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."

Comments

Re:This may not be an apt analogy, but

[Btarlinian]

Actually, I'm pretty sure porn went for HD-DVD. So it's not always the right indicator.

Re:Excellent.

[smash]

Google has no incentive to go theora either, as it means transcoding all their stuff - and they clearly already have a h.264 license anyway.

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

Re:Excellent.

[Philip_the_physicist]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[clem]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[sxpert]

Now if only FireFox will get support.

I think you mean

Now if only FireFox will add support.

Now, if only the stupid h264 codec would be freed !

H.264

[FrostedWheat]

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 acquired On2, makers of video codecs

[dracvl]

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.

Cost for Firefox H.264: $5,000,000+ per year

[CritterNYC]

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.

Re:Excellent.

[CowboyBob500]

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.