[jzelinskie]

If you listen to older versions of Opus @ 32kbps, you'll hear the distortion more pronounced and then when you slowly upgrade versions you can hear it go away and then when comparing to uncompressed, you'll notice just because you know what you're looking for.

Xiph is amazing; I hope Daala actually becomes commonplace, but with the recent Apple announcements it's looking like a chance to usurp h.265 is basically gone.

[Scaevolus]

Many pieces of Daala are being folded into AV1, which is an industry effort supported by most large software and hardware companies to produce an HEVC replacement. This post summarizes the results of the different experiments: https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/revisiting/

Unfortunately some of the most innovative techniques around frequency-domain prediction ended up not panning out. :(

[kuschku]

Sadly, Google is trying to patent AV1, and only giving a patent license to users of its implementation.

If you want to build your own implementation, either to implement it in hardware, or to release it under a different license, then you’ll be fucked.

[TD-Linux]

The AOM patent license covers any implementation of the format. It additionally covers the reference implementation, because the encoder may use techniques that aren't part of the bitstream format, and it's important to grant rights to those too.

http://aomedia.org/license/patent/

[indolering]

Indeed, the whole point of Daala and AV1 is to do a really good job on the IP front so as to make it much harder for patent trolls to hold everyone hostage [0].

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Yc5Hn9bhQ

[boxerab]

Yes. They have applied for a patent on ANS and video compression - ANS is one of the biggest advances in lossless encoding in the last 10 years. The inventor wants to keep it freely available, has helped Google for three years to incorporate ANS in AV1 - their reward is to try to patent his invention. More details here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14583691

[shmerl]

That doesn't make sense really. Do you have a source for it?

[wolf550e]

https://encode.ru/threads/2648-Published-rANS-patent-by-Stor...

[shmerl]

403 Forbidden

Anyway, as TD-Linux said above, any implementation is allowed.

> 1.1. Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Licensor, on behalf of itself and successors in interest and assigns, grants Licensee a non-sublicensable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as expressly stated in this License) patent license to its Necessary Claims to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import or distribute any Implementation.

> 2.6. Implementation. “Implementation” means any implementation, including the Reference Implementation, that is an Encoder and/or a Decoder. An Implementation also includes components of an Implementation only to the extent they are used as part of an Implementation.

http://aomedia.org/license/patent/

I really have no idea what "to the extent they are used as part of an Implementation" means though.

[derf_]

> I really have no idea what "to the extent they are used as part of an Implementation" means though.

Say, for example, you make a chip that does motion search acceleration and you want to sell it to people who do both AV1 and H.264 encoding. You'd be covered for any patents included under this license to the extent the chip was used for AV1 encoding, even though you didn't make a complete encoder. To the extent someone wanted to use it for H.264 encoding, your or they would still have to negotiate a separate license (just as you would have if AV1 didn't exist).

Source: I helped write this license.

[redtuesday]

Someone archived the page, so for the people getting a 403: http://archive.is/362lF

[lern_too_spel]

The two big Internet streaming companies have chosen VP9 over h.265 and are both developing AV1 to use instead of h.265's successor. Apple's announcement is unlikely to change anything as far as what gets used on the Internet.

[voltagex_]

I predict a lot of angry smart TV owners - I have a 4K TV that can't decode certain VP9 profiles in hardware, so YouTube on the TV itself is very limited. Not sure what's available in S90x chipsets, though. Does anything do VP9.2 + Opus in hardware?

[clouddrover]

I think the solution there is to get a streaming stick or a streaming set top box that supports VP9 to plug into the TV. Or alternatively a small form factor PC like a Zotac mini pc, or palmtop if it's strong enough:

https://www.zotac.com/product/mini_pcs/zbox_p_series

Intel's Compute Card is aimed at giving you a way to upgrade the computing side of devices like TVs without having to buy a new TV:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/01/intels-compute-card-...

