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Vimeo Also Introduces HTML5 Video Player
bonch writes "Following in YouTube's footsteps, Vimeo has now introduced its own beta HTML5 video player, and like YouTube, it uses H.264 and requires Safari, Chrome, or ChromeFrame. The new player doesn't suffer the rebuffering problems of the Flash version when clicking around in the video's timeline, and it also loads faster. HTML5 could finally be gaining some real momentum."
Now if only FireFox will get support.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I shed not a tear for you.
Better known as 318230.
That's the sound of you getting passed by.
I'm a total GNU fanboy most days, and generally agree with the moral move they are trying to make with OOG formats, but in this case it is a losing strategy. H264 video has gotten a momentum that is hard to break, similar to how MP3 got a momentum in the past. It has nothing to do with technical features, morals, licensing, or other commonly-argued things. Instead, it's about a critical-mass of popularity. H264 video the new pop thing, even in cases where people don't even know terms like "H264".
By not finding a way to make video work properly, Firefox is saying they want to be left behind. No, I highly doubt people like google or others will re-encode video into Theora. They will make the business decision that not only is it a lot of work, it's not necessary as firefox is supported with Flash.
If the Firefox people want to make a good moral stand with this issue, they should pull something similar to the crypto situation and make an "international" version. That version could serve as an embarrassment to the restrictive patent system, and a useful political talking point. At a minimum, though, they should simply remove all codec processing form the project, leaving that particular can of worms to an external project (gstreamer? embed mplayer/vlc/other? some new project created specifically for this purpose?).
I love firefox. I really do. So please don't choose to be non-player in the video arena!
Ce n'est pas une signature automatique.
At least M$ will then finally go under.
I have tried HTML5 Youtube with Chrome (v.3.0.195.38) about 30 minutes ago.
Badly pixelated image and no full screen video.
To me Flash video looks *much* better so far.
It seems that both Youtube and Vimeo have both chosen to use their own custom controls, and disable the default controls native to the user's browser.
That wouldn't be such a big deal, except for the fact that full screen mode can currently only be entered using those default controls (making full screen mode available via a scripting api is considered a security risk, and thus discouraged by the HTML5 spec). So they're sacrificing that functionality at the alter of branding.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
this is alot of comment!!!! for a hot topic,,
No, really, I do care. Safari and Chrome, that covers both Mac and Windows users fully, right? That's like 99.99% of the market, right?
You can't be serious that those browsers put together include only about 10% of users?
I think Linux isn't better than Windows hence in the slashdot realm I'm a troll
if web video formats follow the precedents of home video, porn will be the deciding factor. See Betamax v. VHS, and Bluray v. HD DVD. As goes porn so goes mainstream content providers, right? I should probably do some research into the delivery method of choice in online stag films, but it's just so tedious.
I have the tried the latest versions of chrome ( for windows since the linux version is barely functional) and Firefox and they don't support HTML 5 correctly yet.
Come talk to me when the big committee in the sky pulls their collective heads out of their asses and finalizes HTML 5 and fixes the problems that have been there since HTML 0.01
This whole Video this and video that is a the tail wagging the dog. If you want to watch movies buy a DVD player subscribe to a cable service that gives you video on demand instead of pushing a bad specficiation out the door before it's finished and waisting a whole but load of programmer time making the incomplete spec of HTML 5 work in a half-assed way.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
Maybe it's time Youtube is boycotted and everyone switches over to Daily Motion, which has been supporting Theora for several months already:
http://blog.dailymotion.com/2009/05/27/watch-videowithout-flash/
Boycott probably not going to happen though :(
This was pretty much response as well, it's pretty obvious if you sit with ffmpeg and run ten minutes of lazy encoding tests.
Into a half dozen different formats and bitrates, what would be one more? It could replace that old and busted h263 crap they offer, for example. Youtube uses ffmpeg for their transcoding, ffmpeg can output Theora. So really, by simply offering HTML5 youtube has done most of the work needed for Theora.
Host codes aren't intended to be exposed to the hostile web. You'd get 0wned up quicker than you could even say "video". The most common host platforms don't ship with a h264 codec in their media framework.
