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Apple Sues Sorenson Over QuickTime Codec
Posted by
pudge
on Wed May 01, 2002 05:20 PM
from the gimme-gimme-some-lovin dept.
from the gimme-gimme-some-lovin dept.
ScooterComputer writes "According to Bloomberg and a bunch of others, Apple is suing Sorenson over their licensing a codec to Macromedia for Flash MX, for 'developing, marketing, or licensing any version of the compression software used in QuickTime to competitors.' For years we have seen finger pointing going on between Apple and Sorenson as to WHY the Sorenson codec can't make it to the Linux platform... and things usually end with Apple saying it is Sorenson's fault. Well, I'd say Apple lied. So, can we all just start putting big pressure on Apple again to release QuickTime for Linux?"
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A contract's a contract (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A contract's a contract (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A contract's a contract (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:A contract's a contract (Score:4, Insightful)
A Linux Quicktime player, not a Linux (or other) non-Quicktime player. Actually, since Flash MX [macromedia.com] also is Mac/Windows-only, Sorenson still doesn't support Linux. Hello?
Parent
Re:Very very good? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Very very good? (Score:4, Insightful)
The older Sorenson Video 1 & 2 used YUV-9, which has one color sample for each 4x4 block of pixels. This isn't nearly enough, and caused quality problems.
Parent
shouldnt be there for many reasons (Score:2, Funny)
Re:shouldnt be there for many reasons (Score:3, Funny)
... God kills a kitten.
Finger pointing on QuickTime for linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Finger pointing on QuickTime for linux (Score:4, Insightful)
This has nothing to do with Apple porting QuickTime to Linux. Apple was reliant on Sorensen for that. Apple's contract with Sorensen wouldn't preclude Sorensen from letting their CODEC be used on Linux as long as it was QuickTime for Linux that using it. Apple gains nothing by refusing to release QuickTime for Linux. Linux users seem to think that Apple is out to spite them for some unknown reason.
Parent
QuickTime for Linux no longer enough (Score:5, Interesting)
For example, Macromedia have been supplying a Linux Flash client for years, yet it has failed to validify the Flash format as an open standard. It has become a "necessary evil" for sites that feel the need to look 'interactive', but has had minimal market penetration beyond that.
I don't think that releasing a binary-only QuickTime codec would solve any real problems: Firstly, it wouldn't be distributed with some of the most popular distributions like Debian and Mandrake for philosophical reasons as well as technical reasons -- without source code, there's no way to know that the codec will still work in 2 years or that it'll be made available for new architectures, or that bugs will be promptly fixed. NVidia's proprietary graphics drivers for XFree86 have, for example, backfired in many ways. Far from soliciting support from the community, their consistent failure to release specifications for their hardware has irked and frustrated the wider Linux community (not just the Free Software zealots) to the extent that the Tainting monitor had to be added to the kernel just to track bug reports from users of buggy proprietary kernel modules.
I'd say that the future lies with open video codecs like VP3 [vp3.com] from On2 Technologies, who've announced that they'll be working with the community to ensure that their next release is LGPL'd and their patents made available in the public domain. This is the kind of codec that should become the de-facto standard on the Web -- not some binary-only QuickTime Sorenson codec that was withheld for years and released begrudgingly. A few years ago, Linux users were quick to praise and embrace vendors of proprietary software who supported Linux, but now, I think the community is big enough to look at the bigger picture and support open standards like VP3 and Ogg that will ensure a more accessible and independent future for Web content in the future.
The SWF spec is publicly available (Score:3, Informative)
For example, Macromedia have been supplying a Linux Flash client for years, yet it has failed to validify the Flash format as an open standard.
By "Flash format," I assume you mean SWF (not FLA). SWF version 4 has a publicly available specification. (Read More... [openswf.org]) Do you consider a format not "valid[...] as an open standard" because it hasn't been submitted to an international standards body?
