Здравствуйте, DiPaolo, Вы писали:

S>>как я понял если продавать видеорекордер надо платить royalty за h264
DP>За сам видеорекордер — нет. А вот за каждую операцию енкодирования либо декодирования — да.

это ответ chatgpt из него выходит что надо платить за инсталяцию
+ windows уже имеет лицензию на h264

Short answer: usually you pay per distributed product (or per user/device), not per encoding operation.

For a software video recorder, the royalty question depends on how you ship the encoder.

1. If you include your own H.264 encoder in your software

If your product contains H.264 encoding capability, the patent pool license (historically via MPEG-LA) treats it as a product unit.

Royalties are generally charged per unit of the product distributed (e.g., per copy of software or device with encoder/decoder).

Example historical structure: about $0.20 per unit after the first 100,000 units per year, with lower rates at very high volume.

The “unit” means a product containing an encoder, decoder, or both.

So if you sell/download your recorder:

1 download = 1 licensed unit

Not related to how many videos the user encodes.

2. If you use the OS / hardware encoder

Often you do not need to pay anything if you call an existing licensed implementation, e.g.:

Windows Media Foundation

macOS / iOS VideoToolbox

Android MediaCodec

GPU encoders (NVENC, QuickSync)

In this case:

The OS or hardware vendor already paid the license

Your app is just using their API

This is the most common approach for commercial apps.

3. If you ship open-source encoders (x264 / ffmpeg)

Two issues:

Patent license (H.264) — still required for commercial distribution.

Software license — e.g., x264 is GPL, meaning your app must also be GPL unless you buy a commercial license.

So many commercial products either:

buy a commercial x264 license, or

use platform encoders.

4. Important: encoding vs distribution

You do NOT pay per video encoded.

Royalties are typically tied to:

product distribution (software/device containing encoder), or

video services distributing encoded content.

✅ Typical design for a video recorder app

Best legal + cheapest:

Your App
↓
OS encoder API (MediaFoundation / VideoToolbox / MediaCodec)
↓
Hardware / system H264 encoder

Then no direct H.264 royalty for your app.