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Questioning Mozilla's Plans For HTML5 Video
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."
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.