Re: Recap from WebRTC World

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 10:19 AM, Gili <cowwoc@bbs.darktech.org> wrote:
>
> Ending the VP8/H264 war: A proposal was made to mandate a
> patent-unencumbered codec (whose patents have expired or are not enforced)
> as mandatory and optionally upgrade to other codecs such as VP8 or H264
> depending on peer capabilities and personal preferences. VP8 guys can use
> VP8. H264 guys can use H264. And if the two camps need to chat with each
> other they can fall back on H263. This gives you the flexibility of
> arbitrary codecs without the need to do transcoding.

I'd just like to note that this is not a new proposal and has had
extensive discussion. If you search for it, you will find a lot of
discussion about it.

In summary, it has been rejected mainly because it's a huge step
backwards in encoding quality, which would take away a big reason of
the uptake of WebRTC. Also, the assumption that it's unencumbered when
it's a known IPR-enforced format is flawed. In comparison VP8 provides
much higher quality and has the IPR agreement with MPEG-LA behind it
and the license statement stops companies that are using the codec
from suing on the codec. The Nokia court case around VP8 should
further clarify the IPR situation around VP8 and, given the already
widespread support of VP8, it seems likely that this is the last test
on VP8.

Given that the choice of H.263 would be a huge step backwards, the
easiest way to resolve this seems to me to just wait for the court
resolution. We're much better informed after that.

(Here's me hoping we're not going down a huge codec debate at this
point in time.)

Regards,
Silvia.

Received on Thursday, 27 June 2013 16:35:14 UTC