Nokia Claims Ogg Format is "Proprietary"

a nona maus writes "Several months ago a workgroup of the W3C decided to include Ogg/Theora+Vorbis as the recommended baseline video codec standard for HTML5, against Apple's aggressive protest. Now, Nokia seems to be seeking a reversal of that decision: they have released a position paper calling Ogg 'proprietary' and citing the importance of DRM support. Nokia has historically responded to questions about Ogg on their internet tablets with strange and inconsistent answers, along with hand waving about their legal department. This latest step is enough to really make you wonder what they are really up to."

Well, isn't it obvious?

They don't like open standards.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

I still don't understand why though.

Apart from it not supporting DRM, ogg has only advantages - it's equal or superior to most other codecs (the widely used mp3 and wma are inferior) and it's open-source w/o patents restrictions...

Seriously, does anyone have an explanation for that?

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

I still don't understand why though. .... Apart from it not supporting DRM

You have your answer.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

Actually Nokia has a great history with "open" standards (generally defined as RAND as opposed to royalty free). In fact Nokia's entire current business comes out of it's ability to cooperate with arch rivals such as Ericsson to build open standards such as NMT, GSM and WCDMA. So the question is not "why is Nokia opposed to open standards?". The question is "why is Nokia opposing this standard?"

Reading through the document, it's actually much more reaonable (DRM should be possible, but shouldn't be mandatory) than implied. The OGG thing, however, is very interesting. To me it almost reads like they know someone who has a fundamental patent on OGG. A fundamental patent is one which can't be avoided to implement a standard and thus guarantees control of the standard. However, give that Xiph.org have done a patent search and claim that OGG is patent free and nobody has contradicted them, I can think of at least two more likely things here.

a) the recent Microsoft / Nokia WMA licensing agreements have seriously crippled Nokias freedom to operate with different formats.

b) they are afraid of the fact that whilst OGG is open, control of how the standard evolves is "proprietary". By this they mean not under control of an "open" standardisation body that they can join. Looking at it; Xiph.org seems to have too much industry independence.

Make no mistake, though, the Nokia of five years ago is probably not the Nokia of today. Where old Nokia was trying to deliver devices to let you do whatever you wanted to do, new Nokia is trying to become a media company and that means is almost certainly joining the dark side.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

Apart from it not supporting DRM, ogg has only advantages - it's equal or superior to most other codecs (the widely used mp3 and wma are inferior) and it's open-source w/o patents restrictions...

Seriously, does anyone have an explanation for that?

Ogg isn't a codec. It's a container format. Vorbis is the audio codec in question, and Theora is the video codec in question.

Theora was created using proprietary code and patented techniques developed by On2 and used in their VP3 codec, adapted to fit inside an Ogg container. There are tools to let you convert existing VP3 streams into Ogg streams.

The Xiph.org foundation negotiated free access for all to those patented technology before adapting and adopting it. From the Theora FAQ [theora.org]:

Yes, some portions of the VP3 codec are covered by patents. However, the Xiph.org Foundation has negotiated an irrevocable free license to the VP3 codec for any purpose imaginable on behalf of the public. It is legal to use VP3 in any way you see fit (unless, of course, you're doing something illegal with it in your particular jurisdiction). You are free to download VP3, use it free of charge, implement it in a for-sale product, implement it in a free product, make changes to the source and distribute those changes, or print the source code out and wallpaper your spare room with it.

The paper from Nokia seems to revolve around the fact that it doesn't support DRM from what I can see.

Shoot me, I'm the Messenger

Ogg is not "equal or superior to most other codecs" because it's not a codec. It's a container file that holds content compressed using a codec.

Ogg is comparable with Apple's QuickTime container format (MOV), Microsoft's former AVI (based on IFF), Microsoft's newer ASF, the rival FOSS Matroska container, or the ISO's MPEG-4 container (MP4, based on QuickTime).

