Five Years of YouTube and Forced Evolution

NakNak writes to mention that the DailyMaverick has a feature looking back at five years of YouTube, some of the massive changes that have been forced through as a result of its overwhelming popularity, and what changes might be necessary going forward. "Google, which bought YouTube less than two years after it was founded for what was then considered outrageously expensive $1.65 billion, does not want Microsoft or Apple (or anybody else) to own the dominant video format. So it has become the biggest early tester of HTML5. Your browser doesn't support HTML5? Google launches its own browser, Chrome. Need to use Internet Explorer at work because that's all your IT department supports? Google launches a Chrome framework that effectively subverts IE and makes it HTML5-compatible. The final blow will be the day that YouTube switches off Flash and starts streaming only to HTML5 browsers. On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage."

Comments

Perish

[Lije Baley]

Yes, perish for lack of Flash, just like the Iphone is now.

Re:Perish

[lwsimon]

Name a popular flash-only site than a majority of iPhone users visit on a regular basis on their desktop or laptop.

YouTube works on iPhone, and Safari for iPhone supports HTML5. From an industry perspective, iPhone's lack of Flash is a *good* thing. From a personal standpoint, as an iPhone user, its a small negative - something that would be nice, but to be honest, I don't really miss.

Re:Perish

[Abalamahalamatandra]

I'm not an Apple fanboi, but I will say: the problem is not that the iPhone doesn't support Flash, the problem is that Flash, as a proprietary overlay to the open Web, even exists.

I spend most of my time on my desktop using NoScript to actively BLOCK Flash, and grudgingly allow it to run when I have no other alternative to get the information I need. Flash support on a mobile phone without the means to easily block it via a permissions structure is an absolute battery and usability nightmare waiting to happen.

Re:Perish

[mikael_j]

Only because youve drunk so much of the koolaid and so used to be roughed up by corporations that you have no idea what its like to have a phone platform that does more

First off, I'll admit that I generally like Apple's products since they different parts are well-integrated (just to get that part out of the way, if that makes you think I'm a fanboy or that I've "drunk the kool-aid" then so be it).

Second, I've used and owned other smartphones that were much more capable than the iPhone on paper but which with real-world usage fell flat because of massive user interface issues, applications that leaked memory and general instability that made any perceived stability issues with the iPhone seem completely insignificant in comparison.

An example of this is the touchscreen on a friend's "high end" Nokia (I think) smartphone which together with the general UI lag makes using the phone painful, precision was so poor it was almost painful.

A second example would be my gf's phone (I can't remember the brand or model, the models are all 32789XS91080++ TouchTurboDeluxe gibberish to me), I experimented a bit with the UI and concluded that from the default "home" screen it took about half a dozen keypresses to get to the browser, once the browser was running I had to open a menu, scroll down to the "I want to visit a website" option and scroll down to the "I want to enter an URL manually" option before I could enter an URL. And that was the fastest path I could find. As a comparison, on an iPhone entering an URL involves tapping Safari, tapping the address bar and typing in the URL. It's hardly revolutionary but at least it's done right.

As for flash, the only times I miss that is when I stumble across some website designed by some incompetent hack who thinks the only way to do menu rollover effects is with flash...

/Mikael

Re:Perish

[element-o.p.]

Why would anyone send you a link to Vimeo knowing it wont work on your iphone?

You must have a much more tech-savvy circle of friends than I do. Most people I know and communicate with on a regular basis (outside of work, that is) neither know nor care about the underlying technology of various web sites and how they interact with the operating systems of the computers and gadgets that I use. Such conversations invariably look like, "What's active-x? That won't work on your computer? Oh that's too...hey, look! A squirrel!".

What they do know: "Hey, this web site is cool. I think I will send a link to everyone in my e-mail list!"

Re:Perish

[Estragib]

perish [...] just like the Iphone

I'm inclined to believe there's a fair amount of people who, when their time comes, would just love to perish as the iPhone is perishing now.

The Company sold 8.7 million iPhones in the quarter, representing 100 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter. (Apple Reports First Quarter Results, 2010/01/25)

Re:Perish

[Stuart Gibson]

Just to nitpick, Vimeo works perfectly on iPhone and, in fact, has an iPhone optimised interface.

As an aside, more people should develop their site to work on an iPhone first, then scale it up. It forces you to decide what it *actually* important on the site. If it isn't needed on iPhone, why is it needed on the full version?

