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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.
Why? Closed formats don't seem to operate under that constraint. In fact, technical qualities seem to be a non-issue as far as success goes in general. The backing of big players seems to be what counts, and that's exactly what we have here. Whether Wikipedia + Firefox + RedHat + other open players is big enough remains to be seen (and I admit I have my doubts), but if "technically better" becomes an issue, I think it'll be the first time ever.
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. 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. Especially if you want to connect with Wikipedia, whose commitment to openness is legendary.
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. :)
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.
In general I find the "must have hardware support now" argument a bit short sighted. By that reasoning there would never be any change in video codecs. In any case, the PS3 and 360 even combined represent a very small percentage of internet connected devices. And the 360's larger problem is not having a web browser so Wikipedia video would be streamed from your PC anyway and if needs must you can transcode on the fly.
As mobile phones go, my Nokia N900 plays Theora. It also runs Firefox. Fennec is on Maemo 5 (the N900's OS) and will soon be available for Android, Windows Mobile, and future MeeGo devices. Millions of devices in the field already have the capability to play Ogg Theora and it will only become more trivial to do so with Firefox releases for those platforms.
Why do you need a package manager when browsers have been facilitating the easy installation of plugins, such as Flash, for years now?
Because the point is the browser shouldn't need *any* codec-specific plugins at all. The browser should simply use the existing mechanisms in the operating system or desktop environment for performing video decoding. On Windows that means DirectShow, and on Linux that means gstreamer. Codec installation is then a task for the operating system or package manager. The result is a better experience for the user, and a simpler implementation for the developers, as they need only to interface to a generic video backend, rather than incorporating a completely codec stack into the browser.
'course, this kind of reasonable design decision would get in the way of pointless political posturing, and who really wants that?
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
h.264 = Porn and "funny", time wasting, videos
Theora = Actually useful stuff
That's a long way to spell "H.264 wins".