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Ogg Vorbis / Theora Language Removed From HTML5 Spec
Rudd-O writes "It's official. Ogg technology has been removed from the HTML5 spec, after Ian caved in the face of pressure from Apple and Nokia. Unless massive pressure is exerted on the HTML5 spec editing process, the Web authoring world will continue to endure our modern proprietary Tower of Babel. Note that HTML5 in no way required Ogg (as denoted by the word 'should' instead of 'must' in the earlier draft). Adding this to the fact that there are widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg technology, there is really no excuse for Apple and Nokia to say that they couldn't in good faith implement HTML5 as previously formulated."
Ogg the cavemen break Apple and Nokia heads with open source CD!
And once again the public loses
Instead of specifying a specific format, just specify the salient details...how about "...MUST use a non-patent-encumbered format that is released under an OSI-approved license...". Well, not that, per-se, but you get my drift.
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
maybe they new Fark planned to patent ogg next year.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
We don't all live in this world and know the players.
So Microsoft is evil, because they're a big corporation. OK.
Google says "do no Evil," but yet has, so now they're an evil big corporation too. OK.
Now Apple is going lower than even Microsoft or Google would stoop. Are they a big corporation that does evil now, too?
Please, crowd of random Slashdot users, validate my perceptions so I don't feel undersocialized.
there are bigger problems than Ogg!
For one, it will mean the death of any lightweight web browser. Web will become something like a TV where you are fed with content you cannot filter (because the TV is too complex to hack). Monopoly through complexity.
A simple new format that is designed from the start for vector graphics and that doesn't try to be backwards compatible with HTML would be the best way for the new web.
I see that what I just suggested is exactly the change they made. I'm fine with that...off to tag the front-page article with "badsummary"
"Murphy was an optimist" - O'Toole's commentary on Murphy's Law
MSFT isn't the only one who pulls crap like this. AAPL and NOK would gladly do the same things if they can get away with it.
Honestly, if the choice was between "Should" and not referencing it, I'd go for the latter. I deal in construction contracts and specifications, and if there's a word that has done more damage than "should", I'm not aware of it.
Repeat after me:
Shall=imperative
May=permissive
That's it. "Should" means "we want it, but making it a requirement will cause a problem, so if you don't do it we're going to whine, but there's nothing we can legally do about it"
Of course, then there's the whole "Shall" vs. "Will" thing, but I don't want to talk about it.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
You furry man
You to o late
Bases are all belong to us
HTML 5 is designed to be a pragmatic markup language, and neither Apple nor Nokia felt that Ogg was of practical use. The "intellectual purity" of ogg pales in comparison with the benefits of MPEG-4 and H.26x codecs. (To name a few: superior compression, less processing power for decoding, specialized chip support, and DRM hooks).
Huh? Furry man? I think this is for patch tuesday. It's for windows only so every here can continue goofing off/
yay for oppression!
If the format is free of patents, and is essentially open source (released under the BSD license)... how can Nokia shake its finger around and threaten people?
This wouldn't be a story if Microsoft had done it, trying to force WMP codecs into the standard - I'm actually kind of surprised they hadn't yet... but Nokia? wtf
The MP3 patents should expire at around 2010, and I imagine the other MPEG-1 patents will expire sometime around that time, if they haven't already.
So what's the point in having it in there then? The vendors who don't want to implement it won't, and the people wanting an open baseline won't get one. The recommendation did nothing for openness or interoperability, it just gave people an official excuse to bash vendors that won't implement it.
All other things being equal, a smaller specification that everybody can agree on is better than one with unnecessary, contentious recommendations. There was never any need for this recommendation, it just bloated the already massive specification.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
It would have been really nice to have a common denominator where if you want to put up a video you can just assume a single format will actually work on all modern browsers of all platforms (one day). But certain corporations are too afraid of their own tactics and therefore refuse to implement OGG Theora. Because, you know, one day someone might pop out of their hole saying "booyah, I have a patent on technology X and you're all infringing" and they would not be able to deny it as OGG is open for everyone to review.
So in fear of a potential lawsuit over something that might not even ever happen we keep up a non-uniform way of displaying video on all platforms and have abandoned hope for a unification for years to come.
What a sad world...