Thanks to YouTube

[boudie2]

Checking today there are 3,180 videos matching the term "lighting farts". That and people reviving Rick Astley's career. It's a fun diversion, but you really have to wonder. About civilization.

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Petrushka]

It's a fun diversion, but you really have to wonder. About civilization.

People are still reading Aristophanes. Fart jokes have always been funny. I'm not worrying too much. (Not about that, anyway.)

Re:Thanks to YouTube

[Rei]

After some searching, I came up with this list of supposedly the ten oldest jokes, as compiled by a University of Wolverhampton study commissioned by the TV channel "Dave":

-------
1. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap (1900 BC - 1600 BC Sumerian Proverb Collection 1.12-1.13)

2. How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish (An abridged version first found in 1600 BC on the Westcar Papryus)

3. Three ox drivers from Adab were thirsty: one owned the ox, the other owned the cow and the other owned the wagon's load. The owner of the ox refused to get water because he feared his ox would be eaten by a lion; the owner of the cow refused because he thought his cow might wander off into the desert; the owner of the wagon refused because he feared his load would be stolen. So they all went. In their absence the ox made love to the cow which gave birth to a calf which ate the wagon's load. Problem: Who owns the calf?! (1200 BC)

4. A woman who was blind in one eye has been married to a man for 20 years. When he found another woman he said to her, "I shall divorce you because you are said to be blind in one eye." And she answered him: "Have you just discovered that after 20 years of marriage!?" (Egyptian circa 1100 BC)

5. Odysseus tells the Cyclops that his real name is nobody. When Odysseus instructs his men to attack the Cyclops, the Cyclops shouts: "Help, nobody is attacking me!" No one comes to help. (Homer. The Odyssey 800 BC)

6. Question: What animal walks on four feet in the morning, two at noon and three at evening? Answer: Man. He goes on all fours as a baby, on two feet as a man and uses a cane in old age (Appears in Oedipus Tyrannus and first performed in 429 BC)

7. Man is even more eager to copulate than a donkey - his purse is what restrains him (Egyptian, Ptolemaic Period 304 BC - 30 BC)

8. Augustus was touring his Empire and noticed a man in the crowd who bore a striking resemblance to himself. Intrigued he asked: "Was your mother at one time in service at the Palace?" "No your Highness," he replied, "but my father was." (Credited to the Emporer Augustus 63 BC - 29 AD)

9. Wishing to teach his donkey not to eat, a pedant did not offer him any food. When the donkey died of hunger, he said "I've had a great loss. Just when he had learned not to eat, he died." (Dated to the Philogelos 4th /5th Century AD)

10. Asked by the court barber how he wanted his hair cut, the king replied: "In silence." (Collected in the Philogelos or "Laughter-Lover" the oldest extant jest book and compiled in the 4th/5th Century AD)
-------

I suspect that #2 is actually a double entendre, since "spearing fish" was an Egyptian euphemism for having sex (the word for "to spear" also means "impregnate", while the word for "throwstick" also means "to beget". The Nile marshes themselves were considered a symbol of fertility because of an association with Hathor.

The oldest joke from Britain was:

"What hangs at a man's thigh and wants to poke the hole that it's often poked before? Answer: A key."

Re:Title bar color?

[Qubit]

Why is the title bar red?

Forced Evolution, duh!

Haven't you been paying attention?

or.....

[tacokill]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

Or, like the thousands of examples that came before.....people will simply go to another website that does not have such requirements.

But don't let me rain on your parade.

Re:or.....

[Maxo-Texas]

What other sites have content like You Tube?

Seriously? Where else can I go for similar content?

Re:or.....

[regular_gonzalez]

Not even the same ballpark. That's like needing to drive to Chicago for the weekend and your car has broken down. Your friend pipes up, "Hey, we can take a go-cart!"

and this is how google wins

[circletimessquare]

some business school moron could have said "hey, why don't we leverage our power and force a proprietary format on consumers, and they will be our captive audience"

like microsoft

like sony

etc

has any of it worked? no

for all the anxiety about google's increasing power, as long google does something like this: actively undermine and destroy a closed format in favor of an open one, then the consumer wins, google wins, other companies win, progress and innovation wins, and shortsighted greedy assholes who try to manipulate market inefficiencies in their favor lose (i'm looking at you, music and other media companies). in this context, at least, google really is "doing no evil"

Re:and this is how google wins

[Rockoon]

for all the anxiety about google's increasing power, as long google does something like this: actively undermine and destroy a closed format in favor of an open one

You mean like how Google actively undermines H.264?

