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Wikipedia's Assault On Patent-Encumbered Codecs
An anonymous reader writes "The Open Video Alliance is launching a campaign today called Let's Get Video on Wikipedia, asking people to create and post videos to Wikipedia articles. (Good, encyclopedia-style videos only!) Because all video must be in patent-free codecs (theora for now), this will make Wikipedia by far the most likely site for an average internet user to have a truly free and open video experience. The campaign seeks to 'strike a blow for freedom' against a wave of h.264 adoption in otherwise open HTML5 video implementations."
It's all nice and all, but if open video technology really wants to win, they have to be technically better. There is no other way.
However it's nice to see Open Video Alliance trying to partner with Wikipedia. In addition to being technically better, that's another aspect you need to take care of. You need to make sure websites, TV, phone, computer and so on manufacturers support your technology. You have to work with them to get it supported - not just put it out there and hope it catches up because its "open", because that's not going to happen. Personally I would also hate to see technically inferior solution being used, as it would eat huge amount of bandwidth. Theora just isn't on the same table with H.264 for Internet video. Theora is based on VP5 from On2 and now that Google acquired them, they're going at VP8.
As far as having a single standard for HTML5 video goes, Theora lost. H.264 is and has been already everywhere and on every device. I also suspect majority of sites will use H.264, as that's what is being used with Flash already.
However, what I see happening (and hope) is HTML5 Video tag being released without requiring support for a single codec, just like img tag is. Then browsers can either implement their own support, use third party tool like gstreamer (like Opera does) or just depend on OS (what I suspect IE and Safari will do). Firefox is still having their ideological problems, but I'm pretty sure they will start using gstreamer too.
What I'm more worried about is that I cannot watch Wikipedia videos with any other device than my PC. Want to see a video clip of a place you're traveling on your phone? Not possible. Want to see videos from Wikipedia with your PS3/360? Not possible. It will create some serious problems, and I don't think Wikipedia is big enough to push the change alone.
Let the OS handle it, and let the browser interact via plug-ins.
It's really not that complicated.
I'm not sure I see Wikipedia as being the "killer app" for video standards. I'm not sure how many articles would be really enhanced by the addition of video, baring in mind that video would need to be licenced under CC or similar, so clips of TV shows / films would probably be out.
To take a random example (today's featured article) . I'm not sure what video you could usefully add to that article? Especially since somebody who died in 1938 probably isn't featured in many video clips.
And Google, Microsoft and Apple give out a collective *yawn*. Youtube has more traffic than Wikipedia so if Google is pushing H.264 through there it will have far more impact than Wikipedia. Not to mention that Facebook, who also has more traffic than wikipedia and also youtube, also uses H.264 for its video.
WP should just adopt html5 and give up on the FOSS posturing for once. We already relented on the issue of fair use media--limited use for copyrighted material. Patent protected material seems like a better place to compromise more widely because patents don't live forever. After ~14-21 years, the content path is free. If WP does plan to be around "forever", that isn't too long a time to wait.
this will make Wikipedia by far the most likely site for an average internet user to have a truly free and open video experience
Yes. An experience of videos that won't play in the average internet user's browser. It's easier to click the "close window" button than it is to care about broken video on a broken web site.
They can dream about unicorns and world peace too but doesn't mean it's gonna happen...
Not with that attitude it won't!
Has anyone tried to create a unicorn using a horse and a narwhal? Why isn't there an island of Dr. Morrow anyway? I think that would be cool. Creating hybrid animals is cool. We should do more experiments along these lines.
So why does an organization like openvideoalliance.org use flash for their videos?
They're so uptight about what pictures they'll accept (copyright, fair use), what makes anyone think that Wikipedia is going to become a giant video repository?
I've been playing around with schroedinger 1.0.9 and it's output is nearly indistinguishable from baseline x264. If dirac had even half the resources that have been invested into h.264 encoders, it's possible that quality, compression, and encode/decode speed could be equal.
Market share wise browsers with Theora support are actually ahead right now...
