<videovortex> To all film/video makers: H.264 = lock-in via cameras, only licence for "non-commercial purposes" (!)

[Valentin Spirik]

Dear readers of this list,

this is about the future of (free) video/moving images production, post
production and distribution across a variety of devices and services.

And it is about (corporate) control over media content (using licensing fees
for codeces).

Having recently bought a small digital camera that also records 1280x720
H.264 compressed video @ 30fps, I was hoping to establish a good open-source
work flow for post production (that I was going to share with everyone
interested on my blog). It now turns out the problem might be non-solvable
from start (*at least, but not only* if your country allows software
patents):

You might have spent thousand of Euros/Dollars for your camera (e.g. a Canon
5D Mark II), yet you may use *your own* H.264 recorded footage only for
"non-commercial purposes" (!!!) - or you pay some more licensing fees to
MPEG LA.


Why Our Civilization's Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the MPEG-LA

http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA


In that context, Steve Jobs, 30.04.10, “All video codecs are covered by
patents. A patent pool is being assembled to go after Theora and other “open
source” codecs now.”

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then
you win." (Gandhi)


And a *very* interesting read, from the Theora mailing list:

Mutually assured minefields.

http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2010-April/003769.html


I'll be avoiding H.264 in the future and hope Google's (soon open-source)
VP8 codec will be the solution for all of this.


Valentin Spirik

http://indiworks.wordpress.com/
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