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Examining the HTML 5 Video Codec Debate
Ars Technica has a great breakdown of the codec debate for the HTML 5 video element. Support for the new video element seems to be split into two main camps, Ogg Theora and H.264, and the inability to find a solution has HTML 5 spec editor Ian Hickson throwing in the towel. "Hickson outlined the positions of each major browser vendor and explained how the present impasse will influence the HTML 5 standard. Apple and Google favor H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favor Ogg Theora. Google intends to ship its browser with support for both codecs, which means that Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions, both in public and privately, on the situation regarding codecs for and in HTML5, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' Hickson wrote. 'I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined.'"
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Maybe "implementation dependent" is the term we're after.
Let the market decide. Too bad we've already been down that road and it wasn't pretty at all...
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
I hope you like shitty looking, processor hogging, absurdly terrible flash video, because we are stuck with it until someone (I'm looking at you, Apple) takes their head out of their ass.
Fucking Apple. You can't trust those turtleneck wearing fascists.
Ars Technica has a great breakdown
Oh, I totally agree. The best articles always insert two lolcats into their page so that we get a better idea of what's going on.
Did I miss something or is it still 2006?
and let the content providers decide.
The Internet Book Database
It seems like Apple has something against implementing any Xiph codec... FLAC and Vorbis support in iTunes is nonexistent, and even with the QuickTime plugin, iTunes still doesn't have proper tagging support. And now refusing to add Theora support in Safari?
Perhaps someone on the Xiph board did something to one of Apple's Media guys when they were kids or something?
-Pope Peter Porker, S.O.W., K.M.K.R., U.G.O.A., F.S.G.S.D.
"Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg"
Except IE, which doesn't support, and has not announced plans to support, anything. Until they decide what they're going to do, it really doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.
Doesn't Microsoft feel a need to push WMV? being slow to adopt HTML5 is not in their best interest. Favoring Silverlight and ignoring HTML5 will comeback to haunt them. For all we know Silverlight might end up a failure!
Plus according to at least one report, IE is becoming less significant.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-monthly-200807-200907 *
*Stats are US-centeric.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
Apple and Google favor H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favor Ogg Theora.
Right, while convenient, that doesn't strike me as a very comprehensive list of "major browser vendors".
sic transit gloria mundi
They could have simply specified that a browser must support ONE of the two options, h.264 or Theora. This would have at least provided a reference to websites, such that they can guarantee that they need support no more than two codecs. Without a standard, they can't necessarily guarantee that a browser will support either. A third party browser may come by and decide to implement nothing but MJPEG since it isn't specified.
I mean, there are legitimate concerns in both camps. Theora's hardware support is non-existent, and h.264 has expensive licensing fees. So why not allow browser manufactuerers to pick the one that best suits their position, rather than leaving it undefined entirely?
A guarantee of at least one of two being supported is better than no guarantee at all.
The best reason I have seen so far as to why Apple/Google favor H.264 is because their current products have H.264 hardware encoders in them. Switching to ogg/theora would hit battery life hard in these devices since it would have to be done in software. While I agree that its a selfish reason, its a reason better then "cause we want it". I would really like to see Theora succeed though, an open standard for web would be a beautiful thing
So put that in your pipe and grep it
Really? Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used? Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
Edith Keeler Must Die
http://xiph.org/quicktime/
Adds support for Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora to QuickTime (which is used for nearly all media playback on OSX). Easy to install (but could be made easier easily - such as making into a .pkg), and makes Safari 4 work with <video> and Theora.
Also, can we please stop whining about this in relation to the HTML5 spec? HTML has never specified file formats for media/objects (<img>, <object>) and it should *not* start now.
Leaving anything in the spec undefined is retarded.
It's a spec.
If Apple doesn't want to be up to spec, fuck 'em.
(Same for MS, who has, as far as I know, no plans to support <:video>.)
Luckily we can specify multiple codecs and let the browser pick. All this really does is create more browser incompatibility. All major sites will be using some H.264 codec, and browsers can determine which stream to play if there are multiple it can decode.