When you talk about Ogg being a "good codec," it demonstrates the kind of impractical, blind bias for free-sounding buzzword projects, which FOSS advocates are quick favor over real open standards that are accepted and established. Ogg isn't open vs closed MPEG-4; they're both open containers available for non-discriminatory licensing. The difference is that there are only some theoretical uses of Ogg and a single source of documentation and libraries for it, while MPEG-4 is in use everywhere, has support across the industry, and has wide hardware support in silicon, because the MPEG-4 container is paired with a portfolio of codecs that people actually use. Ogg also competes with other FOSS containers such as Matroska, so it's not the lone FOSS messiah at all.

Ogg's video codec is Theora, which was proprietary. On2 developed it as its closed competition to MPEG-4's H.263 (DivX) and H.264 (AVC) codecs, alongside other competing proprietary codecs from Real and Microsoft (WMV). The winner to shake out of all that competition has been the MPEG-4 standard, which includes both a container and different sets of codecs. MPEG-4 is open and supported by lots of companies, and is also supported by FOSS (x264 is among the best implementations).

After realizing there was no reason to fight MPEG-4 with a proprietary runner up, On2 donated Theora to Xiph to use with Ogg, and Xiph published it as an open specification. However, Microsoft basically did the same thing: it published WMV with the SMPTE group as an "open standard" called VC1.

If you think Microsoft's VC1--which it's using to compete against the open MPEG-4--is an "open standard," then you can also say Theora is. It's easier to describe both as failed proprietary technologies that nobody uses, although Microsoft is pushing VC1 hard in HD-DVD and in Windows Vista.

For the WC3 to push an obscure format that nobody uses as the baseline of web video of the future is absurd. It means that rather than having one set of codecs that the world contributes toward, we'll have an official joke that nobody uses decreed the "standard" while everyone actually uses MPEG-4 / H.264 (and probably H.265 by the time HTML5 arrives).

This is not a case of OpenDocument vs MS-XML, open vs closed. It's closer to a case of GPL v3 vs BSD/Apache: rhetoric vs reality. Trying to rip apart MPEG-4 and install an openly published version of a failed proprietary standard that nobody uses in its place will only hand the lead to Microsoft's VC-1 (which itself is a proprietary version of H.263). What would that accomplish?

Supporters for Ogg/Theora are voting for a Ross Perot, assuring that we'll really get a George Bush. What we really need is an Al Gore: centrist, workable, functional, capable, and proven to work.

If that analogy lost you: pushing Ogg/Theora might make you proud to have voted, but it will only distract from the industry's coalition to unitedly back H.264 from mobile devices to HD. There's far more FOSS support for MPEG-4 and H.264 than for Ogg/Theora and the rest of the outdated codecs Xiph has salvaged from the dumpster of proprietary efforts. Having wide support behind one good, open portfolio of standards will make it easier for FOSS to compete with and participate in the desktop computing world.

Why Low Def is the New HD [roughlydrafted.com]
Origins of the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD War [roughlydrafted.com]

ITU & ISO MPEG-4 codecs and container [roughlydrafted.com]

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

I'm sure that I'll be modded down for my following comment, but I post it anyway:

Vorbis is pretty much dead. While its quality is good, Vorbis has quite high performance requirements just for decoding (negligible on current desktop PCs, but not on portables that run on battery). Even Vorbis's developer Xiph.org acknowledged that and instead of trying to "fix" Vorbis, they started development of an entirely new audio codec called Ghost.

While Vorbis and Theora are in no way proprietary, the industry already decided to support MPEG-4. Even Microsoft supports it out of the box on Xbox 360 and Zune. Vorbis was cool when it was released, but it never had a modern video codec as companion.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

It's funny that you responded to an article about video with a rambling about audio. It's however hilarious that it got modded Insightful.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

The engineer's mantra: If it aint broke, fix it till it is.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

The fact is MP3 got their first.

Their first what?

The suspense is killing me.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

Well you could always get a mp3 player that rockbox supports and install that. Not only does it support .ogg, but it also supports another feature that is rarely found on mp3 players, true gapless playback.

