编解码器发展新规则

I这两家公司花了大约10年的时间才推出.264和HEVC, 所以MPEG更加雄心勃勃的推出了VVC, EVC, LCEVC in 2020 and 2021 makes you wonder about its chances for success. Not only does it have to effectively differentiate each codec against the other, it also has to create compelling business cases against the Alliance for Open Media's (AOMedia) AV1 and existing MPEG codecs like HEVC and even H.264，这是静止的很健壮. Recent developments have resulted in what I am calling the new rules of codec deployment, they will complicate the success of any standards-based codecs.

The first rule is that fewer companies will deploy a royalty-bearing, standards-based codec without knowing the royalty cost. 在 past, many companies started adopting H.264和HEVC before the business terms were known because their success seemed assured and earlier standards had rational royalty policies. HEVC改变了这一切, 哪一个 saw three patent pools launched within 1–4 years after the standard finalized and after many companies had already committed to the technology, 假设价格合理的话. It wasn't; known annual royalty caps skyrocketed from around $10 million per year for H.从2.64美元到6000多万美元, that's without knowing the cap from one of the pools that won't publicly disclose it.

在大卫·隆卡的话, 他是Facebook的视频编码总监, 当EVC和/或VVC有明确的版税条款时, 它们可能是有趣的编解码器. 与此同时, don't be surprised if there are few companies willing to jump on the 'deploy our codec now, trust us for fair and clear royalty terms' train. 我们在2014年做到了. 进展不太顺利."

沿着这些路线，媒体编码产业论坛(MC-IF) 创建, 在某种程度上, to help accelerate and coordinate the formation of a cohesive and reasonable royalty policy. MC-IF has started the patent-fostering process to identify a single patent pool administrator for forming a single pool and setting and releasing royalty terms. But it hadn't announced the administrator as of Dec. 8, 2020, after the pool is formed, it will take a few months to fix and announce the royalty. So, it's reasonable to expect royalty terms sometime after mid-2021.

EVC reached First Draft International Standard (FDIS) in 2020年6月, MPEG is hoping for license terms to launch within 2 years of FDIS. 如果要花这么长时间, potential implementors wait for royalty terms before committing to the technology, it could be sometime in 2022 before substantial integration work begins. [Editor's note: The preceding paragraph has been modified to reflect the current situation. Thanks to Stefan Schreiber for the clarification.]

The only technology that's ahead of the curve is LCEVC, 哪一个 announced the availability of licensing terms to implementers in December 2020. 有趣的是, V-Nova, 哪一个 claims to own virtually all of the IP in LCEVC, plans to charge a small capped royalty on streaming publishers that use the codec, 不是在浏览器上, 电视, 以及其他能够播放的播放器.

The second rule is that standard-based codecs can forget playback without browsers owned by Google and Mozilla and perhaps Microsoft. 尽管谷歌从未跟进在其 2011年承诺移除H.从Chrome播放264, Google has refused to integrate HEVC playback in any version of Chrome, even on devices where Google could leverage existing HEVC decoding on the system without paying a royalty. Mozilla也一样.

While premium content services enjoy significant playback on living room devices that don't require a browser, the overwhelming majority of smaller publishers see their videos consumed on browsers that are on computers and mobile devices. If the codec isn't supported in the browser, these publishers can't use it.

当然, browsers aren't the only segment where AOMedia members dominate; you have content publishers (Netflix, 亚马逊, YouTube), mobile and desktop operating systems (Apple, Google, Microsoft), chipmakers (Intel, AMD, NVIDIA), OTT devices (Google, 亚马逊, Apple), phone/tablet vendors (Samsung, Google, Apple). All of these companies are in a position to block or slow the integration of any 新的编解码器不符合AOMedia的目标, 哪一个, 当然, is any codec other than AV1 and its successors.

There are some traditional markets like contribution and news collection where AOMedia doesn't have a significant role and where standards-based codecs will continue to flourish. But these markets are shrinking, while streaming-related markets continue to expand. 如果我拥有任何基于标准的编解码器的IP, 我会把注意力集中在我能控制的事情上, 哪一个 is quickly announcing a royalty policy that promotes usage rather than detracts from it.

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