Re:QuickTime for Linux no longer enough (Score:4, Interesting)
I find it at once annoying and gratifying at the same time that Sorenson has no problem using Free Software - their website appears to be running Apache with PHP (can't tell what the OS is). Checking the IP addresses, it LOOKS to me like the server is actually physically part of their own network, rather than some outside ISP contracted to host the site for them...
I agree - I think the future will be with, if not "truly" open codecs, at least "openly available" ones (Sorenson seems to be the ONLY "major" video codec in use that isn't available in some form on Linux - even MPlayer can handle "windows media" files. I suspect if Sorenson would manage to find a loophole in their agreements with Apple (who I think probably considers the popularity of the extra-proprietary "QuickTime with Sorenson" media format to be the biggest thing that they have to fight against "open" systems) and released even a binary-only codec that could be plugged into MPlayer or xanim or whatever, that their popularity would take off, at least in the short term - from what I have heard, that would then give them indisputably the "best" overall video codec that's widely available.
From what I've seen and heard (which I must confess isn't very much), VP3's quality is about the same as Windows Media (i.e. not that great). I get the impression that there are fewer visible "artifacts" but that the image is somewhat "blurrier". Even so, it'd be nice to see VP3/Vorbis in .ogg files become popular, just so that there'd be a completely "open" standard available to build from for video "content"...
Parent
Update from Sorenson (Score:3, Informative)
This story's now off of the main page, so I don't know if anyone will see it, but here goes:
I actually got a decent reply from the PR department at Sorenson in response to my question - I had asked them about what was preventing them from making even a binary-only decoder module available for something besides Windows/Mac...
The answer was interesting - as expected, the exclusivity agreements with Apple prevented them from making it available at all unless Apple wanted it done. Interestingly enough, though, the I was ALSO told that The exclusivity agreement in question expired last month (which may have something to do with the timing of Apple's lawsuit?) and that they are in negotiation with Apple about renewal, and if Apple doesn't renew, they'll be able to make the codec available, at least for licensing if nothing else.
I've got to give Sorenson this much credit, at least: their reply was prompt, polite, and informative, which gives me some hope for their future...
Re:QuickTime for Linux no longer enough (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, maybe these codecs you mention should become standard. But they probably won't, because the other 90% of the computing world that doesn't really care about Linux already has good codecs. MP3 works just fine, Windows users aren't going to move to Ogg. Nor are they going to move to VP3 if Sorenson and DivX/3ivx work fine. The "computing world" is not synonymous with Linux, hell, most of the "computing world" doesn't know what Linux really is; it's just a buzzword to them. The computing world is driven by companies with money, not geeks with dreams and ideals.
Re:QuickTime for Linux no longer enough (Score:3, Insightful)
I doubt Apple would want to do this, they want to make every app with high standards. Even quicktime for windows is nicely written, they wouldn't port it over to Linux if it would be unsupported and buggy and unstable. Only a year or two ago they took to a public beta, but everything else shoots for quality.
Re:QuickTime for Linux no longer enough (Score:4, Informative)
Additionally, Apple provides Darwin Streaming Server [apple.com] as an open source project.
However, hopefully Apple's licensing difficulties with MPEG4 LA will persuade them to pay more attention to the various Ogg codecs.
Parent
mod down - clueless (Score:3, Interesting)
And of course, if you are so worried about it, you can offer to help them.
Re:mod down - clueless (Score:3, Troll)
My prediction is that either Ogg Vorbis will "go away" since no one will be able to use it with a portable device, or Xiph will release a specification and the world will discover that their techniques are in fact infringing on Fraunhofer's patents.
broadening qt technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Hardly (Score:2, Insightful)
Also if Sorenson did breach the contract then they should be sued. I see no room for anyone to bitch given what little we know.
Re:Hardly (Score:2)
Yes, and yes. Real player for Linux is available, and at one point in time, there was even a Media Player for Linux available from MS. The MS player is, as far as I know, gone now though
Real has Linux drivers (Score:2)
I wouldn't describe the Linux driver as particularly good, but from what others said it isn't much worst than the Windows version. That's why I didn't pick up the MLB baseball season ticket (which would have gotten me BB for half the price advertised) I have a cable modem connection, but the quality of the image just wasn't acceptable.
