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Google To Drop Support For H.264 In Chrome
Steve writes "Google just made a bold move in the HTML5 video tag battle: even though H.264 is widely used and WebM is not, the search giant has announced it will drop support for the former in Chrome. The company has not done so yet, but it has promised it will in the next couple of months. Google wants to give content publishers and developers using the HTML5 video tag an opportunity to make any necessary changes to their websites."
... we will need to have every browser installed, because every other website on the intertubes will be using different technologies that are only supported by one browser.
Less choice is so much more convenient for me. I love being forced to use Quicktime/Flash/Silverlight to view online video content.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Does Chrome really have the market share required for this move to have any effect on the decisions of web designers?
In other words.. Google pretends like Chrome has more than a tiny percentage of browser marketshare. Thus they pretend like what they support or don't support is going to control what websites will offer.. How nice of them.
I love how they harp on about doing this because they support open standards - They bundle Flash with Chrome!
Double standards or what?
Google is obviously betting that WebM in Chrome and Firefox can carry enough weight to compete against H.264 in MSIE, Opera, and Safari.
Google, obviously, has enough web-surfing based data to factor into this judgement call. Whether or not Google is right on this call, one thing is certain: Google wouldn't do this unless they were fairly confident in WebM's chances against the looming patent trolls.
This, I think, is the noteworthy aspect of this bit of news. A patent troll going after WebM will now have to expect to have to deal with Google's well-funded lawyers.
This is the dumbest idea ever. I find it hilarious that Google is dropping support for it in their own web browser for a video format that is also sponsored by Google, which they are trying to favor over other formats. I currently run an anime and manga website and I have no plans on converting my video content. Google is taking a big risk because they're risking other website owners to completely abandoning support for this format. I don't have worries about Google switching to WebM and I just don't trust the new format, especially from a company who's making a blatant attempt to monopolize everyone's online experience. The members on my site and my forums continue to support my site and while I do still use the current video formats, I won't be wasting my time with WebM. It's a new format and it's not supported on my DVD and Blu-ray player.
John Gruber over at Daring Fireball asks some very relevant questions about this. The most interesting is: if Google is so concerned about open standards, will they also be dropping the embedded Flash player from Chrome?
Google To Cede Web Video Market To Adobe
This is the kind of crap that Microsoft is famous for: nonsupport of common web standards and substituting their own idiosyncratic replacements. For example, IE had no support for SVG, while it was in all other browsers. Supposedly SVG will be in the next major release of IE, but that is because Sivlerlight has not taken over the world like they planned. I expect that the same thing will happen with Chrome/WebM vs. H.264/everyone else. Meanwhile, all web users and content providers suffer because big arrogant players pretend that they can dictate how the Internet works to try and increase their market share.
Why is Snark Required?
Maybe it's better to weed out all the half-free proprietary stuff now before they have a chance to go all Unisys on you.
This serves two strategic purposes for Google. First, it advances a codec that's de facto controlled by Google at the expense of a codec that is a legitimate open standard controlled by a multi-vendor governance process managed by reputable international standards bodies. ("Open source" != "open standard".) And second, it will slow the transition to HTML5 and away from Flash by creating more confusion about which codec to use for HTML5 video, which benefits Google by hurting Apple (since Apple doesn't want to support Flash), but also sucks for users.
It is, in other words, a thoroughly nasty bit of work. It's not quite as bad as selling consumers down the river to Verizon on 'net neutrality, but it's close. And if Google is actually successful in making WebM, not H.264, the standard codec for web video, they're literally going to render hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tablets, smartphones, set-top boxes, etc. with H.264 hardware support obsolete.
"But wait!", the OSS fans are saying. "Isn't Google really standing up for freedom and justice, because H.264 requires evil patent licensing?"
No. Expert opinion is that WebM infringes on numerous patents in the H.264 pool, and will need a licensing pool of its own to be set up, just like Microsoft's VC-1 did. So the patents are a wash. This is Google manipulating the market entirely for selfish advantage here, and it's all the worse because they're pretending otherwise. And it's going to be really frustrating watching people fall for it.
