Today, something about codecs and their licensing

What does it mean that a codec is royalty-free? When should you pay licensing fees? Let’s dive into the world of codec patents

First of all, there are two main families of codecs - H26x (H264 and H265) and VPx (VP8 and VP9). The former is developed by ITU-T and MPEG organizations, while the latter by Google (which acquired On2 Technologies).

H26x codecs are patented, meaning that to use them, you have to pay license fees to various patent holders. In practice, this responsibility typically falls on big companies.

Let’s take a look at Cisco’s openH264 implementation:

OpenH264 is an open-source H.264 implementation. Cisco compiles and distributes it so you can download it from Cisco’s servers for commercial purposes for free. For this to happen, Cisco pays royalty fees.

You can’t distribute Cisco’s binary on your own. Instead, when your product is installed, it must download the OpenH264 binary from Cisco’s servers.

You can’t include and distribute the OpenH264 source code with your product for free. To do so, you have to pay royalty fees.

VPx codecs emerged as an alternative to the H26x family. They are royalty-free for both personal and commercial use cases. VP8 serves as an alternative to H.264 and VP9 to H.265.

In 2015, a consortium of companies (including semiconductor firms, VoD providers, and web browser vendors) founded the Alliance for Open Media. This consortium aimed to develop a successor to VP9 called AV1. Its first version was released in 2016 and it is also royalty-free and open.

You can read more about Cisco’s OpenH264 at: https://openh264.org/faq.html. Additionally, this video provides a thorough explanation of the entire ecosystem: Open H.264 IPR Explained.

Learn more on VP8 and VP9 licensing here: https://webmproject.org/about/faq/.

Hello!
With the recent release of Membrane Core v1.2 we have introduced telemetry and tracing support for Membrane components.

For instance, you can use it to visualize Membrane callbacks execution time:
https://private-user-images.githubusercontent.com/4634386/425539977-afe95df6-d2ed-422c-9c92-7e26fa4634e7.gif?jwt=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.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.80atZpg2UUb4DbD3fS58Y1XkeDeMTJmgiXnXwzsHlYo

Learn more about it in our blog post

DTLS-SRTP is the handshake protocol used by WebRTC to establish a secure connection. We implemented it as a NIF, but OTP provides some primitives for that too. Is it enough to get it working without the NIF? Check out @mickel8’s new article, where he explores this topic: Hooking into Erlang’s SSL to Perform DTLS-SRTP Handshake