Re:Hardly (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, Real does [com.com].
Parent
In the meantime... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:In the meantime... (Score:2)
Sorenson Press Release (Score:4, Informative)
Woohoo (Score:2, Informative)
Putting presure on Apple (Score:2, Insightful)
Mod me up, if I'm getting it wrong!
"Competing" products? (Score:3, Insightful)
Hm. Last I checked, Quicktime and Flash occupied rather different niches in the "things move on your screen" realm of the world. Quicktime is a movie and, to a lesser extent, audio format. Flash is a vector-graphics animation and interaction product that just happens to have support for raster graphics, sounds, and now movies. Even with movie support in Flash, I wouldn't use it to /play/ movies....
Re:"Competing" products? (Score:3, Informative)
NO.
QuickTime is a time-based architecture for working with objects and events. It's also an authoring environment. Nothing constricts QuickTime to working only with video, animation, or audio. It is not simply a 'movie' format. If you really believe this, I urge you to read some of the technical documentation on Apple's developer site.
QuickTime can handle a number of media formats through extensible codecs.
Products like Director and Flash have always made Apple a little nervous, even as they've brought users to the platform. .
Sorenson on Linux via FlashMX? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sorenson on Linux via FlashMX? (Score:3, Informative)
Among other things, Spark was designed for the decoder to be fast (even on StrongARM and other non-desktop processors), small, and portable. Sorenson Video 3 was designed for high compression efficiency. Sorenson Video 3 looks a lot better than Spark at moderate data rates because it didn't have to make the same tradeoffs. However, Flash MX will play in all kinds of places that QuickTime won't.
This doesn't mean Apple lied. Duh! (Score:5, Informative)
Anyway, here's what's likely the case: Apple developed Quicktime. Sorenson developed Codec. Apple asked Sorenson if they could include their codec in the next QT release (which would have been 4.0, I believe). And had them sign a little piece of paper. Likewise, Sorenson had their own little pieces of paper for Apple to sign.
The default Sorenson codec in Quicktime Pro compresses like ass- you get small files, but the color shits out. If you want it to NOT shit out, you have to pay Sorenson a chunk of cash for a media key to plug into its little panel in the QT setup controls. Pain in the ass, but it doesn't prevent you from viewing "properly" encoded "pro" files- like the Star Wars trailers.
Since you don't have to pay to play Sorenson files, and you do have to pay to encode them properly... and 99% of the productivity apps that produce video run on MacOS and Windows (re: NOT Linux)... what incentive does Sorenson have to port the codec? The likelihood of securing any form of revenue stream on a Linux port of Quicktime is pretty shitty, at best.
So Sorenson has their own legal BS with Apple, and Apple likely has a different legal BS going on with Sorenson. Probably something along the lines of "exclusive". Which explains why Apple is pissed at them. I can't blame them at all- Macromedia has been even more sluggish about porting to OS X than Adobe has, and the fact that FlashMX includes the ability to run video may be something of an issue of "percieved competition".
Re:This doesn't mean Apple lied. Duh! (Score:3, Insightful)
The return on porting or allowing Quicktime to be ported to Linux would be nil - there aren't enough Linux users who would be willing to BUY the QT player to make it pan out on the R&D end.
Second, the goodwill generated would be short-term at best, since the most vocal Linux users don't want anything to do with commercial software. It's hard to justify providing a product to someone for free when the loudest barking dogs are barking at you.
Then again, it could be a conspiracy - but Apple is under no obligation to provide ANY tools to Linux users, since that could hurt their own bottom line with OSX.
When it comes down to it, Linux on the desktop has yet to prove that it can generate a long-term sustainable business model, except in a few limited instances. Things are going well on the server side, but the desktop is headed in so many directions, it's impossible to tell who's on top and therefore deserves the largest chunk of development money.