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Well, I have this half-monkey half-pony hybrid, but my girlfriend doesn't like it.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Ah, now your real concern appears, I suspect. If Theora starts to get momentum, it'll appear on phones and similar devices quickly enough. My phone already supports Ogg Vorbis. (It may even support Theora; I haven't tried.) If yours doesn't, then perhaps you went with the wrong vendor.
I want to go with the right vendor. But which video game console supports Theora? None of the big three do. Or should people buy one box for Theora video and one box for games?
If you want Wikipedia to go with your proprietary, encumbered format(s), your best be is to lobby the patent holders to donate the patents to the public domain. Good luck with that. :)
That depends on what Google decides to do with VP8.
They just won't know it. (Oh, and a more idealistic person might even say that they'll not only be paying money, but paying in a more metaphorical sense with lock-in, etc.)
If people have the technical chops to install something like flash, why wouldn't they have the technical chops to install something else?
Because they trust adobe.com and distrust random codecs downloaded from random sites that infect people with the "Antivirus 2009" scareware.
h.264 = Porn and "funny", time wasting, videos
Theora = Actually useful stuff
H.264 is already included in any recent Windows
At least two-thirds of PCs run Windows XP, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, or Windows 7 Starter. These operating systems do not include an H.264 decoder. Among Windows operating systems, only Windows Vista Home Premium, Windows Vista Ultimate, and Windows 7 Home Premium or higher include an H.264 decoder.
The user should be warned of the issues with installing the codec, and then given the choice to continue.
Some lawyers for MPEG-LA members would try arguing that the maintainer of a repository that doesn't use IP address geotargeting commits infringement.
I believe I told you: Half means half the genetic codebase, not half the mass.
In short, yes, you did use too many monkeys.
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
I've been waiting for this - because it's a rare organization that can long resist the desire to go political.
So much for their independence and reliability.
First of all, bad headline. This is not Wikipedia's assault; in fact, this will be seen as an assault on Wikipedia, to unduly promote a new product. Most of these additions will be reverted as spam, and the organization from that website will be seen as illegitimate canvassing. A campaign to get anything on Wikipedia is against Wikipedia's policies on neutrality. Now it's true that Wikipedia has a tendency to bend to other free-as-in-speech interests, but those video files are going to draw more attention and ire than the usual debates.
You are referring to the fair use policy on the English Wikipedia. Please note that this is a policy for English only, not all language versions allow non-free content.
IANAL, but I doubt that non-free videos would really be a breakthrough. They'd have to be short and low-resolution (at least that's what Wikipedia demands for non-free images and audio). You couldn't just take any youtube video.
In my opinion, that's a good thing. The original idea behind Wikipedia (or it's predecessor Nupedia) was to create a free-as-in-freedom encyclopedia. Wiki-style editing, a strong community and rejection of ads, all those concepts are nice and good, but they are secondary. The real goal is to create a free encyclopedia. There is a wonderful page that explains why fair use should not be on Wikipedia: Veganism parable
As for the project itself (the summary doesn't mention much about the technical background), this brings some nice usability features with it. Until now, if you wanted to add media (images/audio/video), you would have to register (preferably) on Wikimedia Commons, upload the file there, then remember/copy the exact name of the file and include it in the article. Now you can just go to an article, click on the add media button and a wizard pops up and you can upload your file, while editing.
So far the comments are focused on teh 3v1Lz H.264 vs. 'open' codecs, why one is better than the other, etc. What about Wikipedia?
Perhaps Wikipedia doesn't actually need to be riddled with video. Maybe Wikipedia is actually better off without it. Have you ever had to suffer through some lengthy, 99% irrelevant video to get a specific piece of information? How many times have you just not bothered to watch that video because it's frustrating, you can't afford the time, don't have just the right version of some plug-in, etc? Ever tried to copy and paste from a video?
How much of the useful content of Wikipedia is going to end up trapped inside videos when easily indexed and searched, entirely unencumbered US Grade-A ASCII^h^h^h^h^hUTF-8 would have been sufficient? How much more bandwidth is Wikipedia going to have to fund to serve up cell phone footage of Silambarasan Rajendar waving at people?