This space unintentionally left unblank.
Maybe not
Sure, why support THE video standard?
Google, you're fucking dumb.
The only reason I currently use Chrome is due to Chrome to phone. I can do without.
WebM is opensource (and grants use of its patents for free), so there's a bit of difference here. They're not pushing proprietary technology.
What next, will Google drop JPEG, GIF and PNG in favor of WebP?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The move is an attempt to force other browsers to adopt WebM. If you want to complain about "Less choice", than you would have the same complaints against MS and Apple browsers.
The thing is, if Google doesn't do this, and allows both formats, they are contributing to the success of H.264, and detracting from the possibilities of success of their WebM.
You, the consumer are caught in yet another standards-war. Which side will you be on?
AccountKiller
Firefox and Chrome will probably not support H264. So this is probably a move to back up Firefox. And the move gives a very strong hint about the future of Youtube.
or the reality of "We've decided to stop supporting formats for things that aren't free", would be a more simple answer.
Wow, that is exactly the kind of thing that Microsoft would do before it finally got the idea that standards are good. Like the way Windows Movie Maker would only save in WMV format. Although MS used to ignore the standards, only to add them in later rather than blatently removing support in an existing product.
But I can understand why Google might do this. It is annoying that we have the situation (yet again) where you have to choose between one standard that is more commonly used with better device support, and a more open standard (without patents) that is not quite as good (mostly because it doesn't get accelerated). It is the MP3/OGG situation again. And Google's solution is the same that open source audio software did - they will rely on plug-ins like LAME to add support.
Also the similar thing happened when the GIF format patent became a problem. It got dropped from a lot of programs where they didn't want to have to pay for a licence.
I'm not sure why TFA said that it was controversial that Microsoft added H.264 support to Firefox. It seemed quite reasonable to allow Microsoft's patent licence to be used in software installed on their operating system.
1) Draw gun
2) Cock gun
3) Place gun against foot
4) Pull trigger
I was using Chrome for a while and was fairly happy with it, but Firefox 4 is faster. I run it on newer and older Pcs and Firefox 4 performs a lot better on both newer and older hardware.
What? That page says "Click here to download plugin".
how does x264 get around the patent scheme of H.264?
By recommending that users emigrate from the United States, South Korea, and other countries whose courts enforce software patents, I presume.
Really, nobody should be using Chrome anyway. Firefox has a much, much better spec on nearly every level, is open source, has the adblock extension available....
I tell all of my clients to use Firefox exclusively. That way you KNOW the code is truly open, secure, and up to date. There is no way to know this with a closed source browser, and I can't for security purposes ever recommend using one.
Even if it's better than Internet Explorer.
Firefox for the win! Boycott closed source software!
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
On my copy of Chromium on Ubuntu, pasting into a text field works fine on "/comments.pl" pages, just not on "/story/" pages. Try opening the comment ID (e.g. #34842318) in a new tab before clicking Reply to This. If you still can't get it to work, such as if you're trying to post a top-level comment instead of a reply, try writing your reply in Notepad or Gedit.
Google owns Youtube and is working to make every video available in VP8.
Except for the ones that need the Flash-only ad engine because they either are posted by Partners or make fair use of music.
You are the dumbest commented ever. I find it hilarious that you are dropping support for WebM in your own website for a video format that isn't free, which you are trying to favor over other formats. You currently run an anime and manga website, but probably won't for long because you have no plans on getting off your ass and converting your video content. You are taking a big risk because you're risking your website visitors completely abandoning your piece of shit site. I don't have worries about Google switching to WebM and I trust the new format, especially from a company who has done more to push open standards and open source than any other company. The members on your site and forums will not continue to support your site, and while you loaf around in your parent's basement, you'll have no idea why you're losing traffic. It's a new format and since it's not supported on your DVD and Blu-ray player, so it baffles your tiny brain and you don't understand it.
AccountKiller
I'll be on the side of "screw your video, gimmie the transcript"
'course, I'd be on that side regardless of what format the video is encoded in.
Insert wit here.
