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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
We don't all live in this world and know the players.
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.
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
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
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!!!
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
Google = Chaotic Neutral
Apple = Lawful Evil
Microsoft = Chaotic Evil
Me = Nerd
Adventure, Romance, MAD SCIENCE!
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?
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
Ogg Theora sucks but Ogg Vorbis and Speex are, arguably, the best codecs for audio.
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?
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 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.
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.
They do. However having standard codecs and attempting to tie together formats that are orthogonal in nature are two separate matters. The <video> element type works regardless of the video codec in use, so the HTML specification attaching itself to one particular codec is unnecessary.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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
So Ogg will never make it back into the HTML5 spec.
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.
MPEG is the name of a working group. Some of the formats they have standardised contain patented technology. It's not accurate to say "MPEG contains patents".
In Hickson explained Apple's situation quite well:
While many codecs are patent-encumbered, it doesn't necessarily follow that it is equally risky to implement them for any particular organisation.
HTML hates anthropomorphism.
Nobody is saying that the HTML 5 specification should recommend a patented codec. They are saying that it shouldn't recommend any particular codec.
No, they were always patent-encumbered, it's just that people didn't know about it until UNISYS started cracking down on infringers.
I'm sure they would, but this isn't about picking Quicktime over Ogg. You can't win this argument by saying how bad Quicktime, MPEG or anything else might be, because the alternative people are proposing is no recommendation, not a recommendation for competing formats.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
I don't know where this myth arose that previous versions of HTML specified "standard" image formats, but it's just not true. Read the specifications yourself.
Not specifying any particular video codec for <video> is exactly the same as how images were handled. Including a recommendation for Theora is a change from how images were handled.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
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.
100% correct.
I liked the idea of OGG being recommended for HTML5, but realistically, there are a lot of problems.
As a container, OGG is pretty heavyweight. It's not going to be good for mobile devices.
All off the Vorbis and Theora decoders I've seen have been extremely resource-intensive. This may well be because more attention is devoted to other codecs like XVid, and so they are more highly optimized. Nevertheless, again, mobile devices will suffer.
Quality-wise, Vorbis is pretty nice. Theora, however, is a generation behind, and rapidly losing ground. HTML5 isn't expected to be ratified for over a year. In that time, Theora's generation of codecs will be even older and less efficient to the then-current codecs. For a field as rapidly evolving as streaming video, it doesn't make all that much sense to include it. It would be like suggesting that Indeo be implemented for HTML4.
The biggest benefit to recommending OGG in HTML5 is that it would get a free format out there, but at the cost of efficiency. While bandwidth continues to grow, and computers get faster and faster, waste is still a concern, and mobile devices are becoming more popular (you have to treat these as if they were 10 year old computers with equivalent bandwidth!) OGG misses the mark in most categories--too big and bulky for mobiles, too old for new computers. It's the worst of both worlds.
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.
You seem to be living in a dreamland of some sort. I'll try to help you out.
> It goes beyond "FUD" to simply label some technology as proprietary when it is not.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to, but many people (perhaps you too) assume that Ogg Theora is patent-free, so let's go over this again: Ogg Theora (specifically the Theora part) is _not_ patent-free for the bazillionth time.
> What Apple and Nokia have done is damage to the future development of the public internet through blatant lies.
Actually, what they have done is prevent a specific video codec from becoming a requirement in a markup language standard, thus maintaining free competition for all codecs and allowing them to compete on their own merits. Whatever their motives are, this seems like a good idea to me.
> I'm not sure how it would be defined legally, but fraud is a word that comes to mind.
Fraud? Unlikely. It seems you should get a clue before you post nonsense that people might believe. It seems many Ogg users are disgruntled that their pet codec won't get a free pass. Vent your frustrations on a pillow. It helps. The current HTML standard has no image or media requirements and the internet works just fine. Video codec requirements have no place in a markup language specification. It would be just as bad if Apple/Nokia successfully push their own pet codecs into the standard (which hasn't happened yet), but as it is now there is no use throwing a tissy fit over Ogg Theora being rejected where it also doesn't belong.
This author takes full ownership and responsibility for the unpopular opinions outlined above.
because the alternative people are proposing is no recommendation, not a recommendation for competing formats.
'people' is a funny way of referencing several rather loud business organizations. You make it sound like 'the people have been heard on the subject' or something.
Further, you're correct that Apple and Nokia want no standard. They'd rather have the freedom to troll around in the chaos.
It's disconcerting how many people have barely hidden partisan points of view favoring commercial outfits in these discussions. It's as if shilling was an acceptable part of geek/nerd culture. However, it is not.
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.
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