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
......just not between corporate entities.
No, the competition will be between various wiki-weirdoes over who can be first to enshrine their peckers forever by putting video of it on the articles for "Penis", "Herpes", and any other genital or sex-related article on that site....of which there are no small number.
Yeah, but what's that worth when almost no one is using the Theora support?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I can imagine being an access provider, with the more bloated, unpatented, public video versions becoming the rule rather than the exception.
On the other hand, it will create demands for even more throughput, which will happen sooner or later anyway...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Give us a real codec.
Linux beats the crap out of Windows.
Firefox beats the crap out of IE.
Vorbis beats the crap out of MP3.
And Theora should beat the crap out of H.264!
But right now it’s a toothless tiger, slow, bad quality/size ratio, outdated technology...
Until that changes, well... frankly nobody in the real world cares for evangelical wars.
And I’m saying that as someone who almost exclusively uses open source software, and is very very happy with it!
I wish I could write codecs. I’t word night shifts to kick H.264s ass. ^^
But hey, as previously said: If Firefox just binds to generic facilities/libraries like ffmpeg, DirectMedia and CoreVideo, the whole discussion goes away, since everybody can choose what to use anyway.
Unfortunately right now they play little dictators, enforcing what they see as “the one true codec” in their holy war.
Maybe I can at least write a patch that creates these bindings.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Rules with ridges are often more rigid. Com'on guys, were goin' over the top, mind the barbed wire.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Did you forget your lithium this morning?
Fail - somehow inneficient implementation?, takes to much CPU, laggy experience makes me want the sht that works instead.
(good, encyclopedia style videos only!).
Odds on how many Mythbusters citations per page? I'll bet 3.
I don't think this will make much of a difference as the videos in Wikipedia will probably be of little value. Like almost every Internet user I often get a Wikipedia article when searching for something. The things I find useful in it are the external links and to a lesser extent, the text and images in the articles. But most OGG samples are rarely worth checking out. The same probably goes for their Theora videos. It's just not easy to produce or find informative and encyclopedic audios or videos that can be made available under Creative Commons. The text found in copyrighted sources can be reworded to present only the facts, which can't be copyrighted. But you can't do the same with audiovisual material.
Consumers are most interested in freedom from buggy, hard-to-install, hard-to-configure, don't-play-my-youtubes, unsupported-by-my-PC-maker codecs.
I found it more convenient to post my thoughts on my blog, but basically it wraps down to this: Google will support an open codec or they are a traitor to the community they say they support. Here is the rest: http://fossstudent.blogspot.com/2010/03/googleyoutube-and-h264.html
No, most eleven-year-olds act like that. You can tell he's proud that he just learned the word "ideology," though.
Market share wise, web sites with H.264 support are significantly ahead right now (YouTube HTML5 demo).
JPEG images are patent encumbered too. There's just a gentleman's agreement among group members not to pursue royalties for "baseline" implementations of the standard. I don't see anyone scrambling to remove them from Wikipedia.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
>>> What I'm more worried about is that I cannot watch Wikipedia videos with any other device than my PC
> Ah, now your real concern appears, I suspect.
Actually, I think his fears are unfounded, as any (proprietary) converter software will probably be able to transcode a free format to a proprietary one. The reverse is where the real problem lies.
> If Theora starts to get momentum, it'll appear on phones and similar devices quickly enough. My phone already supports Ogg Vorbis. (It may even support Theora; I haven't tried.) If yours doesn't, then perhaps you went with the wrong vendor. I didn't look for Vorbis support for my phone, but I did look for openness; if that wasn't a factor in your choice of phone, then my sympathy for you is nil.
My exact thoughts. People who don't value open formats not only harm themselves, they harm everyone -- because the larger the number of morons, less interesting is for a vendor to approach the comparative lower number of the ones in-the-know.
Regarding Theora appearing on phones, I have something to say. I have an ogg-playing radio (and a portable ogg-player). Besides Linux, of course. But when I must play things on mp3-only equipment... well, no ogg music. At all.
