No, you can't do that with H.264
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==No, you can’t do that with H.264==
A lot of commercial software comes with H.264 encoders and decoders, and some computers arrive with this software preinstalled. This leads a lot of people to believe that they can legally view and create H.264 videos for whatever purpose they like. Unfortunately for them, it ain’t so.
Maybe the best example comes from the Final Cut Pro license:
To the extent that the Apple Software contains AVC encoding and/or >decoding functionality, commercial use of H.264/AVC requires additional >licensing and the following provision applies: THE AVC FUNCTIONALITY IN >THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED HEREIN ONLY FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON->COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE >WITH THE AVC STANDARD (“AVC VIDEO”) AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO >THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON->COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR AVC VIDEO THAT WAS OBTAINED FROM A >VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. INFORMATION >REGARDING OTHER USES AND LICENSES MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA >L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM.
Now, you might think “but I’m sticking with MPEG-4, or MPEG-2, so it’s not a problem for me”. No. It’s just as bad. Here’s the relevant section of the license:
1. MPEG-2 Notice. To the extent that the Apple Software contains MPEG-2 >functionality, the following provision applies: ANY USE OF THIS PRODUCT >OTHER THAN CONSUMER PERSONAL USE IN ANY MANNER THAT COMPLIES >WITH THE MPEG-2 STANDARD FOR ENCODING VIDEO INFORMATION FOR >PACKAGED MEDIA IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED WITHOUT A LICENSE UNDER >APPLICABLE PATENTS IN THE MPEG-2 PATENT PORTFOLIO, WHICH LICENSE >IS AVAILABLE FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C., 250 STEELE STREET, SUITE 300, >DENVER, COLORADO 80206.
2. MPEG-4 Notice. This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 Systems >Patent Portfolio License for encoding in compliance with the MPEG-4 >Systems Standard, except that an additional license and payment of >royalties are necessary for encoding in connection with (i) data stored or >replicated in physical media which is paid for on a title by title basis and/or >(ii) data which is paid for on a title by title basis and is transmitted to an >end user for permanent storage and/or use. Such additional license may >be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC. See http://www.mpegla.com for additional >details. This product is licensed under the MPEG-4 Visual Patent Portfolio >License for the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer for (i) >encoding video in compliance with the MPEG-4 Visual Standard (“MPEG-4 >Video”) and/or (ii) decoding MPEG-4 video that was encoded by a >consumer engaged in a personal and non-commercial activity and/or was >obtained from a video provider licensed by MPEG LA to provide MPEG-4 >video. No license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. Additional >information including that relating to promotional, internal and commercial >uses and licensing may be obtained from MPEG LA, LLC.
This last thing is actually a particularly interesting point. If you encode a video using one of these (open-source) unlicensed encoders, you’re practicing patents without a license, and you can be sued. But hey, maybe you’re just a scofflaw. After all, it’s not like you’re making trouble for anyone else, right? Wrong. If you send a video to a friend who uses a licensed decoder, and they watch it, you’ve caused them to violate their own software license, so they can be sued too.
Oh, and in case you thought this was specific to Apple, here’s the matching piece from the Windows 7 Ultimate License:
1. NOTICE ABOUT THE H.264/AVC VISUAL STANDARD, THE VC-1 VIDEO >STANDARD, THE MPEG-4 VISUAL STANDARD AND THE MPEG-2 VIDEO >STANDARD. This software includes H.264/AVC, VC-1, MPEG-4 Part 2, and >MPEG-2 visual compression technology. MPEG LA, L.L.C. requires this >notice: THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC, THE VC-1, THE MPEG-4 PART >2 VISUAL, AND THE MPEG-2 VIDEO PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSES FOR THE >PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE >VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE ABOVE STANDARDS (“VIDEO >STANDARDS”) AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC, VC-1, MPEG-4 PART 2 AND MPEG-2 >VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND >NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY OR WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER >LICENSED TO PROVIDE SUCH VIDEO. NONE OF THE LICENSES EXTEND TO >ANY OTHER PRODUCT REGARDLESS OF WHETHER SUCH PRODUCT IS >INCLUDED WITH THIS PRODUCT IN A SINGLE ARTICLE. NO LICENSE IS >GRANTED OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL >INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE >WWW.MPEGLA.COM.
My advice: use a codec that doesn’t need a license:
Q. What is the license for Theora? Theora (and all associated technologies released by the Xiph.org >Foundation) is released to the public via a BSD-style license. It is >completely free for commercial or noncommercial use. That means that >commercial developers may independently write Theora software which is >compatible with the specification for no charge and without restrictions of >any kind.edit: parent was at -1 when I posted that.