I run QuickTime on Linux. (Score:3, Informative)
Check Out http://www.codeweavers.com/home/
Flash MX Could Kill QuickTime Player (Score:5, Interesting)
My company is looking to use FlashMX's video capabilities *specifically* because then users won't have to download the QuickTime plug-in as well. This attitude could seriously be a detriment to Apple's already-struggling fight against Real and Windows Media Player. Even if the quality is better, this is just another reason to not download their plug-in.
These codecs are not the same (Macromedia) (Score:5, Interesting)
I always enjoy any QuickTime article on Slashdot because it invariably turns into some big debate on why Apple is deliberately keeping Sorenson from licensing the codec to Linux developers, blah, blah, blah.
First off, Apple claims to have an exclusive license to what are commonly known as the Sorenson and Sorenson 3 codecs. Even if Apple decided to waive their exclusive right to this codec, who in the Linux world could afford the licensing fee that would have to be paid to Sorenson? Mark Podlipec? I doubt he has the (undoubtedly) thousands of dollars the license would cost.
As to the vast market available for a native Linux version of the QT player, that's relatively unimportant to Apple. They make their money on the production tools. So, for a platform to be attractive to Apple, it's one that production houses would be using day to day to produce content.
For now, there is no real content creation platform on Linux (and I'm not talking about digital animation or rendering).
Re:Production tools (Score:3, Interesting)
In my opinion there will NEVER be a 'standard' internet video stream format until there is a free-as-in-speech codec available for all platforms.
Until then, the potential capabilities of streaming internet video will continue to be unrealized.
MS and QT are too closed, and the Real server is way too expensive.
It is not rocket science anymore.
--Jeff++
QuickWhat? (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash is everywhere, like it or not, and they do a good job at porting the plugin to a lot of platforms (even if it's not EVERYWHERE yet) Like it or not, if you surf the web a lot, you hit flash content, the plugin is small, you don't need a 5MB download and install and useless clugging down just to view one file once in a while.
Most of the people on windows are downloading quicktime to almost exclusively view movies encoded with that sorenson coded, mainly because most of all of the other codecs supplied by apple sucks (exept the dv).
I mean, most of them are about the quality of microsoft AVI RLE encoding (aside from the mjpeg and mpeg and dv and anythign high bandwidth that isn't impressive over the net). I do a lot of video editing, I did codec research and analysis a few years ago, made codec-buster files and evaluated most of them with their strong and weak points, if apple would want quicktime to take off and become useful on something other than a Mac, they would have to bring in big guns. Sorenson is nice but it's not even close to DIVX in quality and performance (try playing a quicktime movie at 1280x960 for example, and feel the jerking and all). Why download a 20megs movie preview if you can fit it in 5 megs with about the same quality? that's an extra 4:1 compression (I'm talking roughly here and not considering the time of encoding and all).
Usually if I want to distribute a movie on PC with the maximum quality at lowest bitrate possible, I think DIVX. If I want to distribute cross-platform, with no hassles, MPEG comes to mind. there are VERY good mpeg encoders and if you know what you are doing and how mpeg works, you can output VERY nice results taking minimal bandwidth and competing directly with realvideo (well for anything above 80x80 like most people like encoding in RV). The BIG problem with mpeg movies, is the people encoding them. They hack a cable signal to their tv tuner and encode without knowing what an I-frame is and where they could cut off or optimize the bandwidth usage. The result? most mpeg movies on the net sucks and gives a bad name to mpeg.
I think most people that have basic video codec knowledge here aren't impressed by sorenson, especially when leeching a 20+ meg movie trailer for the resolution it gives, at these file size we're used to double of that resolution with about the same quality when using PC codecs like mpeg-4 based.
Yeah quicktime 6 will have mpeg-4 I know, good for them, but too late, DIVX got the crown there, plus it's EFFICIENT, I can watch HDTV video on my athlon with that beast.
