Alliance for Open Media

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Alliance for Open Media
(AOMedia, AOM)
logo
Seat Wakefield (Massachusetts) United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
founding 2015-09-01

place Wakefield
Website aomedia.org

The Alliance for Open Media ( AOMedia ) is a non-profit industrial consortium for the development of open, license-free technology for multimedia delivery, based in Wakefield, Massachusetts, USA. It adopts the principles of the development of open web standards for the development of video standards, which can serve as free alternatives to the previously dominant standards of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and the associated business model, which is based on the use of intellectual property by means of patent licenses and with financial uncertainty has been linked, especially for internet companies and innovators.

Her first project is the development of a new open video format and codec as the successor to VP9 and license-free alternative to HEVC , which uses elements from Daala , Thor and VP10 .

history

Some of the collaborations and some of the work that were later merged in AV1 date from before the official start of the alliance. After the successful development of an audio standard in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) in 2012 , a working group for the standardization of a license-free video format has been established under the leadership of people from the Xiph.Org Foundation who have been working on their experimental video format Daala since 2010 educated. In May 2015 the Internet Video Codec Working Group (NetVC) of the IETF was officially started and it was offered coding techniques by Xiphs / Mozillas Daala. Cisco Systems joined and offered the working group its own format prototype Thor on July 22nd . People were amazed at the absence and silence of Google, which had already invested heavily in an open video format for the web with its VP8 , VP9 and WebM projects.

The lack of a suitable video format, which led the W3C not to include a video format in the specification for HTML5, and the failed negotiations on a mandatory video format for WebRTC demonstrated the importance of a competitive open video standard. The emergence of a second patent pool for HEVC (HEVC Advance) in spring 2015 provided an important motivation for investing in an alternative video format and the growing support of the alliance, as it spread uncertainty about the license fees for the new MPEG video format.

On September 1, 2015, the Alliance for Open Media was announced, which is developing a license-free video format as an alternative to paid formats such as H.264 and HEVC. The founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix. The plan was to release the video format by 2017.

On April 5, 2016, the Alliance announced the addition of AMD , ARM and Nvidia . Adobe , Ateme, Ittiam and Vidyo were added in the following months. Facebook later joined as a board member, and on January 4, 2018, Apple was tacitly listed as a board member on the Alliance for Open Media website. In October 2018, the Alliance for Open Media already comprised 38 companies.

In 2018, the founder and chairman of MPEG recognized the alliance as the greatest threat to its business model and also stated:

“Alliance for Open Media has occupied the void created by MPEG's outdated video compression standard (AVC), absence of competitive royalty free standards (IVC) and unusable modern standard (HEVC). ... everybody realizes that the old MPEG business model is now broke ”

“Alliance for Open Media has filled the gap created by the outdated video compression standard (AVC), the lack of competitive (license-free) standards (IVC) and the unusable modern standard (HEVC) of MPEG. ... everyone understands that the old MPEG business model is now bankrupt. "

- Leonardo Chiariglione : A crisis, the causes and a solution ("A crisis, the causes and a solution")

On April 3, 2019, the joining of Samsung (also owner of numerous patents) as a board member was announced.

On October 1, 2019, Tencent, a Chinese internet company, was announced to join (also as a board member).

On April 22, 2020, Synamedia announced that it would join.

AOMedia video

The alliance's first project is to develop a next-generation open video compression format and codec optimized for streaming media over the Internet, for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content. A number of new video formats called AOMedia Video (AV) are being developed. Alliance members from the semiconductor industry (AMD, ARM, Intel, Nvidia) should ensure a hardware-friendly design.

AOMedia completed the first version of its format (AV1) as a specification in March 2018. A first version of the reference software was released in June 2018. It is expected to be accepted quickly and the format is the main candidate for standardization by the NetVC working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The main features of AV1 are the free license conditions and the state-of-the-art performance . AV1 was specially developed for real-time applications and for higher resolutions than typical application scenarios of the current generation (H.264) of video formats.

Working method and structure

The alliance is registered in the USA as a tax-exempt non-profit organization and a subsidiary of the independent Joint Development Foundation (JDF), also based in Wakefield.

The alliance will release new video codecs as free software under the 2-clause BSD license . It adopted the patent rules of the W3C , which require technology contributors to disclose all relevant patents and agree to a royalty-free patent license. Allianz's patent license contains a defensive termination clause to deter patent disputes.

Software development is done publicly using a public source code repository and case management system, and public contributions are welcomed. Contributions must pass internal reviews and find consensus to accept them. Various sub-groups within the alliance deal with testing, reviewing IPR / patent problems and hardware friendliness, as well as processing specification documents.

There are two levels of membership: Organizations can join as a simple member or as a board member. These are confusingly referred to as "founding members" in AOM terminology, although they do not have to have been members of the alliance since its inception.

Members include a broad cross-section of the video industry, including several hardware, software and content producers, OTT video distributors, real-time conferencing providers and browser manufacturers. Several AOM members have worked on MPEG's HEVC and hold relevant patents (e.g. BBC, Intel, Cisco, Vidyo, Apple, Microsoft and Broadcom).