Yes. I am very impressed that they are actively undermining H.264.

Definitely it can be said that Google actively undermines H.264.

Re:and this is how google wins

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is a open standard, patent encumbered, but open, with several available decoders/encoders.
Compare to flash, where theres ONE implementation, by the same company writing the "standard", and licensing prohibits writing a compatible decoder...

Re:and this is how google wins

[Rockoon]

Yes, well I am not arguing against H.264. I am actually an ardent supporter of the format (with or without patents) precisely because it is already widely adopted. I am ashamed of my browser maker (Opera) for not supporting it.

Most of the readers on slashdot already have an H.264 license. Win7? Vista? OS/X? Flash? Silverlight? iPhone? Chrome? Safari? Its hard to imagine that very many people go without these days.

Sure, the 100% FOSS crowd is an edge case of people that go without, but they are for lack of a better term just a vocal minority and the vast majority of them know where to get "illegal in their region" H.264 codecs.

But back on topic: Google doesnt give a rats ass about undermining the proprietary. Its not a rational business strategy, so its not a rational google strategy.

life in the old browsers yet

[petes_PoV]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

While youtube is nice for idling away some downtime, it's not the internet-dominating force this article makes out. If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity and allowing children everywhere to get their homework done on time, there wouldn't be so much of a change.

There are also (sit down, this might be a bit of a shock) lots and lots of people who rarely, if ever visit youtube. For them, it's existence or change in the tech. it needs will make no difference at all - if their old browsers fail I'm sure they find other things to do on the internet.

While I'm sure youtube will keep going - for some time at least, and will change more over time there's nothing life changing about it.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[tsm_sf]

You're not really making a distinction between people who are surfing the tubes for recreation and people who are working or studying. If you're just kicking around, then youtube and co. are certainly optional stops. But it's also the prime gathering point for stuff like TED talks, "man on the street" video reporting, Sagan mashups, HOWTO videos, out of circulation educational films, and so forth. It's not really that important to have all of this hosted by YouGoogly, but it is nice to have one place to start your searching.

As far as "life changing" is concerned, I think would depend on if you're in the "funny cat" camp or the "last lecture" camp. You may, in fact, be doing it wrong.

Re:life in the old browsers yet

[FranTaylor]

"If it disappeared tomorrow, than apart from instantly increasing corporate productivity"

Really? My employer uses YouTube a lot. We make YouTube videos of customer recommendations. Having an engineer gush about all of the time he saves with our product makes a very effective sales tool.

A lot of companies use YouTube for instructional videos for their products. Why bother with complex printed directions when you can watch a real live human do it?

Really you should not dismiss the value of something just because YOU can't figure out how to do something useful with it.

If Youtube ever shuts off flv streaming...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

There won't be enough waaaambulances in the entire world to handle the mass-casualty incident at Adobe HQ...

User outrage more likely to be at Google

[Spy Handler]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage

Most users don't know and don't care about the standards wars. What's more likely to happen is:

• User has been using IE and watching YouTube for umpteen number of years
• Google shuts out Flash and IE, only supporting HTML 5
• User notices YouTube doesn't work anymore
• User gets angry at YouTube, not IE. MS isn't the one that changed something, Google is.
• Google backpedals in a way reminiscent of New Coke in 1986

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[inanet]

User sees link "Can't see the video? Click here to remedy and download Google Chrome" user downloads and installs Google Chrome. Microsoft cries in pain. Users these days are a good deal smarter than they used to be, if someone is smart enough to install flash, they are smart enough to install Chrome.. for the most part, or they will have a kid / friend who will do it for them.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[Sinning]

Or..

• Google notifies users to download an HTML5 compatible browser.
• User moves to Chrome and never looks back to IE.

It may actually benefit Google to give users a reason to switch to Chrome.

Re:User outrage more likely to be at Google

[maugle]

Google would be stupid to shut off Flash support entirely. But there's nothing stopping them from making it increasingly more difficult to get to the Flash content, while making the "Your browser is obsolete, use one of (list of alternative browsers)!" messages increasingly larger and more annoying.