Re:Well, isn't it obvious?

I ripped my whole CD collection in ogg about a year ago. Last week, I went to buy my first mp3 player, and I can't find a single one in my "budget" price range that has ogg support. I'm stuck re-ripping or downloading my entire library.

I find it hard to believe that this didn't occur to you a year back. Seriously, anyone who knows enough to want to rip their collection to Ogg would almost certainly know that it wasn't as widely-supported as MP3.

Personally, I'm happy to accept that Ogg is a better format (in terms of the space/quality tradeoff) than MP3. But I also know that MP3 is almost universally supported and Ogg isn't.

I genuinely had my suspicions that the quote above was a cut-and-paste anti-Ogg troll; it has the air of masquerading as someone who'd tried out the open source choice and been burnt by it... except that- as I mentioned- most potential Ogg users would already have known about these issues. I'm genuinely surprised that you didn't look into this before you decided to rip your music collection.

what a tool !

All these alternatives are, in our opinion, preferable over the recommendation of the
Ogg technologies, based almost exclusively on the current perception of them being
free.

The current perception ? WTF ?

proprietary.

In other news Microsoft is making claim that odt is proprietary.

Apple and Ogg

Apple doesn't support Ogg, which as a Mac user bums me. It shouldn't be hard to add support.

Re:Apple and Ogg

There is a plugin you can get for iTunes that lets it support ogg, but last time I tried it there were problems with it (you couldn't stream music to another copy of iTunes for instance because it would stream at the wrong rate and break up every couple of seconds, nor could you stream to an Airport Express).

Re:Apple and Ogg

It shouldn't be hard to add support.

Of course it isn't. But I hope you weren't under the impression that Apple is actually against DRM in principle. They're only against DRM some of the time, only when it makes them money, and only because they're one of the few companies that have woken up to the fact that they can make more money by doing away with DRM some of the time.

And that's why Apple opposes Vorbis -- because they're actually on the ball, because they've got the foresight to realise both the pros and the cons of open formats for them, and they know exactly what the consequences would be if open standards were to become dominant.

Re:Apple and Ogg

But I hope you weren't under the impression that Apple is actually against DRM in principle.

I think you're following a red herring here. Apple is opposed to DRM, from pure selfishness, but that applies as much to Vvideo as it does to audio. Apple implements DRM when they have to and removes it when they can, this is because their goal is to sell hardware. To sell hardware, you need content. If they can only get content with DRM, they'll try to use minimal DRM under their control because their goal is to make things as easy for users as possible, because then more people buy their hardware. If they can do away with it, well that is even easier for users and will sell even more hardware.

No, Apple's opposition to Vorbis as a standard has little to do with DRM, as they could always apply DRM encapsulation for it. Actually I suspect Apple is just heavily invested in the MPEG standard, which is not as open, but is DRM agnostic as well. Having developed a lot of technologies on top of the MPEG standard as well as both pro and consumer tools for creating it, Apple just sees no benefit to them for Vorbis, since licensing costs are not all that significant.

Reaaallly?

This document was written by Stephan Wanger [stewe.org] who, according to his bio "serves on the Board of Directors of UB Video Inc., a leading supplier of video compression software".

I wonder if this has anything to do with him not particularly liking ogg?

Nokia not at ease with Ogg

The post focuses on a single detail: the author calls Ogg a "proprietary format". This is of course a regrettable and stupid comment as Ogg, Theora and Vorbis are not proprietary in any sense. But I suggest reading the whole paper which is an interesting and valid point of view. They are AGAINST the decision of the W3C to recommend those format for Web video. They use three arguments:

      1. Theora video is somewhat based on H.261 and is obsolete in regards with recent developments such as H.264 and VP8 from On2. Can someone knowledgable about Theora make any comment on this assertion?
      2. De facto standard of the Web is Flash video and H.264 encapsulated in either FLV or MPEG 4 file formats. This one valid and reversing the trend seems difficult to imagine.
      3. They believe are not at ease with the process of the organisations behind ogg / vorbis / theora development and fear standard forks.

