Good Bye Interoperability (2) with proprietary audio and video formats

Summary:

While there is a big fight on audio and video formats in the draft HTML5 at the W3C, there does not seem to be any problems for Microsoft to allow their proprietary and patented WMA and WMV in the OOXML standard. Their ECMA proxy says any format is allowed. Good Bye interoperability!

Good Bye Interoperability (2) with proprietary audio and video formats

zoobab 14 Feb 2008 18:36

Some delegations has attracted the attention on audio support on OOXML, asking for a list of supported audio codecs:

Comment ID	Comment (justification for change) by the MB	Proposed change by the MB
BR-0052	No mention is made of what audio formats or codecs are permitted.	This item should be reviewed considering interoperability and flexibility.
CO-0219	The audio codecs allowed for the audioFile element are not specified. There are many proprietary and non-portable codecs which would break portability of a document.	Define a set of patent-free portable audio codecs as base. Whenever other codecs are used, the document must be marked as extended (see comment for Part 1, Section 2.6)
FR-0357	No mention is made of what audio formats orcodecs are permitted.	An interoperable set of formats should be specified.
GB-0308	No mention is made of what audio formats or codecs are permitted.	An interoperable set of formats should be specified.
PT-0104	No mention is made of what audio formats or codecs are permitted.	An interoperable set of formats should be specified.
US-0150	No mention is made of what audio formats or codecs are permitted.	An interoperable set of formats should be specified.

Delegations are asking for a list of codecs:

Proposed change: An interoperable set of formats should be specified.

Here is the ECMA non-answer:

If a rendering application cannot process external content of the content type specified, then the specified content can be ignored. [Note: A list of suggested audio types is provided in Part 1, §15.2.2. end note]

When you go reading the Part 1, §15.2.2, there is no list of codecs.

And the same issue and non-answer is for the video codecs:

Comment ID	Comment (justification for change) by the MB	Proposed change by the MB
CO-0211	The video codecs allowed for the video element are not specified. There are many proprietary and non-portable codecs which would break portability of a document.	Define a set of patent-free portable video codecs as base. Whenever other codecs are used, the document must be marked as extended (see comment for Part 1, Section 2.6)

Here is the ECMA non-answer, where they agreed to refuse to fix a list:

The video element does not specify the actual video file that is used by the animation; as such, we do not believe that it needs a list of potential codecs.

ECMA also does not fix the problems with another comment from Colombia:

Comment ID	Comment (justification for change) by the MB	Proposed change by the MB
CO-0084	The type of video element allowed is not specified. Use of proprietary codecs will break portability of a document, and may present patent problems for implementation, since they are outside of the scope of this specification.	Specify a set of patent free, portable video codecs as base, and whenever other codecs are used, mark the document as extended (See comment for Part 1, Section 2.6)

ECMA continues to do not provide a FIXED LIST of supported video codecs:

Proposed Disposition
Agreed; the description of this element would be improved by referencing a set of suggested formats, as was suggested for other similar items (e.g. image formats) in other national body comments. However, we believe that rather than duplicate this information, we should just reference the list defined in Part 1. Also, we agree that this list should contain a set of portable codecs as the suggested base set. However, we do not believe that preventing the use of other codecs is appropriate, as it will prevent innovation. Accordingly, the following changes will be made:

Part 4, §2.3.3.17, page 259, line 5:

This element specifies a location within a document where the specified parent image shall be treated as a placeholder for an embedded movie. [Note: A list of suggested video types is provided in Part 1, §15.2.16. e note]

Part 1, §15.2.16, page 157, row

Content Type: Any supported video type.

[Note: Some example content types are:
video/x-ms-asf http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/format/asfspec.aspx
video/avi http://www.the-labs.com/Video/odmlff2-avidef.pdf
video/mpg ISO/IEC 13818
video/mpeg ISO/IEC 13818
video/ogg http://www.theora.org/doc/Theora.pdf//
video/x-ms-wm http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/forpros/format/asfspec.aspx
video/quicktime http://developer.apple.com/softwarelicensing/agreements/quicktime.html
video/vc1 http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4425//
end note]

ECMA removes some Microsoft's formats from the list of examples. Does that mean that ASF and WMV are excluded from the list of supported codecs? Of course not, it is a list of suggestions, and Any supported video type is supported, and the ECMA intentions are pretty clear:

we do not believe that preventing the use of other codecs is appropriate, as it will prevent innovation

And when it comes to address the reference to Quicktime, it is a patented format which requires royalty payments to MPEG-LA suckers.

Again, ECMA seems devoted to say: Good Bye Interoperability!

Last edited on 17 Feb 2008 23:38 by zoobab Show more

Re: Good Bye Interoperability (2) with proprietary audio and video formats

zoobab 18 Feb 2008 00:06

Look also at this comment co-0208 from Colombia:

The audio codecs allowed for the "sndTgt" element are not specified. There are many proprietary and non-portable codecs which would break portability of a document.

ECMA does not seem to care about the proprietary nature and portability of audio codecs:

We also do not believe it is necessary to add an additional parameter for marking the content as “extended” though, as it is not up to this standard to determine which codecs are “portable” and which are not. As is always the case, it is recommended that producers use formats which are portable and have a higher likelihood of being understood by more consumers.

And they are still pushing for an unlimited list of patented and proprietary codecs in there, such as the expensive and patented MP3:

Content Type: Any supported audio type. [Note: Some example content types are: audio/aiff http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/INMAC/SOUND/imsoundmgr.30.htm audio/midi http://www.midi.org/about-midi/specinfo.shtml audio/ogg http://xiph.org/vorbis/doc/Vorbis_I_spec.html audio/mpeg ISO/IEC 11172-3 audio/x-ms-wax http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/wmplay10/mmp_sdk/asx_elementsintro.asp end note]

Last edited on 18 Feb 2008 00:07 by zoobab Show more

Re: Good Bye Interoperability (2) with proprietary audio and video formats

zoobab 18 Feb 2008 00:21

Also with Quicktime in another CO-0220:

Suggestion from the NB: Since Quicktime is a proprietary technology not covered within this specification, must cause the document to be marked as “extended” (See comment for Part 1, Section 2.6)

ECMA refuses to put it in the "extended" section:

while it is important to maintain this functionality in order to support the existing corpus of binary documents, we will update Part 1 and Part 4 of this standard as follows: Part 1, §15.2.16, page 157, Table 1: video/quicktime http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/ softwarelicensi ng/agreements/quicktime.html Part 4, §5.1.3.4, page 3,294, line 2: This element specifies the existence of a QuickTime file, as defined in the 2007-09-04 version of the QuickTime File Format Specification http://developer.apple.com/documentation/QuickTime/QTFF/qtff.pdf . [Note: For more information on the QuickTime format: http://developer.apple.com/reference/QuickTime/ end note]. Similar Comments: BR-0053 , CA-0057 , CL-0205 , CZ-0034 , DE-0110 , FR-0358 , GB-0309 , GB-0453 , GR-0086 , KE-0063 , PT-0105 , US-0151

Quicktime, a proprietary and patented file format, is made mandatory to be compatible with old Microsoft Office 97-2007 binary file formats.

Again, say Good Bye to Interoperability!