SIP (2017),vol.6,e13,page1of7©TheAuthors,2017. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. doi:10.1017/ATSIP.2017.14 industrial technology advances The internet needs a competitive, royalty-free video codec james bankoski, matthew frost and adrian grange In this paper, we present the argument in favor of an open source, a royalty-free video codec that will keep pace with the evolution of video traffic. Additionally, we argue that the availability of a state-of-the-art, royalty-free codec levels the playing field, allowing small content owners, and application developerso t compete with the larger companies that operate in this space. Keywords: Royalty free, MPEG, Alliance for Open Media, Video compression Received 15 August 2017; Revised 2 November 2017; Accepted 2 November 2017 I. INTRODUCTION II. BACKGROUND Given the central role that the internet plays in modern life, Thefirstdigitalvideocodecstandards,H.120(1984)and internet bandwidth should be considered a scarce resource, H.261(1988),weredevelopedattheInternationalTelecom- demanding careful consideration as to how we consume it munication Union (ITU) and primarily intended for video- to maximize its utility. phone and video-conferencing use-cases. Both standards Global internet traffic is predicted to increase nearly were royalty-free. It was not until the 1995 development of threefold between 2016 and 2021, and the proportion of MPEG-2/H.262 that standards defined video codecs were video traffic is expected to rise from 73 to 82 over the monetized when the US Department of Justice approved same period [1], driven in part by the move of content from MPEG-LA [2], a company unaffiliated with either MPEG broadcast to online delivery channels and to the rapid evo- orISO,toformapatentpoolwiththeaimofcollecting lution of virtual reality applications. There is considerable royalties from the patents considered “essential” for imple- concern that the growth rate of intellectual property (IP) mentation. Royalties were set at $6 per unit for devices that trafficwillexceedtherateatwhichnetworkcapacityisbeing could both encode and decode, and $4 per unit for a device expanded. capable only of decoding. Adding network capacity means increasing network This pricing was seen as a problem in early 2001 when speed, particularly the last mile where the traffic leaves the the research work around AVC/H.264 was begun by the high-speed trunk networks as it is delivered to individual Joint Video Team (JVT), a group of video coding experts consumers. This is both expensive and time consuming for from ITU-T Study Group 16 (VCEG) and ISO/IEC JTC 1 the network operators, and is not always possible. Thus SC 29/WG 11 (MPEG). A guiding principle was set for the the efficiency achieved by video compression is becoming development of a “baseline profile” that would be royalty- increasingly important. free: Inthispaper,wepresenttheargumentinfavorofanopen “The JVT codec should have a simple royalty- source, a royalty-free video codec that will keep pace with free “baseline” profile (both on the encoder and the evolution of video traffic. Additionally, we argue that the decoder) in order to promote the wide implemen- availability of a state-of-the-art, royalty-free codec levels the tation and use of the JVT codec. All implementa- playing field, allowing small content owners and application tions should have such a common baseline profile developers to compete with the larger companies that oper- core, in order to allow minimal interoperability ate in this space. This will ultimately result in a richer and among all JVT codecs. The above requirement more diverse internet. means that all technology applied in the baseline profile shall have no IPR, expired IPR, or valid but royalty-fee-free IPR.” [3] Google Inc. 1600 Ampitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA However, when it was time to declare IP for this effort, Corresponding author: J. Bankoski multiple participants refused to declare their IP royalty- Email: [email protected] free despite the fact that a majority of IP owners at the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.229, on 24 Sep 2021 at 16:15:12, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/ATSIP.2017.14 1 2 james bankoski et al. time voiced their support. Even though the baseline pro- codec can make a Type-3 declaration, potentially stalling the file performs significantly worse than thehigh” “ and “main” effortorrequiringsignificantworkaround.Evenifallofthe profiles, not all of the IP owners approved its usage for a submissions are accompanied by Type-1 declarations, non- royalty-free baseline. participants may