The cost to Mozilla to license h264 would be a significant fraction of their annual budget, each and every year spending what is probably significantly more to license h264 decoders than has ever been spent developing Theora... and webmasters are still still stuck paying usage fees, and Mozilla has put itself in violation of the GPL. That whole path can only end in tears. The open web demands open formats. Full stop. A decade ago people here lamented the impossibility of fighting MSFT's lock on the web. Firefox made the impossible happen, and they can do it again. They aren't alone: Wikimedia and Dailymotion are other prominent organizations supporting this initiative.
Everytime this topic comes up I am amazed at how many people think that it's somehow Mozilla's fault that Firefox doesn't support H.264.
Repeat after me: H.264 is NOT FREE, not by a long way. If Firefox included H.264 support then Firefox would also NOT BE FREE. It would be illegal for most of us to distribute a copy.
Google recently acquired On2, makers of the Ogg Theora (aka VP-3) codec which was released into the public domain and then taken over by xiph.org.
On2 have codecs VP-7 and VP-8 which have equivalent (if not better) quality than h.264.
It would not be surprising if Google made those codecs available, since they aren't patent-encumbered, and Google is heavily invested in HTML5 --and likes open standards.
This would be the ideal outcome. h.264 is a really bad option.
Use this script: Youtube without Flash Auto
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/50771
Than go to Youtube, hit Preferences under the player, select VLC Player from the drop down menu and Save.
I just tried browsing the full site on iPhone and switched to HTML5 mode. Doesn't seem to work, just displays a crossed over play-icon.
The problem with H.264 is both its patent status and the licensing cost. The patent means that it can't legally be used in software licensed under the GPL/LGPL 3.0 in countries like the US. So, Mozilla would have to add a closed-source component to Firefox for it to be able to work.
But the other problem is the licensing fee. Firefox ships so many software units that it will hit the enterprise cap for H.264 licensing every year. In 2006, that cap was $3,500,000. In 2007 it went up to $4,250,000. In 2009 it went up to $5,000,000. In 2011, it is going to go up again. So Mozilla will have to pay out $5,000,000 (and climbing) per year, just to support this one video codec in a product that they give away for free. Their revenue in their last fiscal year was $78.6 million.
Is it really worth it to spend 6% of your total yearly revenue on the licensing fee for one video codec?
Apple doesn't care, since they already hit the yearly cap anyway (see: iPod/iTunes) so it's free for them to include it in Safari. I'm not sure if Google does (can't think which apps it would be), but they have the money to do it either way. Opera and Mozilla don't currently have this expense... and they can't afford it. Nor can any other upstart browser since once they hit 200k 'units' per year, they have to start paying $0.20 per download.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Ah. The wishful thinking of an anti open source, pro Microsoft zealot is raised again.
Yawn.
A Mozilla developer has pointed out several drawbacks of using Directshow for HTML5 video. Among them was that some Directshow codecs are of questionable quality, it can be source of security bugs and would mean a different backend for every supported platform.
The Opera folks have said Directshow is not well geared to streaming videos so Opera has gone with a minimal gstreamer port for HTML5 video.
patenting how to manipulate bits is not ok
the free exchange of ideas is the only thing underpinning any sense of philosophical integrity in modern liberal democracy. besides, you basically lie when you say its expensive to develop this stuff. a university professional could do this, and by publishing it, for free (in an ideal world) he cements his academic credentials, which is the only reward anyone deserves for the advancement of ideas
capitalizing on those ideas is a secondary game that does not overlap, and should not overlap (in an ideal world) with the primary game of development of better ideas
ideas should not be patented
manipulating bits is simply an idea, not a marketable product
YOU'RE doing it wrong
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The authoring tools for .ogg are not there either.
What authoring tools? Just take your finished MP4 file produced with whatever tools, drag and drop it onto the transcoder, and you have OGV. Provided your MP4 is at a high enough bitrate, you shouldn't notice any transcoding artifacts.
Not being a US citizen I'd like to see it happen, but it won't.
I think more people will realize soon, that a thought that software and Internet are independent from governments and borders is an illusion. Currently, the dominant software provider and consumer is US. So the major part of software abides by US law. I still remember, that IE 6 for Russia did not contain 128-bit encryption because of US export laws.
Add classic US ignorance to it - "we run the world". Hell, even google.ru censors search results with DMCA notice, while DMCA is not valid in Russia. It respects laws of Australia, but laws in China are 'bad' (I personally consider them bad too, but dura lex sed lex). So US laws "must be abided", but laws of other countries "could be abided, if it's not harmful to US".
