H264 licensing and royalties with Chromium

[as...@bluejeansnet.com]

Hello,

I am trying to build a commercial NWJS app which plays H264 video, to achieve that I have to build Chromium with x264 flag enabled in FFmpeg, I am confused with the licencing and royalty scenario here as, if I do that, will the app becomes GPL as the x264 flag is under GPL licence in FFmpeg? Also how the royalty use case works in this case?

Does Chromium uses FFmpeg to decode the H264 video or does it uses OS specific decoder (in the case of Mac and Windows) Is there any way to achieve this in Chromium by some build flag. 

I tried searching for this for couldn't find any relevant information.

Thanks for your help.

-

Anupam

[PhistucK]

This is not a legal/H.264 consulting group, so you should not ask for legal advice (licensing, royalties) here.

As far as I know, H.264 is a non-free codec for encoding as well decoding, regardless of which software code (FFMPEG, x264...) decodes it as long as it is part of your product.

I think I heard that Microsoft used to include an H.264 codec in Windows and basically covered the licensing issues for Windows application developers, so using those APIs would probably be legal (which is probably why you asked about operating system decoder).

Others will know whether Chrome uses hardware or operating system codecs.

☆PhistucK

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[as...@bluejeansnet.com]

I am sorry, but I think my question was more related to Chromium than H264. To rephrase 

1. Chromium bundles FFmpeg which allow proprietary codecs with flags, but this changes the license to GPL, does this mean if I enable them my app becomes GPL?
2. Can Chromium use OS/System decoder on the platform where it's available i.e Windows and Mac OS X instead of using FFmpeg? Is there a way to achieve it?

Thanks,

Anupam

☆PhistucK

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[PhistucK]

The first question is still a licensing question which is inappropriate in non-legal discussion groups, because we are not lawyers.

Regarding the second question, media-dev might be more helpful.

☆PhistucK

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[Mike Fry]

Regards,

Mike

[as...@bluejeansnet.com]

Yes, the reason is I am planning to distribute Chromium based app to play H264 video, as per my understanding the only way to avoid royalties to MPEG-LA is not to redistribute H264 decoder and use the decoder available via the OS.

Thanks,

Anupam

On Monday, July 31, 2017 at 10:57:30 PM UTC+5:30, Mounir wrote:

Regarding question #2, it is not possible. It used to be the case on Android then was an option and nowadays it's only used for very specific situations (ie. old devices and HLS).

Is there a specific reason why you would prefer Chromium to use the system decoders?

-- Mounir

☆PhistucK

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[as...@bluejeansnet.com]

Hi Patricia,

Great to hear that, It would be nice if you could open source it on GitHub. Also, can you give me some pointers to the work which Opera did ( I am assuming it is open source).

Thanks,

Anupa

On Monday, July 31, 2017 at 11:05:13 PM UTC+5:30, Patricia Aas wrote:

Forgot to say: This is only for Windows and Mac for now...

man. 31. jul. 2017 kl. 19.32 skrev Patricia Aas <psm...@gmail.com>:

We, Vivaldi, do this, we are using a fork of some work Opera had open sourced for a while. It isn't perfect, but I am working on it. It is a module + a set of patches to hook it up. I would have to check, but I would assume that we could put it on GitHub if there is interest. Would be nice to have company :)

As for reason: it is the only way us that can't afford the patent fees, can use patented codecs.

Patricia Aas

man. 31. jul. 2017 kl. 19.27 skrev Mounir Lamouri <mlam...@chromium.org>:

Regarding question #2, it is not possible. It used to be the case on Android then was an option and nowadays it's only used for very specific situations (ie. old devices and HLS).

Is there a specific reason why you would prefer Chromium to use the system decoders?

-- Mounir

On Mon, 31 Jul 2017 at 13:07 PhistucK <phis...@gmail.com> wrote:

☆PhistucK

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[PhistucK]

I do not know about macOS, but I am pretty sure I read that Windows stopped covering the royalties since some version of Windows or something (but they may have reversed the decision since then) so your desktop target audience may only include some versions of Windows and possibly macOS in that case.

Also, for commercial use, the operating system codec does not seem cover royalties -

https://annevankesteren.nl/2010/05/h264-licensing

☆PhistucK