use patents that put royalty free status in MPEG made a further attempt to define a royalty-free question. baseline when in July 2011 they issued a call for proposals Six years after the CfP was issued we still cannot point (CfP) for internet video coding that anticipated that patent to a single published royalty-free standardized codec and declarations associated with the baseline profile would be for those still in the standardization process, it seems very contributed on a royalty-free basis. Each of the resulting unlikely that they will see wider adoption than they already three submissions took a different approach: have today. Independent of the work taking place at MPEG, and at • Web Video Coding (WVC) spun out the Constrained Base- the request of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), line profile from AVC/H.264 as an independent standard, in 2011 the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) began • Video Coding for Browsers (VCB) is Google’s VP8 video an effort to define a“mandatorytoimplement”(MTI) codec, and, video codec for the WebRTC [5] project that was prefer- • Internet Video Coding (IVC) is built from a base of expired ably royalty-free. WebRTC applications [6]wouldfallback patent IP with new technology added. to use the MTI codec in cases where they are unable to negotiate an alternative, guaranteeing interoperability. WVCwaspublishedin2013andwhilesomeofthepatent AftermuchdebatetwoMTIcodecswereadopted,Google’s holders again refused to license their technology royalty- VP8, and the AVC/H.264 Constrained Baseline profile. free, the hope is that it will become royalty-free once those Bothareinactiveuseandwidelydeployedinmostmajor patents expire in the near future. VCB has been adopted by browsers. MPEG but the status at ISO is uncertain. IVC is nearing OutsideoftheMPEG,therehavebeenacoupleofnotable technical completion. efforts to produce a royalty-free codec. Microsoft published MPEG’s laudable efforts in this area have been hampered their VC-1 codec through SMPTE, but MPEG-LA estab- by the ISO/IEC rules regarding IP declarations. Standards lished a patent pool to collect royalties [7]. Google created bodies are provided with guidance to avoid consideration the WebM project [8] in 2010 after acquiring On2 Technolo- of intellectual property rights (IPR) in technical committees gies [9]. Their VP8 codec is widely deployed, has support in and are asked to let outside organizations (e.g. the World most browsers, and is utilized by many WebRTC applica- Intellectual Property Organization)handlelicensing.The tions, and its successor VP9 continues to achieve adoption only IPR statement participants are asked to make is a patent through its use by companies such as Google/YouTube and declarationthatasksthemtoselectoneofthefollowing Netflix. options [4]: 2.1 The patent holder is willing to negotiate licenses free of charge with other parties on a nondiscriminatory III. STANDARDIZATION basisonreasonabletermsandconditions.Suchnegotia- tions are left to the parties concerned and are performed A) Advantages outside ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC. (Type-1) 2.2 The patent holder is willing to negotiate licenses with Multimedia standardization ensures interoperability, and other parties on a non-discriminatory basis on reason- the ubiquitous support for content that plays back inde- able terms and conditions. Such negotiations are left pendent of the equipment manufacturer or application ven- to the parties concerned and are performed outside dor. The technical complexity of video codecs makes this ITU-T/ITU-R/ISO/IEC. (Type-2) difficult to achieve. Standards bodies achieve this by: (1) 2.3 The patent holder is not willing to comply with attracting participation from a large cross-section of the the provisions of either paragraph 2.1 or paragraph manufacturing community; (2) having mature development 2.2; in such case, the Recommendation | Deliverable processes; and (3) writing precise and accurate and highly shall not include provisions depending on the patent. scrutinized specification documents. (Type-3) From the perspective of a hardware vendor, standards provide a degree of certainty that the specification will not If a codec is to be considered royalty-free, all technology change that is less obvious when a technology is developed submissionshavetobeaccompaniedbyaType-1 declara- under the control of a single company. Considering the huge tion. However, an intellectual property rights (IPR) holder investment required to implement these standards in hard- gives up certain patent rights when they make a Type-1 ware and the complexity and cost