I don't see that the edit makes much of a difference. Even if HTML5 says that user agents SHOULD support Ogg, it doesn't mean they all will. And even though HTML 5 doesn't mention Ogg, it doesn't mean they all won't.
As every web developer knows, what you can and cannot do on a web site has less to do with what the standards say, and more to do with what browsers decide to support. There are web standards that have been specified for years that developers still cannot use (for example, much of the CSS in the Acid2 test), and there are technologies that get widely used before being standardized (for example, XMLHttpRequest).
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
From the page:
It would be helpful for interoperability if all browsers could support the same codecs. However, there are no known codecs that satisfy all the current players: we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies. This is an ongoing issue and this section will be updated once more information is available.What part of initially suggesting Ogg Vorbis doesn't fit with the new quote? It just seems wierd. Like they could say what they mean, but not explicitly suggest Ogg.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
Sure there is! Lots of them!
Greed.
Avarice.
Stupidity.
Need I go on?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Forgive my ignorance, I've not been following the topic at all, but why would one even consider it a good thing to have specific support for one format -- free-as-in-beer-speech-whathaveyou -- embedded in HTML in the first place? Aside from the usual not very good hippie-mountain-crunch commun/social/altru-istic reasons, especially when there is likely to be an encoding-agnostic means to attempt to embed objects into HTML? (I'm assuming here, because I can't imagine something like the OBJECT tag going away any time soon, right?)
Ed R.Zahurak
You know, oblivion keeps looking better every day.
Lift the cat who was amongst the pigeons up and put him back on his pedestal for now. (remove requirement on ogg for now)
... and the replacement text doesn't name ogg, it merely lists codec desiderata that only the oggs (afaik) can meet.
That said, I can easily imagine that companies are in exclusive-licensing binds and have promised not to support other media formats in exchange for, say, massive price breaks.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
I have nothing against the Ogg Vorbis format, but how is it the business of an HTML spec as to what file format is used by external links? This is no better than the spec mandating we use PNG instead of JPG. Developers will use whatever makes sense to them and it isn't really the spec's business to mandate what is really outside of its scope.
why does anyone think that would actually carry weight? reference microsoft browsers and previous standards
make ogg official, and business will ignore it, and marginalize the standard. do we really want the standards ignored?
so allow the businesses their moronic formats, and use ogg anyways
it's silly if anyone thinks the war against proprietary formats is going to be won by a standards body. at the very best, business will embrace standards because the standards body play footsie with business desires, which is what happened, which is good!
at worst, the standards body ignores business on some ideological crusade, so businesses just ignore the standards as well, and we have a worse tower of babel on our hands
folks: this is the best possible outcome, where best possible outcome = ugly begrudging accomodation of moronic business desires. you can't do any better than what happened, unfortunate, but true
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The actual removal can be found here.
"we need a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies."
The sad thing is that Ogg/Theora is strong on all these points, and it's probably the only somewhat modern codec set that even comes close. Theora might not be state of the art, but it is orders of magnitude better 1980s tech that someone might propose as an alternative (and Vorbis clearly is a state of the art design).
Meanwhile the MPEG LA licensed codecs that Apple and Nokia are advocating have already landed several *licensees* in court for patent litigation, with two major cases ongoing. In particular the MPEG LA license agreement is quite specific that the license does not provide all the patents needed to implement the covered codecs. Some of the lawsuits have even been from members of the pool (such as Lucent), so paying up provides you with little protection from attack from the pool members, no zero protection from patent attacks by third parties.
Theora and Vorbis were designed to be free of serious patent problems. That doesn't mean that they are completely immune, *nothing can be* in our current patent climate. However, they should do better than their proprietary competitors... and the track record shows that.
Just to point out what it currently happening, here is the mail from Ian Hickson from this morning:
:) In other words "temporarily removed until a consensus has been found".