Video games need input, timers, processing, sprites, and audio output. That's it. Modern browsers have far faster processing engines than (say) Firefox 1.0-era browsers. The HTML DOM has supported input, timers, and sprites for a long time; games from yet another Soviet Mind Game on up have been possible for years. And the latest draft of HTML5 finally adds decent audio (with pitch, volume, and sync) to the DOM.
hmm...I'm testing out this vimeo html5 player and I'm looking at the source...I see calls using mootools 1.11 to a mootools class named "Kaiser Soze".....gotta love programmers with a sense of humor.
Now if only FireFox will get support.
Now if only the MPEG LA would give Mozzila a patent license that covers downstream distributors.
Because HTML5 + VIDEO tag draws people away *from Flash* and *into an open standard* that can be found everywhere.
What Microsoft would have liked would be, drawing people away from Flash and *into one of their own proprietary* technology, marketed as much better.
The core strategy of Microsoft is not just killing random IT companies for the fun of it (although it's not always obvious), but killing other companies in order to get bigger themselves in the process.
Silverlight is their optimal solution to lock more customer in Microsoft solutions.
HTML5 is their nightmare.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
check with the system to see if it provides those codecs, and then either play the content
The main problem with Firefox is that there no such thing as *THE system*, singular.
Firefox is a cross-platform tools designed to work on lots of different OSes (and even more now that it is also entering the embed world with project Fennec)
The solution you currently ask for would require the developers writing in support for lots of different codec framework.
The second problem, is that you *hope* that the system's codecs will be adequate :
- They will be able to correctly pause/seek/loop/etc. as the command are issued with the VIDEO tag's API.
- They will be of adequate security. We're not speaking about an offline player. We're speaking about streaming video from THE (virus-filled) WEB ! The number 1 problem with closed source Flash are the vulnerabilities - you'll be just replacing 1 problem with another.
And given the popularity of video websites, you know that the slightest bug will be over-exploited. You saw how much abuse was done simply with rick-rolling ? now think of the possibilities if, instead of subjecting the user to some cheesy song, you inflicted a remote exploit to a buggy codec.
(- Also, the Mozilla developers mentioned there are lots of "install this codec to view our porn" scams on the web to get people will fully install malware)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Firefox would be paying $5million/yr. $5m would pay for a lot of codec development, and Firefox wouldn't be the only one paying: anyone else distributing a h264 supporting browser that isn't judgement proof would need to pay, and everyone serving up video. So practically, doing your hosting will no longer be realistic: We'll be stuck with service providers like youtube with their insane habit of taking your files down on a whim.
Mpegla states that they are already collecting $66 per every man, woman, and child on earth. How much more do you think they're going to make once we hand them over the Internet?
Goodbye open web. Hello pay to play.
We're speaking about Youtube, Vimeo and Dailymotion.
Websites with short video snips uploaded by users.
*NOT* movie rental website providing 1080p HD studio-quality videos (although Youtube has said considering this options in the future...)
In this context, arguing which codec is better boils down to arguing which codec would be better at preserving all the artefacts, distortion and noise/grain due to previous compression stages and sub-par recording equipment (camera-phone, which compress video as MJPEG with 70% quality).
Once again,
the THEORA vs. H264 QUALITY debate is *irrelevant* regarding video clip websites. Even older codecs like DivX/Xvid and similar MPEG-4 part 2 ASP codecs are good enough.
The only argument in favour of H.246 is that :
- most of these websites already store a h264 variant of the video. HTML5 + h264 requires absolute zero efforts, whereas HTML5 + Theora would require adding yet another compression variant to the others (H263, Sorenson, etc.) already stored on the site.
- the most popular pieces of equipment out there (like iPhones and the like) have some form of hardware h264 acceleration built-in. So h264 already works, whereas as Theora would require porting/recompiling a codec for now, and sourcing a chip with hardware Theora support later (Note: There are free/libre Theora cores. Although none in production at some high-volume manufacturer).
So in short, Laziness is the main reason why some prefer to implement H264 instead of Theora. If it was really a question of quality, people would have moved to some Dirac/Schrödinger derivative (which is both patent-unencumbered *AND* based on a more recent and better technology as H264).