The companies that implement and support H.264 also know all about the license, and they have most likely gotten some pretty sweet deals for getting this thing as widely deployed as possible.
What needs to be done is to get the message through so that the masses realize that MPEG LA will come after _you_ with their pitchforks and torches in less than a year from now. Worse yet, we do not even know how the license will look.
But maybe scaring people is not the key here. The question remains then: How do we get that message through to the big masses? Make alternatives look "cool"? Next generation video?
I know, I know. I'm not saying anything new...
A (6 month old) interesting link: http://streaminglearningcenter.com/articles/h264-royalties-w...
When skimming the comments on that page, seems there is something new, (as of yesterday):
http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme... [pdf]
MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Continue Not to Charge Royalties for Internet Video that is Free to End Users
(DENVER, CO, US – 2 February 2010) – MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2016. Products and services other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be royalty-bearing, and royalties to apply during the next term will be announced before the end of 2010. MPEG LA's AVC Patent Portfolio License provides access to essential patent rights for the AVC/H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) digital video coding standard. In addition to Internet Broadcast AVC Video, MPEG LA’s AVC Patent Portfolio License provides coverage for devices that decode and encode AVC video, AVC video sold to end users for a fee on a title or subscription basis and free television video services. AVC video is used in set-top boxes, media player and other personal computer software, mobile devices including telephones and mobile television receivers, Blu-ray DiscTM players and recorders, Blu-ray video optical discs, game machines, personal media player devices and still and video cameras.
For more information about MPEG LA’s AVC License or to request a copy of the License, please visit http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx
Not because I think they're not evil enough to do it, but because that kind of money-making scheme just doesn't scale.
Also, whenever they've sued one or two people, people's eyes will open and they'll just use an other codec. No big deal.
As a means to make money, that strategy simply sucks. A more likely turn of events is that licensing H.264 becomes quite a bit less good of a deal when H.264 has truly established itself. But even then they're not going to sue millions of people, because that doesn't scale, they're going to sue big vendors and service providers.
Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".
I admit that I went a bit over the top in the scare mongering with "_you_", though.
(the comments at the end of the article linked above is quite interesting, by the way)
If you have the need to pay for the sake of it you can relocate to my country, we have one of the highest taxes in the world :)
Some of us make products that may want to use h.264 and would be liable to have to pay to do so. Not as consumers, but as businesses.
> Certainly, that's not great either. But no, MPEG LA are not coming after "_you_".
Not if you're just a consumer, but we are not all just consumers on HN. So they might come after us.
If you are using any technology for commercial use you should probably be reading all licensing agreements and have your lawyers deal with anything that arises.
100 million of them have installed VLC, and the standard DirectShow codec packs probably have at least that too.
http://www.on2.com/blog/2009/08/google-and-on2-to-improve-vi...
Happy days!
I'm pretty sure you can find outrageous (and oftentimes unlawful) things in most licenses (that's more or less the point), but come on, do you really think MPEG LA will ever sue your friend that watched your x264 encoded clip of your cat on his iPhone? (Which they found out about... how?)
Using the H.264 standard for video on the internet seems like a dumb decision to me. It's not rocket science to choose some format which doesn't have potentially debilitating licensing issues associated with it.
Vorbis, however is really in the league of mp3/aac/wmv, so in the case of audio, picking Vorbis is really a no-brainer.
In other words: Theora is already good enough for the "masses". It's not the technological inferiority of Theora that hinders its wide adoption.
I think it's that people use H.264 for everything and don't care about the licence and the alternatives. The only way to change that is to either (a) raise awareness of the legal issues with H.264 or (b) support Theora in every browser to make it the next video standard in the web. Then, sooner or later the "masses" will follow.
The article works on the former, although it's important to work on the latter, too.
So it's acceptable to deliver a product you know to be inferior to someone because their content isn't important enough to you? Would you not be insulted if someone said they didn't think your home movies were worth encoding with the best available technology?
Here we are deciding.. will there be the the "free" video the masses of people can post/cut/encode/decode/do-what-ever-they-want with it on the web or not.
Would it make sense for a whole web to pay for the better CSS format?
I hear a lot of talk about how it's "good enough" but quite frankly it's not. If my videos look bad, I look bad. It matters, to me at least.
Frankly at this point I wish the governments of the world would just hand the licensees $100m and annul all the patents for the public good. The cost of worrying about the damn licenses seems likely to eclipse the economic contribution of the IP itself.
You mention Macs and I'm not sure if there's been an official 1.1 release of the XiphQT Quicktime plugin yet, which would affect you if you're using Mac tools to generate the video.
Also, does Perian play Theora now? I'm guessing you meant the XiphQT plugin which enables Safari support.