The end result is that Joe User doesn't get angry at YouTube for "suddenly not working", but eventually gets the message that his browser is broken and needs upgrading.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Rashkae]

Well, close. Firefox will be unable to include the decoding of h264 right into the browser. But there is already work underway to simply hand over the video to an underlaying OS system, (Gstreamer for Linux, as example.). It will then be up to the user to aquire the required codecs and what not, which can't legally be distributed in North America as entirely free software, (but in practice, patents have never stopped free software before, only creates annoying red tape.) Gstream and ffmpeg have been able to handle h264 for longer than I remember, and I don't expect that to change at all. It's probably a good thing that Firefox will use existing software rather than creating yet another decoder to deal with.

Chrome Frame

[tepples]

User gets angry at YouTube, not IE

"YouTube no longer uses Flash. Now we use Chrome Frame to provide you with new features. Click here to install Chrome Frame." The user response really isn't that much different from the "Your Flash Player is too old" that YouTube started serving once Nintendo finally upgraded Wii Internet Channel from Flash 7.

Re:Chrome Frame

[derGoldstein]

Why are corporate employees watching Youtube at work? Obviously there may be some useful technical talks and the like, but in most companies very few people have a legitimate reason for doing so.

For the same reason they'd browse Facebook and have a twitter app on the side -- people aren't machines. It's true that quite a few companies block facebook/youtube/twitter/myspace, but they're not the majority. Any "sane" company worries about employee output, not how said employees go about producing it.

And any company which locks their employees into using IE probably deserves everything they get.

This includes many government institutions in the western world. They use IE because it's easy to administer across a large network. The major hurdle for any non-IE browser is to get into corporate environments -- people using their computers at home already know (for the most part) that pretty much any browser is better than IE.

That's what Chrome Frame is for

[tepples]

YouTube won't turn off Flash until a super-majority of users have HTML-5 compliant browsers.

That's one reason why Google made Chrome Frame: to make every copy of IE for Windows that's not completely locked down into an HTML5 compliant web browser.

IE6 rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

Management is going to be VERY happy that youtube will stop working with older web browsers. User productivity is going to skyrocket.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[DaMattster]

Well, Google has the marketplace cornered for streaming video sites with YouTube. It has the power to effect such a change so don't be so shortsighted.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[Anonymous Coward]

Y2K called and left the following message:

I don't think Flash video/flv will ever be successful. RealMedia is very dominant.

Re:Cart or Horse first?

[The MAZZTer]

Google will probably throw up an info bar a bit before the switchover if your browser is not HTML5 compatible, warning that YouTube is dropping support for said browser and so get a new one if you wish to keep using YouTube... it would have a link leading to a list of HTML5 compatible browsers you can install such as Firefox, Chrome, ChromeFrame, Safari, etc. Or just ChromeFrame, for IE users, though I think even now Wave offers browser suggestions too as well as ChromeFrame.

Re:They need to fix the site first.

[macs4all]

What use would HTML5 have if Google insists on streaming crystal-clear high-definition unskippable ads to me in a few seconds, but streams the video to me bit-by-bit to the point where it takes five minutes to watch a one minute HD video.

Boy, I couldn't agree more with that!

I recently switched the "Try HTML5" thing on, and I've got to say, they need to assemble and download those clips a helluva lot faster. They've made the site nearly un-fun.

To the point that I'm about ready to "un-volunteer" to be an HTML5 Guinea Pig...

Re:Perish (reasons why flash is not supported)

[AndrewStephens]

The video sites I will give you (although if they really wanted to be on the iPhone they would just make the original h264 files available) but people bemoaning the lack of flash games on the iPhone are missing an important point - none of the existing flash games would work anyway!

The iPhone doesn't have a keyboard and (even worse) has no mouse. These two facts alone mean that the vast majority of game would not work. Even games that use the mouse purely for pointing would run into problems, since tapping with your finger is much less precise than using a mouse pointer. In addition, on the iPhone you effectively have multiple pointing devices - how would current Flash apps handle that?

For a quick demo of why sites like newsgrounds will never work on the iPhone, resize your browser window to 480*320 (or 320*480 since that is more usual) and visit your favourite gaming site. Now set your mouse pointer to a big white blob instead of an arrow to similar tapping with a large figertip. Remember to stop playing after 45 minutes to simulate the battery drain. See how much fun you have.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[shermo]

The trap has been laid... *waits*

http://xkcd.com/326/

Re:Ok, so that makes Three...