"I've temporarily removed the requirements on video codecs from the HTML5
spec, since the current text isn't helping us come to a useful
interoperable conclusion. When a codec is found that is mutually
acceptable to all major parties I will update the spec to require that
instead and then reply to all the pending feedback on video codecs.
http://www.whatwg.org/issues/#graphics-video-codec
"
The title of the news is a bit misleading
In the last story about this there was a guy who made a really good comment about mpeg4 and how Ogg/Theora isn't actually that good for HTML5. He basically said that the video codec was patent encumbered but the company who owned it made it available to the public under a free nonrevocable license since it was DOA anyway when compared to mpeg4. see here:
"Ogg's video codec is Theora, which was proprietary. On2 developed it as its closed competition to MPEG-4's H.263 (DivX) and H.264 (AVC) codecs, alongside other competing proprietary codecs from Real and Microsoft (WMV). The winner to shake out of all that competition has been the MPEG-4 standard, which includes both a container and different sets of codecs. MPEG-4 is open and supported by lots of companies, and is also supported by FOSS (x264 is among the best implementations)." - DECS
I get the feeling that if people would actually sit down and look at the issue objectively then it would be obvious that Ogg/Theora being included in the HTML5 spec isn't that great of an idea. The problem is the Ogg crowd has a huge chip on their shoulder since no one has really given them the time of day. So, here's a chance for them to get some validation for all their hard work but they've been cut out yet again so everyone's all up in arms.
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
Why should a cellphone company, and a company that represents only 15% (is that a safe number?) of the PC market dictate what's best for the other 85%? Heil Jobs and Kallasvuo.
Oddities of writing style aside (and possible DRM agenda nonwithstanding) I actually thought the idea suggested in the original Nokia paper to use older techniques that are or will very soon be based on expired patents was a pretty good one.
Whatever we may want to think, it is true that someone COULD challenge Ogg Vorbis on patent grounds, valid or not. A technique 20 years old and based on expired patents is absolutely unambiguous - the patent office itself is the documentation that the technique is now unrestricted.
For most of what is done on the web the older technologies would work just fine. They are also mainstream, which means they stand a better chance of being used. The HTML standards process is not strong enough to push forward Ogg Vorbis, IMO.
Remember, this is big corporate lawyer turf here. Ogg Vorbis is thought to be free of patent claims but there is no way to prove that. Expired patents are the safest possible way to proceed.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
The Babel is even worse with video. I've almost given up on watching shows with torrents. Every fricken geek out there tries to use the newest and most obscure codecs they can find for some reason, but maybe they're just jackasses. I downloaded a television episode recently, and had to search the web to even figure out the file extension. Turns out it was some new codec where the only players available were at 0.0.1 alpha stage. Great. :-\
The **AA doesn't really have to do anything anymore. The file traders are going to obfuscate the whole thing into uselessness.
It seems to encourage sloppy code writing, there's too many "Well you can do it this way if you want" type comments which is a major reason we have many of the browser incompatibility issues we have in the first place.
Unless you define specifically how things should be done there's always going to be ambiguity and there's always going to be browser incompatibilities.
XHTML was a good common sense step towards making people standardise their code and it's existence has pushed that well. Why are we now throwing all that good work away and to an extent even contradicting it?
I'm not entirely sure why a specific media format is being suggested in the first place either, this seems like a bad idea. If the spec becomes stagnant as many others have in the past it's going to become outdated as recommended formats die out and so on and so forth leaving people to treat it with further ignorance.
The brilliance of XHTML is the very fact that it is extensible and does only specify the absolute minimum required to work whilst the rest can be added on through the extensibility provided via the spec. That leads to a very adaptable, very future proof, well defined language.
At the HTML5 site I see comments about how XHTML doesn't cater to web application developers but the core issue is that many web application developers came about without requiring any formal software engineering skills and again this is why the web is such a relative mess. The reality is that the language shouldn't be adapting to web developers but web developers need to be adapting to tried and tested good practice development methods and concepts to ensure a well structured, clean, standardised, future proof web.
Microsoft = Dr. Evil
Apple = John Travolta's character from Swordfish
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
I'd rather have a spec that clearly defines how content is embedded, rather than what content to embed. Specifying a particular format reduces freedom. There's nothing to say you can't use Ogg. The only benefit to having Ogg in the spec itself would be to get the format more well-known, but that should happen on its merits, not because a standards body decreed it so. What is unfortunate in this instance is just how much sway a single company or pair of companies can have over a spec as a whole, and how quickly they can make changes happen. It just smacks of impropriety. I don't think anyone's going to argue that H.264 is a bad codec, but isn't the point of a standard to ensure interoperability? Why do these companies have so much clout?
Theora is a bit computationally cheaper to decode than H.264, and of much higher quality per bit than older generation codecs.
