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posted by takyon on Tuesday September 01 2015, @09:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the open-for-business dept.

Seven big-name Internet companies today announced formation of the Alliance for Open Media – an open-source project that will develop next-generation media formats, codecs and technologies in the public interest. The Alliance's founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix.

Reportedly, the group plans to publish its code under the Apache 2.0 license and it will operate under W3C patent rules, meaning the members will waive royalties from the codec implementations and their patents on the codec itself.


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  • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:23PM

    by morgauxo (2082) on Wednesday September 02 2015, @03:23PM (#231299)

    Why do we need new codecs? I'm genuinely confused and would like to understand.

    Is it an issue of patents and royalties? I know I've been watching videos on my computer since about 1995. The patents on those codecs should be expired. Also, I use a lot of Linux and open source and have since about 1998. I can still play videos. If those codecs are patented and closed then who paid the royalties to make that open source software possible? Is patent violating software being openly distributed while nobody does anything about it? And if so then why do the patents even matter?

    Is it about quality? Can't pretty much any codec support arbritary resolution, color pallets, frame rates and compression levels? i would think that the same old codecs would keep working and content providers would just tweak those parameters as computers become faster, storage larger and user's internet connection bandwidth greater.

    Is it that different mathematical algorithms can compress the same quality of data into a tighter package? If so then how do we even know that? If such algorithms are already known then doesn't that define our new format already? If not then have mathmeticians via information theory have somehow shown that better compression is possible but the current task is to figure out how?

    The only problem I have ever had playing a video is DRM. I don't see new formats somehow convincing the industry to drop DRM though. Without answers to these questions all I see is that old XKCD comic about standards.

    Thanks for any thoughtful answers!

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @09:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02 2015, @09:56PM (#231459)

    WE need new codecs because we can save a bit of HD space and use those 8 core CPU, but OUR needs are already covered by vp9, theora and the like.
    THEY need to control stuff, including codecs. It doesn't matter who owns the patent, it matters for the corporation, but not for the system, who sees only money getting from point A to B, both under the same rules with the same managers, with the same mindset.
    This is why free and open stuff are never for the mainstream, even when they beat hands down the proprietary stuff.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @05:09AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 03 2015, @05:09AM (#231576)

    Video compression is perceptual - it is all based on how the human brain perceives things - the shortcuts our brains take in processing visual stimuli. It is possible that compressed video looks like shit to your cat because cat brains process visual input differently than humans.

    Thus there are no end-all and be-all 'mathematical algorithms' for video compression - it is an area of active research. But one thing is generally true, the more CPU power we have available, the more sophisticated tricks we can apply to a video to make it seem OK to our brains with less bitrate.

    That is all a vast over-simplification but good enough for now.

    And DRM is completely orthogonal to compression.