[macs4all]

Why would Microsoft for example use flash when they could use silverlight?

To keep people from whining (like they do about Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad) that it doesn't support Flash, and therefore is unworthy.

Having said that, I agree with you that in MS' case, it could be a Silverlight ploy; but, since they also axed Multitasking in Windows Mobile 7 at the same time (like Apple's iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. Hmmm...), methinks its more a problem (like Apple realized) of battery life, heat, and poor performance (this time), rather than them trying to push Silverlight.

Even marketing must sometimes bow to the laws of physics.

Re:But which codec?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla, for good reasons (IMHO), is not willing to support H.264, but that seems to be the direction YouTube is heading. But as good and open as Theora is, I think don't believe there is any hardware with a Theora accelerator (yet?).

You can make use of the DSP that's used for H.264 acceleration and use it for Theora acceleration or any other similar workload. That's what's been done here:

http://www.schleef.org/blog/20...-c64x-dsp-and-omap3/

As mentioned in the post, that work is broadly applicable to Nokia's N series of phones, the Motorola Droid, and the Palm Pre. There are millions of devices in the field today which are capable of accelerated Theora playback. All they need is the software.

See also Christopher Blizzard's post on the importance of open formats to the future of the web:

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/webl...anding-with-the-web/

In the comments Christopher Montgomery from Xiph.org, the foundation behind Theora, says:

"As for the chicken/egg problem of hardware support, several big commercial groups are already scrambling to get over it, partly because full Theora support in hardware is so much simpler than full h264 support. It’s a tiny fraction of the complexity. You practically get that many transistors for free in the today’s average cardboard cereal box. Can’t say more– NDAs. But that’s OK, it will be reality or not soon enough."

As you say, Microsoft's lack of HTML5 support will probably be a problem for some time. Fortunately, it can be worked around with Cortado or Highgate media suite's Theora for Silverlight

The new YouTube video page

[A Friendly Troll]

I've been selected to try out the new YouTube video page. If that's forced evolution, then I don't want to be a part of it...

There are no normal links anywhere anymore. Whereas previously the video links were http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxxxxxxxx, they are now monstrosities with a hundred characters in the URL.

It's all full of AJAX. I haven't tried disabling JS to see what happens... The layout has changed, it's confusing, and it's ugly. When the video you are watching stops, the next one starts automatically, as if it were all a giant playlist.

If you get that piece of garbage (which is a clear devolution, not an evolution), delete YouTube's cookies. I'm not sure which one was responsible; I just got rid of all of them and got normal YouTube back.

Re:The new YouTube video page

[Culture20]

Waaaaah waaaaah waaaaah I hate change. Change sucks!

A lot of times it does. In this specific case, posting a URL to a specific youtube video will soon look like posting a URL to a location in googlemaps, and you apparently can't rewind and rewatch a clip you just saw as easily, or spend some time choosing a related clip; they force one on you.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Insanity Defense]

It will then be up to the user to aquire the required codecs and what not, which can't legally be distributed in North America as entirely free software,

Can't legally be distributed in the United States. Canada does not have software patents so it can be distributed here. I don't know about Mexico.

YouTube will get the outrage, not IE

[johnthuss]

On that day all browsers will be HTML5 compatible or they will perish in the flames of user outrage.

People won't blame their browser (IE) they will yell at YouTube for needlessly breaking something that was working just fine. Seriously, users don't care AT ALL about the politics behind this. They just want IE6 to keep working. Well, "working" might be a generous description, but you get the point.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

You would apparently be surprised, then, by the number of mp3 players that support vorbis(not even counting the ones that can be rockboxed). Some will even do so without mentioning the fact.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[yelvington]

And what about the weekly exploit or two? Flash has never missed a beat. Will browsers implementing HTML5 expose us to at least the same level of risk that Flash does?

Will HTML5 also cause my browser (even if it's just a sandboxed tab) to crash several times per day, like Flash does now? I sure hope so, otherwise the experience just wouldn't be the same.

Sadly, those features are missing from early versions of HTML5 browsers, but perhaps Microsoft will step up to the plate with HTML5+ Enterprise Edition Bonus Pack.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[bzipitidoo]

H.264 has significantly better video quality

Wrong. Ogg Theora is nearly identical in quality to H.264. Both are a lot better than H.263. Judge for yourself: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

will be free until at least 2015, and I'm willing to bet it will continue to be free after that.

