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YouTube, HTML5, and Comparing H.264 With Theora
David Gerard writes "Google Chrome includes Ogg support for the <video> element. It also includes support for the hideously encumbered H.264 format. Nice as an extra, but ... they're also testing HTML5 YouTube only for H.264 — meaning the largest video provider on the Net will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines. Mike Shaver from Mozilla has fairly unambiguously asked Chris DiBona from Google what the heck Google thinks it's doing."
DiBona responded with concerns that switching to Theora while maintaining quality would take up an incredible amount of bandwidth for a site like YouTube, though he made clear his support for the continued improvement of the project. Greg Maxwell jumped into the debate by comparing the quality of Ogg/Theora+Vorbis with the current YouTube implementations using H.263+MP3 and H.264+AAC. At the lower bitrate, Theora seems to have the clear edge, while the higher bitrate may slightly favor H.264. He concludes that YouTube's adoption of "an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate."
Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?
I wasn't blaming so much as pointing out that like many blogs, slashdot can be an echo chamber. The same opinions are repeated over and over and treated as if they are held by the majority of people. I was younger then and still thought slashdot had a finger on the pulse of technology. It doesn't. It's really great as a news aggregator and the comments are often a hoot, but it isn't what I thought it was.
Bingo. Theora may be equally as good, but it's trying to supplant an already-established format. 'Equally as good' isn't good enough for that: You have to be noticeably better. And Theora isn't. It offers no major advantages, and would just give YouTube headaches, as it either tried to re-encode into a choice of formats, or had to explain to people how to play the videos.
The first of those costs money, the second costs viewers. I'd bet very few people would choose the Theora choice, making the money just wasted money. And YouTube lives on it's viewers: making their site any more complicated than 'click play' is just not acceptable.
It's not worth it. Theora doesn't have enough of a benefit.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video, that is the real issue that people seem to have trouble to understand. That is why the HTML standard only mandates a format that is not impaired by any legal restrictions: Theora.
Not being able to legally play DVDs, Blurays, connect your ipod, etc. on linux are already big problems, we don't need another one.
Why would they install another browser when they could just click the "Click here to install silverlight and watch this video" button?
Good point. My Radeon 4650 supports hardware decoding of Divx, WMV, and h264. Does Theora even have a hardware accelerated codec? With the rise of netbooks, green computing, and the Ion Netbook solution it is pretty obvious that hardware assisted video decoding is where the market is headed. So even if Theora gets "good enough" (which reading TFA may be awhile yet) if Theora doesn't come up with a good hardware assisted decoder and quick I'm guessing it will be a non starter.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Your argument subtly implies that Firefox's implementation is more secure, without providing any proof of your own assertion. Bluntly, Firefox's security record has been far from top-notch for quite some time now, and while their patch response times tend to be excellent, this doesn't change the fact that security vulnerabilities of varying severity are still frequently occuring; and we're all familiar with Microsoft's security record. I can't conclude which implementation is likely more secure.
Which is irrelevant anyway, as you've missed the point of the GP's post in the first place (did you listen?). His argument was that if the OS supports decoding the video format, which it will if it's a modern consumer OS, why should every browser then implement its own media stack to provide a service that the OS already provides? You just end up with a proliferation of software that all does exactly the same thing. Thus, you end up with more security issues (as each implementation will almost certainly have security flaws throughout its lifetime) and more bloat (code duplication, and increase in code size for each respective browser implementing its own media stack).
You can be surgical here and note that this doesn't necessarily translate to greater exploitation, just more security issues. Lots of different media stacks means different exploits, meaning different exploit code, and incompatibility is high. So, any given exploit might only be able to target a small subdomain of the overall browser market, but this is really just a security through obscurity argument, and good security practices (e.g. sandboxing) should mitigate such concerns, and all browsers should have either implemented such technologies or have it on their roadmap.
I understand the value in having a variety of different options, but implementing a solution for no express reason than to offer an alternative, is inherently pointless. It has to have an advantage (and no, being open-source isn't an advantage for most), so if the OS implementation is up to snuff, then the GP does have a valid point.
Where by "some tiny number of people" you mean "everyone broadcasting H.264 on the Internet, next year when the moratorium on H.264 Internet broadcast fees runs out".
I am in partial agreement: The browser venders should be implementing HOOKS to the operating system's native multimedia libraries. In Windows, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera should all be hooking into DirectShow, QuickTime if installed, ffmpeg if installed, VLC's libraries, if VLC is installed.
In Linux distributions, Firefox, etc should all hook into FFmpeg, Gstreamer, etc.
On MacOS X, Safari (etc) should hook into QuickTime.
They should be acting more like any other media player: Implement the native multimedia API, rather than 'create' your own. This way all browser should be able to support as many codecs as the operating system can support.
signature is pants
the point is that the codex part of Theora is pretty settled down. Sure it's slow, but it's FREE... really Free just like png or HTML. The HTML5 group isn't mandating that people HAVE to use Theora for commercial sites. What they're really after is that ALL web browsers will support Ogg & Theora as part of the basic specification. Then everybody will be able to have multimedia functions without paying anybody royalties. It's the companies with interest in their own pony that are causing the problems because they like having everybody have to pay "somebody" for multimedia.
the spec is designed to be open and to use whatever the vendor wants to include. That's good. Along the way the HTML5 folks are trying to throw Free Software a bone by using Ogg and Theora as the "preferred" spec partly as a matter of philosophy and partly as a matter of pragmatism .
The big problem is Apple and Noika. Both of which build hardware and both have significant browser interests now... webkit and Qt (covering Safari, Nokia phones, and Chrome].Both also have no problem being buddy with the media companies and other patent holders. Unlike Firefox and Opera, Apple and Nokia are part of the patent club and see no need to "rock the boat" for "moral principal" reasons. Hence people keep berating Ogg & Theora simply so that they look "right" by not playing along simply because they don't want to and it conflicts with their other interests.