-
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
In theory Dirac/Schrödinger/VC-2 should be better than H264/MPEG 4 part 10 ASP : it's a newer technology.
It will be the best thing : patent-unencumbered, opensource, and hardware supported.
BUT
In practice I can't really understand why such a fuss about codec quality for websites on which users mainly post short video sets taken with their camera-phone.
Do we really need a debate to decide which codec is better at faithfully carrying over the compression artefact of the original MJPEG at 70% ?!?
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You're indulging in the "Not written here" attitude, where code that is written in any other codeshop is considered inferior.
The problem is not that the code is not inhouse. The problem is that this code can't be reviewed.
Nowaday NO opensource project rely on their own codec implementation. They all tend to use ffmpeg.
FFMPEG is good because it is opensource and its code can be (and is) reviewed for bugs.
(The only problem : it can't be used in some jurisdictions due to patents on H264)
Whereas, a hypothetical Direct-Show backend has no way to know if the codec receiving data *straight from the (virus-filled) interweb* is trustworthy.
Remember how quickly videos of Rickymartin spread everywhere and how easy it was to rick roll unsuspecting users ?
Now think what will happen if, instead of simply subjecting innocent users to some cheesy music, malevolent people were subjecting buggy codecs to remote exploits ?
As soon as a flaw is discovered in the system H264 codec on Windows, you bet that you'll see "ricky-exploit-rolling" poping every where on the web. Bonus point if your viral video doesn't ultimately stop the player, but only freeze it during the exploit - something which could be interpreted as a buffering glitch by the user.
For the record, I have almost 30 years experience writing code, and a good decade of running teams of programmers. I know what they're like.
For the record, I might only have 20 years experience. But in that (shorter) time frame, I've had on lots of occasion met crappy - but locked and proprietary code - that I had to patch / circumvent with debuggers and hex editors, just have it work. And that was just software wich *I* was forced to use. Meaning that these softwares mainly only got my input fed into them. With HTML5 with VIDEO tag, you're speaking about feeding data directly from the un trustworthy internet straight into codecs whose crappy quality you can't control ! That is irresponsible. That is just a huge disaster waiting to happen.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Come on firefox, everyone else in the industry is leaping head over foot to get themselves hog tied with ridiculously expensive licenses for h264, so why not add a proprietary anchor to your open source boat? So throw away any notion that open source software can be successful on its own, give up your only real reason to be different, and pick up a technology that a couple of your proprietary competitors are adopting! Sure it kind of undermines the whole idea of open source, but who cares, h264 is the media format of the week!
So send payment to Firefox, then. Or is it you want FF to pay for you?
If they go for h264 video is a nonstarter. All that "product" they want to entice me with? Pointless. If they don't support a video codec that can be implemented for free, I won't be watching.
I don't need to consume: I'm a CUSTOMER.
If you exclude me, I'll not play either.
svg extensions cannot be used until they are tied up with the same straightjacket limitations and ip law cruft that makes adobe suck in the first place
his point of view is the enemy of the free exchange of ideas
allow me to throw insults at the control freak asshole, because he is destroying the philosophical underpinnings that makes everything since the age of enlightenment subject to corporate ownership. his way of thinking is very much the enemy
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
When does the h.264 patent expire? I've been doing google searches, but haven't had any luck in finding the dates. My google search mojo must be weak today.
Ol' Rick Dawson had a farm EIEIO
is simply an idea, not a product
that some people do not understand this is the real problem
a product is something like a iPhone, or a car, or a pressure release valve: a physical thing. anything composed of bits is not, and can never be considered, as a simple matter of logic and reason, to be a product
your current understanding is simply logically incoherent
not that there aren't laws that support your incoherence. but these laws, and people like you, stand in the way of the free exchange of ideas, and must be defeated for the sake of progress, if not simply for the sake of philosophical integrity
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Try to use the Other OS? ;)
They won't lose anything. Sites that only use the proprietary codec will also support Flash. They *have* to. Chrome + Safari (the only browsers that support it) is less than 10% of online users.
HTML5 video only really had a chance to supplant it if it was open and free. If H.264 is what sites were all going to use, you're just replacing one proprietary thing (Flash) with another.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
All sites that support H.264 will continue to provide Flash video. They have to. Safari+Chrome (the only HTML5 H.264 supporters) is less than 10% of the online population. So that's not changing.
