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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."
The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?
Flash has always been a Band-Aid on a gangrenous ulcer. If you aren't [un-]lucky enough to be running Windows it sucks up gobs of CPU time to decode even the teensiest thumbnail of video, which is incredibly annoying when you visit websites that are plastered in Flash ads. HTML5 has its problems, but it's worlds better than what always seemed to me like the Next Coming of Java.
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
Flash is already on my Symbian phone and various other platforms. Will HTML5 advocates spare time to non cool (!) platforms to code a codec/driver along with testing thousands of different setups to show their Theora video which is clearly missing 2-3 generations in video codec development compared to H264?
Google, a multi billion giant can roll out a good "quicktime interface" for youtube, can even add extra features to it but it doesn't really mean HTML5 with codecs which nobody can agree will crush Flash.
BTW; if you are concerned about Flash CPU usage, use 10.1 beta which has GPU decoding under Windows. I have seen it using almost nothing while playing 1080P video over youtube.
I keep testing Theora and sorry to say, I don't think it will take off unless Google does some amazing thing and make the VP7+ codecs open, free as in freedom. Now that would really change entire media universe. Hopefully they purchased that codec company for that reason.
Most video chipsets these days are including hardware support for H264 decoding. This includes the chipsets in devices like mobile phones, MP3 (portable media) players, and set-top boxes.
Mozilla cannot legally support H264 without releasing a closed-source version of Firefox.
I doubt YouTube is going to go ahead and reencode everything to Theora. Firefox needs to get its act together and at least take advantage of OS-supplied h.264 when it's available. Everyone likes to whine about patents for h.264, but there are free/oss decoders available and the best h.264 encoder is probably the open source x264. Considering that Theora isn't guaranteed not to contain patented technology anyway (it's just not known to), I'd say h.264 is a pretty good option with better support.
Consider that Vorbis never really broke into the mainstream, and it's actually superior to MP3. Theora doesn't really stand a chance as it is, and I have my doubts that it'll ever get to h.264's performance.
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)
Like Theora? The problem with that codec is that its based on pretty old technology. Google probably isnt interested in paying a bandwidth premium. It looks like this move is Google telling the rest of the industry to standardize on H.264 via licensing deals.
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.
Theorarm decodes Theora full screen video at about 110 FPS on my jailbroken iphone. The hardware support thing for h264 is mostly an issue because of h264's utterly obscene cpu consumption, Theora is much more thrifty. The "doesn't work" thing is entirely manufactured by the device makers (e.g. Apple) having a direct monetary interest on a format that they get royalties for being adopted.
Mozilla doesn't just refuse. Legal licensing of the codec would be 10% of their annual budget. Do you really want 10% of Mozilla's budget to just be flushed on a single media codec? (and then more needed for AAC.). For that kind of money Mozilla could employ an entire codec development team.
No one huh?
> 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.
Adobe already released a closed-source plugin to play H.264. It's called Flash Player.
(T>t && O(n)--) == sqrt(666)
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.
Have any proof Theora uses more bandwith? Old doesn't mean bad, HTML is old, so is TCP/IP and UNIX
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Trying out with chromium (binary package) at the moment, does not work, neither do firefox 3.5. :(
"Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available.
Click here to visit our frequently asked questions about HTML5 video."
I didn't say that Theora needs triple storage capacity. I said that Google would need to triple their storage capacity, the first 100% being taken by H.264 files (obviously).
As for that page you linked to, look at the screenshots. There's nothing subjective about them, H.264 is the clear winner. If you can't see that then you need to calibrate your monitor. Same bandwidth = lower quality results using Theora.
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.
Is there really any demand to burn Youtube videos to DVDs in 1080p? Sounds to me like Google picked an inappropriate codec for their medium. Perhaps they chose it simply to drive a wedge between their Chrome browser which supports this codec, and IE and Firefox which do not.
From the VLC FAQ:
Is VLC legal in all countries?