Some information and background on the codecs (Score:5, Informative)
For those curious about the details of the technologies in question, here goes. FWIW, I was a beta tester for both codecs, have taught classes with them, and cover them both extensively in my forthcoming book.
Sorenson currently sells two different codecs, Sorenson Video 3.1 Pro, and Spark Pro, both bundled with versions of their Squeeze encoding tool.
Sorenson Video 3.1 Pro is an advanced version of an encoder/decoder built into QuickTime. It's an excellent codec, with good compression efficiency, a B-frame mode that dramatically improves QuickTime streaming, and many other groovy features. All versions of Sorenson Video are QuickTime only.
Sorenson has also had a MPEG-4 codec in beta for forever (I did the first public demo of it back at QuickTime Live 2000). MPEG-4 is a superset of "baseline" H.263 (an older standard codec, designed for video conferencing), and any MPEG-4 decoder is required to also play back baseline H.263. Sorenson's MPEG-4 encoder includes a baseline H.263 encoder as well, so you can use the codec to make files compatible with H.263 decoders as well (like the Java Media Framework).
The Spark codec, which Sorenson licensed to Macromedia, and Spark Pro, the advanced encoder version included in Sorenson's Squeeze for Flash MX encoding tool, are derived from H.263, based on Sorenson's work with the MPEG-4 codec. Spark Pro is enormously better than the plain Spark incoder built into Flash - that one doesn't even let you specify a data rate.
I haven't read Apple's complaint, but I'd guess that they're alleging that parts of Sorenson Video were used to develop the Sorenson MPEG-4 codec, and which in turn wound up in Spark, which was licensed to Macromedia. I have no idea if this actually happened, or whether or not it would be permitted under their contract if it did.
Both codecs do have a number of features in common, like a configurable threshold for automatic keyframe insertion, an optional image smoothing (deblocking) filter on decode, and 2-pass VBR encoding.
Anyway, knowing as much as I do about these codecs, I feel completely unqualified to have an opinion on the legal merits of this case.
Hope this helped clarify things slightly.
Re:Wasn't this a bit obvious? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Wasn't this a bit obvious? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's like saying 100% of the Mercedes market is a monopoly, because nobody else makes Mercedes automobiles except Mercedes.
mark
Parent
Re:Wasn't this a bit obvious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it doesn't answer the question as to why 99.99% of all other desktop software makers (Macromedia being a slightly on-topic example) don't release for Linux, since they have no OS monopoly to protect.
The sad fact is there's no money to be made in the Linux desktop market. Linux user's don't buy desktop apps, they don't buy games... They might buy highend workstation software like 3D modellers, but this has less to do with the "Linux community" than it does with animation houses trying to cut costs by going with a free (as in beer, they could care less about the other supposed benefits) operating system.
For most software, any money a developer spends creating and supporting a Linux version of their software is money that is pissed away, never to be recouped. That's no way to run a business.
Parent
Re:Wasn't this a bit obvious? (Score:2, Insightful)
Right. Which is why they're including with their OS *and releasing patches for things they fixed back to the community* parts of freeBSD and other unices, as well as many GNU tools such as egcs.
Um, no.
Look, apple's stance on linux is simple. They don't really care about it unless they're getting something out of it. They have no coherent strategy on it, and the different divisions within apple probably look at it in an inconsistent way. The Core-OS/API group gets something out of passing small bits of code back and forth with the Open Source community, so they do it. The rest of apple doesn't have much reason to fear linux, and certainly doesn't get anything out of developing for it (apple does much less cross-platform development than they used to), so they don't pay any attention to it. If it were otherwise, those portions of apple would be either trying to compete with or trying to develop for linux. But they aren't.
Also, it's possible for apple to be completely happy with the idea of linux becoming popular and common as a desktop/server OS but still be very unhappy with the idea of anything which promotes linux's usage in a multimedia production environment. There's a good chance apple is okay with supporting linux, but if it comes to anything-- say, the wealth of apps which would become easy to do if a quicktime library implementation were available for linux-- which could make linux a likely threat later in the video/audio production environment, which right now is one of apple's last fortresses, they'll just go, um, let's not go there right now.