As for the encoding, I was using ffmpeg2theora 0.25, which according to the release notes bundles libtheora 1.1. Whether or not I'm using it optimally, though, I can't say. I was loosely following the instructions for batch encoding here:
http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html
.. but no matter what I do, the .ogv comes out looking like a poorly encoded DivX.
Anyway I'll keep trying, thanks for the correction on the QT plugin.
But I checked the site, they only do vorbis in mkv.
Maybe on desktops, but not on portables. For whatever reason (bad implementations?), Ogg Vorbis takes more processing to decode than mp3. Numerous portable players have shorter battery lives when playing Ogg.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t5...
I suppose the solution would be writing an integer-based codec for Vorbis as well.
What is missing is decoding by DSPs built in mobile devices. You need to bug TI, Broadcom and other DSP makers for that.
A more recent set of figures shows that implementation can have an impact, but that if you've got control of the software you'll probably do better with Vorbis. Note the test is on matching bitrates, but Vorbis is more efficient per bit.
http://tuomas.kulve.fi/blog/2009/11/07/n900-battery-duration...
It also shows that FLAC has longer battery runtimes which I'm guessing is because flash based players no longer need to spin up disks more for the larger filesizes.
Yes, to reach certain quality targets using Theora might mean increased bandwidth cost, but it will also be the only major cost left, for a moment leaving aside the question of adoption. That seem to be a much more predictable cost model than what MPEG LA offers. It might, as well, turn out to be a more affordable model for smaller companies not reaching the MPEG license fee caps.
Paying more for a better product? I'd chose the, possibly higher, price of pushing Theora adoption and Theora-encoded bits now to get a promise of a better "quality", in more aspects than just the visual appearance, down the road.
For example, at the moment I'm working on a set top box. The processor is simply unable to handle 720p decoding. We need to rely on the decoder built into the chip to make it happen. And that decoder only does license-encumbered formats.
Because there are a lot of devices that fall into this category, content providers are pretty much constrained to generating content in the formats handled by hardware, which in turn reinforces the use of these formats in hardware.
Really, the only way out of this loop would be for the big-league device manufacturers - Apple, Sony, Samsung, etc to decide to change format. They don't seem to want to, so the rest of us are stuck with h264...
If the only widely adopted format on web becomes h264, which would already be the case if Mozilla wasn't resisting (which most of you attacked), then you have no other option than to use this format. And pay, unless your plan is to be unnoticeable.
And video is "everywhere". Just two examples from my real life:
- Screen-cast of usage on my subscription based projects
- My sister teaches elder people how to use computers. She is now preparing a set of video tutorials.
Do you like paying anything for thin air?
The absurdity goes even to this. If you compile the "Open Sourced" Chrome by yourself and distribute it you would have to pay the license to MPEG guys.
So the opportunity still exists for you or your sister to encode web videos for commercial use and have them playable by the majority of users today with no legal hassles.
The issue tends to be with the HD quality video craze thats happening now. VP6 is fine, but its noticeably different in quality to h.264. Most people wont notice the difference when encoded at high bitrates unless you know what to look for.
What bugs me is Apple is part of that whole h.264 consortium that owns the h.264 patents, yet the also serve on the web standards group defining html5... I don't think they can be impartial there, also denying flash on apple products is more to do with protecting the codecs that can be used to the ones they own. If you sell a app on the apple store that uses h.264 video then you better be sure you own the commercial license as apple know who you are.
It already is, thanks to Flash.
...which would already be the case if Mozilla wasn't resisting (which most of you attacked)
It already is and Mozilla is doing very little to stop it considering they continue to fully support Flash. What the are actually doing is hindering the adoption of the <video> tag, because their implementation doesn't support the formats that are actually in use.
The last time they introduced these streaming fees, everyone (including Apple and Real) went mental and predicted that MPEG-4 would die because the licensing was so insane. They had to make some concessions, though it seems unlikely that they got bartered down very far since they started so extreme.
So this time, they let the web broadcasters get away with it for nothing for years while they solidified the markets where they've already got a monopoly.
You've got to admit it's a smooth move, almost Bond-villainesque.
In August 1999, Unisys changed the details of their licensing practice, announcing the option for owners of Billboard and Intra net Web sites to obtain licenses on payment of a one-time license fee of $5000 or $7500. Such licenses were not required for website owners or other GIF users who had used licensed software to generate GIFs.
Edit:
I am completely opposed to web standards including proprietary codecs. HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle - this does not stop anyone from using h264 if they wish to. What it does is ensure that the web remains as free and open to use as possible.
If the working groups had plumped for Theora then optimisations and hardware would follow in pretty short shrift. It ain't going to happen and the reasons are commercial - this makes me sad for the future of the web, I see this is a big turning point. Kinda like if the developers of HTML4 had said "we know about the LZW patent but we're going to write in GIF as the standard requirement".
