h264 is not Free

With news of the sudden royalty free amendment to the h264 license by the MPEG LA sweeping the web, it's easy to forget that this actually changes very little, indeed. You now won't ever be charged for viewing free video on the Internet.

You will still be charged for distributing an h264 encoder or decoder.

This means that if you're someone like the Mozilla group, you can't include h264 support for the HTML5 <video> tag without paying hefty royalties for the privilege. You might wonder what the problem is: surely it's right that one company licenses the right to distribute the technology of another? No. Not when it comes to the Web and the standards that underpin it (such as HTML5). Paying a royalty to take part in the Web defeats the entire point of an open internet, where ideas can be freely exchanged using the promise that the base standards are available to everyone on a royalty-free basis.

There's some sanity on this 'sweeping change' from the MPEG LA at Create Digital Motion.

H264 is not the only codec out there. You can distribute the encoders, decoders and content with WebM/VP8 and Ogg/Theora without restriction.

Use 'em.

Encoding x264 Video for the iPod Touch with mencoder

Update, 18-Aug-2012: I've changed to using an ffmpeg/mplayer combo to do this, as it's much more reliable and stable. See my new post for a breakdown.

I tend to view a lot of video content on my first-generation iPod Touch. It's great for travelling, with its these-days-paltry 16GB capacity able to store well over a dozen half hour episodes of whatever I'm following at the time.

While there are some wonderful graphical encoders out there (HandBrake springs to mind), what I was looking for was something I could script. I know that HandBrake has a command line interface, but I prefer mencoder's support for embedded subtitle streams, which is something I use often.

If you're on a fairly recent SVN of mplayer (say >= r31363), you'll find that mencoder now supports a profile in x264encopts. This is important! The default is high, which the iPod explicitly doesn't support. What you need is baseline, leading to something like this:

mencoder INPUT-FILE -o OUTPUT_FILE
	-vf scale=480:-10,harddup	# resize the video to whichever height is suitable for the max 480px width
	-sws 9	# Choose a really good scaler (lanczos)
	-of lavf	# use lavf for output
	-lavfopts format=mp4	# specifically, mp4
	-oac faac	# AAC audio for output
	-faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:raw:br=128	# Audio coding parmeters
	-mc 0 -noskip	# Really work at keeping A/V sync
	-ovc x264	# x264 video
	-x264encopts nocabac: bframes=0: level_idc=30: global_header: threads=auto: subq=5: frameref=6: partitions=all: trellis=1: chroma_me: me=umh: bitrate=768: profile=baseline	Video coding parameters. Note the baseline
	-aid 0 -sid 0	# Audio and subtitle tracks
	-subfont-text-scale 4	# Better subtitle scaling for an iPod sized device

(or, for a more cut n' paste friendly version:

mencoder INPUT-FILE -o OUTPUT-FILE -vf scale=480:-10,harddup -sws 9 -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:object=2:raw:br=128 -mc 0 -noskip -ovc x264 -x264encopts nocabac:level_idc=30:bframes=0:global_header:threads=auto:subq=5:frameref=6:partitions=all:trellis=1:chroma_me:me=umh:bitrate=768:profile=baseline -aid 0 -sid 0 -subfont-text-scale 4)

This transcodes the source in a single pass. Lots of people strongly advocate two-pass encoding, but really, I find the quality of a single pass encode good enough for the iPod screen. There's no denying that two-pass is higher quality, but the extra time to encode disposable content just isn't worth it in my opinion.

Apple's vision of an 'open' web

Apple are certainly 'thinking different' when it comes to the definition of 'open'. In their spat with Adobe regarding Flash on Apple's mobile products, Steve Jobs responded almost convincingly about why Flash isn't on the Apple mobile product line. The primary reason? Openness. Flash is a closed platform, whereas JavaScript, CSS and HTML 5 are all open.

The 'but' here comes from the HTML 5 part, which includes a <video> tag that essentially renders Flash video obsolete, with decode and render available natively in the browser, rather than through a plugin. The standards committee overseeing HTML 5 still hasn't agreed on what format that video should be delivered in. The de-facto standard of h264, a high-quality, industry-driven standard that's nevertheless mired in patent and licensing issues that are really sticky. Or Xiph's Theora, which has been designed to avoid using techniques covered by patents, and is available royalty-free (which most of us think of when we think 'free').

When it comes to browser support, the big three unsurprisingly lend their weight to h264. Mozilla's Firefox—distinct from the others in being the only organisation that's an actual browser company and also non-profit—throws its weight behind Theora, with that crazy idea that participating in the web shouldn't involve licensing fees just to access it.

Of the corporations, Google has interestingly promised to open source the VP8 codec and, since they own YouTube, could theoretically swing the balance by offering VP8 support in Chrome and VP8 YouTube videos, especially if Firefox supported the same.

But, back to Apple.

Steve Jobs reckons that there's no such thing as a free video codec. Furthermore, he issues a threat to Xiph over Theora (without including useful specifics, which relegates it to FUD).

So Steve: get a grip. The i-whatever ecosystem is locked down tight, and you're free to do that to whatever extent your customers are willing to put up with, but don't hide behind a wall of righteousness when dissing other technologies. Your 'open' arguments are empty with a platform and environment that is increasingly developer hostile.

As for me, I've owned a G4 PowerBook and am typing this on a two year old Macbook Pro. With each statement from Jobs regarding criticism of his closed platform, I find it increasingly unlikely that I'll buy a third. So hey, Apple marketing-types: your CEO's statements are costing you a £1500 sale, and most likely not just from me.

Edit:

Apparently Apple once believed in a royalty-free Web, too. However, despite the original having lived here on apple.com for years, it's recently been pulled.

Thankfully, George Orwell's Memory Holes are a difficult thing to accomplish with an open Web.

Hat-tip to ZeroGravitas on Hacker News for the info (and to Create on the comments page for the Memory Hole reference).