If there are no alternatives, I'm sure H.264 will not remain free. Once everyone is hooked, why on Earth wouldn't the owners start charging money for it? Because they're such nice people? LOL. If they have no plans to start charging for it, why don't they make it free forever, starting now? Since they have not done so, obviously they are hoping they can eventually charge money for it.

The war is already over

Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already. The fact you feel you have to make a proclamation suggests you're not sure yourself, or that you have a hidden agenda. You say it's everywhere, and that's why it has already won. It's not nearly as widespread as you seem to think. Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

Re:source?

[BobNET]

iphones [...] we accept that platform as important

[citation needed]

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[element-o.p.]

Back when I graduated from high school, cassette tapes and VHS were the dominant audio/video format, and they haven't been displaced, either!

Erm...I mean...oh, nevermind.

Forcing Change

[aBaldrich]

And nobody mentioned the IE 6 ban in G-Docs... Google is moving the internet foward.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[ThrowAwaySociety]

I don't think HTML5 video will ever be successful, flash video/flv is very dominant.

I don't think Flash video will ever be successful, since RealPlayer is very dominant.

Sincerely,
1999.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[koro666]

[...] Just delegate it to the OS [...]

So next time there is some remote code execution vulnerability in DirectShow and/or its codecs, you want Firefox users to be affected too?

Face it, with the amount of "plugins" installed by default in Firefox these days in the back of the user (Acrobat, Silverlight, WPF, Windows Media Player, etc.), Firefox has become as much vulnerable as Internet Explorer, if not more because of its lack of usage of Vista's integrity levels.

Let's not add another nail to its coffin.

Re:HTML5 Video: A big No-No

[cynyr]

google is smarter than to just drop support for flash overnight with no notice. I'm betting like the above proposal there will be flash support for a few to several months, where if you fall back to flash you get a message bar that says you are using the old youtube and that it is being phased out, see this link for more info. The link will provide instructions that grandma can follow to get something else(chrome being the recommendation, FF/opera/safari being listed in the "more browsers" link).

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[zmollusc]

Bah! I hate having to dick around with stupid flash animated picture galleries etc. Give me a nice html page with ftp links to your content, I may be on a slow gprs link and viewing the content on a separate device.
Too many duhsigners and arsetists.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Kjella]

1) Sure linking to a comparison on xiph.org, that'll be unbiased. Please, can we have a comparison that isn't devoid of all neutrality?

2) Lots of companies in the MPEG LA have an interest in making H.264 videos free to play, like say all those selling H.264 cameras and selling editing software and encoders and whatnot. Microsoft and Apple are already licensing it for Windows and OS X, I'm sure they have licenses that are permanent to make it a base technology like that. In other words, this is getting very close to patent FUD.

3) Look around, everywhere MPEG2 and H.263 is considered legacy and slowly being replaced with H.264. Theora is like Vorbis, the only place I ever hear about it is on slashdot. To your "Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already." is that some people here are like the Iraqi information ministry. There is no threat from H.264, the glorious Theora is victorious on all fronts.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Kjella]

Well, close. Firefox will be unable to include the decoding of h264 right into the browser. But there is already work underway to simply hand over the video to an underlaying OS system, (Gstreamer for Linux, as example.).

Last I heard from Mozilla was "we could, but we'll do no such thing to protect your freedoms". Has that changed recently, or are you talking about a patched version that won't come with Firefox's trademark?

Re:Here's a secret about the Internet.. Shh

[fm6]

Depends on what you mean by "available". If you just want to dump your video files on a web site, then yes, anybody can make their videos available — if "available" doesn't include people actually seeing it. And a video dumped on an ordinary web site, won't be — even if people can find it, they mostly won't have the patience to download or buffer it.

Successful online videos are the ones that go viral. For that to happen, there has to be some kind of search and web 2.0 functionality to help people find it. There also (and this is the hard part) has to be heavy-duty network infrastructure that allows the video to start streaming seconds after the user clicks on it,. That's a much more useful version of "available".

