Re: [chromium-discuss] H264 licensing and royalties with Chromium

[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

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 3:30 PM, <as...@bluejeansnet.com> wrote:

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

On Monday, July 31, 2017 at 5:53:10 PM UTC+5:30, PhistucK wrote:

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

On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 1:06 PM, <as...@bluejeansnet.com> wrote:

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

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[Mounir Lamouri]

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]

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

[Patricia Aas]

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

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/media-dev/CA%2B-LeH_PVQfekt8iAzXeRYGULh4zoers3NdBdnbn8ER6WGmNTQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Patricia Aas]

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

[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

[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

[Patricia Aas]

Hi Anupa,

Opera released it under an open source license, but I think they changed their minds and withdrew the code (before my time) So what we built on was this older version.

I have to warn you though, this is not effortless plug and play. I have to make changes for every Chromium version and we have several open issues on it. But we are releasing Vivaldi with it all the time and I am working on improving it.

I will have to discuss it internally first, but what kind of timeframe are you hoping for?

Patricia 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/media-dev/4819f749-80c5-46f2-a94b-ff51d42cabd8%40chromium.org.

[as...@bluejeansnet.com]

I will have to discuss it internally first, but what kind of timeframe are you hoping for?

Approximately a month.

Thanks,

Anupam 

[Patricia Aas]

Then this is probably not for you... but I was thinking about doing it and I think it's a good idea, but given that it's still quite custom I wouldn't recommend it to anyone that doesn't have a long perspective currently. Let's discuss it off-list somewhere if you are still interested?

Patricia 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/media-dev/fd48b40b-7fd2-4080-9488-7f6f9e2c7fc8%40chromium.org.

[qphot...@gmail.com]

Hi Patricia, did you manage to make Vivaldi play h264 without the use of ffmpeg proprietary codecs on Windows? I downloaded and installed the browser and I see that netflix works, so it has h264 and widevine support. Me and other 3 devs are working on making an app for photographers and videographers, that makes use of chromium, but till now we used the proprietary ffmpeg and we would like to switch from this to avoid royalties, and we are looking for possibilities to do that.