Video codecs without a future?

[10:03 Thu,1.February 2018 by Thomas Richter]

Leonardo Chiraglione, the founder of MPEG (Moving Pictures Expert Group, which is responsible for the standards for MP3, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEGH-H) complains in a blog post about the state of licensing of the current video codec H. 265/HEVC and predicts a gloomy future for the further development of ever more efficient video codecs.

He is concerned about the confusing licensing dispute surrounding H. 265/HEVC: several consortia claiming royalty payments on the use of H. 265/HEVC and thus driving up costs for the industry in comparison with its predecessor H. 264. There are 3 patent pools, one of which has not published its licence and a considerable number of patent holders who have not joined a pool (and have not published their licences). This results in a legal uncertainty for the use of H. 265/HEVC - a bad incentive for potential interested parties from the industry to obtain a HEVC license. Chiraglione even goes so far as to equate failure of the reform efforts within MPEG with a standstill in the development and improvement of future video codecs.

As a reform, he proposes to offer a lower-quality, free-of-charge version of the current MPEG codec (linked to certain license terms, however) in addition to a licensed version. Furthermore, in the future development of MPEG standardization, the ownership of certain methods should be clear at all times and should be shown in the respective encoder/decoder tool instead of different profiles, with the possibility to select one or the other version (with all - possibly depending on the rights to the different compression methods - different licensing consequences).

H. 265/HEVC license clutter

However, he deliberately overlooks the codec developments outside the MPEG on the part of large corporations, which can be understood as a reaction to their licensing confusion and which have an interest in a more efficient video codec. The AV1 video codec will be freely licenseable and is intended as a free competitor to H. 265/HEVC. The AV1 codec is made up of techniques and ideas from the codecs Daala (Mozilla), Thor (Cisco) and VP10 (Google) - but it will probably be available to the general public (and cast in hardware) as an alternative to H. 265/HEVC in 2019.

The AV1 codec should compress up to 30% better than H. 265/HEVC, i. e. deliver a higher image quality at the same bit rate or the same image quality at a lower bit rate. According to

Netflix, AV1 should not be released until at least 20% improvement can be achieved. The AV1 codec

includes a variety of (over 77) experimental compression methods, which can be tested first for quality, then tested and activated individually for licensing compliance.

Apple recently joined the Aomedia (Alliance for Open Media, which includes among others Google, Netflix, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, IBM, Amazon) - Facebook in November 2017 - so there is a lot of clout represented to enforce AV1 as an alternative - from the content side (Amazon, YouTube, Netflix) as well as from the software side (integration into the browser by Mozilla, Microsoft, Google and Apple) and the hardware side. All with a keen interest to avoid paying royalties for the H. 265/HEVC video codec. But whether the AV1 codec will be a success and be able to assert itself against H. 265/HEVC - and what this means for the future of MPEG - will only become apparent after 2019.

Here a demo of the quality of the AV1 in comparison with the HEVC codec - but a

Firefox Nightly Build with AV1 support is required.

more infos at bei blog.chiariglione.org

deutsche Version dieser Seite: Videocodecs ohne Zukunft?