For a while, it bothered why the radio vendor doesn't advertise the ogg playing feature. I suspect 3 things:
- the radio maker "licensed" the project and doesn't know about ogg;
- the potential buyers of ogg hardware are still just a few and the vendor simply doesn't care;
- the vendor is afraid of patent-related suits and doesn't advertise ogg, believing it could violate someone's patents.
I think this is like the .doc x .odt x .ooxml thing: you can use odt but remember to also save on proprietary formats for interchange with M$-slaves. Given enough time and increased usage of ogg (Vorbis or Theora), more and more hardware will play ogg.
> If you want Wikipedia to go with your proprietary, encumbered format(s), your best be is to lobby the patent holders to donate the patents to the public domain. Good luck with that. :)
This can, unfortunately, be quite easy. A favourite tactic is enabling free use of proprietary formats for as long as needed for it to "catch". When everybody uses it, then start charging...
Hardly a day goes by without HTML5/H.264/Theora popping up here. Here's the facts, not the fiction:
I'm guessing from the number of people that think Theora is unusable, too slow, requires hardware to run on handsets, and H.264 can just be popped into Mozilla, that there's the usual troll:signal ratio problem.
Some of the folks who died in 1938:
Clarence S Darrow, attorney
Thomas Wolfe, author
Warner Oland, actor (Charlie Chan)
Pearl White, US actress/stunt woman (Perils of Pauline)
Benjamin Cardozo, American jurist
E.C. Segar, American cartoonist (Popeye)
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder and the first President of Turkey
Typhoid Mary, carrier of the typhoid disease
Karel Capek, Czech author (R.U.R.)
Joe "King" Oliver, jazz cornet and bandleader
Famous Deaths for Year 1938
Way to go Wikipedia! The quality, performance, and user convenience may not be 100% yet, but HTML5 can meet and exceed its proprietary competitors very quickly, especially with the backing of a site like Wikipedia.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." --Gandhi
(Signed: Alex Libman's sock-puppet.)
we just had this same discussion on /. concerning Flash vs HTML5, I said HTML5 was a clear winner, because it is not Flash, because it is not a proprietary tech.
Some disagreed. I still say it is the only right way to go, towards the open standards, to be just like the rest of the Internet, which could not have survived without the open standards. Don't care if Flash is 5 times faster and 10 times flashier. We need an open standard, so that nobody owns the only allowed implementation, so that nobody can control the Internet through proprietary means. Many people want to control the Internet, proprietary tech is the only way that they could, let's not lose our Internet to them.
You can't handle the truth.
Fuck those eggs, we need chickens!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
as a content producer, i see one of the biggest hurdles to open video standards adoption to be the lack of options in mainstream production tools. Until it is a "one-click" option to encode in ogg/theora, most FCP and Premiere users are not going to do it, especially when they have h.264 support built in with a one-click preset.
I asked Mozilla's Chris Blizzard about this part of the puzzle at SXSW this week, and he blew me off as being "cute." I think this is indicative of their non-realistic view of the situation. If they don't include the production side of the equation in their plans to push for an open standard, then they're pretty much ensuring that open video remains a fringe issue.
... for all the usual reasons, I have to say... this takes balls. Kudos to Wikipedia.
My guess is that what you are calling "implemented in hardware " is actually "firmware" for a "DSP".
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Lots of the devices that support h264 do it in hardware^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfirmware embedded in ROM using a DSP. Something we are unlikely to see out of Theora.
There fixed that for you. So, we're just a firmware upgrade away from Theora on most devices, right? If I'm the manufacturer of these devices, with continuing falling RAM/ROM prices, if Theora becomse even 10% of available video, I'll include it or I'll lose to my competitors.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
... under Linux. The standard "libtheora" library simply compiles and runs and does full screen video just file. The only thing needed for Theora on Wikipedia to work in the gameos is for Sony to get off its ass an add it.
And whats this "sub standard" crap? Since when is "better than everything except the very best and most recent proprietary format" substandard?