... which needs on the order of 10x the bandwidth to still have worse quality than Theora, enough of a difference that H.261 is not really suitable for web streaming. So it's really a choice between Theora and nothing at all, a state of affairs that screws the public but should leave the codec licensing folks happy since they are already making great money off the fragmented status quo.
W3C was quite clear in their diff that pay-per-use codecs like H.264 were utterly unacceptable to them. This isn't a choice between Theora and H.264, it's a choice between Theora and H.261
Theora is not as good as H.264, but it's not that far behind, and it's much better than anything else no-cost. For a baseline codec it doesn't matter that chosen codec isn't the best quality available, it matters that it isn't terrible and it matters that it can be universally implemented. Today Theora is pretty much the only option that meets those two simple criteria.
And, of course, Vorbis is a state of the art codec which stands up well even next to the best AAC-HE codecs, even at low bitrates.
I am so sick and tired of people saying silly things like "Its only an operating system," or "use what's best," or other justifications for taking crap that we MUST STAND UP AGAINST.
Every little one of these things matters, they all add up like links in a chain. There are people actively trying to destroy freedom and they are doing it slowly with incremental steps. This is just another step. I'm sorry, if you can't be bothered to take an active participation in protesting and exploring alternate systems, then you are letting everyone down. You know the expression: "No one snow flake in an avalanche feels any responsibility."
The *big* picture is democracy itself. Once the information is controlled, the people are controlled. Make no mistake, people are actively working against the free exchange of information. While most are just working for their own self interests, there are others capitalizing on these actions in more nefarious ways.
I know you think this is tin foil hat stuff, but look around, look at what's happening. We have to work against these sorts of things because rust never sleeps.
I can't wait to see RoughlyDrafted defend this move. Daniel Eran, now is your time to set the record straight. Allow me to assist you with the article: the Vorbis formats are secretly backed by Microsoft, include highly restrictive squirt DRM called PlaysNotForSure, and secretly embed Zune logos into all of the files you play.
Don't forget to include bar graphs showing how the AAC format far outsells the Vorbis format in terms of digital media sales, because I think that will really drive the point home.
I tought the XHTML specifications were made to replace the old HTML4.01 ... but now I see that the next "version" of HTML4.01 is HTML5.
I think it's better to leave alone the HTML5 beucase it will cause more incompatibilities with the browsers and concentrate all the development efforts on the XHTML standard. I'm almost sure it won't be fully compliant with HTML4.01 and all major browsers will implement some different interpreting methods.
XHTML is more easier to understand for the computers because it is formatted as a XML, so it is nested and clear, but also is flexible.
...If it was, our problems would be over.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
How can anyone involved in objective analysis of a standard "cave"? Was there money involved? Because if Ogg was the best choice than there has to be some other major deciding factor outside legitimate consideration.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
There are important patents needed to implement a quality MP3 encoder which do not expire until ~2018. Though you're right that MP3 decode becomes free fairly soon. Video, on the other hand, is MUCH worse off and this argument is, after all, over the tag.
You could use prior generation codecs a bit sooner such as H.261 But H.261 needs something like 10x the bandwidth of Theora to produce something of even remotely comparable quality. Adopting that as a baseline would, no doubt, make parties like Apple and Nokia who earn money off codec licensing happy... it would not be good for the public. The bandwidth requirements of H.261 really make it unsuitable for web streaming, and the poor quality of the older codecs even at moderate bitrates makes them really undesirable.
While Theora is not quite as good as H.264, it's not several orders of magnitude worse. It's serious competition, and the price is hard to argue with. The Ogg solution is especially competitive right now as multiple MPEG licensees are getting sued and losing patent infringement cases brought both by third parties and members of the MPEG licensing pool. While you can't say for sure that someone won't sue you for using Ogg/Theora+Vorbis, it's becoming increasingly sure that you will be sued for using the MPEG codecs and that your expensive license provides little protection. At least Ogg/Theora+Vorbis are *intended* to avoid patents, and the money you save of licensing could go a long way for insurance or outright legal defense.
Ultimately the only way to resolve this issue is to fix the broken patent system in the US... but thats somewhat outside of the scope of the W3C.
I have news for you: HTML is a format!
