AW: Intel QSV H.264 codec for AVFoundation and DirectShow

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2016-07-07 09:16, Tiemo Hollmann TB wrote:
> FYI
> I asked Sorenson Media, whos video compressor I am using, if I have to 
> pay
> license fees for the H.264 codec for encoding videos with Sorenson 
> squeeze
> for a commercial product. They answered to me:
> 
> " No, you do not need to pay any license fees to use any codecs 
> included in
> Squeeze. Sorenson Media pays any license fees necessary for all the 
> codecs
> contained in Squeeze. Once you have encoded your video with a licensed
> product, like Squeeze, you will never need to pay any licensing fees 
> again."

This is what I would expect.

If you produce and distribute a program which includes an H.264 
compressor or decompressor then you need to pay patent license fees (in 
actual fact, I suspect even if you don't distribute said program, and 
use it to generate compressed video, you still need to pay patent 
license fees).

So, if you use a third-party product you have bought (like Squeeze), and 
OS included codecs to playback the video (like AVFoundation and 
DirectShow used in LiveCode) then that has already been taken care of 
for you.

In regards to the 'stepping' - it might worth asking Sorenson (who sound 
very helpful!) about that. In particular with regards DirectShow. Having 
a key frame every frame I'd have thought would vastly reduce the effacy 
of compression - so I wonder if there's some other tricks to encoding 
which would let it work in DirectShow, the way you want.

Alternatively, if you can find an open source program which *does* allow 
stepping through H.264 videos via DirectShow on Windows then let us know 
and we can see if it is possible to make DirectShow do that without 
special encoding options. (After all, if AVFoundation lets you do it for 
an arbitrary H.264 encoded video, then you'd think it would be possible 
for DirectShow to; on the other hand, AVFoundation I think is newer and 
perhaps 'better' than DirectShow due to that, so it is very hard to 
say!).

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps