2013年5月14日
By 1月时特约编辑
专题文章

VP9 Is Almost Here, But a 诺基亚 Patent Fight Might Have it DOA

在上周的一系列博客文章中, Google detailed the final release schedule for VP9 and a few other implementation details. These 帖子s also indicated that YouTube plans to start using VP9 once it’s available in Chrome. 不幸的是谷歌, recent patent infringement claims from 诺基亚 seriously muddy the waters regarding whether or not VP8 and VP9 will ultimately be royalty free.

让我们从事实开始. 根据这帖子 by Paul Wilkins, a Google codec engineer, VP9 should be released on June 17. 根据 Lou Quillio, webmaster for WebMProject.org, there won’t be a new WebM container format; instead, the existing container will be extended to allow for VP9 video and Opus audio streams. There was no update on how VP9 compares to HEVC in terms of quality; the last word on that came in November, 2012, 当谷歌报道 that VP9 was about seven percent behind H.就质量而言.

关于YouTube，在这个博客, 马特·弗罗斯特, senior business product manager for the WebM Project, “上周”, we hosted over 100 guests at a summit meeting for VP9, the WebM Project’s next-generation open video codec. We were particularly happy to welcome our friends from YouTube, who spoke about their plans to support VP9 once support lands in Chrome.”

While skeptics might (correctly) point out that YouTube adopting WebM 做了 little to advance VP8, certainly the availability of a royalty-free codec that’s only seven percent less efficient than HEVC would be alluring to multiple parties, particularly given the uncertainty surrounding HEVC’s royalty picture. 回顾, the most beneficial aspect of Google’s open-sourcing VP8 was that it likely contributed to MPEG LA的决定做H.264 royalty free in perpetuity for free internet distribution, and it would be lovely if VP9 had a similar impact. 然而, Google is currently embroiled in its own VP8-related patent issues that make it far from clear whether or not VP8 or VP9 is or will be royalty free.

我听到你在想, “Didn’t I read in 流媒体杂志 that MPEG LA had issued Google a license on patents that may be essential to VP8?“是的，你做了, on March 7, the two parties signed such an agreement. 然而, 文章还指出, “While this is probably meaningless, it’s interesting that though 12 parties stepped forward in MPEG LA的 call for patents, only 11 patent holders were party to the agreement.”

实际上, it wasn’t meaningless; on the day after the Google/MPEG LA agreement, 第12次聚会, 诺基亚, 在对HTC的诉讼中, 声称在德国法庭上，VP8, as used in the Android operating system, infringes on one or more of its video compression-related patents. 诺基亚 followed that up with an intellectual property rights (IPR) 信息披露 to the Internet Engineering Task Force) that claims that the VP8 Data Format and Decoding Guide infringes upon one or more of its patents, and that it was unwilling to commit to any licensing terms.

根据 Florian Mueller, owner of the authoritative Foss Patents blog, the royalty picture for VP8 is far from clear. 在Google/MPEG LA协议之后, 穆勒写道, “Claims that VP8 is now free from per-unit or per-implementer license fees are grossly exaggerated. There are simply too many video technology patents out there, and the backers of WebM/VP8 are primarily companies whose own patent portfolios are too weak to resolve patent infringement issues through royalty-free cross-licensing.”

此时此刻, any potential user of VP9 (or VP8 for that matter) would have factor the potential costs of a lawsuit with 诺基亚 into their decision-making process, and you’d expect that the deeper the pockets, 起诉的可能性就越大. 从这个角度看, Microsoft’s and Apple’s decision to not incorporate WebM into their respective browsers seems a whole lot more reasonable.