Recherche avancée

Sur d’autres sites (8470)

• Vedanti and Max Sound vs. Google

  14 août 2014, par Multimedia Mike — Legal/Ethical

  Vedanti Systems Limited (VSL) and Max Sound Coporation filed a lawsuit against Google recently. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t care about corporate legal battles. However, this one interests me because it’s multimedia-related. I’m curious to know how coding technology patents might hold up in a real court case.

  Here’s the most entertaining complaint in the lawsuit :

  Despite Google’s well-publicized Code of Conduct — “Don’t be Evil” — which it explains is “about doing the right thing,” “following the law,” and “acting honorably,” Google, in fact, has an established pattern of conduct which is the exact opposite of its claimed piety.

  I wonder if this is the first known case in which Google has been sued over its long-obsoleted “Don’t be evil” mantra ?

  Researching The Plaintiffs
  
  I think I made a mistake by assuming this lawsuit might have merit. My first order of business was to see what the plaintiff organizations have produced. I have a strong feeling that these might be run of the mill patent trolls.

  VSL currently has a blank web page. Further, the Wayback Machine only has pages reaching back to 2011. The earliest page lists these claims against a plain black background (I’ve highlighted some of the more boisterous claims and the passages that make it appear that Vedanti doesn’t actually produce anything but is strictly an IP organization) :

  The inventions key :
  The patent and software reduced any data content, without compressing, up to a 97% total reduction of the data which also produces a lossless result. This physics based invention is often called the Holy Grail.

  Vedanti Systems Intellectual Property
  Our strategic IP portfolio is granted in all of the world’s largest technology development and use countries. A major value indemnification of our licensee products is the early date of invention filing and subsequent Issue. Vedanti IP has an intrinsic 20 year patent protection and valuation in royalties and licensing. The original data transmission art has no prior art against it.

  Vedanti Systems invented among other firsts, The Slice and Partitioning of Macroblocks within a RGB Tri level region in a frame to select or not, the pixel.

  Vedanti Systems invention is used in nearly every wireless chipset and handset in the world

  Our original pixel selection system revolutionized wireless handset communications. An example of this system “Slice” and “Macroblock Partitioning” is used throughout Satellite channel expansion, Wireless partitioning, Telecom – Video Conferencing, Surveillance Cameras, and 2010 developing Media applications.

  Vedanti Systems is a Semiconductor based software, applications, and IP Continuations Intellectual Property company.

  Let’s move onto the other plaintiff, Max Sound. They have a significantly more substantive website. They also have an Android app named Spins HD Audio, which appears to be little more than a music player based on the screenshots.

  Max Sound also has a stock ticker symbol : MAXD. Something clicked into place when I looked up their ticker symbol : While worth only a few pennies, it was worth a few more pennies after this lawsuit was announced, which might be one of the motivations behind the lawsuit.

  Here’s a trick I learned when I was looking for a new tech job last year : When I first look at a company’s website and am trying to figure out what they really do, I head straight to their jobs/careers page. A lot of corporate websites have way too much blathering corporatese that can be tough to cut through. But when I see what mix of talent and specific skills they are hoping to hire, that gives me a much better portrait of what the company does.

  The reason I bring this up is because this tech company doesn’t seem to have jobs/careers page.

  The Lawsuit
  The core complaint centers around Patent 7974339 : Optimized data transmission system and method. It was filed in July 2004 (or possibly as early as January 2002), issued in July 2011, and assigned (purchased ?) by Vedanti in May 2012. The lawsuit alleges that nearly everything Google has ever produced (or, more accurately, purchased) leverages the patented technology.

  The patent itself has 5 drawings. If you’ve ever seen a multimedia codec patent, or any whitepaper on a multimedia codec, you’ve seen these graphs before. E.g., “Raw pixels come in here -> some analysis happens here -> more analysis happens over here -> entropy coding -> final bitstream”. The text of a patent document isn’t meant to be particularly useful. I’ve tried to understand this stuff before and it never goes well. Skimming the text, I just see a blur of the words data, transmission, pixel, and matrix.