I don't know any geeks using Safari. It's decent on Mac OS, but it's a loser on Windows. And it's a good chunk of closed source (geeks still prefer open). And Chrome is a privacy nightmare. Geeks don't like that. Chromium and the variants that don't have the privacy issues won't support H.264.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
it takes time and energy and money to express your ideas in physical form
but it takes no effort or time or expense to share an idea on the internet
the creation of a physical object is a choke point that can be controlled: i can send 10,000 copies of a song from my home computer to anyone in the world, just by leaving a program running on my computer. but i can't publish and mail 10,000 copies of a song without considerable expense. therefore, "piracy" is a concept only a few could engage in in the pre-internet world, and ip law worked, because it was essentially a gentleman's agreement in an exclusive club of a few publishing companies. but in the internet world, piracy is simply the status quo, because its better, cheaper, and easier. you can't apply laws from a previous technological era on the behavior of tens of millions of teenagers around the world. so there's no enforcement possible, so the laws are defunct
in other words, talk all you want about patenting ideas. who cares? certainly not the teenager in slovakia who just violated your patent without knowing or caring anything about all those archaic legal structures that simply don't matter to him. and you have no recourse to make it matter to him. the era, and the laws derived from that era, is simply over, and you have to get used to it. the internet has rendered patents on ideas, and copyrights, as philosphically untenable concepts
the internet is disruptive technology. it will not be tamed by laws that depend upon the assumption that the production and distribution of media has choke points. instead, the laws will simply be ignored. look: the spanish came to the new world and rendered centuries old civilizations supporting the incan and aztec nobility extinct in a matter of weeks. was it fair to the previous era and the nobility who were invested in that structure to be so rudely toppled? who cares about continuity. who cares about fairness. its technological change: there's no stopping it.
talk all you want about ip laws: the only question is one of enforceability, and ip laws are unenforceable in the internet world. you merely have to adapt to the new world. a set of laws depending upon pre-internet assumptions going back to the invention of the printing press, about the economics of the distribution of media, are laws that simply don't matter any more
i'm not advocating for some far-out cybermarxist alternative fringe ideology that might work if everyone just started acting the way i think they should. what i'm doing is simply describing the already extensive reality of how things are already working in the real world, to people like you who seem to live in a pre-internet bubble of denial
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Too bad HTML5 specifies Ogg Theora, not H.264. This is about as much HTML5 as Silverlight.
Furries make the internet go.
Somebody hasn't heard about Debian...
One that hath name thou can not otter
The only thing GIFs did that PNGs didn't was animation.
And they still don't. It's been over a decade, and MNG still hasn't been widely implemented. What format (container+lossless codec) should one use for short (20 frame or less), looping line-art animations?
And the rest of the world cares because?
How much would it cost Mozilla Corporation to move its headquarters, every developer, and all its other assets out of the United States?
All we need is a non-US company (Canonical perhaps?) to fork Firefox and end this madness.
Such a non-US company wouldn't have the Google ads providing the bulk of the revenue.
is a concrete real world entity. it takes effort and material to produce it
a stream of bits takes no effort to produce, and is infinitely reproduceable
note i am talking about economic effort, not intellectual effort. of course it can take a lot of intellectual effort to produce a stream of bits. at the point where those stream of bits influence the production of a real world object, that is where you put the toll barriers in place
you do not put the toll barriers on the flow of bits. for many reasons, not least of which this strategy never works
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
for video compression
at some point, new hardware will built to take advantage of that new algorithm, which is where you can profit from the intellectual effort
say you write an amazing song
at some point, enough people will gather to hear a live performance of that song, which is where you can profit from the intellectual effort of creating that song
but you don't put toll barriers on the flow of bits. for many reasons, not least of which this strategy never works, its always circumvented. its a false conceit to say this can ever work to make money. all you do is cut down on the free exchange of ideas, which impoverishes the whole of society overall. you make more money exchanging ideas freely, and profit from where real world effects emerge from those ideas
a stream of bits takes no effort to produce, and is infinitely reproduceable. of course it can take a lot of intellectual effort to produce a stream of bits. at the point where those stream of bits influence the production or assembly of real world objects, that is where you put the toll barriers in place
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it