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MPEG LA Declares H.264 Standard Permanently Royalty-Free
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Mozilla's excuse was that the h.264 codec cost money so they weren't going to use it.
That was their official reason..
What is their reason now ?
It still costs money.
You do realise that nothing has changed with this announcement right ? What was true of H.264 yesterday still is today. The announcement just means it'll still be true in 2016.
How is Mozilla "playing" anything ? It's a browser not an internet streaming company.
Yes, this is why you should never question negatives. Many times you'll find no backing for them.
Because the royalty-free part of the license doesn't cover encoders or decoders. Which is what Mozilla would be implementing.
The summary is misleading, leading people to believe (as can be witnessed in this very thread) that this actually changes something and that now, H.264 is truely free when all that was announced was an extension on the status quo.
I'd say that's a pretty big negative.
Mozzilla would be charge royalties for decoding the video so it can play in the browser.
It is free to encode video to play on the web for free but the players that decode it even for a non profit like Mozzilla. They have to pay royalties.
Another example of the mess is look at MPEG-2 codex. This is what DVD are put in. That is not a free codex for a player to use. DVD player manufactures have to pay for the right to play DVD's.
Same here. Darned if I know how it works. So they are a non-profit group creating and maintaining a web browser, but this non-profit group has a corporate arm that profits from distributing the aforementioned browser.
I'm trying to see it as Red Hat with Linux, as in they make money selling their own package of open-source Linux, but Mozilla Corporation (profit) is wholly owned by Mozilla Foundation (non-profit) who uses the corporation to sell the non-profit work to make profits to fund the foundation non-profit work... huh?
That's not what they said. I quote: "In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video only". And by "only" I really think that they mean "only", as in "nothing else". That include WMV, AVI, VC-1 and other previously MS sponsored formats.
In this post they write that they will support other formats and codecs but not in HTML5, but in the usual WMP plugin to IE9, e.g. not natively in IE9. They take VC-1 as an example for plugin support even.
In this post however, they are saying that they will support VP8 (I guess they are meaning WebM) if the user provides the codec. My take is that they are restricting the use of formats and codecs natively in HTML5 to reduce the security issues. MPEG4/H.264 and WebM is _in_, and everything else is through a plugin. If you extend this topic to plugins and ActiveX-support then there's pretty much nothing that any web browser can support given the proper plugin.
The content provider encodes it. If they provide the content for free then the content provider pays no fee. If the content provider charges for the content then they pay the fee. Mozilla pays nothing for the plug-in used to decode it. Provided they don't charge.
you still are not understanding it.
The encoding and decoding software is not royalty free. No matter if the video playing is free on the web.
h.264 encoders are pay the royalty to encode it. Not a big issues there.
Decoder software on the other hand have to pay for that right to decode any h.264 video regardless if it is free or not.
Since the browser would have to function as a decoder it has to pay royalties in the terms of 5 mil plus a year. There is no plug in for that part of HTML 5. That is the browser handling it all. This is the issue.
Now if you want to sell video encoded in h.264 you have to pay royalties on that video. So in a sell of a h.264 video MPEG-LA is going to collect money from the software ecoding it, the software decoding it and the video itself. In a free h.264 video MPEG-LA is going to collect money from the encoding software and the decoding software.
The common person just is not getting it.
Sweet. This is really good news. Now if we could just get them to agree on a few more standards!!!
Mozilla and Opera’s argument against H.264 is philosophical anyway. Most PC users use either Windows (vast majority) or Mac. Both Microsoft and Apple include the H.264 codec in their operating systems by default.
In the actual world, it doesn’t matter if Opera or Mozilla includes the H.264 codec or not since their browsers could and likely will just use the built-in native H.264 codec provided by the operating system manufacturer. The same is true for the mobile OS manufacturers.
This is non-issue for consumers. MPEG LA is just trying to pacify critics who have been generating fear about H.264.
In the actual world, it doesn’t matter if Opera or Mozilla includes the H.264 codec or not since their browsers could and likely will just use the built-in native H.264 codec provided by the operating system manufacturer. The same is true for the mobile OS manufacturers.