  So I read the complaint to try to figure out what this is all about. To summarize the storyline as narrated by the lawsuit, some inventors were unhappy with the state of video compression in 2001 and endeavored to create something better. So they did, and called it the VSL codec. This codec is so far undocumented on the MultimediaWiki, so it probably has yet to be seen “in the wild”. Good luck finding hard technical data on it now since searches for “VSL codec” are overwhelmed by articles about this lawsuit. Also, the original codec probably wasn’t called VSL because VSL is apparently an IP organization formed much later.

  Then, the protagonists of the lawsuit patented the codec. Then, years later, Google wanted to purchase a video codec that they could open source and use to supplant H.264.

  The complaint goes on to allege that in 2010, Google specifically contacted VSL to possibly license or acquire this mysterious VSL technology. Google was allegedly allowed to study the technology, eventually decided not to continue discussions, and shipped back the proprietary materials.

  Here’s where things get weird. When Google shipped back the materials, they allegedly shipped back a bunch of Post-It notes. The notes are alleged to contain a ton of incriminating evidence. The lawsuit claims that the notes contained such tidbits as :

  • Google was concerned that its infringement could be considered “recklessness” (the standard applicable to willful infringement) ;
  • Google personnel should “try” to destroy incriminating emails ;
  • Google should consider a “design around” because it was facing a “risk of litigation.”

  Actually, given Google’s acquisition of On2, I can totally believe that last one (On2’s codecs have famously contained a lot of weirdness which is commonly suspected to be attributable to designing around known patents).

  Anyway, a lot of this case seems to hinge on the authenticity of these Post-It notes :

  “65. The Post-It notes are unequivocal evidence of Google’s knowledge of the ’339 Patent and infringement by Defendants”

  I wish I could find a stock photo of a stack of Post-It notes in an evidence bag.

  I’ve worked at big technology companies. Big tech companies these days are very diligent about indoctrinating employees about IP liability issues. The reason this Post-It situation strikes me as odd is because the alleged contents of the notes basically outline everything the corporate lawyers tell you NOT to do.

  Analysis
  I’m trying to determine what specific algorithms and coding techniques. I guess I was expecting to see a specific claim that, “Our patent outlines this specific coding technique and here is unequivocal proof that Google A) uses the same technique, and B) specifically did so after looking at our patent.” I didn’t find that (well, a bit of part B, c.f., the Post-It note debacle), but maybe that’s not how these patent lawsuits operate. I’ve never kept up before.

  Maybe it’s just a patent troll. Maybe it’s for the stock bump. I’m expecting to see pump-n-dump stock spam featuring the stock symbol MAXD anytime now.

  I’ve never been interested in following a lawsuit case carefully before. I suddenly find myself wondering if I can subscribe to the RSS feed for this case ? Too much to hope for. But I found this item through Pando and maybe they’ll stay on top of it.

• ffmpeg segments only the first part of my audio file

  30 juin 2012, par hammat

  I'm implementing a http live streaming server to send audio file to iOS devices.
  No problem with Apple's tools, mediafilesegmenter, my files are valid and it works fine.

  I'm trying now to segment the same file using ffmpeg. I've downloaded the last stable version which is the 0.10.2 for now.

  Here is how I try to segment my mp3 file :

  ./ffmpeg -re -i input.mp3 -f segment -segment_time 10 -segment_list outputList.m3u8 -acodec libmp3lame -map 0 output%03d.mp3

  It starts the mapping like expected but finish with only one .mp3 file.

  Did I miss something in the process ?
  Thanks in advance.

  edit

  Ok here is my latest command line :

  ffmpeg -i input.mp3 -c:a libmp3lame -b:a 128k -map 0:0 -f segment -segment_time 10 -segment_list outputlist.m3u8 -segment_format mp3 'output%03d.mp3'

