MPEG Licensing

[jesse.fallon]

I'd like to build a tool to edit video. I'd like to accept input in as many formats as I can, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (part 2) and MPEG-4 (part-10) or AVC/H.264. From reading the MPEG-LA documentation, to decode I need to pay $2.50 for MPEG-2, $.25 for MPEG-4 (part2) and $.20 for H.264, and I have to try to track every copy of the tool that is produced, whether it is paid for or not. This could add up to quite a bit of money if the tool is popular.

On2 and Sorenson make tools that decompress all these formats and manage to charge as little as $1/copy. Assuming that they are not producing their products at a loss, I am obviously missing something here.

Does anyone have any recent experience with MPEG-LA and their current requirements for licensing fees?

Thanks,
Jesse

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I'd like to build a tool to edit video. I'd like to accept input in as many formats as I can, including MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (part 2) and MPEG-4 (part-10) or AVC/H.264. From reading the MPEG-LA documentation, to decode I need to pay $2.50 for MPEG-2, $.25 for MPEG-4 (part2) and $.20 for H.264, and I have to try to track every copy of the tool that is produced, whether it is paid for or not. This could add up to quite a bit of money if the tool is popular.

On2 and Sorenson make tools that decompress all these formats and manage to charge as little as $1/copy. Assuming that they are not producing their products at a loss, I am obviously missing something here.

Does anyone have any recent experience with MPEG-LA and their current requirements for licensing fees?

We have the same problem for VLC. But as those license are for software and algorithm patents, which are not legal in Europe.
All the free players, and codecs (VLC media player, MPlayer, Xine, MPC + ffdshow, BSPlayer + ffdshow) are facing the same problem.

We don't pay the fees because we don't get any money on the software.