mp3 now license free?

[bamsagla]

Hi PureBasic team, hello PureBasic community,

the news at winfuture.de stated that the licensing of MP3 codec has been ended: http://winfuture.de/news,97637.html
Also the german wikipedia has information that the last patent ended on April 9th 2017: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Paten ... itigkeiten
The english wikipedia, however states that the last patent might not expire before December 30th 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licen ... egislation

The "simple" question is: will it be possible to add native MP3 support to the sound library if the patents will expire? Maybe in the nearest future or at the end of the year, as mentioned above?
I know there is the license free OGG format already included within PureBasic with almost the same possibilities, but all my music is MP3, so... just asking
Thanks in advance for your answers and opinions.

Harry.

[Mohawk70]

Hi PureBasic team, hello PureBasic community,

the news at winfuture.de stated that the licensing of MP3 codec has been ended: http://winfuture.de/news,97637.html
Also the german wikipedia has information that the last patent ended on April 9th 2017: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Paten ... itigkeiten

The english wikipedia, however states that the last patent might not expire before December 30th 2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Licen ... egislation

The "simple" question is: will it be possible to add native MP3 support to the sound library if the patents will expire? Maybe in the nearest future or at the end of the year, as mentioned above?
I know there is the license free OGG format already included within PureBasic with almost the same possibilities, but all my music is MP3, so... just asking
Thanks in advance for your answers and opinions.

Harry.[/quote]
They stopped licensing the MP3 ENCODER I believe, the decoder license hasn't been revoked as of yet. Moot point though once the patent expires I'd think.

[chris319]

It looks like the patents expire on different dates in different jurisdictions.

the last MP3 patent, U.S. Patent 5,703,999 might not expire before 30 December 2017.

Unfortunately the Opus codec hasn't really taken off.

[Roger Hågensen]

Unfortunately the Opus codec hasn't really taken off.

Which is false. Opus is part of the WebRTC standard, which means all modern browsers should support it. All modern audio and media players support it too.

The english wikipedia, however states that the last patent might not expire before December 30th 2017

Not a concern any more as Fraunhofer shut down the MP3 license site a month or two ago and no longer license MP3. So MP3 licensing is no longer a issue. Some commercial software have already started adding libmp3lame to their code bases.

BTW! Just be aware that the decoder in lame may be subject to a GPL license rather than LPGL. So if anyone plan to integrate a MP3 decoder then the one in LAME may not be the way to go. The LAME encoder is LGPL however.


PS! Do be aware that at bitrates of 224kbit and below then AAC+ (v1) and Opus has much better quality. And at bitrates of 224kbit and up the difference between most codecs are minimal.
There is no more quality to get out of MP3 (LAME is basically as good as it gets while remaining bitstream compatible).

My advise is to use Opus for any bitrate but if you must then LAME with the V0 preset is pretty good. But with birates as high as 320kbit on average one might wonder if not FLAC which is lossless might be worth it as it's only twice as large on average.

MP3 for legacy support and Ogg Opus going forward, Ogg Vorbis is pointless now as Ogg Opus is just as good on high bitrates and better at lower bitrates.

[chris319]

Which is false. Opus is part of the WebRTC standard, which means all modern browsers should support it. All modern audio and media players support it too.

The vast majority of on-line radio stations are not using Opus unfortunately, despite it being a standard..

[DK_PETER]

Mp3 is going stronger than ever and the internet is cheering for the expiration of related patents.
I would like to see it become a part of the sound library too.

Actually both the movie- and sound-library needs an extensive overhaul, when it comes to
the numbers of build-in features available.

We can always hope, the team will find the time to update both in the near future.