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YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video
bonch writes "YouTube is now offering the experimental option to view all YouTube videos using HTML5 in H.264 format. Supported browsers are Chrome, Safari, and the ChromeFrame plug-in for Internet Explorer. Captions, ads, and annotations aren't yet supported but are coming soon."
Well, you could sign into an account on YouTube and turn them off.
Here
The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?
Captions? They are opt-in, and they can be very useful for hard of hearing people (if the video creators do add them, that is...)
Agreed on the others, though.
Firefox supports the video tag. The h.264 support can be added by installing mplayer browser plugin or xine browser plugin.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
Even with h264 support (through gecko-mediaplayer), Youtube tells me "Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available.".
This
Well, you could sign into an account on YouTube and turn them off.
And let them track how many cute, fluffy kitten videos I watch? Er, I mean how many boob videos I watch? And car crashes. And explosions! People falling off skateboards. Grr, manly videos! That's right. Anyway, I think not.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
No. Firefox video tag is free formats only. Tools like mplayer are a cesspool of security holes— they aren't designed to be exposed to hostile content. The video tag requires pretty deep browser integration, ... only apple supports using the native infrastructure and even they disable 99% of their features for security reasons (e.g. try a mov with hyperlinks in it).
Mozilla is committed to an open web, and you can't get their with a wink and a nod and asking users to install codec software which is illegal everywhere in the developed world. (Including europe. I'm so tired of seeing people characterized codec licensing as a US thing— there are more European patents on codecs than US patents)
H.264 is the codec used in youtube when you play videos with the flash player. This HTML5 video viewer just reuses theses videos, only the html client code changes. Using other codec means reencoding all their videos in a different video format, which must not be easy. Specially when the alternatives are worse (theora) or not ready (dirac).
Using Safari/OSX (latest version of each) on a first generation Core2 Duo laptop (2.33 GHz), I tried watching the same video (containing no ads, annotations, etc) at the same size using both the default Flash option and the beta HTML5 option. CPU use was a steady 33-34% during playback in Flash. A steady 12-13% in HTML5. Seems like a winner to me.
> and ffmpeg being free and with H.264 support
Free in what sense? You can use their code in your code. Your code would then not be able to be distributed to users unless you pay the relevant patent licensing fees. The Mozilla Corporation could do that, but then any other Firefox distributors (e.g. Linux distributions) would not be able to distribute Firefox without either removing this functionality or paying the relevant patent licensing fees. Anyone doing a custom build of Firefox and distributing it could be sued by MPEG-LA to recover the money due them.
Effectively, Firefox stops being "free" for practical intents and purposes. It's still "open source", but the only thing you can really do is contribute patches back to the main repository, unless you pay up the patent fees.
That's not exactly a desirable situation. We might end up there, but as a first cut trying to avoid it is a good thing.
Yeah I tried that. I had to move back down to 10.0 because while the performance was better, videos looked like crap because hey, guess what, 10.1 doesn't have nice-looking video scaling! I'm sorry, but I'd rather have Flash eat my CPU alive than feel like gouging my eyes out due to uneven pixelation.
--- Mr. DOS
Why throw around bullshit claims based on nothing more than your vague and absurd assertion that "every time you hear..."? You can easily search for that info yourself, which would take less time than it took to post to slashdot. For example, you have this purely subjective analysis which was done by encoding Theora and h.264 files with equivalent size and then having a dude claim what image he preferred. Although he claimed that h.264 was better according to his own personal tastes, you can easily see for yourself that, when comparing Theora and h.264, you get pratically the same quality with the same file size. It's the same bandwidth, same size, practically (and in some cases) indistinguishable quality and although Theora's developers had to intentionally avoid more efficient algorithms due to patents.
So who exactly is spewing those bullshit, FUD claims of "Theora needs triple storage capacity and wastes twice as much bandwidth"?
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Old technology? Since when is technology's age any relevant to it's value? Electricity was discovered centuries ago and we still rely on it up to this day. Do you believe that just because it's old technology it should be simply be abandoned without any relevant and rational reason to justify it?
And for your information, Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality. So, that's also not it.
Regarding that "hardware accelerated" bit, do you know what it takes for a codec do be "hardware accelerated"? It only takes the will of the manufacturer to offer hardware support for a specific format. The h.264 codec isn't magical nor is the Theora codec cursed. In fact there are Theora hardware decoders in the market already.
So please refrain from spewing ignorance and/or FUD. Theora may eventually stumble on relevant shortcomings but hard
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Being a codec snob is trendy.
The reality of it is much less exciting.
Youtube already supports several versions of the files, they could probably drop the flash 7 compatibility in exchange for Theora. In terms of numbers of client Ogg/Theora for firefox is probably a better deal than flash 7. Adding one more to a half dozen isn't a tripling.
Part of the problem is that h264 licensing fees are generally hidden. You don't pay for a license, your hardware/software vendor does. Apple and Microsoft and Google all buy the licenses for you and include them in their products. It's hard to convey the importance of the licenses for non-free codecs if they seem to be free.
That's been seriously considered. The reason it's not being done (yet?) is described at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directshow_and.html
As long as Theora isn't implemented in video chipsets, it is irrelevant. I think more people care about decent performance than RMS-approved GNU/Freedom (Free as in beards).