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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'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.
They just won't know it.
Know what? People pay 0 dollars for a browser. Exactly what costs are they bearing due to Apple or Google or Microsoft including H.264 support in the browser?
Oh, and a more idealistic person might even say that they'll not only be paying money
Paying money where? Browsers have all been free for quite some time now.
but paying in a more metaphorical sense with lock-in, etc.
What lock-in? What exactly am I "locked-in" to when I watch H.264 HTML 5 movies on youtube? And how would those movie being encoded in theora make me less "locked-in"?
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.
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.
Know what? People pay 0 dollars for a browser. Exactly what costs are they bearing due to Apple or Google or Microsoft including H.264 support in the browser?
I would assume that the licensing fees for MPEG are a part of the Windows and Mac OS X price tag.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
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.
h.264 = Porn and "funny", time wasting, videos
Theora = Actually useful stuff
That's a long way to spell "H.264 wins".
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.
I would assume that the licensing fees for MPEG are a part of the Windows and Mac OS X price tag.
Is there someone who wouldn't assume that? What would it be like if someone found out the answer and posted it?
Meanwhile, this uncertain assumption that some unknown cost paid by some unknown entity and then included as an unknown component cost in some unknown products is hardly a call to arms .
.
You could say the same thing about FireFox's challenge to the Microsoft disaster known as Internet Explorer.
Yet FireFox has driven the web towards standards-based web design, instead of Microsoft-based web design.
And Google recoding the videos is little more than the mother of all batch jobs.