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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."
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.
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
Honestly, as much as I'd like to stop using Flash immediately, I'd rather have Mozilla try to stick this out. Somewhere around a third of all people on the internet use Firefox (and I assume a higher number of Youtube users). If Mozilla can push Google to support Theora it will be worth the wait.
If firefox do not support H.264, they're going to become irrelevant as far as video goes.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
And you can't write videogames in HTML5. Flash will be around for a while.
The real problem with Flash, stupid menu widgets, irritating ads, and non-html website frontpages, won't disappear until sites can recreate equally annoying equivalents via some other method.
Actually, I'm pretty sure porn went for HD-DVD. So it's not always the right indicator.
The authoring tools for .ogg are not there either.
So really, open source people can whine all they want, it will make no difference - Firefox can buy a license, or they can become irrelevant. Or maybe start their own video hosting to compete, but my bet is that will be more expensive than a h.264 license.
Or hell, they can just use whatever codecs are available on the host platform.... and get back to what they should be worried about - writing a web browser, rather than getting involved in a codec war they have no chance winning
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=422540
They are working on a Gstreamer backend for the video tag, and that will provide support for h264. From skimming the comments, it seems that there is a working but slow patch for 3.5, which is yet to be updated for 3.6.
This will of course benefit ChromeOS and will force Microsoft into implementing html5 and H264 negating its strategy of killing adobe and becoming king of the online video.
But there is a bad smell about this. Google could achieve this as well by adding Theora to the supported codecs. Google is putting Firefox in a position where it is either encumbered with patents therefore losing the status of "pure" open source project, or looking bad in the feature front. I don't like this.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
and firefox better swallow their pride and licence it.
Why should they license it when an embeddable player is available on every OS with noticeable marketshare?
They just need to enable the HTML5 video tag to use that. Oddly enough I couldn't find this bug at BMO with a quick search.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Also, Ogg Theora is just less good than h264 on several levels. For one thing, there are hardware decoders for h264, but more importantly for me, h264 just indisputably looks better. Seriously, in this grudge match of Firefox v. Google (and now others), Firefox is on the losing side. I hope the developers realize this soon. Maybe Google is not intervening because they're happy to let people say "fuck it, I guess I'll try it with Chrome" - as I'm about to.
You know, I was originally leaning towards Theora as the better codec. But your brazen anonymous cursing has turned me right around on this issue. Well done, sir.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
I think you mean
Now, if only the stupid h264 codec would be freed !
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.
Javascript.
Don't whine that it's slow - Chrome, Opera, Safari and Recently firefox now have very fast javascript engines.
Don't whine its not powerful enough - ActionScript (Flash Scripting) is Javascript. And Flash isn't very quick at interpreting it either...
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.
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
And a majority of that third live outside the jurisdiction of the US patent system so the license issue becomes moot. Personally I'd rather the rest of the world stick 2 fingers up at the US system and continue to use browsers that support H.264 and don't pay any patent licenses to anyone.
For example, why not make a US and non-US version of Firefox with the non-US version having H.264 support. US people will still manage to get the working version and Firefox will still have the required support.
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Mostly it seems Mozilla just do not want to support anything but Theora, and they're making up weak excuses for why they shouldn't use platform libraries to play video.
I sure hope they grow out of it soon.
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.
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