It would be nice if there was a standard set in the HTML 5 spec to list several codecs that must be supported by the browser.
H.264 - very good
Ogg - good, free
MPEG /1/2/3/4 - I dunno, why not. Lots of content exists that's mpeg 1 or 2 or 4(pre-PART 10/H.264) (and sometimes the audio is mp3). This would be easier for a lot of machines to decode, too, even though it's not nearly as bandwidth efficient.
I am sure Apple would agree to include it in Webkit if the XiphQT and SchroQT components were merged into a codec which can do Ogg Dirac.
Ogg Dirac has a better PSNR than Ogg Theora.
O rly?
This is what made me click the link to TFA.
Lolcats are still in, dude. They'll never go away. They'll enter the lexicon and become so ingrained that you only need the text, not the picture.
(Ya rly)
To see who wins.......
No sense spending money obfuscating, perverting "standards" or extending, if they can halve the amount, just with a few days/weeks waiting...
If I had an Ass, I'd call it Fanny Bottom, then I could slap my Ass; Fanny Bottom, on the Arse.
I'm not sure why we can't implement support for both or even more codecs. Can anyone tell me why this isn't possible?
The way I figure it, if both is supported, and agreement to assist in implementing support for the other can be reached and as long as the spec is documented, adding the functionality to the browsers should be trivial to any group capable of creating and maintaining a modern browser. We could actually implement a plug in scheme that allows functionality to be snapped in on the fly.
What am I missing with this?
Also, I'm not sure I like the idea of video in my HTML. First, most of the player implementations so far seem to lack significant things like volume controls, pause, start and stop buttons. That or you are stuck with a small screen developed for some other resolution and there is no way to resize it even if just enough to read the credits in the video. Do both and do it right.
apple, go fuck yourself.
</flamebait>
weinersmith
If they can pick one that 80% of browsers will support, say Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, then all the small players like apple and opera will support it eventually or their users will start to complain.
I only see the real problem is if the two largest vendors cannot agree. Let the small players go jump in a lake.
You can use a single block of HTML below to provide video for everyone using the new tag:
Video For Everybody
It works on older browsers too, falling back on built in players or even flash if it has to. You simply provide it one .mp4, and one .ogg file and it uses which is best.
Don't let this bickering stop everyone from moving to the video tag as soon as possible, which may then see further solution on a final standard.
I have to say though, the hardware support aspect to me makes h.264 support a must. I also think Apple should support ogg too, but Mozilla really needs to support this de-facto standard for video (it's not just Apple using this in hardware).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The Snow codec is still unfinished, however if Google could put some effort into it perhaps we'd have an unencumbered standard that has as good quality as H.264. Why Google? Because the have the resources, are interested in open standards and open source, and would benefit from the lower bandwidth required. Also, whatever they convert YouTube to will become supported by everyone one way or another. ATM is looks like they're going 264 because Theora doesn't have the same quality per bit.
Pick one. Anything is better than insert-proprietary-vendor-lockin-format-here.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Make OGG required as part of the spec and 264 as optional.
If you want people to use your browser, implement both.
For those running websites... if you can afford the licensing fees for H.264 you can afford the storage of OGG as a fallback should 264 not be available in that browser.
Unless it's an open and completely freely relicensable patent.
Otherwise if I were to write a Web Browser I *would NOT* be able to do so.
And if there's a standard I am unable to comply with, it cannot be a standard, can it.
So if they can release the codec for free without patent limitation, THEN we can talk about it Apple/Google.
IE hasn't supported most of the other standards for... ever - and no one threw in the towel at that did they? Write the best standard as you can and let the market hash things out - if they're smart they'll support it in their products. But don't let some insignificant players make you take your ball and go home like some baby throwing a tantrum. How pathetic.
If HTML5 had required Theora support, there'd be two or three months delay and then all the ASICs you could shake a stick at would be there.
Apple use H.264 and so their iPod/iPhone/et al demand an ASIC for it. But until Apple wanted one, there wasn't one.
For full systems (notepad/tablet/laptop/PC) there would be a mod to the graphics card driver and there would be hardware accellerated Theora. Two weeks tops.
But there WILL NOT be a patent free H.264 for another 17+ years.
Odd you forgot about that beam in the path of the Free Market when it comes to the bloody PATENT. Very free market, that is...
I could swear I already saw this a few days ago here, on Slashdot. And indeed:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/02/184251/Browser-Vendors-Force-W3C-To-Scrap-HTML-5-Codecs?from=rss
Apple can't avoid checkmate for long on this. They've been trying to control video for decades now and can only deploy the annoying "quicktime" that calls home all the time, steals your CPU and steals your file preferences. Lots of spying for little benefit.
Firefox has dealt them a crippling blow. Ogg Theora it is !
That way everyone will implement both, and they can compete on technical merits.
It doesn't really matter. Microsoft isn't supporting the <video> tag in HTML5.
I don't see where is the problem....
Just use OGG (cause it's open) and forget about Apple.
Like they remebered us when they decided to drop support from PowerPC from OSX...
Do we really want to lock it in to a particular codec now? Newer and better audio/video codecs are released more frequently than new versions of the HTML spec.
Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?
and the amount of people who don't care what MS is doing with their browser is growing very, very fast. Doesn't matter what MS does.
The HTML standard should contain a codec that is widely used by "people". I have yet to use OGG or come across a site that offers OGG format.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
the reason is that by having developers pick a new format, then clients will have to buy new equipment, which has it built in.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
If the H.264 folk were smart they'd encourage browser vendors to support H.264 and license it to them for free. Why? Because that would ensure that H.264 becomes the dominate standard, and open the floodgates to users creating and uploading and playing H.264 video.
In the meantime, the H.264 group makes its money off the hardware guys, as now every computer, notebook, phone, and media device will need low-power dedicated H.264 hardware decoders.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
are sitting on h.264.
Theora was THOROUGHLY searched for prior art.
If it's not found, h.264 won't have it either (do you think they missed reading h.264 patent cross licenses???).
So this "some content of the Theora codec is covered by some other patents" isn't avoided by going h.264. So if Apple are soooo worried about it, why aren't they abandoning h.264 too?
Can there not just be support for both?
If a browser vendor doesn't implement them both then it's their market share that will suffer, so browser vendors really would have no choice.
So... Why not implement both standards?
As Microsoft still has 90%+ of the installed OS base and IE6 shows no signs of being dead, if they don't support the VIDEO tag in Windows 7, or support it only with their own VC1 codec, that will effectively set both efforts (VIDEO and Theora) back at least 5 years.
-- Sig down
and a poster child against software patents. It's *very* expensive for small players, it's incompatible with free media, the terms are almost impossible to comprehend (or at least you need several "IP" lawyers on staff), plus you aren't even assured that you won't be sued in Texas by some scum sucking, syphillitic pus-drinking, rotting corpse-devouring and worm-infested defecation-eating patent troll.
Microsoft's blessing was a must when they had 95% market share. Right now they have no more than 70% and it is steadily declining - by the time HTML5 is available, they might not matter any more. Moreover the majority of their market share is just uninformed. All it takes now is one really big "killer site" like Youtube not supporting IE, and their share will plummet into the low 20s.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
They're not content with having hardware makers pay, they charge for encoding, decoding and software, if they can get away with it.
I would rather see use of a format that is licensed from an independent body like H.264 is rather than a format that either requires use of GPL'ed or LGPL'ed code because the published spec is either non-existent or not up to date.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
if you leave that sort of thing out.
Eight years of stagnation.
apple suck. They're just as much about locking people into propriety formats as M$.
What difference does it make? People who watch videos on iPhones and iPods are going to buy them through iTunes. Furthermore, Apple's proprietary phones have equally proprietary web sites to go with them anyway. And until HTML5 actually gets widely adopted, all those Apple products are going to be obsolete anyway; Apple has plenty of time to build Ogg hardware into their devices if they really care.
...is that Apple took a lesson from its fanbois and decided to be massive, flamboyant homosexuals.
We're talking about video embedded in web pages, for a standard that will take years to become adopted (long before Apple's non-removable batteries are dead). If HTML5 adopts Ogg today, you're going to see H.264 hardware also support Ogg in less than a year.
because someone snatched them while he wasn't looking. All but one of the big players got on board and that one has the second lowest market share.
So, why not set both in the standard and, if Apple doesn't want to support it fully then they don't have to.
It won't be the first time a standard was selectively supported by a major vendor.
POSIX,anyone? Various SQL revisions? Fortran? Any frickin' number of standards?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Add both as standards..Why not?
Why can't we farm out the decoding to an external media player that advertises support for the codec? Granted it would be a bit more work to get vendors working together, but it would allow a lot more flexibility in the end.
was not only that I was quoted in TFA, but that my quote was illustrated with a lolcat.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
What about allowing eith a type="MPEG-2" method or a new codec="Theora" and putting on the the browser software to determine how and what to play? Its not great but it makes embeding a video much simpler to the layman and opens the doorway for an open source codec to come in the future and nestle its way into the hearts of nerds everywhere. Somebody put together a committy to build an Open Source internet video codec that is designed from the ground up to work with todays internet.
sucks bad , lags to crap on 3ghz and dont bother anything less.
During a recession you are forcing peopel to migrate up to top line state of the art computers with expensive equipment.
Its a total fail
Because otherwise you end up with the case that no one codec works in all browsers, so websites will have to support both formats by encoding all their videos twice.
Because people shouldn't have to be prompted to install codecs in order to view in-browser videos.
etc
Then why not skip all the bullshit and put both codecs in the spec, and only those codecs in the spec and tell the browser developers to get over it. Both codecs are free, so it's not like any vendor is going to be out a significant amount of money to implement either. Give the right to choose to those who make use of the Internet. If a particular web designer prefers Ogg over H.264, then let him use it by making sure that every browser that sports "HTML 5 compliance" will support it. Same for those who prefer H.264. Why does there have to be a concrete bias hard-coded into the spec?
..isn't that Apple is holding things up. It's that they're holding things up because of lack of decoding hardware for a tiny device. Wait a minute, who the fucks watches video on a tiny screen?
Developers, don't answer that. Yes, I know your handheld device can play the video. I'm sure you're very proud.
I'm asking the users. Are there any? I know many iPods have shipped, but what are you people doing with them? You're watching video on them? Really?
No, really: who the fuck is watching movies on a 3 inch screen? And if that's you, are you actually happy with it? When you want to watch some video, your first instinct is to reach for your battery-powered thingie?
This obscure corner case is what is going to hold video back for everyone (including the desktop users and PVR users) for 20 years, until the patents expire?!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Unless there is a miracle and Software Patents are deemed illegal, Firefox will never support H.264. Being tri-licensed at least the GPL/LGPL would prevent Mozilla from licensing H.264.
How does it matter what the browser companies say what they will or will not "support" ?
As far as I am aware my browser plugin(s) hands off whatever is delivered to the browser to the system installed codecs, which decode the stream or the saved to harddrive video/audio.
I install the KLMCodec pack, which includes Media Player Classic and if you wish pretty much every decoder and encoder there is.
And if Apple is the only one that is the hold-out on Ogg Theora... well fuck them and their proprietary systems that make Microsoft look like a saint.
Related - the open source Perian enables QuickTime application support for additional media:
File formats: AVI, DIVX, FLV, MKV, GVI, VP6, and VFW
Video types: MS-MPEG4 v1 & v2, DivX, 3ivx, H.264, Sorenson H.263, FLV/Sorenson Spark, FSV1, VP6, H263i, VP3, HuffYUV, FFVHuff, MPEG1 & MPEG2 Video, Fraps, Snow, NuppelVideo, Techsmith Screen Capture, DosBox Capture
Audio types: Windows Media Audio v1 & v2, Flash ADPCM, Xiph Vorbis (in Matroska), and MPEG Layer I & II Audio, True Audio, DTS Coherent Acoustics, Nellymoser ASAO
AVI support for: AAC, AC3 Audio, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3
Subtitle support for SSA/ASS and SRT
Animoog.org
Can anyone explain to me why the browsers vendors canÂt simply use the existing codecs in the OS? They could(and should) use Direcshow for Windows, Quicktime for MacOSX and Gstreamer/ffmpeg for Linux?
"Both codecs are free"
No, they're not. H.264 is patented and you have to pay royalties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing
Dilbert RSS feed
Except that most browsers don't include Flash support, and browsers do exist on platforms for which there is no Flash.
Which platforms that contribute to a significant number of video views are you talking about? If it's Wii, then you already have to encode the video twice because Internet Channel supports only H.263 (FLV), not H.264.
What interests me is the fact that in these discussions about Theora being an old and antiquated codec, nobody seems to know about Dirac, which is a modern video codec quite comparable to H.264 developed by the BBC.
Dirac is specifically designed to be free in the sense we love, and they have specifically checked to make sure it doesn't violate any patents, etc.
It is supported in recent versions of FFMPEG, and since VLC 0.9.2. Support for it is maturing quite fast, and I don't understand why Mozilla didn't include support for it in their HTML5 video implementation.
Since Opera implements <video> with GStreamer, it should already support Dirac if you have the support installed.
If the video element is implemented in a way content providers like iTunes and YouTube are not happy with
Let me say it again: YouTube is not a content provider any more than Google Docs; it is a hosting and search provider. YouTube's users provide the works that YouTube displays to viewers.
Since it's vendor-driven, it's going to be exactly what the vendors can agree upon - no more, and no less.
That sounds pretty worthless.....
On the contrary, many if not most good standards are written this way.
Ideally a standards committee has an even mix of users and implementers and the resulting standard is a negotiated balance between what all sorts of different users want and what all sorts of different implementers are willing to implement. From the implementer's side this is important not only to encourage quick implementation but also to ensure the standard can be efficiently implemented From the user's side this is important not only to make the standard easy to use but also to ensure it covers all the important use-cases.
It would be nice if Congress could pass a law for proposed standards to give patent trolls a 6 (or 3) month period to announce any infringement or forever hold their peace.
I believe there is already such a defense at equity, called estoppel by laches. It's not as strong for copyrights and patents as it is for trademarks, but it's still available.
Likewise, simply because the MPEG LA controls the licensing of KNOWN patents for H.264 doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once it gets adopted as a standard.
Unlike non-profits such as Xiph, major corporations such as Apple own patents that they can use to counter-sue patent holders that show up late to the MPEG-LA party.
Well, In a way thats a good thing. It makes it easier to spot people with horrible senses of humor. Its like adding a bad humor meta tag to everything you do.
Microsoft hasn't commented, which isn't the same as supporting neither. However, considering that silverlight 3.0 is slated to support H.264, I suspect that says a lot by itself.
Silverlight 3's Raw AV pipeline should be able to support Ogg Theora/Vorbis:
http://on10.net/blogs/benwagg/Silverlight-3-Beta-Whatrsquos-New-for-Media/
Someone's already working on a port of the Ogg wrapper and Vorbis for Silverlight and Moonlight:
http://veritas-vos-liberabit.com/monogatari/2009/03/moonvorbis.html
My video compression blog
Is that google has become evil.... Apple has always been evil to one extent or another, but for the most part i trusted google... now if youtube only supports h.264 then basically they have a method for elimating firefox and opera as competitors. Yay google.
When the spec specifically says "you can have 2 video formats in the one video tag". Why not just support a crappy version in ogg (i.e. low res), low enough that its 25% of the size of the original h264 version. At least mozilla's legs wouldn't get cut off. It would also be a challenge for theora - i.e. google could say "a 1 meg h264 video is like this, make a 250k theora start to look good and maybe we'll balance those numbers a bit".
A 25% hit on storage for google would not be a killer and its a shame it couldn't see its way to doing just that.
Ultimately we can only assume google's motive is "Death to firefox and open standards"
When Safari was introduced, Jobs presented a keynote showing how Safari will take on FireFox and IE, predicting a marketshare of 40 %.
This hasn't happened, instead FF continued to invent new features, making Safari look really old. And a new open-source browser entered the stage, which uses the same code base as safari and is backed by a large vendor.
With Mozilla now having more than 40% market share in some countries and Google taking on Safari/Windows, Apple has lost its self-declared browser war.
As soon as Wikipedia and other large community sites will start using the free codecs, apple will have no choice but to implement them, too.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Mod this offtopic or nonsense.
Whether or not it can or can't is completely irrelevant for the reason given by apple.
Apparently, the use of the Offtopic moderation reason on Slashdot has suddenly grown much more strict over the past few days. Let me connect it directly to the article. In the Ars article, Ryan Paul wrote:
The situation around H.264 is more certain for two reasons: First, its developers are certain that they can counter-sue anyone who brings patent claims against them, which assures destruction for any patent troll. Second, it has been implemented long enough on high-profile public web sites and in publicly available hardware that patent trolls' claims would likely be estopped by laches. The situation around Theora is less certain for Apple because there is no such developer that can assure destruction, and there is no such track record of having sat implemented with no actual lawsuit.
I'm quite interested by this debate, mainly because my music is in OGG-Vorbis and I'm quite encouraged by the idea that major browsers might starting supporting a similarly open standard. It has to be a good thing.
(you can read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg_controversy)
It seems that Apple and Nokia are against Ogg Theora, whereas Mozilla and Google are pro-Theora.
Apple and Nokia's main arguments: H.264 is better (for example, consumes less bandwidth), there are no good hardware implementations around, and there is a risk of submarine patents.
I don't believe these objections for a minute. Apple is simply against an open format because they're lobbying for control of the market. This is clearly underlined by past behaviour (blaming music companies for the use of DRM in iTunes is a brilliant piece of deflection, but I can't believe anyone who understands the business world would really buy that).
Technical superiority is not that important: clearly Google would not be in favour of Theora if there weren't other overriding concerns of open standards. A.N.Other format can always come along. We just need something that works ok, is simple to implement, and nice and open so everyone gets the same experience on the web.
If hardware implementations were really an issue, we'd have every hardware manufacturer in the world complaining about it. No, hardware implementations follow standards and popularity - we'll get great hardware designs if necessary. It's not a problem.
The patent issue just seems to be FUD. A great example of why such patents shouldn't be permitted, but as it is every single piece of software is open to such problems.
I'm not an Apple-hater, I admire the iPhone's interface (I own one) and some of their design work is awesome. But they need to open up - if they try to lock things down in this way, long-term they will lose (see Microsoft's decline, particularly in the browser market) and we're all going to suffer. For God's sake, anyone want to see the introduction of Flash on the iPhone? Thought not. Apple fans - please do everyone a favour and convince the company to change tact.
I see no problem. Apple doesn't want to support OGG, I couldn't care less. They'll come around eventually if it becomes popular.
I thought it was meant ironic ,but I see it isnt.
First, a third party patent claim doesn't make the situation more certain but more fragile.
Apple has certainly no guarantee to successfully counter-sue, in any case. They may or may not find an infringing patent to sue the third party.
And third, you seem to confuse "high profile web sites" with high profile companies.
And third, you seem to confuse "high profile web sites" with high profile companies.
The point is that if a party outside the MPEG-LA pool really wanted to press the H.264 issue, it would probably have announced plans to sue Google, which operates the YouTube video hosting service.
Oh yeah, music playback on battery-powered devices totally makes sense, because we have cheap, good wearable speakers. But until we have cheap, good wearable displays that, unlike an iPod's screen, actually take up more than a few arcseconds of the user's field of view, battery-powered video playback is a niche app.
The iPod's software is not a serious part of the video market -- not merely a drop in the bucket (compared to the systems with power cords) but a drop that everyone else can point at as a shitty user experience. W3C gave Apple way too much say on this issue, at least as far as the iPod is concerned.
Safari on desktops? Ok, Apple's opinion counts, so let them put forth their pretense of being worried about submarine patents (as though it's a factor in Theora but not h.264), but W3C should have laughed them out of the room over the hardware decoder issue.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Except video for everybody is not _a_ video for everybody it is different videos for different people.
But it's only two videos.
No more flv videos. No more wmv files. It's way better than the mish-mash we have now because you only have to provide two files and you really do have "video for everybody" without having to worry about what they are using, what they have installed - or even if they are on an iPhone or not!!
It frees you from having to do ANY browser detection in javascript or server side, and that is a huge win.
One single format would be desirable but it's not realistic. Frankly I am a happy camper if we only have two standards moving forward. Having a commercial format that's well supported is great because of hardware support, and having an open standard keeps everyone honest.
The real beauty of this thing is that if everyone starts using "video for everybody" then every single video gets transcoded to ogg. That is the goal after all, right? All video in an open format so you don't have to worry about lockdown? That accomplishes this goal even at the same time as users with commercial devices get good performance and smaller files. It's a win/win.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Get your head out of your ass. Mozilla is not neutral. They're sticking with Theora as hard as Apple is sticking with H.264. At least Apple has a good reason which is 50 million iPhones and iPod Touches with an H.264 decoder chip which can't decode Theora. The only reason Mozilla doesn't want to use H.264 is because they don't want to have to pay licensing fees.
IMHO pushing open source codec is plain ridiculous. The H264 is a open standard which is widely used. Note that H264 is a sucessor to MPEG2 which is used for 20 years now.
Changes in this area are happening every 20 years and there is a place for only one codec. It is very well standarized and so on. The guys who wants to standarize the HTML 5 doesnt really know what means to standarize over many years and what standards are made for.
Everything goes in the direction of H264 Part 10 (The open one version), even latest FLASH PLAYER is licencing H264 codec from MAIN CONCEPT.
I think guys who are pushing this are just plain fanatics of opensource and they do not understand the openness of standards etc.
No, most users of iPods and iPhones would not ditch them for something else. All of Apple's mobile devices don't support flash of any kind and that has not stopped many people from buying them.
Hardware de/encoders can easily support both with no significant extra cost or battery usage.
Correct. They COULD.
Right now, they DO NOT. In ANY of millions upon millions of devices shipped. Nor can they.
You need some hardware support in place before you can start moving it to be a real standard, that's all there is to it.
That's why mp4 MUST be in any final standard.
Now I also think you MUST have an open format for the standard. Which is why you need ogg.
Therefore, you MUST have both in the standard. Therefore, use "Video For Everyone" and the real standard will be OGG and MP4, side by side. That's good enough I figure for the reasons you'd want either format.
If everyone started supporting this dual path publishing, then before long any video site would HAVE to support ogg because some significant portion of users would expect it. In the end that should be the ultimate goal, that every single video be available in Ogg. Who cares if it's ALSO in a commercial format too?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I tried the Video For Everybody on my recently (last night) ubuntu installed laptop. It prompted me to install the proper software (yay ubuntu) but it picked up the h.264 decoder and mpeg-4 AAC decoder. Is there anyway that I could easily get it to try ogg thera first.
If you're using Mozilla (seems likely) it seems like that would be a bug in the way that "video for everybody" code fragment works - which browser (and version) were you using? I'd be happy to send on a report to them about something working oddly...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
isn't it an irony that firefox 3.5 crashes with the vido link you provided ?
(a) It works on my Mozilla 3.5 (on a Mac).
(b) If any input causes Mozilla to crash, how is that anything but a bug in Mozilla? A browser should not crash period, no matter what markup it is fed (it is of course allowed to look like crap).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Will you pony up the 5Million per year? And if the fees are hiked up next year?
If I were Mozilla I certainly would pay that fee out of the giant pile of money (100+ million/year) they get from having Google as the home page.
It would further increase uptake of Mozilla and is as noted required to be a serious platform...
If I were Apple I would also adopt ogg. But Mozilla stands to gain a lot more by licensing mp4 than Apple would licensing Ogg.
Opera is a trickier question since I'm sure they cannot afford it... but if everyone uses the code I sent it doesn't matter, because there's always an Ogg version.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley