H264 and licensing

[rockouthippie]

Sankt dropped me an email about H264 licensing, and I did a little research.

VIA handles the licensing for H264 and mpeg4 codecs. It looks like licensing is like this.

$.25 per unit like a DVD player or playback software.
2.5 cents an copy for media embedded as with a DVD.

50,000 units or $500 is the grace where you don't owe any royalties.

Would Winamp pay $.25 a player for us to have this codec?.

The good news is that you can use x264 and broadcast internet tv with it. No royalties apply unless you write a permanent media (like a DVD) or sell software with this technology. Broadcasters and webs are exempt.

The good and the bad, but not that dire of a situation.

[sankt]

I bet the H 264 folks would be willing to offer a more support than ON2 did.

NSV is a fantastic way to highlight and show off a companies video codecs.

[putnam]

Originally posted by sankt
I bet the H 264 folks would be willing to offer a more support than ON2 did.
x264 is open source and h264 is just a standard. They don't need to offer "support" like On2 should have. On2 had proprietary closed source stuff that we had to beg them to make changes on, and they completely ignored the community when it asked for Mac support.

On2 needs to be dropped like a bad habit right now and I'm happy to know our work is going to soon be made useful.

And I daresay Macromedia made a mistake licensing VP6 for Flash

[putnam]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
VIA handles the licensing for H264 and mpeg4 codecs.
No, VIA is one of two choices. AOL can choose to license through VIA or MPEG-LA. Both have their own terms.

MPEG-LA's pricing is available here: http://www.mpegla.com/avc/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf

See item a(1) on page 2.

VIA's pricing is here: http://www.vialicensing.com/products/AVCH264VC/license.terms.html

With VIA you're looking at a $15,000 initial fee and a 0.25/unit royalty with a cap of $4M, which seems to be static over the years.

With MPEG-LA I don't see an initial fee and the cap is at $3.5M this year and next year, but the cap increases over the years - $4.25m in 2007 and 2008, then $5m in 2009.

There is speculation at the Doom9 forums about why the patent holders would want to have 2 different licensors, and the general idea is that they want to create competition so prices are driven down and that will help get the standard adopted easier.

This whole licensing scheme is really fucking stupid. You can (almost) freely use the decoder support, but it is limited to 30 days of use before you have to pay royalties. And the royalty doesn't split up encoding and decoding; you can't buy just one. This is completely fucking retarded to me because obviously you're going to have a lot of media player software out there that doesn't even care about encoding the codec. Encoding is where the money is.

This might ruin the whole x264/h264 idea for Winamp, though I'm not sure. I wonder if people at AOL even give a shit about this.

It could probably be included with Winamp Pro, but that would be pointless for broadcasters in the YP.

I think a big question is how many units Winamp Full ships per year. You'd have to ship 35 million units of it to hit the MPEG-LA cap of $3.5M next year. In comparison, 5 million units would only be $500,000 (after 500,000 units its 0.10/unit).

The licensing is just plain stupid, as if they didn't even consider software players that might use the codec. It looks like they really wrote this toward hardware manufacturers (and you can tell by looking at the Licensees page on MPEG-LA's site).

[gaekwad2]

Would that cap also apply if AOL licensed it for use in all their software, not just Winamp?

[putnam]

The caps apply on the enterprise level (at least for MPEG-LA), so I think AOL could use it on any product they choose.

[rockouthippie]

Via covers both licenses and (from the VIA license agreement)

THRESHOLD ROYALTY FREE PROGRAM

For parties that manufacture and/or distribute less than 50,000 Devices per year AND derive less than US$500,000 of annual revenues from the combination of Devices distributed and revenues from content sold/rented subject to the Replication Fee, a program will be available that does not require an initial fee, nor payment of royalties for Devices and Replication Fees. This program will not require specific product or revenue reporting, but may require an annual certification that the use remained under the limits and an obligation by the party to notify the administrator upon exceeding the limits.

So see you can use H264. Whether AOL would license the software is another question because obviously they would exceed the limits.

[putnam]

My posts have been about including h264 support with Winamp

[rockouthippie]

H264, with or without Winamp is the same thing. I can't see any reason that VIA would want to make a special arrangement with AOL and vice versa. But it isn't impossible.