Thought-provoking line from the article

[dmneoblade]

However, there was a more fundamental problem, in the minds of some internet service providers and powerful telecommunications companies. YouTube pays for the transmission of half that awesome amount of data it serves (in theory only, in practice it's less). The other half is paid by those who receive it, by way of the telephone company used to get internet access. The users may consider that fair, but the telephone companies saw the equivalent of newspapers being delivered using their vans while they see none of the advertising revenue. YouTube, and Google and Facebook and other big traffic destinations, they argued, should pay to reach those customers.

Now, think about this for a moment. If I am renting a van from you, paying what you asked for mileage, filling up the tank when I brought it back, etc... why should I give you more money for using it to deliver newspapers, than if I used it to pick up a couch and bring it back to my place?

Seriously, where the hell did they think up this analogy?

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[Anonymous Coward]

H.264 is significantly better then Theora. The comparison on xiph only shows similar quality because Youtube uses suboptimal settings on x264 and the Theora guy cranked the settings as high he could get them.

You may notice he sacrificed things like seeking granularity to increase Theora's effectiveness, if he had used similar settings then it wouldn't be as close.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[Toonol]

I'm skeptical. But also...

Once you can make annoying animated music playing hovering popup advertisements in HTML5, won't they be even harder to filter out than Flash?

Re:Arrogance...

[SEE]

If HTML5 is built into every browser,

Pretty damn big "if", there.

Microsoft has expressed no interest in supporting HTML5 at all in Internet Explorer. It's been made very clear that Firefox will not support patent-and-royalty encumbered H.264. Opera joins Mozilla in its hostility to H.264. "It plays on Safari and Chrome" is not a compelling sales pitch on either side of the creator-viewer divide.

On the other hand, Flash? The plugin is already ubiquitous; Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, and Solaris all have Flash 10, and it works with both NPAPI and ActiveX browsers. It's been used for years, and there's masses of content already developed for it, so the need for it isn't going away any time soon.

Re:Open Web alternative to Newgrounds?

[CopaceticOpus]

For one thing, you can make annoying animated music playing hovering popup advertisements today without using Flash.

Once HTML5 is in place, the browser will have more control over how audio and video is played. This means that the browser or a browser extension will be able to block audio and video from unapproved sites, in the same way that Flash and Javascript blockers work today.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

Yup.

Basically, the HTML power-that-be set out to establish video as a first-class thing within HTML, via the tag. Much as with , they would not dictate precisely what kinds of video would be supported, but basically allow the browser to play it or fail. BUT... there was general consensus that, as with JPG and GIF, originally (and later, PNG) there ought to be known standard formats that everyone supported.

The Mozilla folks, backed by Opera and a bunch of FOSS entities, back Ogg Theora as the video CODEC that should be "built-in" on all web browsers. They do this because Theora is open source... it's based on On2's VP3.2 CODEC, which was released as open source after they had produced their VP4 CODEC. They gradually opened the source even more, eventually granting the Xiph Foundation a "do whatever you like with it" BSD-like license, including the free use of any governing patents. "Theora" is named for Theora Jones, a character from the "Max Headroom" series.

Anyway, the opposition, including Apple, Google, and various others back H.264 instead. Some of this is de-facto.. H.264 is already the standard used in most modern video these days: satellite and some cable TV, European HD broadcast, YouTube, iPhone/iPod, etc. It is, of course, not free, but administered by the MPEG-LA, the same licencing organization that deals with other MPEG and related IP. The FOSS folks reject this because it means no built-in free H.264 CODEC, and as well, potential frees for internet broadcast, even per-view fees (which have been promised, but regularly rolled back to date).

Big companies are also somewhat concerned about the patent implications of VP3 and Theora... there aren't tested in court, and there's no organization like the MPEG-LA ready to take the legal heat if there's any new patent exposure. It's so far just a fear, but not a trivial one. The other is for streaming video: companies like YouTube spend nearly all their money in network fees... the cost of delivering video. Ogg Theora is less efficient than H.264, so switching to H.264 would result in a quality loss or much more costs, neither of which is deemed acceptable.

I actually understand both positions. But Mozilla takes it one step further... they won't just not support H.264 as a built-in, but they do not intend to support external video CODECs. That seems to be a very stupid position: video CODECs for many different kinds of video are now a standard part of every major OS, just like device drivers moved from hacks or in-application to in-OS back in the 1980s or so. Many OSs (for example, Windows 7 and MacOS X) ship with H.264 drivers built in. It's actually important to at least have the option of using an OS driver in preference to anything you might build in to your application, simply because OS-level drivers can very often use your hardware better.