Re:Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
on slashdot simply implies
you're a karma whore
Re:Hmm... (Score:3, Funny)
Whose comments were usually wordy
You're karma whorin' he cried
With japanese poems he lied
To fight haiku with haiku is just playing dirty
Re:Apple (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple to my knowledge has never bad-mouthed X Windows; in fact the Unix ad you mention shows XDarwin running. And Apple has opened up far more of their source than they are required to. Yes, they're only releasing some of the code they've spent millions of dollars writing, rather than all of it. That hardly makes them the enemy.
Parent
Re:Apple (Score:3, Informative)
The story is much larger than that. Back in the early 90s all the talk was about Copland, some of which would eventually become Mac OS 8. One of the technologies Apple was previewing was the Appearance Manager, which was intended to make OS-level look-n-feel themes available for the user.
(Incidentally, as far as I know, Apple was the first company to talk big about a customizable user interface. I am NOT certain, by any means, but I heard about Apple's Appearance Manager plans long before I ever heard of Windows Explorer themes, or Winamp skins, or any of that other stuff.)
Apple obviously spent some time working on appearance themes; there are three that I remember seeing in Apple marketing materials and prerelease documentation and all that: Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board. The pencil-sketch theme that the great grandparent referred to was based on Drawing Board.
Along the way, a couple of things happened. First of all, the Copland project simply went Tango Uniform. Enough things went bad that the project as a whole was cancelled, although some of the technology made it into Mac OS 8 and 8. One of the things on that list was the Appearance Manager, and appearance themes.
At the last minute, the themes were pulled. I don't have any inside info, but here's my speculation: Apple's reputation was founded on the consistency and user-friendliness of their OS. They spent years and years-- and tons of money, to be sure-- developing a great user interface. Themes would have made it possible-- nay, even easy-- for third parties to throw away all of that hard work, and to make the Mac OS ugly or difficult to use. It just didn't make sense. For the hardcore user out there who was into customization, there was still Kaleidoscope [kaleidoscope.net].
So, for whatever reason, built-in appearance themes never made it out the door in an OS release. But they did make it out the door in tons of marketing info and developer documentation. And the Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board themes were all over that documentation in dozens and dozens of screen shots.
Apple still owns Gizmo, Hi-Tech, and Drawing Board. The fact that those appearances were never included in a released product doesn't mean Apple should necessarily give up their exclusive rights to those ideas. We've talked about it before; if Apple doesn't protect their trademarks (of which the Mac desktop-- even an unreleased desktop-- is one), US law dictates that they lose the exclusive right to those trademarks.
So given the facts, Apple did the only thing that made sense: they asked the developers, politely, to go get their own ideas and quit stealing Apple's. And the developers of these various themes have, thus far, complied with that request. Who knows? Maybe if one of those guys found a lawyer willing to work on contingency, the courts would end up revising what a company can and can't protect as its own. But so far that hasn't happened.
Apple's still fairly hung up about form over function.
That's too much of an oversimplification. Apple's hung up on the overall user experience. See, a Mac is capable of more or less the same stuff as a PC with Windows, or one with Linux. There's not much that a PC can do that a Mac simply can't, or vice versa. Apple's focus is on one thing: let's make using our computers as easy and pleasant as possible. Let's take the common tasks and streamline them to the point where people enjoy using our computers. That's why we get things like iTunes and iPhoto and iMovie released for free. They're basically included in the price of your Mac, because Apple believes that most people will eventually be interested in messing around with digital music, pictures, or movies. So they tried to make it as easy as possible.
The appearance thing is the same deal: overall user experience. I suspect that Apple did the math and decided that customizable appearance themes would detract from the user experience more than they could add to it. So they canned the idea.
I still don't see a problem with the way Apple does business. Sorry.
Proprietary Video (Score:3, Interesting)