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).

Seriously? Lolcats?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

why does the codec have to be in the spec?

[ibookdb]

and let the content providers decide.

Re:why does the codec have to be in the spec?

[Serious Callers Only]

The whole point of the element is to allow content providers to choose one of the always supported formats and therefore know a-priori that it will work in the user's browser. A "choose one from this list" strategy, or creating a new plugin-hell for codecs doesn't accomplish this end.

I disagree - the video element explicitly allows for several source files, so the whole point is not to allow only for one codec, or to mandate several codecs which are supported by everyone. That would have been nice, but hasn't been possible. As it is the video element is now being treated more like the image one - different browsers will support different image formats, but most will support a few core ones.

The whole point of the video element is to allow pages to easily embed video files (as opposed to the messy complicated method using object elements). The video element allows for several encodings in order, so the process of choosing a codec is transparent to the user, so long as you can give them something they can play, and is painless for the provider, given that there are free options for converting to ogg.

So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example.

Life would be great if there was one clear unencumbered codec with no drawbacks, or at least a choice of a few (as there are for image formats), but there isn't one clear winner (ogg theora has definite disadvantages, the most important being lack of hardware support and quality issues). I think Apple should support Ogg, and see why Mozilla resist h.264 - there are strong arguments for both sides.

In the meantime the video element makes presenting video possible without a plugin with any sane browser (i.e. not IE), and is a step toward native browser support when people converge on a codec (or several) as they did with image formats.

irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

There was a simple solution...

[Guspaz]

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.

Re:There was a simple solution...

[samkass]

HTML doesn't specify what image format must be supported (PNG, GIF, JPG, etc); why is video any different? If HTML had specified GIF explicitly up-front, we'd all be in trouble when UniSys became dicks about it.

Let the market decide. If h.264 succeeds despite the extra cost, it means folks found enough value to justify the cost. If DivX or VC1 come out of nowhere to take over the web we won't be left with an out-dated standard. If a sleeper patent hits Theora hard we'll be glad we didn't lock ourselves down.

Hardware Encoders

[Nate53085]

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

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:Apple and Xiph

[Evanisincontrol]

We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles. We make the sites and we tell people what browser to use.

Woah woah woah. That's a huge misconception that needs to be squashed right now: We, the content providers, do not tell the customer what browser to use; rather, the customer tells us what browser they're willing to use to view our content.

Why do you think so many "IE6 approved" sites still exist? Because those website's operators desperately want people to continue using IE6? No, they do it because a very large number of people are still using IE6 and are going to continue using IE6 regardless of what browser we mighty developers to try "force" others to use.

As someone else pointed out above, the problem with trying to hardball Apple into playing nice is that Apple will just sit and wait. When website developers go to create their sites and try to ensure cross-browser compatibility, their response to the problem will NOT be "Oh, Apple is just being douchebags. I'll just not bother supporting Safari until they support Theora." Instead, what they'll probably say is, "Hey, flash videos work in every browser. Why should I bother using this stupid VIDEO tag?"