Board members

Simple members

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Bright: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, others, aim for royalty-free video codecs (en-us) . In: Ars Technica , September 1, 2015. 
  2. ↑ a b c Swapnil Bhartiya: Open source, open standard, royalty-free media codecs? That's the promise of the newly formed Alliance for Open Media . In: CIO , IDG Communications, Inc., September 2, 2015. 
  3. ^ Greg Lamm: Why Microsoft and Amazon are working with Google and Netflix to make video streaming faster . In: Puget Sound Business Journal , September 3, 2015. 
  4. ↑ a b c Alliance for Open Media established to deliver next-generation open media formats . Alliance for Open Media. September 1, 2015.
  5. ↑ a b c d Stephen Shankland: Tech giants join forces to hasten high-quality online video . CNET . September 1, 2015. Accessed September 1, 2015.
  6. ^ David Bryant: Forging an Alliance for Royalty-Free Video , Mozilla . September 1, 2015. 
  7. ↑ NETVC (Canceled) - BOF meeting proposals for IETF 91 . 20th January 2015.
  8. ^ Initial import of Timothy Terriberry's daala-exp code . October 13, 2010.
  9. ↑ Lucian Armasu: IETF Begins Standardization Process For Next-Generation 'NETVC' Video Codec (Daala) . In: Tom's Hardware , March 25, 2015. 
  10. ↑ NETVC IETF 93 minutes .
  11. ^ Paul Krill: Cisco's Thor project swings a hammer at Web video codecs . In: InfoWorld , IDG Communications, Inc., August 19, 2015. 
  12. ^ Andrey Pozdnyakov: AOM AV1 vs. HEVC ( en-US ) Elecard.
  13. ↑ Steven Zimmerman: Google's Royalty-Free Answer to HEVC: A Look at AV1 and the Future of Video Codecs . XDA Developers. May 15, 2017. Retrieved June 10, 2017.
  14. ^ Jan Ozer: Amazon, Google, and More Working on Royalty-Free Codec , StreamingMedia.com. September 1, 2015. Accessed September 2, 2015. 
  15. ↑ a b c The Alliance for Open Media Welcomes New Members and Announces Availability of Open Source Video Codec Project , Alliance for Open Media. April 5, 2016. Retrieved April 7, 2016.  
  16. ↑ Vidyo Joins the Alliance for Open Media . June 7, 2016.
  17. ↑ Ittiam Joins the Alliance for Open Media . May 20, 2016.
  18. ^ Dana Rao: Adobe Joins Alliance for Open Media to Develop Next Generation Video Platform . June 14, 2016.
  19. ↑ ATEME Joins the Alliance for Open Media . June 14, 2016.
  20. ↑ Apple joins an alliance to shrink your online videos . Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  21. ↑ Members . In: Alliance for Open Media . ( aomedia.org [accessed October 8, 2018]).
  22. ↑ Cory Doctorow: After industry adopts open video standards, MPEG founder says the end is nigh ( en-US ) January 30, 2018.
  23. ^ Scott Licata: Tencent Joins the Alliance for Open Media at the Board Level. In: Alliance for Open Media. October 1, 2019, Retrieved October 8, 2019 (American English).
  24. ↑ Synamedia joins Alliance for Open Media | Infrastructure | News | Rapid TV News. Retrieved May 24, 2020 .
  25. ↑ a b A Progress Report: The Alliance for Open Media and the AV1 Codec , Streaming Media Magazine. April 12, 2016. Retrieved April 13, 2016.  
  26. ↑ Sebastian Grüner (golem.de), July 19, 2016: The next video codec should be 25 percent better than H.265 (German)
  27. ↑ a b What is AV1? , Streaming Media Magazine. June 3, 2016. Retrieved June 20, 2016.  
  28. ^ Clint Boulton: W3C Publishes Patent Policy Draft . March 19, 2003.
  29. ↑ https://bloggeek.me/webrtc-codec-wars-rebooted/
  30. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzPaldsmJbk
  31. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thvSyJN1vsA
  32. ↑ Jan Ozer: HEVC IP Owners Are Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory (en-US) . In: Streaming Learning Center , November 27, 2017. 
  33. ^ Alliance for Open Media welcomes Facebook to its board as a founding member . AOMedia. November 13, 2017. Retrieved November 13, 2017.
  34. ↑ a b Steven Zimmerman: Facebook joins AOMedia to promote Royalty-Free AV1 Video . XDA Developers. November 28, 2017. Retrieved December 12, 2017.
  35. ^ Argon Design joins AOM . June 28, 2017. Retrieved July 8, 2017: "Argon Design has been contributing to the VP9 / VP10 codebase for over 3 years (…) Argon will be positioned to release Argon Streams AV1 immediately after the standard is completed later in 2017"
  36. ^ BBC R&D joins the Alliance for Open Media . November 14, 2016. Retrieved November 19, 2016.
  37. ↑ Bitmovin Joins the Alliance for Open Media . April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
  38. ↑ Bitmovin Supports AV1 Encoding for VoD and Live and Joins the Alliance for Open Media . April 18, 2017. Retrieved April 18, 2017.
  39. ^ Chips & Media, Inc. Joins the Alliance for Open Media . October 21, 2016.
  40. ↑ https://ngcodec.com/news/2017/7/12/ngcodec-joins-the-alliance-for-open-media
  41. ↑ Press Release - VideoLAN Joins the Alliance for Open Media . VideoLAN. May 16, 2017.