Eve: A New VP9 Video Encoder Offering Much Better Results

[liam]

You know, if you check into Netvc, both Mozilla/Xiph and Cisco provide updates on both codex's. As near as I can tell, Dalaa has been fairly active in the last few years hammering out the codex, Thor less so.
Then there is AV1 from Aomedia, which is completely in the dark. Unless you are a member of the alliance, which is something of a disappointment.

With h.265, the situation is a lot more complex. The main issue outside of the generally unknown/known patients on the codex that are floating in the wild, there are to two rather prominent patent pools (MPEG LA and HEVC Advance) collecting royalties on the codex that are unrelated to each other. So unlike h.264, which has one authority (MPEG LA) on patents aside from what is in the wild, h.265 is somewhat split since to be generally covered... you are paying for the protection at least twice.

Apple is something of the wild card in all of this, aside from the fact that they are rather happy with h.264. They have yet to really jump into h.265 by much, and seem to want to deemphasize it's usage.
Truth is, that is neither here nor their on if they are going to use the codex or not... but they jumped into h.264 relatively fast, so thing seems to mean... something.



Simply put, it is not being developed in the open, unlike Dalaa, or thor. It similar to the VP series after Google took control of it, the format is open, the codex is open, the development after code-dump is open, the development before code-dump isn't... there is no real way to have effective changes to the codex outside of some really random discussions that hit the mailing list.

AV1 has a repo you can examine/compile.

https://aomedia.googlesource.com/aom/+/master

[tessio]

I wonder, are the patents for h265/4 valid in the EU? If they are not, I see absolutely no point in using VP9.


Just like the majority of "open" standards. Including but not limited to Vulkan, C as well as the POSIX standard. There is absolutely no reason to refuse the use of an open standard just because it is not being developed in the open, assuming that it's better.


What makes it a proprietary codec in your opinion?

The format is open, royalty free, and uses the New-BSD license. What's the problem?

Software patents. An open source implementation of a patented codec is only free until you try to use it.

[FishB8]

If you're referring to x265, no that's an implementation, not a format — it cannot possibly solve the problems of the format, that there are, presently 3, organizations (MPEG LA, HEVC Advance and Technicolor SA) that demand a nonzero amount of money per copy of "a method or apparatus" that infringes their patents on H.265.

No, I'm referring to VP9. The original comment was "the Alliance for Open Media chose libvpx/vp9 as starting point for their new codec".

[float]

Software patents. An open source implementation of a patented codec is only free until you try to use it.

To my knowledge software patents are not a thing in Europe. USA does not get a special right to define what everyone else in the world may or may not use nor the right to limit free software implementations.

distros ship without MP3 support, and Mozilla without H.264

As far as I know, this is not true. Mozilla ships with OpenH264 (however it is paid by Cisco) and most of the distros I know do ship with mp3 support.
Just wondering, is there any other way for them to enforce royalties other than software patents? In a way that would apply to more countries. If yes, then it is indeed a problem.

[smitty3268]

To my knowledge software patents are not a thing in Europe.

This is a myth, or more accurately it's wishful thinking.

H.264 patents outside the US

I've seen a number of comments recently along the lines of "I'm in Europe, so the H.264 patents don't apply to me; why are you not letting me have a browser that plays my Youtube videos?" So I took a look at the list of patents on H.264. Or rather, the first 6 pages of the 43 page list. Excluding the US, there are relevant patents granted in at least the following countries:

• Europe: Germany, France, UK, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Bulgaria, Liechtenstein, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Ireland, The Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Portugal, Slovenia
• Asia: Japan, China, South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, India
• Americas: Canada, Mexico
• Australia

I wasn't reading very carefully; I'd be suprised if I didn't miss a few, or if a few more don't come later in the list somewhere.

That was from 2010, and you can bet things have only gotten worse since then. x265 is surely worse than 264 in terms of patents.

[DanL]

I'm not really sure why they're comparing a VP9 encoder to x264. VP9 is supposed to be competitive with HEVC.

[utack]

*face palm*
How could the Alliance for Open Media possible chose a proprietary codec as base for their free codec?

I did not say they should do that, but they could see that it is much better than libvpx,and decide to dump libvpx and start from scratch

[Gusar]

I'm not really sure why they're comparing a VP9 encoder to x264. VP9 is supposed to be competitive with HEVC.

What is supposed to be is very different from what the reality is. libvpx is a bad encoder, so whatever theoretical potential VP9 has, it hasn't been realized yet. This EVE encoder might change that, but the thing is, even potentially better tech has a hard time competing with x264. Nothing so far has come close to the psychovisual model of x264, so what the h264 format lacks in technical ability*, x264 more than makes up for with a good encoder implementation.

* Which isn't much really, larger transform sizes is the main thing, but that's basically only relevant for 4k. For example, the folks at the doom9.org forums who test x265 are *turning off* large transform sizes at HD and lower than HD resolutions, because doing so results in a better picture. So unless you're encoding 4k, the main advantage of newer codec formats (large transform sizes) doesn't even come into play.

[tessio]

To my knowledge software patents are not a thing in Europe. USA does not get a special right to define what everyone else in the world may or may not use nor the right to limit free software implementations.

Europe does not get a special right to define what everyone else in the world may or may not use, also.
And the world is not just EUA and Europe. Many other countries enforces software patents.

[andreano]

The format war is global anyway.