This is non-issue for consumers. MPEG LA is just trying to pacify critics who have been generating fear about H.264.
You have to dig but MS did state that IE9 will have access to all the codex that the computer can use. This means if it plays in WMP it will work. now when IE9 ships it will only come wiht the h.264 codex and the user has to add in WebM to the system but as I pointed out it is a non issue since WebM will be in so many of the codex packages out there that the system will have it and their for it will play.
Yep, that's the way I'm reading it too.
Quote:
In the case of the (a) encoder and decoder manufacturer sublicenses:
For (a) (1) branded encoder and decoder products sold both to end users and on an OEM
basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of an operating system (a
decoder, encoder, or product consisting of one decoder and one encoder = “unit”),
royalties (beginning January 1, 2005) per legal entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no
royalty (this threshold is available to one legal entity in an affiliated group); US $0.20 per
unit after first 100,000 units each year; above 5 million units per year, royalty = US $0.10
per unit. The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an enterprise (commonly controlled
legal entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5
million per year 2009-10.8
In the case of the (a) encoder and decoder manufacturer sublicenses:
For (a) (1) branded encoder and decoder products sold both to end users and on an OEM
basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of an operating system (a
decoder, encoder, or product consisting of one decoder and one encoder = “unit”),
royalties (beginning January 1, 2005) per legal entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no
royalty (this threshold is available to one legal entity in an affiliated group); US $0.20 per
unit after first 100,000 units each year; above 5 million units per year, royalty = US $0.10
per unit. The maximum annual royalty (“cap”) for an enterprise (commonly controlled
legal entities) is $3.5 million per year 2005-2006, $4.25 million per year 2007-08, $5
million per year 2009-10.8
That one four letter word in bold there means to me that this only applies if Mozilla charges to have its browser preinstalled by OEMs or sell it to users. Give it away free, they don't pay any license fee.
But then again, if it's a third party decoder they need to actually buy to include even in the browsers given away free, that will have the license fee of 10¢ a unit attached to it. So can they just write their own decoder, hence no fee? The license fee appears to only apply when money changes hands for a decoder.
It seems to me it does appear a decoder to be royalty free, if it is itself free.
with all the arguments over firefox, I'm glad I'm using midori on linux. Native gtk interface, relying on ffmpeg and super fast speeds FTW!
minor clarifications
This is how it works today for IE8.
The h.264 codec is included in the current version of Windows, so .MP4 files play natively (even an <a href="foo.mp4"> brings up WMP to play the file).
I download the free K-Lite Codec pack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Lite_Codec_Pack), and now my Win7 x64 system plays .FLV without Flash, xvid, divx, ....
What you said isn't wrong - but it's not new, Windows has had an extensible codec library for a long time.
This is how it works today for IE8.
The h.264 codec is included in the current version of Windows, so .MP4 files play natively (even an <a href="foo.mp4"> brings up WMP to play the file).
I download the free K-Lite Codec pack (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-Lite_Codec_Pack), and now my Win7 x64 system plays .FLV without Flash, xvid, divx, ....
What you said isn't wrong - but it's not new, Windows has had an extensible codec library for a long time.
Well their argument is based on the HTML5 specs. The HTML5 spec says that the video element must only be a royalty-free codec. H.264 is not in the spec. :/
And:
Mozilla Firefox is shipped and distributed under a certain license.
http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/
H.264 is not compatible with their licensing so distribution is sticky for the open source-friendly Firefox.
Mozilla would not be able to bundle H.264 support, for instance unless they change their license or think of some other way to make this work.
K-lite is such a nice pack. It also includes the MPEG-2 codec in it. Now I did not know about the .FLV part. That is pretty cool. Either way you just more proved my point that WebM is going to be non-issue to IE because it will be put into the major codec packages like K-lite so most people will have it in their library.
This means the only browser will not support WebM is Safari.
h.264 is not going to be supported by over 30% of the browser market. Far cry from the less than 5% not supporting WebM.
umm..h.264 is in IE8 and 9. The only browser that won't support it is Firefox.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0