| encumbered/licensed that's slightly _better_ than H.265.
|
| The post here says "EVC is promising because it provides a
| quality that is comparable with or better than AV1, although less
| than VVC. EVC may have a chance if a licence will be published.
| However, this has not happened yet." I can only assume, from
| those numbers above, that "comparable with or better than AV1"
| applies only to the encumbered/enhanced variant.
|
| It's hard to see why anyone would bother to implement the "base"
| standard vs. the already widely-deployed AVC/H.264, nor the
| "enhanced" one which seems to be roughly comparable to AV1 but
| with licensing costs attached (and as the post points out, no
| certainty at all about what that licensing would actually
| entail). Apart from those companies that hold the relevant
| patents, of course.
| ksec wrote:
| The widely deployed AVC is still AVC Main Profile, which is
| what Youtube and many other Streaming / Broadcasting uses due
| to devices compatibility. EVC Baseline is expected ( or claims
| ) to be 20% better than AVC _High Profile_. So you should
| expect ~30% better than current AVC all while being royalty
| free.
|
| The beauty of EVC baseline is that it is quite power efficient.
| Considering AVC already require the least computation in modern
| codec, EVC baseline offer 30% reduction in bitrate while
| requiring NO increase in decoding complexity and is actually 40
| to 50% _less_ in encoding complexity.
|
| Note: None of these has been tested outside of its members as
| it does not provide a reference encoder due to "new" patents
| arrangement with this codec. So we have no way to verify those
| claims.
|
| Edit: Will add the link to document with those claimed figures
| later.
|
| Edit2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Itt0cOvgXU
| zerocrates wrote:
| My understanding is that YouTube uses at least some High
| Profile, and only Main for the lowest resolutions (though who
| knows how up to date that information is), along with of
| course VP9 and AV1 where they figure they can.
|
| Anyway, if those claims bear out then it would seem like EVC
| has a possible future as an "AVC killer," though the
| computation complexity factors are complicated by the wide
| deployment of hardware acceleration for AVC encode/decode. Of
| course, hardware support could materialize for EVC as well,
| but it does rather complicate possible adoption for what
| we'll call a "sub-generational" improvement, in a world
| coming around right about now to AV1 hardware support.
|
| Perhaps reduced computational demands could lead to a niche
| of usage in unaccelerated environments. I don't know if
| there's an example of significant uptake for an "in-between"
| step like this that one could point to as a possible model
| for success, though.
| ksec wrote:
| >My understanding is that YouTube uses at least some High
| Profile
|
| Oh yes. I just double checked. I stand corrected. I was
| under the impression they only use high profile with
| MutiView Videos.
| drmpeg wrote:
| A quick check shows 360p = Baseline, 720p = Main, 1080p =
| High.
| makapuf wrote:
| Am I reading it right ? The text says: > But there is a big news:
| MPEG passed away on 2020/06/02T16:30 CEST. Does that really mean
| MPEG is no more ? Or is it hyperbole about something that
| happened 2nd of june ? This would be huge (and really sad).
| phkahler wrote:
| I would guess a patent expired, or the cartel disbanded or
| something like that. It's only dead to those who cant profit
| from it any more.
| WhatIsDukkha wrote:
| This post is so "inside baseball" that it's difficult to discern
| what his point or goal is?
| fmajid wrote:
| Chariglione was the charismatic leader behind the MPEG
| standards, including those behind DVD (MPEG-2). The biggest
| challenge wasn't technical but political: getting a bunch of
| companies to agree to pool their patents so licensing them
| could be streamlined.
|
| For next-generation video beyond H.264 (AVC) and H.265 (HEVC),
| that consensus has broken-down and his prediction seems to be
| that open-source standards like Alliance for Open Media behind
| the AV1 video codec will prevail. It's worth noting that H.264
| and H.265 are telecom videoconferencing standards defined by
| the ITU-T, not consumer electronics standards defined by ISO,
| so I'd say the loss of relevance of MPEG happened 20 years ago,
| even if MPEG (part of ISO) was involved in both standards.
| scandox wrote:
| Agreed
| ksec wrote:
| I am not sure where to begin. But let's start with EVC.
|
| EVC Baseline is expected to be 20% better than AVC _High Profile_
| , and EVC Main Profile is expected to be 30% better than HEVC.
| The Codec is backed by Huawei, Samsung and Qualcomm. If you are
| unfamiliar with the Smartphone market, The three would represent
| roughly 80% of marketshare excluding Apple.