[AstralStorm]

Yes, the chips exist, but why do you need hardware decoding in something as unreadable as a TV?

[shmerl]

Such people can either use lower quality H.264 versions which are commonly provided, or as others said, get an external device to decode modern free codecs.

[shmerl]

> but with the recent Apple announcements it's looking like a chance to usurp h.265 is basically gone.

What announcement?

[reubenmorais]

I assume they're talking about HEVC support in macOS High Sierra and iOS 11.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/06/macos-high-sierra-del...

https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2017/503/

[shmerl]

That was expected, since Apple are part of MPEGLA cartel and they strongly oppose free codecs. But it doesn't really mean anything, since everyone else would have to pay arm and leg to use it, so the pressure to adopt free codec is still here. I hope AV1 will come out soon enough. Daala itself isn't really ready as is.

[indolering]

Apple held off on adoption of HEVC and they certainly don't make as much money as they pay. As much as I hate Apple's love for proprietary technology, had AV1 been released on schedule Apple might have adopted it.

[shmerl]

I'm not convinced. Otherwise they would have joined Alliance for Open Media. Their absence speaks for itself and shows where their allegiance lies.

[derf_]

More to the point, VP9 is available today and is a perfectly good substitute for HEVC, with the benefit that you don't have to pay for a license from three different patent pools and an as-yet unknown (but certainly non-zero) number of third parties on undisclosed terms in order to use it.

[quikee]

Apple probably held off adoption so that HEVC patent license situation improves a bit (at least most companies with patents join in some pool or start to offer licenses).

If AV1 would be released sooner it wouldn't be even as good as HEVC, which would be bad. VP9 is already that free-but-not-as-good-as-HEVC codec. Also they would need to release AV2 in 1 or 2 years (as the better-than-HEVC codec), which is just too soon after AV1 and would put a big question on why AV1 was released at all...

[eutectic]

Daala is dead, AV1 is the current contender.

[shmerl]

Daala isn't dead, but it's not production ready. AV1 is using Daala in part for the reference.

[Caspy7]

I'm actually unsure what's meant by reference here. But VP9/10 is the base codec on which AV1 is being built, but many of the most significant innovations from Daala are being folded into AV1.

Daala isn't dead and will continue to have value, at the very least as an experimental/development codec, but it may also form the base of a future static image format (it compares very well against JPG and HEVC/BPG. This is comparison is over a year old so it's even better now: https://people.xiph.org/~jm/daala/revisiting/compare.html

[shmerl]

> I'm actually unsure what's meant by reference here.

Same as FYI, not as in reference implementation or anything like that.

[eutectic]

My understanding is that most of the development effort has been moved over.

[shmerl]

I don't think it can move fully, since Daala is by design a different type of codec (using lapped transforms), while AV1 is more "classic" / block-DCT type of codec.

I.e. it makes sense to develop Daala further. Not sure what's going on in practice though. I guess it's better to ask Xiph / Mozilla.

[derf_]

Our development is focused on AV1 for now.

We may return to Daala in the long term: it has competitive performance with HEVC on perceptual metrics despite a vastly simpler design than AV1 or even VP9, and despite being less mature than the classic block-based approaches and missing many tools that we simply didn't have a chance to implement (e.g., Daala has only basic MPEG2-style B-frames with no bi-prediction, as just one example).

Like the old adage says, if you have two baseball players who can run to first base in the same time, and one has perfect form while the other one looks lousy, which one do you pick? The guy with lousy form, because teach him the right form...

However, a lot of Daala's design is predicated on having a very constrained legal budget and not being able to rely on anyone else's patents. With the Alliance for Open Media, both of those constraints are relaxed. So even in the best case the result is likely to look pretty different from the way Daala looks today. Ultimately we're interested in making a codec people will actually use, and that means working with our partners.

[indolering]

It seems as if there are diminishing returns in DCT based codecs. I would think switching to greenfield technology would be a necessity.