A couple examples. It's impossible to play 1080p H.264 in software on a 1GHz ARM A9 processor. Yet, in the nVidia Tegra 2 chipset, you can not only play 1080p H.264 video, but you can play it at very low power, around 200mW. They have a rockin' accelerator for it... same as most every handheld device today. Another one... most desktop PCs play 1080/60i or 1080/30p pretty well, as long as they have dual core or so CPUs. But 1080/60p is pretty challenging. I have been shooting 1080/60p video for sports video, much better. It'll play in VLC, sort of... it's choppy, and using 40-60% of my total CPU, this, on a Q9550 PC. Running in evil old Windows Media Player in WIn7, I get perfect 60fps, full screen on one of my 1200p monitors, using 12% CPU. Why? That video CODEC is tapping DXVA 2.0, which is offloading much of the work to my nVidia 8800GT, which would otherwise be sitting around, all 118 stream processors given nothing to do.

So with Mozilla, it's not just sound open source philosophy, it's religion. There's no reason they shouldn't support OS-level CODECs, they're just trying to leverage Firefox's popularity to force others to adopt Theora as the one and only default CODEC.

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[discord5]

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

Oh boy, this page AGAIN. I shall stop the sarcasm engine I started up last time someone quoted this thing as an irrefutable fact. From that page:

The primary challenge is that all files at these rates will have problems, so the reviewer is often forced to decide which of two entirely distinct flaws is worse. Sometimes people come to different conclusions. That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion.

Why, several people have expressed that they thing the Theora codec might be better, and he (one of the xiph.org people) tends to agree. I'm sorry, but could you please do something a little more than encode the same video with two different codecs and then a jedi-handwave accompanied by saying "Oh this looks so much better, and my buddies with a xiph.org e-mail address tend to agree" ?

How about pointing out flaws in the generated videos, artifacts that will definitely be present at low bitrates, the effect of the encoding on colors, or how well both codecs perform in a scene where everything moves?

The war is already over

Propaganda. If it was over, we'd all know that already.

Does anyone here remember the CD-i? DVD-RAM? MD ? How about the more recent one HD-DVD? (I'm sure someone has an xbox, so that should be a bit more popular). Format wars are never over. Hell, people still argue about Betamax vs VHS. A format war is good for only one thing: making geeks froth at the mouth like a cappuccino. For the rest, the industry will play its part and the war won't be won on technical merits. By the time this thing is settled another format war will take and it'll be cappuccino time all over again.

a hidden agenda

Oh noes! THEY ARE AMONGST US! Posting on our boards, subverting our free codecs by spreading words.

Many of us do not use Blu-Ray. Much video on the Internet is still H.263.

My mother doesn't own a DVD-player, nor does my grandmother. I'd call the DVD pretty much a (set of) standard(s) though. I strongly believe that the next big thing in media-land will no longer be a physical medium, and what's more, we'll beg the industry for more a dollar at a time. And I think that ultimately that will be the deciding factor on this whole debate, but I might as well be wrong in that belief. Only time with tell, but in the meantime: froth on, kind sir!

Re:.h26x a stumbling point?

[hazydave]

if you actually WATCH the videos it's not hard to see that the theora encode looks FAR worse than the h.264 on practically every frame

Indeed. And consider... this is the Xiph web site.. these are the Ogg Theora development people. So what you're seeing there is the best argument they could construct, and it still fails.

Theora is at an inherent disadvantage, and always will be. It was, after all, based on On2's VP3, which they tossed out there for free once VP4 was shipping. They're on VP8 now, and recently bought by Google. Anyway, they are inherently limited by the improvements they can add, because they're likely to trip on any number of video encoding patents that have been filed in the 10 years since VP3 was released. This, in fact, is one big concern from the big companies involved in HTML5... if you're an MPEG-LA licensee, you're covered should any new patents emerge on H.264, as unlikely as that is. But Theora hasn't been all that tested.

I have absolutely nothing against some open source CODECs being available, I think that's great, and would put pressure on the MPEG-LA to keep H.264 free. But Theora is the wrong answer. Right answers? Well, it needs more work, but the BBC's Dirac CODEC is more competitive, if just as much of a problem on handheld gear. Google could release VP8 to the FOSS community, which is said to be noticeably more efficient than H.264 at lower bitrates. Both still could have patent entanglement issues, however.