Rakesh Malik wrote:Denis Kazlowski wrote:The major failure is that other companies who have cameras out on the market did not just step out and call out RED out for this - loudly and publicly, and have either silently paid the RED tax which they passed on to their customers, or handicapped their product to avoid liability. Insane. Anti-Competitive.
Actually, several have called Red out for its patents. None of those attempted callouts have succeeded, so Red's been licensing that IP to its competitors.
In the end it's not really any different from the fact that HEVC aka H.265 also carries a cost which is why only some drones and action cameras record in it, and why HitFilm can't read HEVC, except for the fact that no one is jealous of MPEG LA.
Hi Rakesh, licensing a particular encoder like H.265/H.264 together with their open source x.264/x.265 variants or the argument that Faunhoffer Institute still owns MP3, they have tried to get people for license money - I recall their $39.95 Digidesign Protools MP3 tax. It's is not the same as getting a patent grant on compression of a thing - like on compression itself, regardless of what kind on imaging or 23.0 frames per second. - The closer analogy would be OGG suing FLAC or any other lossless audio codec maker, where technologically they're not a user. - If RED licensed out it's R3D and people did not want it, and wanted to build a beefier R3D support via other vendors devices I'd understand.
This is coming from someone who licensed On2 VP6 form On2 (and not Adobe) at ridiculous over the top prices while working in a broadcast/cable commercials post house. Same place we paid Cineform for at $1000 per station, then moved to ProRes which was at the time very badly supported on Windows and Linux - unlike now. But if we had moved to RAW+Wavelet JPG2000 style, RED/Oakley would get to come after us again. Thats like suing people for using Bullet Time footage they shot on non Bullet Time systems - almost.
Incidentally REDs founder was on the other side of that stick with Luxotica - they sold Oakley as a (TM) to them if my memory is correct. - and even in the Fraunhoffer case, it's not having a patent but choosing to enforce it randomly when you're low on cash, and renewing it in perpetuity after seeing that it's actually worth something, that is the stifling business practice.
Oh you're making a camera ten years after we sold a ton of ours, Really? --- Here is a cease and desist letter from our lawyers - or pay up on every unit etc.. - If you read the patent closely they patented a VIDEO CAMERA capable of recording RAW in any compression over a certain frame rate.
If I read their application correctly anyone doing stop-motion on a Nikon/Canon who plays the frames back at 23.98fps after and happens to zip them for archival and using less disk is a RED patent target - and the question is for how long.
So just to re-iterate, licensing MP3, MPEG-4, R3D, ProRes - a specific encoding system vs. licensing the fact that you're "allowed" to compress raw in a video recorder or camera and using the government and courts to enforce this because you need more cash are two different concepts.
The argument RED is making is that CinemaDNG is okay, Compressed CinemaDNG is also okay, but don't you dare play or record it at 24fps.
Oh you don't have fast enough or cheap enough storage to write uncompressed CinemaDNG?
Pay us for a license to do so, because we own compressed raw video faster than 23fps. - You won't get R3D IPR for that license, you'll only retain your ability to do this obvious thing - that you did without us on your dime prior to our (RED) involvement in your business. Cheers RED.Com, Inc.