- Joined
- Jun 2, 2022
- Messages
- 349 (0.49/day)
| System Name | HP EliteBook 725 G3 |
|---|---|
| Processor | AMD PRO A10-8700B (1.8 GHz CMT dual module with 3.2 GHz boost) |
| Motherboard | HP proprietary |
| Cooling | pretty good |
| Memory | 8 GB SK Hynix DDR3 SODIMM |
| Video Card(s) | Radeon R6 (Carrizo/GCNv3) |
| Storage | internal Kioxia XG6 1 TB NVMe SSD (aftermarket) |
| Display(s) | HP P22h G4 21.5" 1080p (& 768p internal LCD) |
| Case | HP proprietary metal case |
| Audio Device(s) | built-in Conexant CX20724 HDA chipset -> Roland RH-200S |
| Power Supply | HP-branded AC adapter |
| Mouse | Steelseries Rival 310 |
| Keyboard | Cherry G84-5200 |
| Software | Alma Linux 9.1 |
| Benchmark Scores | Broadcom BCM94356 11ac M.2 WiFi card (aftermarket) |
Today is a special day unbeknownst to the vast majority of tech/multimedia lovers probably: the last (apparently) US patent on MPEG-4 ASP (Advanced Simple Profile) expires today.
https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-October-1-2023-MPEG-4-Visual-Attachment-1.pdf
MPEG-4 Visual patent list
Only three Brazilian patents appear to still be active. The MPEG-4 ASP subsets/profiles known as DivX, supported by many hardware DVD and Blu-ray players, are better known. This means that MPEG-4 ASP (and by extension DivX) can now (apparently, I am not a patent lawyer!) be freely used (just like MPEG-2 and AAC-LC for some years now), even for commercial use, in the US (where the concept of software patents is well established) without having to worry about acquiring patent licenses or using a licensed decoder/encoder or even content fees (which later returned for H.264 and H.265).
You may wonder, "why does this matter when I can simply use newer, more advanced video codecs such as VP9 or AV1, which are claimed and widely considered to be "free and open" royalty-free video formats that do not require any patent licenses, that can achieve a significantly higher level of compression and save a bunch of disk space?". The answer is this that these newer "royalty-free" formats have turned out to seemingly require patent licenses after all if you do not want to potentially get sued by patent holders or their representatives:
Sisvel Announces AV1 Patent Pool
Sisvel VP9/AV1 pools re-launch and editorial response
Sisvel Launches Patent Pools for VP9 and AV1
Of course, whether the involved patents are valid and applicable is unclear and subject to dispute. But only one of the many patents that AV1 (or VP9 for that matter) is claimed to infringe upon needs to be deemed to be valid and applicable (in the US if you are located there) for AV1 to lose its royalty-free status and things to become much more complicated for those who want to use it. And patent licensing issues involving video formats continue to cause major issues in the open source software world
Of course, there are still older royalty-free alternatives to VP9 and AV1, VP8 and Theora, but those have never enjoyed the level of hardware or software support that MPEG-4 ASP (sometimes also referred to as "MPEG-4 Part 2" or "MPEG-4 Visual") has nor have they ever received the amount of patent/legal scrutiny that MPEG-4 ASP has by virtue of it having been a much more popular format, making MPEG-4 ASP still a safer bet (unless you are in Brazil or have a commercial presence there, obviously). There also is only 1 open source and cost-free encoder that is considered to be efficient/good quality in terms of its output at a given bit rate for Theora and VP8 each (libtheora and libvpx, respectively), while MPEG-4 ASP has 2: ffmpeg's native "mpeg4" encoder and the well-known XviD encoder, for which many front-ends exist and which is also supported by the ffmpeg program, and additionally there are cost-free closed source encoders such as the official DivX one.
As mentioned earlier MPEG-4 ASP (or at least the DivX subset in the case of optical disc playing appliances) has (or at least had) broad hardware support. If you have a dedicated DVD or Blu-ray player, there is a good chance it can play DivX, sometimes even from a USB drive. It is also supported by the PS3 and PS4 (MPEG-4 ASP in AVI container) as well as the Xbox One. The UVD3 hardware video decoding ASIC on the Radeon 8450G iGPU in the Richland APU of my ProBook 645 G1 also supports MPEG-4 ASP as do all UVD versions up til 7.2 (the last version, used in Vega dGPUs) and all versions up til and including 3.1 of its successor, VCN. This means that all AMD Radeon dedicated graphics cards until Navi 3x and all AMD iGPUs in APUs until Rembrandt/Mendocino support hardware MPEG-4 ASP decoding. Unfortunately Intel Quick Sync Video (and therefore Intel HD series iGPUs) appears to never have supported MPEG-4 ASP. All Nvidia GPUs from at least the GT 2xx series appear to support MPEG-4 ASP hardware decoding: Nvidia PureVideo, VDPAU support. Cheap TV boxes and single board computers based on many Rockchip and Amlogic SoCs also support hardware MPEG-4 ASP decoding.