By being half-assed and not specifying a standard for a widely used aspect of the web browsing experience, what is in effect happening is a de-facto endorsement of all of those pet proprietary formats at the expense of clarity and allowing the various companies to rape the public with a million of buggy plug-ins, each with its own flavour of the week. The very anathema of a "standard".
It does not matter if Ogg/Theora were not the most advanced and efficient of technologies as neither is the whole concept of HTML. What mattered was estabilishment of an open standard which would cut down on the chaos of inane plug-ins and made it impossible for companies like CNN to purposefully block all web browsers other then IE from accessing their video contents, as is the case now.
What the heck is the difference between "should" and "must"? Everyone, switch to Logban, now!
What's the value of information that you don't know?
Apple made sense. After all they can not have OSS competing against them on something that they do not control. But Nokia had no reason to fight this. Well none that is out in public. Have to wonder why?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I have to agree with parent post. Browsers don't read just any data format. There are specific ones that are standard on the web for text rendering? What about standards for video and audio rendering? Why don't these exist? It is almost 2008 for gosh sakes.
Skipping over the issues of mpeg-4 vs ogg, the real issue is that HTML read as SHOULD, not shall. That means that they do not have to support it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
When we're already on IE7? It just causes confusion. We should bump up to HTML7 to match the de facto browser
He is a fscking idiot. And fsck apple too. Especially given that they based their whole OS on BSD. Fscking fsckers fsck fsck fsck. Fsck.
Salut,
Jacques
It's true that H.264 is better than Theora. But H.264 has zero chance of being made the baseline because it is expensive as hell and certainly not free as the W3C requires.
Theora is substantially better than any other codec which has a chance of being included. As such it's silly to say that Theora shouldn't be used because it isn't the best... thats a bit like saying "I won't drive any car but a Ferrari" when all you can afford is a used Ford Escort.
Obviously most implementations will also include a better codec than Theora, but Theora is a generally respectable codec at web streaming bitrates and it will provide a viable option for those who can't or won't pay the licensing fees for better codecs. In other words, Theora will be a reasonable baseline which is all it's supposted to be in this context.
Furthermore, the inclusion of Theora will also help keep the licensing costs down for better codecs. Everyone Wins, except companies that make money licensing codecs... and in the long run they'll probably win too, since web video that Just Works will increase the popularity of web video.
Well, have you considered the idea that a standard is there in order to allow different systems to interoperate; not just for some theoretical reason? It's perfectly reasonable to allow absolutely any other sub standard to be used, but in the end, if you need interoperability for some specific reason (e.g. an accessible version of the page etc.) there should be some choice made about what other standards should be recommended. Sometimes this recommendation should be in the standard (e.g. IPSEC standard recommends the use of 3DES) sometimes it's done de-facto (e.g. the web standard for a long time was GIF and is now PNG), but if there's a sensible clear choice then it makes it much more likely that the standard feature will actually be used and work reliably.
HTML pages now often rely on sound. HTTP supports media switching meaning that better (or DRM encumbered) formats could be used together with OGG. Recommending OGG would be a a clear benefit for all whilst in no way stopping the use of other standards.
Probably Nokia IPR people just want to have a big patent war. Stupid really; since Nokia still makes most of its money producing useful things and will continue to for a long time even if they imagine they are becoming a "Mobile Web 3 Hypercompany". Patents are a game they can only lose.
I would not be surprised at all if it turns out Novell was secretly behind this. Their plans for video on the web have been made clear by their M$-supported involvement with Silverlight, which of course is rife with patents.
... This wouldn't be a story if Microsoft had done it, trying to force WMP codecs into the standard - I'm actually kind of surprised they hadn't yet... but Nokia? wtfNokia recently signed on with MS for its proprietary codecs and is shoehorning WMP/WMA codecs into many (all?) of its products. Biting into Ogg and other open formats is probably part of the deal, or perhaps the MS boosters working from inside Nokia now feel secure enough to upset the apple cart.
It could also be backlash from MSFTers (both inside Nokia and outside) from Jorma Ollila's public support of open standards.
Or it could just be the water
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Yeah, like it doesn't already specify image formats and audio formats (bgsound).
Dig into the CV of the author and you'll find at least a little M$ contamination. It's like with a sheep dog. Once they go bad, there's but only one thing that can be done...
By a conscious decision Vorbis *is* based off technology which is old enough to be expired if it ever was patented. That was part of the fundamental strategy in the Vorbis design.
