Re: [rtcweb] ~"I'd love it if patents evaporated...If not now, when"

["Martin J. Dürst" <[e-mail]>]

On 2013/11/14 14:22, cowwoc wrote:
> On 13/11/2013 8:43 PM, Justin Uberti wrote:
>> Regarding H.261: Consider the following clip, encoded at 256 kbps
>> using H.261.
>> http://www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk/peter/h261/missa.norm.h261.mpg

Thanks for the pointer to the sample.

>> Do you think this quality (QCIF, grayscale, PSNR of 38) is acceptable
>> for your users?
>
> That is hardly a scientific comparison.

True, but that's not what I asked about.

> And again, it is misleading to imply that I am advocating the mass-use
> of H.261. I am only advocating the use of this codec in the 5-10% of
> cases where the clients fail to agree on a common upgrade path (to VP8
> or H.264). In those cases, I'd happily accept H.261 instead of dropping
> the call. You can still transcode, if you so wish.

Having had a look at the sample, I'd say "it depends".

If the video were used to discuss e.g. some details of a new physical 
product, higher resolution and color may be rather important, and H261 
insufficient.

If it's just to get a quick impression of the person at the other end of 
the call, I guess it would be okay, but in that use case, there's a high 
chance I'd overlay it with some other document even if the video quality 
was much better.

If it's one of many videos of participants in a conference call, 
grayscale may be disappointing but better than nothing, the size may be 
just about right, and the (relatively speaking) high bandwidth may not 
be noticed.

Regards,   Martin.