[MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH] (mencoder) lavc option "notch_matrix"

[Michael Niedermayer]

Hi

On Sunday 19 October 2003 20:00, Diego Biurrun wrote:
> D Richard Felker III writes:
>  > On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 10:24:02AM +0200, Alex Beregszaszi wrote:
>  > > > Included is a patch to add the lavc (encoding) option
>  > > > "notch_matrix". (The KVCD "Notch" Quantization Matrix)
>  > > >
>  > > > So you can use:
>  > > > mencoder -voc lavc -lavcops notch_matrix
>  > >
>  > > The main problem of this is that it's not free...and it's license is
>  > > not compatible with the GPL, so we aren't allowed to include, that's
>  > > why I've settled to the way below. (see http://kvcd.net/, if anyone
>  > > who understands GPL and law better, please have a look at it, if it's
>  > > legal to include with GPL, I1m not against it)
>  >
>  > IMO this is nonsense. Coefficients needed for encoding are not
>  > themselves copyrightable; only the actual publication in which they
>  > originally appeared is under copyright.
>
> I'm also very doubtful of the illegality of including this.
>
> On their homepage
>
>   http://www.kvcd.org/portal/articles.php?lng=en&pg=20
>
> it says
>
>   The KVCD "Notch" Quantization Matrix is Copyright (c) 2002, 2003 of
>   Softronex Corporation. Please contact us for commercial use.
>
> GPL is not commercial use, is it?  How you can restrict reusing of a
> matrix that you publish on your homepage is beyond me.  I doubt it is
> possible, it's less than 20 lines, but IANAL.
additionally the matrix is included in all encoded files so they would also 
fall under this copyjoke

btw, does anyone know why this matrix is supposed to be better then the 
default? did anyone do any tests? PSNR?, double blind subjective?

and yes, IMHO its not copyrightable as its the only possible matrix to decode 
the resulting files, IIRC there was some case where some court decided that 
cases where there exists just one possible solution, this solution cannot be 
copyrighted, but IANAL!!!

[...]
-- 
Michael
level[i]= get_vlc(); i+=get_vlc();		(violates patent EP0266049)
median(mv[y-1][x], mv[y][x-1], mv[y+1][x+1]);	(violates patent #5,905,535)
buf[i]= qp - buf[i-1];				(violates patent #?)
for more examples, see http://mplayerhq.hu/~michael/patent.html
stop it, see http://petition.eurolinux.org & http://petition.ffii.org/eubsa/en