... but Vorbis is already there. And thats obviously not good enough for you, or the W3C. As such, your proposal is worthless. You seem to want certain immunity from patents, but that just isn't possible, even if you're willing to accept unreasonable concessions
Vorbis' floor system? Based off the earliest speech codecs. Vorbis' stereo system? based off the encoding used in records. Vorbis' psy model? taken directly from research papers from the 1960s. Vorbis' entropy coder? it's just a simple huffman coder!
The brilliance of Vorbis is that it's the result of finely optimizing the best of the oldest ideas.
However, the composition or implementation of the ideas might still run afoul of some idiotic patent. This is a risk that simply can't be avoided. It's a fundamental vulnerability that ALL software has thanks to our patent system. Even implementing an old algorithm in a new programming language can create a patent minefield.
So yes, what you propose will make a codec patent resistant.
.
Wrong icon and everything!
"Widely available patent-free implementations of Ogg".
First, saying "Ogg" means Ogg Vorbis to most people. This is about Ogg Theora.
Second, whether something is patent free is not determined by the implementation. You're thinking of copyright!
Ogg Theora uses patented technology. We don't want to enter into a Rambus-type situation where once something becomes popular a company can come back and start dinging people for money.
And the icon doesn't make sense. This isn't about trying to patent existing or trivial things, it's about whether a standard should make mandatory a patented codec that isn't even widely used.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
From reading the links and comments on this story it sounds like the main gist is:
Ogg Theora is a nice codec, but
1) there might be patent issues with it
2) other modern codecs have several advantages, such as (to quote coolGuyZak from this thread) "superior compression, less processing power for decoding, specialized chip support, and DRM hooks"
As far as the HTML5 group goes, it sounds like they are looking for:
"...a codec that is known to not require per-unit or per-distributor licensing, that is compatible with the open source development model, that is of sufficient quality as to be usable, and that is not an additional submarine patent risk for large companies."
(http://html5.org/tools/web-apps-tracker?from=1142&to=1143)
If the Big Companies are wary of Ogg Theora for technical or legal reasons, why don't they try to resolve these issues by:
1) putting their patents where their mouth is and trying to make the MPEG-4 standard open enough for everyone to use, OR
2) doing the programming and legal work necessary to make Ogg Theora be of "sufficient quality" and not be a "submarine patent risk" anymore ?
I mean, it's entirely possible that there are no existing media codecs that can meet the needs of HTML5, and if so then I'd really like to see that spelled out in a 5 or 6 page document, but at this point I'm much more likely to believe that a handful of large companies are trying to manipulate the standardization process for their own benefit, much to the detriment of software developers and end users.
coding is life
I agree with your statement regarding an open standard to web video, however the example you gave is just plain wrong. I can view cnn videos no problem on ubuntu. You may have confused the BBC's iplayer which in early stages was only available to IE. A public outcry forced them to change this.
So Ogg will never make it back into the HTML5 spec.
Ban flash.
As much as I'd like to see OGG gain momentum over proprietary formats, I think specifying a format is beyond the scope of HTML. If being HTML compliant meant that you had to use Theora and Vorbis for video and audio respectively, I could see that somewhat stifling innovation. If someone comes up with a new concept for delivering web based video or audio more efficiently than can be done with OGG, they'd have to disregard HTML standards in order to implement it. This means that either the standard largely gets ignored, or people forgo progress in favor of the standard.
If it doesn't belong in the spec, why was it ever mooted about for inclusion in the first place?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I'll be happy as long as the standard includes Plays For Sure. Anything with a name like that just has to be great!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Seriously - HTML 5 -- so what? This thing is being worked on by the same incompetant standards body who proposed CSS 2 11 years ago and never got it fully implemented. They've been drafting CSS 3 for 8 years. The W3C is no longer relevant. The web formats are prisoners of their own bloat - they cannot proceed further and support their legacy. Replacement isn't an option either since they are too firmly entrenched.
...
Mark my words, HTML 5 will still be a draft in 2017 just like CSS 3, first proposed in 1998, is still a draft in 2008.
