- without dedicated processors, VP9's encoding is roughly 4.5x as slow as H.264, while with the VPUs, the two formats perform the same; this is a big win for the open format(s)
- sad extract: "Google has aggressively fought to keep the site's cost down, often reinventing Internet infrastructure and copyright in order to make it happen" (emphasis mine)
H.264 is an open format. Just not Royalty Free. The baseline of H264 will soon be "free" once those patents expires in 2023. ( Or basically MPEG-5 EVC )
The hardware encoding for VP9 being the same as H.264 is mostly due to hardware specifically optimise for VP9 and not H.264. The complexity difference is still there.
So it's definitely not any more open than H.264.
because the wholesale destruction and minimization of knowledge, education, and information to appease (often arbitrary) intellectual protectionism laws is sad, regardless of who perpetrates it.
non-Google example : What.cd was a site centered around music piracy, but that potentially illegal market created a huge amount of original labels and music that still exists now in the legal sphere.
No one would defend the legal right for what.cd to continue operating, it was obviously illegal; but the unique, novel, and creative works that came from the existence of this illegal enterprise would be sad to destroy.
Swinging back to the Google example : YouTube systematically destroys creations that they feel (often wrongly) infringe upon IP. This is often not even the case, Google routinely makes wrong decisions erring on the side of the legal team.
This destruction of creative work is sad, in my opinion it's more sad than the un-permitted use of work.
Of course, Google as a corporation should act that way, but it's sad in certain human aspects.
Have your own site in your own individual name with no corporate entity nor search for profit offering to host people's videos for free, and I guarantee you that within 24h you are dealing with things ranging from pedophilia to copyright violations and the like. And if you don't clear them out, you're the one responsible.
Google is acting the way society has decided they should act through the laws it voted. Could they act another, more expensive, way in order to save a bit more of content that get caught by mistake ? Definitely, but why would they as a company when the laws says any mistake or delay is their fault.
Source: like many people, I once made a free image hosting thingy. It was overrun by pedos within a week to my absolute horror and shock. Copyright infringement is obviously not the same at all, BUT the way the law act toward the host is not that different "ensure there is none and be proactive in cleaning, or else ...".
If you vouch for someone who is dodgy now you are also seen as a little dodgier than you were before. This doesn't necessarily mean you lose your account because you happened to vouch for someone, but it might mean that your vouching means less in future.
https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/n4a4l0/huge_history...
Even if not supported in the article here are two examples in the last couple of days of how YouTube is de facto defining copyright regulation.
Given their entire copyright takedown system is (in)famously entirely automated, I would have thought it would be trivial for it to always follow copyright laws to the letter.. if they wanted it to.
None of those things are trivial, and that's before rights assignment.
YouTube's system is built primarily to placate rightsholders and avoid human labor paid for by Google.
> this is a big win for the open format(s)
How is this a big win if you need dedicated processors for it to be as fast?
I honestly can't parse this sentence.
"Google creates dedicated custom proprietary processors which can process VP9 at roughly the same speed as a 20-year-old codec". How is this a win for opensource codecs?
For example OSX doesn't support it at all and iOS only supports VP9 in 4K/HDR mode and only for certain versions.
Heck, even the M1 supports VP9 in hardware up to 8K60.
I'm not sure where you got that macOS has no VP9 support, it works quite well.
YouTube uses so much bandwidth that this is still measured in millions of dollars but it’s really worth remembering that “at scale” to them is beyond what almost anyone else hits.
> After pushing out and upgrading to VP8 and VP9, Google is moving on to its next codec, called "AV1," which it hopes will someday see a wide rollout.
I still can't see how this is a win.
Vp8 seems to be the most supported on all platforms without melting your intel CPU. At least from when I was deploying a webRTC solution to a larger customer base last year.
> In May 2010, after the purchase of On2 Technologies, Google provided an irrevocable patent promise on its patents for implementing the VP8 format
This is significantly better than even h264 in terms of patents/royalties.
Would you mind elaborating on your hate? There's nothing for google to abandon here? It's already out in the wild.
How did you even come up with this question?
Please go an re-read my original question: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27035059 and the follow-up from me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27035112 and from another person: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27036150
But yeah, sure, I hate hate hate VP9 smh
VP9 running on custom circuits being equivalent speed to h264 running on custom circuits seems like a win for VP9? Since VP9 isn't royalty encumbered the way h264 is, that could well be a win for the rest of us too.
I can only repeat myself: "Google creates dedicated custom proprietary processors which can process VP9 at roughly the same speed as a 20-year-old codec". How is this a win for anyone but Google (who is already eyeing to replace VP9 with AV1)?
"The rest of us" are very unlikely to run Google's custom chips. "The rest of us" are much more likely to run this in software, for which, to quote the comment I was originally replying to, "without dedicated processors, VP9's encoding is roughly 4.5x as slow as H.264".
Note: I'm not questioning the codec itself. I'm questioning the reasoning declaring this "a big win for the open format(s)".