hi, I recently bought Canon Vixia HF200, which records in AVCHD.
I'm a total amateur at this point, but I have a dream of making short films:
1) to enter into festivals
2) to sell them
Several weeks after purchasing the camcorder I looked into the manual, and noticed a trademark restriction for MPEG4:
"this product is licensed under AT&T patents for mpeg4 standard and may be used for encoding mpeg4 compliant video and/or decoding mpeg4 compliant video that was encoded only for a personal and noncommercial purpose..."
AVCHD is based on mpeg4, so it looks like I cannot use this camcorder to help me with my dream:
#1) dream is 'not for personal purpose', although this can be debated,
my dream 2) is of commercial nature.
There is no notice of the license restriction on the box, and I no longer can return it to the store. It feels like Canon pulled a trick on me but restricting the use without making it obvious for the buyer (me).
Have I just wasted several hundred $ ?
Is there any way to deal with this problem?
Any advice please!
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You are probably the first to read this time bomb. Does this mean if your amateur film becomes an Oscar contender then Sony, Canon, Panasonic (among AVCHD format owners) can emerge to take their cut?
Do I smell class action?
When they promote you as a movie producer, does this give them right to a cut from your work?
I say no. You should retain rights to be paid by them to say you used AVCHD to produce this work.Last edited by edDV; 25th Mar 2010 at 23:20.
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well, a class action is not something I would initiate, although I'm totally unhappy with my 'discovery'
I wonder what consequences I would face if I decided to enter a film into a festival, with no monetary gain. Considering winning the festival would be certainly too arrogant in my position, but hypothetically? -
Commercial purposes for distribution require a MPEG-LA license; this is true for virtually all MPEG distributions formats, including AVC (e.g. blu-ray), MPEG2 (e.g. DVD) , and has been the case for many many years - nobody is pulling a "fast one" on you . The fee is tiny and usually works out to a few cents per disc depending on how big you're going
http://www.mpegla.com/main/default.aspx
If you are something like a small beans indy producer, or a ma & pa wedding shooting outfit, chances are they won't sick their lawyers after you. They only go after larger outfits do it for commercial purposes. I don't think a film festival falls into this category, but if it becomes commercialized (i.e you're successful and DVD's are made and sold), then I suspect it would. You can email them to check if you want to be certain -
This is super helpful! I'll be reading the link.
Is it a reasonable strategy to do filming first, and apply for a license when/if my film becomes worth distributing, or you suggest getting a license up front?
I don't mind paying a reasonable fee, and looks like I overreacted.
thanks. -
I don't see filming as a problem; the grey areas manifest when you start to distribute using a MPEG format that falls under the MPEG-LA (some festivals have different guidelines on the format submissions; it might not be a MPEG format , for example).
Certainly selling DVDs/BD's is a clear cut case, but is an audience viewing your works at a festival considered "distribution" ? are there clauses that exempt this situation - honestly I don't know, and you should contact the MPEG-LA and the festival for guidelines
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