Probably not. Specially DeCSS module might violate DMCA (and similar laws) and some codecs would require licenses for personal/commercial use. There haven't been any court cases related to VLC but specially companies should make sure they pay license fees to license holders if they use VLC commercially and use patented formats or codecs.
Essentially the licence is not for implementing the codec, but for using it. If you use VLC to encode video, then broadcast that video (including on the Web), then at least in some countries, you have to pay the patent holders.
As long as h.246 is non-Free, it is irrelevant.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
>Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality
Much as I support Theora (i.e. totally), that is not even close to true. It is maybe comparable to MPEG-4 ASP (divx, xvid).
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Personally, I'd be willing to drop something reasonable, like, say, $1.99 one-time to buy a license to use an H.264 codec (as long as it was of sufficient quality and did things like taking advantage of available hardware acceleration features of my CPU and GPU). I prefer open source, but I also accept that a lot of R&D, and Engineering went into creating H.264, and I don't mind paying a *reasonable* fee for something like that. I'm sure RMS would disagree, but I've always disagreed with RMS, and as long as the browser itself can stay open source, I'm ok with a proprietary plugin.
(Although, not Flash, specifically - I'd really like to get away from the Flash model (where everyone is locked to a single vendor/implementation, and towards the <video> tag model, where there can be competing implementations, but that's more of a free market/open standards ideology than a Free Software dogma).
All religions are nuts.
my God is currently using His noodly appendages to fire a meatball of death upon you for this blasphemy
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Essentially the licence is not for implementing the codec, but for using it.
So, technically speaking, VLC users that install/use the h264 decoder of libvacodec owe licensing fees?
That's... kinda funny.
Boot Windows, Linux, and ESX over the network for free.
That comparison is ancient. Theora has come a long way since then.
No problem with that. You should already be able to do that with a 3rd party plugin.
Sorry, I was thinking in terms of the whole thread, starting with, "You can't use it in firefox because mozilla refuses to support H.264". Mozilla isn't going to bundle h264 support in the browser, but it's not an open-source/closed-source problem and it has nothing to do with your willingness to pay. It has to do with their unwillingness to pay a licensing fee per download.
Mozilla could rely on 3rd party plug-ins, or they could do what Apple does in Safari and basically pass decoding duties back to the OS, thereby avoiding responsibility for deciding which codecs to support. Either of those seem reasonable to me.
But I bet they will bitch and scream again, mentioning some "non-freeness" of H.264, despite nobody having cared about GIF support or anything, and ffmpeg being free and with H.264 support.
In many jurisdictions, ffmpeg is only Free as in Beer, not Free as in Speech. Firefox doesn't want to give up broad international distribution or its corporate status.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Unfortunately it won't. There are fundamental limits in the Theora spec that means it can never quite equal H.264 without breaking compatibility with current decoders. Also H.264 encoders have improved since that comparison too, but the gap was definitely closed in the push to Theora 1.1.
Well technically yes. Theora produce slightly more blurry frames for an equivalent bitrate.
Now the big question: do we *really* need the added quality of H.264 ?
For fuck's sake, it's Youtube we're speaking about.
The website filled with small home-made video done using crappy webcams. Or feature botched TV-grabs. Where the people who upload video don't actually really have a clue about codecs and thus their creations have been through several conversions, each time with the corresponding drop of quality.
Arguing whether H264 or OGG/Theora is better for streaming HTML5 videos means arguing which codec will be the best to faithfully convey all the artefacts contained in video produced by clueless users. Given the average, both formats are already*good enough*. In fact the older MPEG-4/DivX/Xvid would probably be already good enough.
We're not talking about the best way to bring 1080p commercial movies to Youtube, we're talking about videos of dancing kittens filmed with a smart-phone's embed cam.
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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).
I think you misunderstand. The HTML5 standard does not specify a codec to be used in the <video> tag; just like the standards don't specify what image formats are to be used in the <img> tag.
Arguing that "it's not HTML5" because your browser (presumably, firefox) doesn't support h.264 would be no different to an Internet Explorer user saying "it's not HTML4.1" when a website uses PNG images.