Dualing video codecs square off at broadcast conference
By Junko Yoshida
EE Times
September 13, 2003 (1:54 a.m. ET)
AMSTERDAM, the Netherlands — The battle between two competing next-generation video codecs — H.264 and Windows Media 9 — escalated this week during the International Broadcast Convention (IBC) here, with Microsoft Corp.'s sudden declaration that it will make its proprietary Windows Media 9 video codec a movie and TV standard.
Meanwhile, Via Licensing Corp., an IP licensing agency, announced Friday (Sept. 12) the availability of preliminary financial licensing terms for patents essential for H.264 implementation. The industry had been waiting for such a sign, indicating that H.264 IP rights issues might finally be resolved. However, Via Licensing fell short of disclosing individual companies participating in its patent pool.
Video codec quality, standards-based technologies over proprietary solutions and the availability of reasonable license terms stand out as the three keys for any video codec to gain a broad adoption among broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers. Proponents of H.264 and Windows Media 9 are both accelerating their efforts here to win over the broadcasting industry.
In particular, Microsoft's move - using the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) as a backdoor to portray Windows Media 9 as "an open standard" — is viewed by many here as a calculated move to gain support for the proprietary technology from both the broadcast and telecom industries.
Jonathan Usher, director of the Windows Digital Media Division, said, "Windows Media 9 video has been receiving a lot of positive comments from broadcasters since we launched it at IBC a year ago. But we've been told by broadcasters that it would be even better if Windows Media 9 were an open standard."
Despite the gambit, Microsoft appears untroubled that it might be single-handedly undermining years of intensive H.264 joint development efforts by standards bodies. Ironically, a Microsoft executive chaired the H.264 joint video team and successfully guided the group to completion of the H.264 spec that was ratified last May.
Microsoft's Usher defended his company's position, by noting, "We eventually came to different conclusions." He explained, "H.264 was all about compression efficiency. But we at Microsoft needed to strike a good balance between the compression efficiency and computational efficiency because of our desire to do decoding in software on a PC platform."
Besides computational efficiency, Usher also claimed "some advantage" of Windows Media 9 video codec in encoding quality. "We are definitely on a par or better than H.264," he said. "Many experts in Hollywood actually liked the texture and film grains that Windows Media 9 seems to be able to capture."
H.264 proponents begged to differ. For example, SandVideo, an H.264 codec company, contrasted a split-screen demonstration of SandVideo-tuned encoder against Microsoft's latest Windows Media 9 encoder.
Although SandVideo said it used all of Microsoft's features to increase the Windows Media 9's encoding quality — including variable bit rates, two pass encoding and high decoder complexity — the encoded image showed marked artifacts, when compared to a SandVideo-tuned H.264 Main Profile encoder using all the encoding tools developed by the standards group.
Patrick Griffis, director of worldwide media standards at Microsoft, predicted Windows Media 9 video will become a SMPTE open standard within the next six to 12 months. Microsoft delivered its 350-page spec to SMPTE earlier this week.
The group is expected to review the spec, determine whether it is ready for implementation and prepare it for balloting and a comment period, Griffis explained. Once it becomes a SMPTE standard, "Anyone can go to SMPTE, get the spec and do its own implementation" independent of Microsoft, he said.
Previously, companies would have had to first sign an agreement with Microsoft before they could get access to the Windows Media 9 video bit stream. Companies implementing it in their systems and services will still have to pay royalties to Microsoft.
Just before submitting its spec to SMPTE, Microsoft officially froze the Windows Media 9 video bit stream syntax, according to Usher. Hence, its codec will no longer be a moving target for those who hope to implement it on a non-PC platform.
Not everyone buys the argument that Windows Media 9 becomes an "open system" once it becomes a SMPTE standard. According to Rob Koenen, president of the MPEG Industry Forum, "It simply means a public documentation on a proprietary system." In developing a true open standard, it must go through due diligence, with contributions from the industry, evaluation by experts and standards approval, Koenen said.
Like Windows Media 9 video royalties, Via Licensing's preliminary licensing demands no content-use fees. Via is asking for $0.25 per device for H.264 encoder/decoder royalties. Details are available at Via Licensing's Web site.
Andrew Fischer, Via's director of licensing business development, said nine unidentified companies have agreed to publish basic license terms for patents. Calling the licensing terms "a basic framework," Fischer added, "We know how urgent it is to complete this."
Via Licensing said standard licenses should be available for no later than early 2004.