I would recommend using pungi and Fedora. It can determine all the prerequisites of the programs you specify and download them as well. Basically, you just use the gather portion and it downloads all the files. I used it for maintain
https://fedorahosted.org/pungi/
If bandwidth is the problem, just use the same bit rate for each codec. H.264 will probably be a bit better, for the same bandwidth, but for the people who don't have a H.264 decoder, this may just be fine. Theora is probably about the same as H.263, which is what youtube was originally anyway.
VHS vs Betamax
you learned nothing - again
"Free as in use exactly what we want you to use and nothing else"?
Not only Wikipedia, Red hat. Canonical should put its weight behind this as well (I'm not hoping for Novell/SuSE, but hey).
Mark? Are you listening?
If it's "practically free", why not make it free? After all, they're not making any money off it, are they.
Among those PCs that run Windows OSs without h264 codec, a lot have a third party codec downloaded and installed.
Recommending that end users install an infringing third-party codec pack could be considered contributory infringement.
We're lucky that the x86 instruction format is not patent-encumbered.
Imagine we'd have to pay Intel every time we compiled a program...
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
So that's a long way of saying that Theora will steam roll all other formats if the porn industry takes it up, right?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"Like it or not, the iPhone's dominance isn't because of any media blitz or cult of Apple, it's because it came out in a market where it was by far the best choice and is still superior to any other smartphone I've seen."
Really? iPhone vs. Blackberry 9000. About the only thing the iPhone wins at is Shiny Shiny.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
There is a lot of mention about the cost being very small, or the concept that the end user never pays for this. This message is just for them...
I beg to ask these questions:
1) how is my O/S provider going to pay for this "small" cost? Especially since I don't pay my O/S provider any money for development.
2) what exactly is small about this cost? You take the total number of customers and divide it by the maximum licensing cost to reach a per-user cost??? This doesn't come out to a small number when the total number of users is smaller.
These questions become very real when you use an operating system that doesn't come pre-installed on your computer.
If you can for one moment, imagine that you are not a common computer user with a common operating system. You will see that the usage of proprietary licensed video formats is another mechanism to keep the large O/S providers in demand and to reduce or eliminate competition from alternate operating systems with a smaller user base. In other words, the status quo is one which encourages monopolistic positions and discourages competition.
I agree that these sorts of decisions and thought patterns may not interest the average computer consumer would can easily afford an additional $50 ish payment to an O/S provider to not have to deal with these issues each time they purchase new hardware. But please... think of the children and by that I mean think of those in countries with a lower standard of living.
If you can imagine that, then maybe you can start seeing the big picture. We have free and open alternatives to just about every digital storage format available. And yet we don't take the 2 seconds of time in order to set the Word document default to an open standard. What kind of world do we live in where we are so lazy that we would rather push proprietary requirements onto others? These proprietary formats being ones which require the end user to pay or commit a crime????
Who are these people? Why do they demand others to pay for their choices?
BTW: I will tell you that it is not the government. Because at least they are aware that such demands mostly effect the poor.
Also, I would just like to add that it is completely incorrect and ignorant to believe that open formats are not as good then their proprietary brother-en. I agree that they often have different and other characteristics... but I would be hard pressed to find such an instance where the obvious issue preventing a feature enhancement to an open product is not one which is not caused by a proprietary format (software/hardware) that is being withheld from the open source community. ie: if you see deficiencies in open source... the #1 suspect is underlying proprietary issues. Get rid of these issues and you will see how much better software could be.
Lastly, I want to say that I do not personally see the benefit of open source as one about cost. It just really is a better model for getting better software to the people... regardless of the channel used to deliver it. I am saying that open source is far better then any alternative out there for producing solid, secure and timely software. IMO: we will all consider this an obvious fact within a decade. Then all slashdot members will lament about how the death of windows is a bad thing... because that's what slashdot does: fight for the underdog.
When do you think Linus Torvalds will get sued?
He installed the Gstreamer ugly plugins
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858#c19
and ugly includes MPEG-LA patents
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/data/doc/gstreamer/head/gst-plugins-ugly-plugins/html/
and users have patent liability:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/h264_licensing.html