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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."

11 of 242 comments (clear)

  1. 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 malevolentjelly · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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.

      I think that's rather simple. The video tag would only be popular with free and amateur content. Flash (or Silverlight) solutions will continue to dominate the more popular commercial comment that needs to be protected. If videos were trapped behind theora playlists with commercials in-between, advocates would make solutions to circumvent the commercials and demonetize the model of the very companies who took the risk to support it.

      Basically, any major media company that buys into HTML 5 video tag will be strangled by the advocates who pushed it on them in the first place, monetarily. When the production studios offering the content find out that a free video application that plays their content without commercials (hypothetically) exists, they will pull out and said video site will collapse. Colloquially, it's a trap. Commercial content needs protection because those watching it on the web do not own it.

      Furthermore, there will be a minor codec war. Firefox will probably only support theora, Safari will only use h.264 (Apple will flatly refuse to use theora), same for google chrome, perhaps. Then, Microsoft will support the tag in IE, but provide support for WMV in the video tag (and possibly h.264 if we're lucky, since it's now licensed in Windows 7). So, the video tag will slowly become just as crazy as the plugin-based video players of Web 1.0... except they will be written in slow javascript instead of the fast native code of the past. Primarily, because no one has agreed on how to do it so it isn't a standard.

  2. Re:Eyes wide shut by Simon+(S2) · · Score: 5, Informative

    So are we going to require browsers to install with codec packs?

    No. The idea is to include the codec in the browser. 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. As you can imagine, Apple, MS and Adobe are not really happy about this, as they obviously would like their patented technology to be used in HTML 5, and because Apple and MS are not only video-codec-makers but browser-makers too, and not small ones, we can not just ignore them and go ahead with Theora. Implement the HTML 5 video tag in Mozilla with Theora looked like a good chance to get the open codec though, but this Javascript stuff post by Mozilla now makes it look like they have other plans.

    --
    I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
  3. Re:Eyes wide shut by nyctopterus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Flash Video is unbelievably processor intensive (especially given it's pretty crappy quality), surely you've noticed that? Even on modern dual processor machines it can stutter and slow down other processes. If video could settle down like image formats, the web would be a better place for it.

  4. Re:HTML is dead... Didn't you notice? by Repossessed · · Score: 4, Informative

    That would be the entire point of HTML 5. To bring HTML back to the forefront.

    --
    Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
  5. Re:Waiting by smoker2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This has nothing to do with HTML 5 or the video tag. The javascript is used to create a fallback path for users who don't have a particular codec installed. It is not compulsory. Most linux machines install ogg theora with a media player package anyway, it's the rest of the world that need to download it.

  6. Re:Eyes wide shut by nyctopterus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nope, OS X (10.5) on a dual 2.8Ghz iMac. There's no excuse for Flash video's failures.

  7. 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.

  8. Re:Eyes wide shut by QuoteMstr · · Score: 4, Informative

    I won't even bother getting into details, but flash can't get the clipboard contents, only set it

    Clipboard.getData().

    much like all other browsers

    Only IE, actually.

    Don't get me started on your XMLHttpRequest argument...

    Flash allows you to request content from sites that would be blocked by XMLHttpRequest. Can you refuse that statement or not?

    I bet if it was made by Linus/RMS/Jobs, the same crowd would have worshiped it...

    You inadvertently make a good point. If Linus or RMS had developed flash, its source would have been open sourced, and by now, its capabilities would have been integrated into the browser. We wouldn't talk about what "Flash" can do as distinct from something else, but simply about the abilities of browsers.

    That's what the rich media part of HTML5 is all about: doing what Flash can do in a browser.

  9. Re:When bandwidth costs more than MPEG royalties by asa · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    Except that statement is provably false if by no other facts than that neither Theora nor H264 quality scales linearly with bitrate.

    Beyond the obvious fail in your claim, you're also just wrong.

    See this comparison and this comparison to see how Theora compares to the most popular real-world implementations of H264 on the Web.

  10. Re:H.264 H.263 by asa · · Score: 4, Informative

    tepples, you claimed that H.264 requires twice the bitrate to achieve the same quality. d235j responded that it only took15% more bandwidth to achieve the same quality and you failed to respond to that. Also, for the last several years h.263 was "good enough" for billions of video views from hundreds of millions of users. Theora is considerably better than h.263 and very close to h.264. Your claim that it requires twice the bandwidth to math h.264 just doesn't hold water with the overwhelming majority of video content online today. For real-world online video content, both standard and high-def, Theora holds its own against H264. It might not be better, but at comparable bitrates, I'd wager you couldn't find more than 2% of the Web population who can appreciate the differences. Oh, and Theora is getting better with every passing day AND in my experience it beats H264 in decoding CPU usage.