I don't like it. No web designer does. In an age where computers can render entire environments in real time you still can't do the following in HTML/CSS/Javascript
draw a straight line at any orientation other than horizontal or vertical.
draw a curve of any type.
embed a font
RELIABLY position an object (CSS != reliable -- 1,001 browser hacks stand testament to this).
drop shadow anything.
perform a gaussian blur.
And that's not even the tip of the iceberg. HTML has stagnated and will continue to be stagnant so long as there is no money in browsers.
Communist Zonk.
Because people tend to get carried away occasionally? I don't know, you can step through the revisions to find where it was first introduced if you like. Just because something has been included in a draft, it doesn't mean that it's a good idea or within the remit of the working group. Hell, people getting carried away and bolting on unnecessary things is so common in the software industry, there's even names for it like "creeping featuritis".
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I tried gnash. I have a AMD_64 type machine and it worked WAY less than half of the time. The other times it just sent the processor into orbit and maintained a geosynchronous one indefinitely.
The idea of entire websites where I go to spend money saying, "you must have Adobe Flash player to view our site", seems so unreal. No fallback text at all?! It is becoming as bad as "you need IE to be here". So, gnash is really important, but releasing something that works less than half of the time is a mistake. If someone doesn't know what is happening to their computer, it just leaves them with "linux is broke and it freezes my computer".
Now that is an extremely contentious claim to make, and yet you state your opinion as fact, and do so with an utter and complete lack of evidence of any kind to support it...
By all means, prove it.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Throwing your personal anecdotal evidence informs but does not present the full picture.
I have 3 computers with Linux/Firefox an YouTube works fine.
Yes, in an ideal world we would prefer something open, but the ideal world is reached only by incremental steps. You make it sound like if Flash did not work at all in Linux, which is not true.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
The EFF or some other interested party along those same lines should file a law suit claiming damages. What Apple and Nokia have done is damage to the future development of the public internet through blatant lies. I'm not sure how it would be defined legally, but fraud is a word that comes to mind. Telling lies to get your way in business is illegal. It goes beyond "FUD" to simply label some technology as proprietary when it is not.
http://www.w3.org/2007/08/video/positions/Nokia.pdf
Turns out that if I start up xmms or audacious on some mp3, then hit pause (has to be pause--not stop) or just let it play, then I can view flash movies to my heart's content without a crash.
It's a kludge, but maybe with a little luck it works for you.
That list and the WHATWG list have very little interest in serving the consumer or the developer. They are serving the interests of the browser vendors - Ogg/Vorbis was threatening Quicktime so it was never going to make it into Webkit.
HTML needs rescued from the browser vendors - as it is we are going to get a load of cr*p we don't actually need - they think - no insist we have it - so we get it.
Give me a properly designed web over this Browser Vendor Soup nightmare.
Perhaps you should take a look at Gnash, the open source Flash player. Works for me.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Note that there is a precise definition of the terms MUST, SHOULD, MAY, SHOULD NOT and MUST NOT found in RFC 2119, which every W3C spec references (and in certain cases extend) for defining these terms. Look for any section or chapter using the word "Conformance". On should, it says:
http://virtuelvis.com/
That sounds like George Bush's approach to Iran.
Hi. I'm the 'inventor' (not really, On2 originally wrote vp3 and we're riffing from there. I'm the hacker working on it now).
1) That is in comparison to h264. And I call it 'embarrassing' because Theora *could* easily be just as good, but it isn't right now. That document is a call to arms and because of it, a new encoder is rapidly taking shape. Its improvements are already making it back to mainline. We'll catch up rapidly.
2) "It's safe to say that MPEG4 and it's codecs have been more thoroughly researched than Theora" Bullshit. MPEG is simultaneously inefficient and narrow in their focus. MPEG-4 / h.264 is a decades old chassis with a few recent research papers tacked on. _Several of the items I identified as 'embarrassing' and 'obsolete' ironically apply to MPEG-4 too_.
3) "I absolutely, positively promise you that Youtube serves more video than Wikipedia, and they don't stream Theora." Irrelevant. This is an argument against Google (Altavista dwarfed them), Microsoft (IBM and even Apple dwarfed them), Toyota (GM dwarfed them), etc.
"As much as I like the idea of Theora, I'm glad we don't have to be saddled with the reality of it."