(Incidentally I gather that no image formats were written into the standards before?!).
So do you link to h264 videos from your intranet - want to buy a license for $10k? No? Switch to Theora as the best free alternative. OK, now none of the browsers support your video format natively. Congratulations you've been screwed again by MegaCorp.
In light of this article, that quote is quite interesting. Looks like this time around the software is only licensed to generate h264 for non-commercial reasons right from the get go. Something planning ahead?
You seem not to realize that Apple and Microsoft are the ones writing the "standards". Their goal is use HTML5 to make money, not to make the web "more free" or something.
Our only hope is that Google takes a stand.
Nope I thought it was the WHAT-WG and the HTML WG at the W3C. Yes major corporations have direct influence on these groups but so to do the OSS friendly browser corps and to some extent web designers and users.
Google are already using h264 in HTML5 on YouTube for capable browsers aren't they? Are they sending Theora/Vorbis streams at all? Seems clear where they are going then.
Yeah, exactly. I don't think Theora will ever see the light of day, and most users will just "pirate" h.264. It's a shame.
However, they support Theora in both Chrome and Chromium. In the Chromium OS demos they demonstrated playing Theora files from an SD card. They also purchased a company that creates codecs that don't infringe on MPEG patents and which was the original source of Theora.
I don't think it's clear at all which "side" Google is taking on this because as a large they'll get some benefit whether the web adopts royalty free codecs or not (e.g. if small, community specific Youtube competitors pay more per video than giant sites like Youtube that's good, but more video on the web generally probably helps Google too).
h.264 is not in the HTML5 standard and nobody is trying to get it put there. The reason it is a hot topic is that it is what people are actually using, not because of web standards.
HTML5 should have Theora (or some other open gratis and libre codec) as the standard which all browsers wishing to be HTML5 compliant must be able to handle
The point of the spec is to document what is shared in common across browsers. Mandating something that was not going to be shared in common would have turned the spec into a work of fiction.
It's usually a good idea to restrain from cooperating with such companies. Unless, of course, the market forces you to do that - which is the only reason they get away with such excessive licence conditions for a nowadays state-of-the-art technology.
The way I read the MS and Apple licenses is that they are just covering their asses, there is a greater than zero percent chance that there could be new MPEG fees that would make it unpalatable for them to continue to support it. I suspect that neither MPEG nor Apple or MS or Adobe or really anyone wants that to happen. At the same time the MPEG folks don't want to just take a one time fee and potentially leave money on the table. It's somewhat open ended, that's unsettling but how do you price that stuff? You could do it per use but everybody seems to find that unacceptable, you could charge a percentage of profits but not many companies would go for that, you could have a one time flat fee but that will usually be too large, so you kind of have periodic re-evaluation. For most users, it seems like it's simply an issue between them and their vendor, not MPEG.
Look at MP3, it is patented. Thomson has gone after companies and collected money on the patents. Nobody seems to care at all and it appears to be much more nebulous, they may or may not try to get you to pay them, it's not clear to me who is sued and why. That's shady...
I was making an encoder for them to download using ffmpeg but then realized I may have wasted my time because of the licensing of h264.
So the problem became: do I take the cost and encode their video or do I let them send the video prencoded for me. I had assumed that if they had encoding software that they have already paid for a license. Anyways, i've added support for ogg to the service (with warnings about it's usability).
Does anyone know if sorenson squeeze has this licensing issue?
Whoever handles the video distribution (you or your customers) also needs to license the codec. This too is free or cheap. It could all change in the future, but who knows if that will happen.
Personally, I'd be more worried about other parts of the encoding chain. What format are you using? MP4 requires a license. What audio codec? Both AAC and MP3 require a license, and they're more expensive out of the gate. And what about decoding inputs? You need to license decoders for whatever input you accept.
[1] http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Documents/AVC_TermsS...
I'm actually trying to figure out whether or not to have the user encode everything, and absolve me of any of the encoding details, or licensing everything myself and doing it for them.
Right now I'm planning to have the filmmakers encode and send me final deliverable product, but to ensure a standard of quality, I'm also requiring videos to use H.264/AAC or dolby digital, or Vorbis/Theora. Still ironing out the details, but obviously part of my service can be absolving them of licensing issues so I'm still not sure which way to go.
Also it's a pay-to-download service for films, so all videos will probably be longer than 12 minutes. Pretty sure I can't get it for free.
That said, the world needs an open-source video codec, and I'm glad that Mozilla is taking a stand here. MPEG-LA is much more likely to offer favorable licensing terms if it doesn't have a monopoly on web video.
Would it hurt user experience as much as not having ads or never being able to charge for accounts? Because that's what using the free version of h.264 implies.