  It still gives me only one file but the file is the hole song, not only one part.
  Here is the output of ffmpeg :

  ffmpeg version 0.10.2 Copyright (c) 2000-2012 the FFmpeg developers 
  
  built on Apr 20 2012 07:08:29 with gcc 4.5.2   
  
  configuration: --enable-gpl --enable-version3 --enable-nonfree --enable-postproc --enable-libmp3lame   
  
      libavutil      51. 35.100 / 51. 35.100   
  
      libavcodec     53. 61.100 / 53. 61.100   
  
      libavformat    53. 32.100 /
  
          53. 32.100   
  
      libavdevice    53.  4.100 / 53.  4.100   
  
      libavfilter     2. 61.100 /  2. 61.100   
  
      libswscale      2.  1.100 /  2.  1.100   
  
      libswresample   0.  6.100 /  0.  6.100   
  
      libpostproc    52.  0.100 /  52.  0.100 
  
      [mp3 @ 0x8e4f120] max_analyze_duration 5000000 reached at 5015510
  
  Input #0, mp3, from 'BeachHouse-Myth.mp3':   
  
      Metadata:
  
              title           : Myth
  
              artist          : Beach House
  
              track           : /
  
              album           : Bloom
  
              disc            : /
  
              genre           : Alternative
  
              TSRC            : USSUB1296501   
  
      Duration: 00:04:18.69, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 320 kb/s
  
              Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 320 kb/s Output #0, segment, to 'stream%03d.mp3':   Metadata:
  
              title           : Myth
  
              artist          : Beach House
  
              track           : /
  
              album           : Bloom
  
              disc            : /
  
              genre           : Alternative
  
              TSRC            : USSUB1296501
  
              encoder         : Lavf53.32.100
  
              Stream #0:0: Audio: mp3, 44100 Hz, stereo, s16, 128 kb/s
  
  Stream mapping:   
  
      Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (mp3 -> libmp3lame) 
  
      Press [q] to stop, [?] for help 
  
      Truncating packet of size 1024 to 105ate=   0.0kbits/s    
  
      Truncating packet of size 1024 to 1 
  
      size=       0kB time=00:04:18.71 bitrate=   0.0kbits/s     video:0kB audio:4042kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead -100.000000%

• G.I. Joe Custom Multimedia

  30 mars 2012, par Multimedia Mike — General

  I received this 3-disc set of G.I. Joe CD-ROMs today :

  
  
  

  Copyright 2003, and labeled as PC ONLY. Each disc claims to have 2 episodes. So are these some sort of video discs ? Any gaming elements ? I dove in to investigate.

  So, it turns out that there are some games on these discs, done in Flash Player (which tells me that these were probably available on the web at some point). Here’s a shooting gallery game from the first disc :

  
  
  

  As promised by the CD-ROM copy, the menu does grant access to 2 classic G.I. Joe episodes. Selecting either one launches this :

  
  
  

  Powered by C-ezy ? Am I interpreting that correctly ? Anyway, the video player goes fullscreen and looks fine (given the source material). I can’t capture screenshots and controls are limited to : space for pause, ESC to exit player, and up/down to control volume. No seeking and certainly no onscreen controls. Pretty awful player.

  Studying the first disc, I find a 550 MB file with the name 5859Hasbro.egm. Coupled with ep58.cfg and ep59.cfg files in the same directory, I gather that the disc has G.I. Joe episodes 58 and 59 (though the exact episodes, “There’s No Place Like Springfield” parts 1 and 2, are listed on Wikipedia as being episodes 154 and 155 ; but who’s counting ?). The cfg files contain this text :

  ep58.cfg :
  EGM_GIJOE.exe
  5859Hasbro.egm /noend /track:0 /singletrack
  ep59.cfg :
  
  EGM_GIJOE.exe
  
  5859Hasbro.egm /noend /track:1 /singletrack
  

  The big EGM file starts with the string “Egenie Player”. After that, I see absolutely no clues. The supporting EGM_GIJOE.exe file has some interesting strings : “Decore Bits Per Pixel” (I know I have seen “Decore” used to mean “decoding core” in some libraries), “Egenie Player – %s, Version :%s”, “4th June 2002″, a list of common FourCC tags seen in AVI files, “Brought to you by Martin, Patrick Bob and Bren” (do you suppose “Patrick Bob” is one person’s name ?), a list of command line options…

  Aha ! A URL : http:\www.e-genie.tv (yep, backslashes, not forward slashes). e-genie.tv seems to redirect to mygenie.tv, which… doesn’t appear to be strictly related to video technology these days.