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• Trolls in trouble

  6 juin 2013, par Mans — Law and liberty

  Life as a patent troll is hopefully set to get more difficult. In a memo describing patent trolls as a “drain on the American economy,” the White House this week outlined a number of steps it is taking to stem this evil tide. Chiming in, the Chief Judge of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (where patent cases are heard) in a New York Times op-ed laments the toll patent trolling is taking on the industry, and urges judges to use powers already at their disposal to make the practice less attractive. However, while certainly a step in the right direction, these measures all fail to address the more fundamental properties of the patent system allowing trolls to exist in the first place.

  System and method for patent trolling

  Most patent trolling operations comprise the same basic elements :

  1. One or more patents with broad claims.
  2. The patents of (1) acquired by an otherwise non-practising entity (troll).
  3. The entity of (2) filing numerous lawsuits alleging infringement of the patents of (1).
  4. The lawsuits of (3) targeting end users or retailers.
  5. The lawsuits of (3) listing as plaintiffs difficult to trace shell companies.

  The recent legislative actions all take aim at the latter entries in this list. In so doing, they will no doubt cripple the trolls, but the trolls will remain alive, ready to resume their wicked ways once a new loophole is found in the system.

  To kill a patent troll

  As Judge Rader and his co-authors point out in the New York Times, “the problem stems largely from the fact that, [...] trolls have an important strategic advantage over their adversaries : they don’t make anything.” This is the heart of the troll, and this is where the blow should be struck. Our weapon shall be the mightiest judicial sword of all, the Constitution.

  The United States Constitution contains (in Article I, Section 8) the foundation for the patent system (emphasis mine) :

  The Congress shall have Power [...] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

  Patent trolls are typically not inventors. They are merely hoarders of other people’s discarded inventions, and that allowing others to reap the benefits of an inventor’s work would somehow promote progress should be a tough argument. Indeed, it is the dissociation between investment and reward which has allowed the patent trolls to rise and prosper.

  In light of the above, the solution to the troll menace is actually strikingly simple : make patents non-transferable.

  Having the inventor retain the rights to his or her inventions (works for hire still being recognised), would render the establishment of non-practising entities, which most trolls are, virtually impossible. The original purpose of patents, to protect the investment of inventors, would remain unaffected, if not strengthened, by such a change.

  Links

  • Taking on Patent Trolls to Protect American Innovation
  • Fact Sheet : White House Task Force on High-Tech Patent Issues
  • Make Patent Trolls Pay in Court
  • Constitution of the United States

• RGB to YUV422 conversion with ffmpeg, incorrect colors

  22 janvier 2016, par user3578571

  I’m trying to convert an 8bit RGB uncompressed to an mpeg2 mxf file (xdcam 422 HD 1080 50i) which is YUV422. With info from the FFMpeg docs and various websites i made the following command :

  ./ffmpeg -y -i test_lines.mov  -pix_fmt yuv422p -vcodec mpeg2video -non_linear_quant 1 -flags +ildct+ilme -top 1 -dc 10 -intra_vlc 1 -qmax 2 -vtag xd5c -rc_max_vbv_use 1 -rc_min_vbv_use 1 -g 12 -b:v 50000k -minrate 50000k -maxrate 50000k -bufsize 8000k -acodec pcm_s24le -ar 48000 -bf 2 -ac 2 lines_HD.mxf

  This gave me a result with the colors much brighter than the original.

  So i tried adding the options -color_range 1 -colorspace 1 -color_primaries 1 -color_trc 1 but this didn’t seem to do anything.

  After adding colormatrix=bt601:bt709 i got a way better image, but slightly darker than the original and it also feels weird specifying this option cause the source is also in the REC709 colorspace, so why specify it differently ?

  Next i regenerated my source image to an YUV codec (prores) and rerun FFMpeg on it with the colors coming out just fine. Therefore i think it has to be an RGB -> YUV problem.
  Does somebody have an idea how to this properly ? I can provide screenshots of the different results on a videoscope as soon as i’m back at the office, if anybody is interested.

  Last, i know there are various topics touching this subject but either they go way over my head FFmpeg wise or bring me to the stage where i already am.

• Rsync a video stream continously and watch it

  13 juin 2017, par Ural

  I am recording a cam on a remote machine in my office. I use ffmpeg for that, and writing to mpegts file.
  I want to copy that stream locally, to have a fresh copy, and watch it simultaneously.
  I don’t know options for rsync to grab a changing (appending) file, so I am using loop for it, and it is very slow.

  while true; do rsync -avz --progress --partial --append remote:~/myvideo.mp4 ~/; done

  For watching, I tried :

  mkfifo /tmp/fifo
  
  tail -f ~/myvideo.mp4 > /tmp/fifo
  
  mplayer /tmp/fifo

  But because rsync is stopping every 5 sec, it is working unstable.

  How to record and stream a remote cam continuously, and use only one network stream for that ?