|
| Now on to VVC. I am surprised by the sentence
|
| _MC-IF has 31 members, 7 of which are licensing entities (i.e. a
| little less than 1/4 of all members). The "industry" members
| account for just 1/2 of the HEVC patent holders. It is hardly
| believable that VVC will fare better than HEVC. It could very
| well fare worse because VVC adoption in broadcasting will take
| years._
|
| Well Yes. That is because 7 of those licensing entities already
| covered most if not all of the industry. ( Excluding a few Open
| Media Alliance Member of course ) The MC-IF actually includes
| _ALL_ of the current HEVC patents holders. That is HEVC Advance
| and Velos Media, which is basically Samsung and Qualcomm, along
| with many others that were not in any HEVC patent pool due to
| disagreement in the first place.
|
| ( And If you notice the removal of the infamous Technicolor, they
| sold their patents to another entity that is inside MC-IF, but I
| cant remember which one on top of my head )
|
| VVC is expected to be 50% more efficient than HEVC. And judging
| from its reference encoder, this is the first time since AVC /
| H.264 era a video codec that might actually live up to its
| claims. ( Normally marketing likes to use unrealistic claims ) It
| really is the state of the art Video Codec, at a decoding
| complexity that is quite manageable. ( Lower than AV1 )
|
| So what does all that means? Samsung, Huawei and Qualcomm are
| also inside MC-IF ( represented by different groups ). My guess
| is that EVC is basically a backup plan or a gesture to MC-IF, if
| the licensing deal can be agreed upon, they will go with EVC.
|
| As a video codec enthusiast, I am extremely excited with both VVC
| and EVC.
|
| As to MPEG ( Not to be confused with MPEG-LA ), I am not quite
| sure why he said it is dead. I reread the article a few times and
| still dont quite understand it. May be I am missing some context?
| unlord wrote:
| > It really is the state of the art Video Codec, at a decoding
| complexity that is quite manageable. ( Lower than AV1 )
|
| I am afraid this has not been substantiated by any of the
| public decoder demonstrations I've seen. Please see the most
| recent VVC technical update presented at the MC-IF meeting on
| March 2nd of this year:
|
| https://a7dce6fd-e8f0-45f7-b0b0-255c5c9a28e1.filesusr.com/ug...
|
| On slide 10 is a graph of VVC performance showing the VTM (VVC)
| decoder at 2.0x the complexity of HM (HEVC). On slide 12, the
| Ittiam production decoder boasts 1920x1080 @ 24fps on a 4-core
| Cortex A75 @ 2.5GHz.
|
| Compare that with this recent study of dav1d (AV1) decoder
| complexity on a broad set of mobile SOCs, where 1920x1080 @
| 24fps was easily reached by a Google Pixel 1 from 2016! Using
| just the two LITTLE cores! Even higher frame rates were
| achieved with more modern devices:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AV1/comments/gncplq/av1_multithread...
|
| Full disclosure, I contribute to the dav1d project and
| performed this study.
| sitkack wrote:
| This is absolutely amazing, I had no idea this would come so
| soon. I wonder how much the vp% series of codecs played a part,
| or netflix/amazon/youtube controlling both ends of the channel?
|
| The next device to get converted to the web is the smart tv,
| there is no reason it literally has be anything different then a
| webpage, same goes for Roku.
| dwheeler wrote:
| Put another way: The video patent cartels have fragmented due to
| greed, and so the cartel enablers at ISO have lost their purpose.
| In addition, organizations are tired of paying bridge tolls.
|
| So we can finally have open standards for video that anyone can
| just use and implement. AV1 in particular seems to be on its way
| to replacing them: https://research.mozilla.org/av1-media-codecs/
| makapuf wrote:
| I guess it wont mean that parents on video encoding won't
| exist, rather that now they wont be standardized. Not everyone
| can be sponsored by advertising monopoly, some might need their
| technology to bring revenue by itself. However yes, the pool
| broke by too greedy companies (IP based companies, not
| technology ones) and hevc is laughable. See it explained by
| mpeg chairman itself https://blog.chiariglione.org/a-crisis-
| the-causes-and-a-solu...
| amelius wrote:
| I guess a problem is that most hardware, SoCs etc, still use
| MPEG.
| cure wrote:
| If it is true, then good bloody riddance. Nobody is going to miss
| those rent seekers. The future belongs to open, unencumbered
| standards.
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