Unlike the vice grip that was on MPEG2 patents and Windows codec patents, the terms for this patent are far more friendly.

Of course, nothing prevents us from distributing this codec in small quantities.

This is a lot better than most of the other open source codecs in that they aren't legal to use at all.

[CraigF]

So what?

The point here is that without support in Winamp as STOCK, its not worth using.

So any plans along the lines of "oh, well, the pro version could pay towards h264" are all moot.

[rockouthippie]

Not worth using w/o Winamp stock support. I might not go that far, but it would certainly be an inconvenience.

Tech support on these sites is an issue. I try to organise things so that's not a big issue, but ????.

I think Winamps decision would be easy. Can Winamp make a dollar for the quarter a copy they spent on the patent?. My guess would be no.

And if Winamp was going to spend some money on us, maybe there would be better places to spend it. Like fixing NSV tools in general.

[Inedible Bulk]

Originally posted by rockouthippie
Not worth using w/o Winamp stock support. I might not go that far, but it would certainly be an inconvenience.

People don't like reading. It's a fact. It's been covered in a really good talk by Richard Kyanka (http://www.somethingawful.com/articles.php?a=3318). He explains that people are for some reason on the internet, but hate reading.

People would connect to a stream listed in the YP, see the video isn't working, and move on. Or, they'll look for your contact info, and email you to tell you it's not working. Maybe 10% or so will find your FAQ page and get the codec or codec installer (better way to go: nsis installer for .dll), but the rest are pretty lazy and since winamp plays mp3, ogg, and pretty much anything else they throw at it, it must be your fault.

And the 10% who visit the FAQ page are of the people that care to find and load your website in a browser (clicking is also something they don't like doing, for some reason). It makes sense, too. TiVo is more popular than ReplayTV because it's more "turn off your brain and enjoy" type activity. This is also why the iPod is popular, it's dead simple.

So yeah: inclusion in stock winamp = dealbreaker. This paragraph is for those people who don't like to read.

[Jeeper One]

Hi everyone:Originally posted by rockouthippie
H264, with or without Winamp is the same thing. I can't see any reason that VIA would want to make a special arrangement with AOL and vice versa. But it isn't impossible.Personally I think AOL would be CRAZY not to pursue a license with (at least) one of the companies.

But that's JMHO. :DUnlike the vice grip that was on MPEG2 patents and Windows codec patents, the terms for this patent are far more friendly.Don't forget the codecs for what most anyone with half a brain now refers to the RealSpyware system.

But yeah, I'd have to agree that H.264 looks good so far. :DOf course, nothing prevents us from distributing this codec in small quantities.I would just assume point to a Google search on H.264 decoders and let people download what they will. I did this for my video blogs (they use PSP-compatible MP4) and it seems to work out just fine.This is a lot better than most of the other open source codecs in that they aren't legal to use at all. If they aren't legal to use, then how on earth can they be considered "Open Source"?

ANSWER: They aren't & can't.

Again....Just my humble opinion :D

[rockouthippie]

Originally posted by Jeeper One
HDon't forget the codecs for what most anyone with half a brain now refers to the RealSpyware system.


No kidding. Holy Catfish Batman. Did they lose their mind?. I remember when Real was cutting edge...... the best player..... Maybe the 770 million that Microsoft gave them could stop a couple of popups?.

[gaekwad2]

Originally posted by Jeeper One
If they aren't legal to use, then how on earth can they be considered "Open Source"?

ANSWER: They aren't & can't.
Huh? What does one have to do with the other?

Their source code is open, and legal.
Using them without a license isn't.

[rockouthippie]

Since licensing isn't available or has terms that are impossible, it's much the same thing.

In contrast we have x264 which has reasonable terms for it's license.

[gaekwad2]

Erm, yes. But that still hasn't got anything to do with the source code being open or not.

[CraigF]

x264 still doesnt give you a license to use h.264

[rockouthippie]

No, but the h264 license would cover x264 or any other software you created to do h264 encoding.

For our purposes using h264 is quite legal. Winamp, because of it's broad distribution would be required to pay the license.

Under 50,000 copies and <$500,000 revenues. I wish I had to worry about that :)