Certainly by 2030 all the H.264 patents should have expired, but until then there is MPEG-4 ASP!
https://www.via-la.com/wp-content/uploads/Final-October-1-2023-MPEG-4-Visual-Attachment-1.pdf
MPEG-4 Visual patent list
Only three Brazilian patents appear to still be active. The MPEG-4 ASP subsets/profiles known as DivX, supported by many hardware DVD and Blu-ray players, are better known. This means that MPEG-4 ASP (and by extension DivX) can now (apparently, I am not a patent lawyer!) be freely used (just like MPEG-2 and AAC-LC for some years now), even for commercial use, in the US (where the concept of software patents is well established) without having to worry about acquiring patent licenses or using a licensed decoder/encoder or even content fees (which later returned for H.264 and H.265).
You may wonder, "why does this matter when I can simply use newer, more advanced video codecs such as VP9 or AV1, which are claimed and widely considered to be "free and open" royalty-free video formats that do not require any patent licenses, that can achieve a significantly higher level of compression and save a bunch of disk space?". The answer is this that these newer "royalty-free" formats have turned out to seemingly require patent licenses after all if you do not want to potentially get sued by patent holders or their representatives:
Sisvel Announces AV1 Patent Pool
Sisvel VP9/AV1 pools re-launch and editorial response
Sisvel Launches Patent Pools for VP9 and AV1
Of course, whether the involved patents are valid and applicable is unclear and subject to dispute. But only one of the many patents that AV1 (or VP9 for that matter) is claimed to infringe upon needs to be deemed to be valid and applicable (in the US if you are located there) for AV1 to lose its royalty-free status and things to become much more complicated for those who want to use it. And patent licensing issues involving video formats continue to cause major issues in the open source software world
Of course, there are still older royalty-free alternatives to VP9 and AV1, VP8 and Theora, but those have never enjoyed the level of hardware or software support that MPEG-4 ASP (sometimes also referred to as "MPEG-4 Part 2" or "MPEG-4 Visual") has nor have they ever received the amount of patent/legal scrutiny that MPEG-4 ASP has by virtue of it having been a much more popular format, making MPEG-4 ASP still a safer bet (unless you are in Brazil or have a commercial presence there, obviously). There also is only 1 open source and cost-free encoder that is considered to be efficient/good quality in terms of its output at a given bit rate for Theora and VP8 each (libtheora and libvpx, respectively), while MPEG-4 ASP has 2: ffmpeg's native "mpeg4" encoder and the well-known XviD encoder, for which many front-ends exist and which is also supported by the ffmpeg program, and additionally there are cost-free closed source encoders such as the official DivX one.
As mentioned earlier MPEG-4 ASP (or at least the DivX subset in the case of optical disc playing appliances) has (or at least had) broad hardware support. If you have a dedicated DVD or Blu-ray player, there is a good chance it can play DivX, sometimes even from a USB drive. It is also supported by the PS3 and PS4 (MPEG-4 ASP in AVI container) as well as the Xbox One. The UVD3 hardware video decoding ASIC on the Radeon 8450G iGPU in the Richland APU of my ProBook 645 G1 also supports MPEG-4 ASP as do all UVD versions up til 7.2 (the last version, used in Vega dGPUs) and all versions up til and including 3.1 of its successor, VCN. This means that all AMD Radeon dedicated graphics cards until Navi 3x and all AMD iGPUs in APUs until Rembrandt/Mendocino support hardware MPEG-4 ASP decoding. Unfortunately Intel Quick Sync Video (and therefore Intel HD series iGPUs) appears to never have supported MPEG-4 ASP. All Nvidia GPUs from at least the GT 2xx series appear to support MPEG-4 ASP hardware decoding: Nvidia PureVideo, VDPAU support. Cheap TV boxes and single board computers based on many Rockchip and Amlogic SoCs also support hardware MPEG-4 ASP decoding.
Certainly by 2030 all the H.264 patents should have expired, but until then there is MPEG-4 ASP!