The last one is partially valid also but I have to add a comment: First, Nokia has vested interest in codec developments itself (they have patents related to the AMR codec). Second one has to remind that they are phone manufacturers. It is clear that they are more at ease with the standard process developed by the ITU. And I understand them: they are not building software but they are embedding chips with hardware codec capabilities. If someone 'forks' the standard and the OSS community decides to create an alternative standard (see Torrent protocol), all the chips that they developped are toasted.

Emmanuel

Re:Anoter one going for a Waterloo

Fully documentable nothin'! Theora and Vorbis are fully [xiph.org] documented [theora.org]. If you can't figure out how to make your own implementation from the docs and/or by studying one of the many existing implementations out there, you need to turn in your geek card and just forget about developing software.

Proprietary would imply that independent implementations cannot be made or cannot be made easily without violating patents or reverse engineering or whatever. Vorbis and Theora are nothing of the sort -- they are fully open and unencumbered.

Re:Ah, the "Humpty Dumpty" defense

(1) choose open standard/software
(2) have your lawyers claim it as your own
(3) profit!

Unless you're SCO...

Re:ACC/H2.64

First off, it's actually AAC. And it's not proprietary, at least not to Apple - AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is part of the MPEG-4 standard and intended as a successor to MP3, though like MP3 it legally requires a patent license. Also H.264 is not an Apple codec - it's an ITU standard, also known as MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC (but again with the patent nonsense).

I think why Apple picked them up is that they are about the best codecs out there (I'm not going to entertain a debate between AAC and OGG quality, please, the reasoning here is that H.264 and AAC are DESIGNED to work together). Also AAC is very good at surround sound, something MP3 has never been popular for, perhaps for the reasons below.

The reason that the community and market have been slow to accept them are that they are more complicated, thus heavier and/or more expensive to implement, as well as the fact that Xvid and Divx (same thing, different encoders - another part of MPEG-4 by the way) can (or used to) produce smaller filesizes for video, and at standard def you wouldn't really know the difference. But as HD content has become more popular, it's become more common to find media in H.264 with AAC 5.1 audio, and as en- and decoders get better (not to mention computers) H.264 and AAC present less of a relative strain on both disk (or bandwidth) and processor, and at HD resolution the hit to speed is completely worth it.

I think this might be way Nokia is pushing H.264 and AAC - they present real possibility for advancement into high-def streaming content, something that other codecs really don't. Please note that I really haven't had any experience with Ogg Theora (which is NOT the same as Ogg Vorbis) in high-def environments, so I can't really say for sure. Also I'm not sure how it is at streaming.

Re:From Vorbis.com

From reading the whole position paper, rather than just the one poorly-phrased sentence, it sounds like the poster is making a mountain out of a mole hill.

The actual quote that's being focused on is:

...including a W3C-lead standardization of a "free" codec, or the
active endorsement of proprietary technology such as Ogg, ..., by W3C...

If you look at what the intent of this sentence is likely to have been in the context of the statement as a whole rather than read it literally, it appears that that he's using Ogg as an example of 'a "free" codec or a proprietary technology'.

The reason for opposing Ogg, though, is best summed up by another sentence from the paper:

Compatibility with DRM. We understand that this could be a sore point in
W3C, but from our viewpoint, any DRM-incompatible video related
mechanism is a non-starter with the content industry (Hollywood). There is in
our opinion no need to make DRM support mandatory, though.

It seems to me that Nokia just wants a standardized way to deliver paid-for video to mobile devices. This kind of service is coming relatively soon and it will involve DRM. And while we like to bitch and moan about how horrible DRM is, the average wireless customer could care less. Nokia just wants the delivery mechanism to be somewhat standardized so that they don't have to have separate implementations for each wireless carrier.

Re:Nokia: You Just Don't Get It

I had a scan through the PDF document, and couldn't really believe what I was reading.

That's because you can't believe anything you read if it's in a proprietary format like PDF! Nokia told me so, in a word document.