Why does everyone here think this is a battle of individuals? These are huge multinationals and your puny insignificant selves don't even appear on their radars. Sure, the public will indeedy benefit from a standard multimedia codec set with no proprietary/encumbered strings attached, but that is entirely irrelevant in the process of making money. They're *for profit corporations* doing what for-profit corporations do. Making money. And that is entirely orthogonal to morals, public good, or even competent engineering. They don't have any interest whatsoever in what you think.
Although we're a non-profit (and exist on behalf of the common good), our argument in this battle happens to concern rallying all the sub-$100M companies that will be frozen out by the very biggest players getting their way. When big companies win, little companies generally lose. Although the little compaines greatly out-mass the big companies, they tend to be fragmented. If we can get them all together to fight for a uniform technology recommendation, way more people win.
But you might want to run for cover, 'cause Godzilla has his squishin' boots on.
Time to just totally eliminate the dependence on proprietary formats for video, audio and image formats in HTML.
It was a great idea to create HTML as an open standard that anyone can implement.
It is a great idea to define a minimum set of open formats for image, video and audio.
I should be able to create a rich multimedia experience that works on every platform with no dependence on any proprietary format.
If someone cannot display these open standards than it is their problem, and they should not be allowed to say they are standards complaint.
Can you suggest one codec which isn't heavily encumbered which might even be close to Theora? The only real candidate that I'm aware of is H.261, which takes roughly 10x the bandwidth of Theora to deliver anything close to the same quality at typical web streaming sizes. Try it for yourself. It's not like we're awash with non-patented codecs.
This is an except from an MPEG-LA press release:
"Owners of patents or patent applications determined by MPEG LA's patent experts to be essential to the H.264/AVC standard (standard) include Columbia University, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute of Korea (ETRI), France Telecom, Fujitsu, IBM, Matsushita, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Motorola, **Nokia**, Philips, Polycom, Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Thomson, Toshiba, and Victor Company of Japan (JVC)."
So lets review the three companies loudly objecting to OGG, misrepresenting its status and continuing to fuel this debate:
Apple: Has heavy investment in H.264, AAC and DRM via iTunes. Known for proprietry hardware lock-in.
Microsoft: Heavy investment in WMV and DRM. 'Essential patent holder' in H.264. Major shareholder in Apple. Known for proprietry browser and OS lock-in and standards disruption.
Nokia: 'Essential patent holder' and heavy invester in H.264. Argued for software patents in EU.
Stop believing their lies! Don't you think it's weird that Nokia is complaining about patents while simultaneous holding numerous video related ones? OGG/Vorbis/Theora are open and as safe as codecs can get. Its patent risks are practically non-existent. It has no licensing fees. It is easy to implement across all major (and most minor) platforms. It is the format of choice - unless you're Nokia, Apple or Microsoft.
Finally, nobody has mentioned that the licensing terms on H.264/AVC state that in about 8 years from now ALL internet H.264 content and software becomes licensable. Sites will have to pay to use it. It is NOT FREE, just 'on hold' until adoption becomes widespread and enforcement more practical. When that happens guess who makes billions? Nokia and Microsoft.
Ironically my captcha for this post was 'villains' !!
P.E.R.I.O.D.!
it's not a problem with the computer. it was clearly stated that the problem is with the closed source flash plugin.
:)
that plugin has been and still is crappy.
i've seen a lot of problems with it - grey plugin areas if i switch tabs a lot, memleaks (some only evident after having browser open for a week, some appearing soon after loading the plugin)...
also, alsa support was added way too late, thus making life much harder that it should be.
flash sucks. heya, adobe
Rich
First off, MPEG-1 is no longer patent restricted, and is newer and better than h.261.
Second, 10X is clearly a made-up number. Through the past 20+ years of lossy video compression, there hasn't been an order of magnitude improvement in compression at all. And even if there had been such an improvement, Theora certainly wouldn't be the codec in a position to do it, as it's pretty poor quality. If you're really seeing that huge of a difference, you're doing something HORRIBLY wrong.
I have tried h.261 even though support for it is pretty flaky, and I use MPEG-1 EXTENSIVELY today (on SVCDs and DVDs, in lieu of MPEG-2). I've got a video encoding to MPEG-1 right now... I would put libavcodec's MPEG-1 up against Theora any day. If nothing else, the quality is quite close, and MPEG-1 requires a tiny fraction of the CPU power to encoder or decode.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant