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.'"

Comments

It's a toughy

[91degrees]

Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?

Maybe "implementation dependent" is the term we're after.

Re:It's a toughy

[maxume]

It matters very little. If Microsoft and Apple fail to implement Theora, the fact that the standard calls for it will not matter (because it will not be practical as a universal fallback).

Mozilla can't license H.264 in a way that lets downstream packagers use it, so they don't want to put it in the standard either.

The previous /. story discussing the email Hickson sent out covered this stuff pretty well.

It isn't particularly hard to do things like put a flash fallback inside of a video tag, so people that want to use the standard but still have wide reach have lots of options (flash is the de facto way to play 'web' video today, so I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this may continue).

XiphQT Components

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Major browser vendors

[sam31415]

If you click through to Hickson's actual summary, you can see why Microsoft is being largely omitted from the discussion:

"Microsoft has not commented on their intent to support <video> at all."

Re:Why does it care?

[JCSoRocks]

Because you end up with the craptastic situation like IE6 where they sort of support PNG but not really because they don't support transparency. If there isn't universal browser support for a format it might as well not even exist / be an option because you can't use it. If you have to code for IE6 you can't use transparent PNGs can you? So what difference does it make that you can "use any format?"

If we go this route with video what options are left? Stick with flash? Encode everything in two different codecs and *hope* that the browsers all support one of the two? I don't know about you but I think those options suck.

Argument moot, just use both

[SuperKendall]

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).

Re:Hardware Encoders

[pembo13]

Hardware encoders/decoders would come pretty fast if Theora was made the HTML5 standard.

Re:Apple and Xiph

[shutdown -p now]

You misunderstand the nature of HTML5 standardization process. Unlike previous HTML iterations, which were designed by W3C committee which largely did not intersect with people who actually implemented it, HTML5 is a vendor-driven effort that had only recently came under the aegis of W3C (after the latter's XHTML 2.0 died a quick and painless death). Since it's vendor-driven, it's going to be exactly what the vendors can agree upon - no more, and no less.

Re:Translation

[timster]

Well, with a "submarine" patent, the patent holder will typically wait until the "invention" is in common use, THEN sue for retroactive damages. Those sorts of awards can get very expensive.

Re:Why does it care?

[shutdown -p now]

The fear is that the "good format" in this case will be H.264, and once it will stick and become de facto standard, we'll have the same mess as with GIF all over again - since FOSS browsers won't be able to support it legally (at least in U.S.), nor free content creation/editing tools.

Re:Apple and Xiph

[larry bagina]

The fact that it's open source or royalty free doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once Apple or Microsoft use it.

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.

Not another time

[kmike]

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