Have the patents for H.264 MPEG-4 AVC expired yet? - Meta
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  • kralk@lemm.eeEnglish
    5·
    8 hours ago

    I have literally no understanding of video codecs, standards etc. Is there a “set and forget” option which is free and good?

    • GHiLAEnglish
      16·
      8 hours ago

      H264 is almost universally playable and transcodable by nearly everything on earth.

        • d_k_bo@feddit.orgEnglish
          3·
          3 hours ago

          That depends on where you live. In many parts of the world, software patents don’t exist and aren’t applied.

        • GHiLAEnglish
          7·
          6 hours ago

          Never cared. I’m one of those people that would indeed download a car.

        • PieMePlenty@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          6 hours ago

          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.

    • patatahooligan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      6 hours ago

      Because patents cause issues for free software. Some examples:

      • As far as I can tell, vlc is legal only because French law does not recognize software patents, see here.
      • HDMI 2.1 support in AMDGPU is impossible, see here.
      • I think Media Foundation is unsupported in Proton because of patents as well, though I’m having trouble finding a reliable source on that.
    • hendrik@palaver.p3x.deEnglish
      25·
      9 hours ago

      And free and open source software can be written, shared and used without potentially getting sued. And these projects power lots of things.

      • exu@feditown.comEnglish
        2·
        2 hours ago

        To be fair, this is mainly a US issue. VLC (French) has provided h264 encoders and decoders for years.