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Questioning Mozilla's Plans For HTML5 Video

Posted by Soulskill on from the is-that-your-final-answer dept.

AberBeta writes with this excerpt from OSNews: "We're on the verge of a serious evolution on the web. Right now, the common way to include video on the web is by use of Flash, a closed-source technology. The answer to this is the HTML5 video tag, which allows you to embed video into HTML pages without the use of Flash or any other non-HTML technology; combined with open video codecs, this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardize the web. Sadly, not even Mozilla itself really seems to understand what it is supposed to do with the video tag, and actually advocates the use of JavaScript to implement it. Kroc Camen, OSNews editor, is very involved in making/keeping the web open, and has written an open letter to Mozilla in which he urges them not to use JavaScript for HTML video."

16 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. Eyes wide shut by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The last time Mozilla added support for a tag that had some automatic animated behavior, the browser was still called Netscape and the tag was universally reviled. I hope they don't blink again.

    But that said, does anyone really think video is a good idea? It's hard enough to get users to install the correct codecs to play back movies now. At least with FLV you've got a pretty standard platform which almost everyone already has installed. Adobe, for all their fuckups, has done a good job with Flash. Quicktime, OTOH, is not quite as accepted. And WMV, for whatever reason, is rejected by many users out of hand.

    So are we going to require browsers to install with codec packs? What are the distribution formalities required for that kind of thing? It sounds like a giant ball of baling wire stuck in a thresher. I'm tempted to let it alone.

    1. Re:Eyes wide shut by QuoteMstr · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Can you imagine going to a web site from a corporate locked down machine and attempting to install some untrusted codec?

      As opposed to Flash, which is pretty much the ultimate untrusted codec? It's a huge binary blob that has had numerous security problems, and which has a huge attack surface. Even ignoring declared vulnerabilities, Flash allows web pages to do things like access the clipboard and bypass XMLHttpRequest same-origin restrictions. In short, installing flash makes a web browser demonstrably less secure.

      It's remarkable, then, that an administrator would be comfortable installing this Trojan octopus of a plugin while ignoring a far simpler open source video codec that he can verify and compile himself.

      Really, it just shows that people will trust the familiar without seriously questioning it, at least until a crisis shows up.

    2. Re:Eyes wide shut by beelsebob · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The point of the video tag is that it should contain some (as yet undecided thanks to infighting) standard codec, in the same way as an img tag should always contain jpeg, png or gif data, a video tag should always contain xyz, abc or nml data. Exactly what xyz, abc or nml should be is yet to be figured out.

      Google and apple would like them to be h264/aac, because everyone uses that already, even more recent people using flash.
      Mozilla would like them to be ogg theora/vorbis, because they're open, even though nothing actually supports them.

      Neither side can agree.

    3. Re:Eyes wide shut by Simetrical · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Can you imagine going to a web site from a corporate locked down machine and attempting to install some untrusted codec?

      All browsers that support <video> package the codecs they support in the default download. No user downloads are necessary. In the worst case, Flash can still be used as a fallback until all common browsers support <video>. After then, the author will just have to provide video in as many formats as necessary (hopefully, one) to ensure it will play in all browsers.

      --
      MediaWiki developer, Total War Center sysadmin
    4. Re:Eyes wide shut by plnix0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      So are we going to require browsers to install with codec packs? What are the distribution formalities required for that kind of thing? It sounds like a giant ball of baling wire stuck in a thresher. I'm tempted to let it alone.

      Somehow you fail to realize that Flash videos don't work unless Flash Player is installed. There is no conceptual difference between requiring Flash to be installed and requiring a codec pack to be installed. If some level of extra browser support is going to be required, an open standard is far superior to proprietary junk like Flash.

  2. Video tag by Adrian+Lopez · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive. I wonder how they'd react if a major online video provider were to provide its content through a less restrictive method such as the video tag.

    --
    "In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
    1. Re:Video tag by asa · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A lot of video producers like to rely on the fact that Flash makes it difficult to download videos to your hard drive.

