Have the patents for H.264 MPEG-4 AVC expired yet?
Have the patents for H.264 MPEG-4 AVC expired yet? - Meta
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/22949658
If I'm interpreting this correctly, many MP4 patents are going to expire next year. 🎉
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I have literally no understanding of video codecs, standards etc. Is there a "set and forget" option which is free and good?
H264 is almost universally playable and transcodable by nearly everything on earth.
But non-free?
Never cared. I'm one of those people that would indeed download a car.
God I wish
No, e.g. the package x264 from videolan.org is free software (FOSS) with GPL2+ licence.
It is also illegal in most places beside France
Not enforced so you should use it but it is technically illegal. Same thing with Linux distros shipping anything under patent.
I think you're mixing the libdvdcss library for playing protected DVDs or referring to some other non-free, patented codec with the x264 package implementation of the H.264 codec, which the patent holders allowed to be used freely for non-commercial use.
Commercial use requires payment to patent holders, free use does not (whenever end user does not pay to watch). I dont know how ad supported streams are categorized, probably commercial. For personal use, I wouldnt worry about the license. Worry when you start a streaming server and start making revenue.
That depends on where you live. In many parts of the world, software patents don't exist and aren't applied.
cries in core 2 duo
Wasn't Theora the set-and-forget free option? Don't recall if it had the "good" part tho.