      They aren't relying on this and if they are, they're just plain silly. You can either grab a Firefox extension to download Flash files or you can just do a Tools->Page Info and Save from the Media tab.

  3. Somebody help me on this by Glonk · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Some random Mozilla Hacks (note the word Hacks) blogger posts some code that web developers can use to implement HTML5 video (which does not use javascript, contrary to the implications in this article and summary?) and also provide a fallback path for non-HTML5 Video browsers (IE, Opera, etc). Their particular method of providing the fallback code uses javascript to determine browser capability, and uses Flash if HTML5 Video is not there.

    Why is this upsetting to anyone? The implication from the summary is this is a less "open" way to do it, but last I checked Javascript/ECMAScript is a standard that all browsers implement already.

    I cannot fathom why anyone would be so upset by some blogger providing JS-implemented video fallback implementations.

  4. Plugins are Still the Answer by phantomcircuit · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The video tag should be run by plugins, they would need to conform to a single standard interface. PLay/Stop/Pause/etc. The key would be having two mechanisms for display, a method which returns a pixmap (so that it would work with X Forwarding) and a version that was accelerated.

    the PLay/Stop/Pause interface would be entirely part of the DOM.

  5. Re:HTML is dead... Didn't you notice? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    HTML is the content, CSS is the way to display the HTML content and Javascript is the way to interact with it all.

  6. Is this what you really want? by westlake · · Score: 1, Insightful

    this could provide the perfect opportunity to further open up and standardize the web.

    Innovation and standards often pull in opposite directions.

    There are always cracks in the façade. Opportunities for the entrepreneur. The committee moves too damn slow.

    I don't think the geek imagined the web evolving as it has - into communities like MySpace, Twitter, and so on.

    It would be easy to imagine Windows media and gaming coalescing around portals like Windows Live! and Steam.

    By the time the geek standardizes the hell out of the web the real action will have moved elsewhere.

     

  7. When bandwidth costs more than MPEG royalties by tepples · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But to allow that at reasonable conditions, the codec should be Free. The codec proposed for this purpose is Ogg Theora/Vorbis, an OSS codec build specifically trying not to use any patented technology.

    Unfortunately, Theora still needs twice the bitrate as H.264 to deliver the same quality, even with the "Thusnelda" rewrite of the encoder. It's not like Vorbis, which surpassed MP3's rate-distortion curve early on. Using Theora for video to avoid H.264 patent problems is like using IMA ADPCM for audio to avoid MP3 patent problems. Google would probably stick to H.264 for YouTube because the bandwidth cost outweighs the royalty cost of having H.264 support in Chrome.

    1. Re:When bandwidth costs more than MPEG royalties by d235j · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Unfortunately, Theora still needs twice the bitrate as H.264 to deliver the same quality, even with the "Thusnelda" rewrite of the encoder.

      Not really. Thusnelda is noticeably better than H.263 (which is what YouTube used to use) and it's more like a 15% higher bitrate [and that's probably higher than necessary]/

    2. Re:When bandwidth costs more than MPEG royalties by Daemonax · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why is anyone worried about the quality of videos your going to watch in your browser? The vast majority of those videos are not going to be interesting enough to want to see them in full HD glory. I would rather see Ogg because it's a free standard, and if we lose quality in order to save bandwidth I don't really care when it comes to the type of videos that I watch via my browser.

    3. Re:When bandwidth costs more than MPEG royalties by civilizedINTENSITY · · Score: 2, Insightful

      But would you be willing to use technology that is almost indistinguishable, even if its open source? Or does it need to have that elite banner flying with a brand name for it to be considered? Are you willing to use mediocre, poorly implemented technology just because it is commercial, closed software?

  8. H.264 > H.263 by tepples · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thusnelda is noticeably better than H.263 (which is what YouTube used to use)

    Exactly: used to use. Since then, YouTube serves HQ and HD videos in H.264.