This is what people got for not supporting Theora. This is may or may not be your cup of tea, but the open web still pushes, regardless of corporate interests. Independant people will still be able to make a free web browser legally. This will either a: force the h264 codec to open up more, or b: force a more open HTML5 spec.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
But then they'd be liars since they're still supporting Flash.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
It is a double standard, but it looks like they took a dose of pragmatism with their idealism on Flash. They support and promote open standards where it is practical (not necessarily not controversial), and use proprietary work when it isn't.
AccountKiller
Chrome is rapidly eating market share: in just about 2 years since launch, it's at 13.5%. This is twice the share of Opera and Safari combined.
Using your data, Opera + Safari is about 6.75% of market share. But then you pull numbers out of your ass and say...
Opera + Safari + Chrome make over 50% of the browsers used today, in market share.
Using your original figures 13.5 + 6.75 = 20.25% marketshare. WTF dude!?!
H.264 is not a free codec and consequently, you have to pay if you wish to encode content in it or decode content encoded with it. They just are gracious enough not to charge you for streaming it. Consequently, it's not supported by Firefox natively nor in any other browser that cares about being sued and can't or won't pay.
Google's motivation is obviously to try to establish an open source, free (as in speech) codec as the web standard for video. That way, we won't have the silly issues you mention above. So why are you not happy with this move?
Keep in mind that browsers like Firefox, Konquerer, Seamonkey, etc., because they are open source, cannot legally integrate H.264 into its browser. On the other hand, there is nothing stopping Microsoft, Apple, Opera, and Google, and anyone else who wants to from integrating WebM into their browsers. It simply boils down to an administrative decision to do so.
So if you want your web-based video to "Just Work," you absolutely must support WebM. Or more precisely, you absolutely must not support H.264 unless MPEG releases it to the public domain or under a free (as in speech) license, which I think there's exactly zero chance of happening.
The easy inability to stick ad's in ?
The H.264 2015 deadline?
Kicking Apple on Adobe's behalf?
I'm not sure of the motive here. Taking away support for anything is surely a bad idea?
Never be afraid to ask. Wisdom must be gathered before it can be given.
I wish I could mod this +5 Brilliant. Finally, someone who understands 1) why Google is doing this, and 2) how important the stakes are!
Can you imagine how much easier life would have been if PNG had been established early on as the de facto standard image format? You would have thought that people would have learned that lesson well. None of those stupid ass lawsuits, and a hell of a lot of very early patent trolls would have been preemptively defanged.
The web need to operate on free and open standards, period, end of story. Anything else is asking for a lot of trouble, trouble which is avoided relatively easily, trouble for which there is well-established precedent.
I do have the same complaints against MS and Apple browsers. I'm typing this in Chrome right now. If they want to set the bar high, they should retain support for H.264 and add WebM, but instead they're trying to use the popularity of Chrome to push a new standard. I just hope this doesn't mean that Flash is going to spin up twice as often.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Wow. You are a poet.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Open Source != (Open) Standard
Whether a tool is open source or not doesn't make it a standard, open or otherwise. What makes something a standard is when a group of people, companies, etc... (IEEE, ISO, ITU,etc...) get together propose and ratify a standard. In the case of h.264 the MPEG-LA and its members contributed their technologies and processes to the pool to build many of the wonderful products we like today. The only way that all of these different products by different manufacturers work is if they all support the standard. All of these companies built these technologies to make money.
What Google did with WebM was buy a company and provide one of their newly purchased products as open-source. This product may, or may not, come under scrutiny for various IP issues. Many have stated in the past that a number of WebM's algorithms are very similar to those of h.264 and its "freeness" may come in to question.
Googles actions today are not for you or for me. They are for the positive gain of Google as well as the negative impact on all of Google's competitors. This would not be a bad thing if this did not take into account the fact that millions, if not billions, of people already own products that make use of h.264 and therefore negatively affects consumers if they are forced to buy new products.
In the long run, will it matter? Won't there be something new by 2014 anyways? I doubt the MPEG-LA members are resting on their laurels and not working on h.265 or MPEG-5 or whatever is next anyways.
I wish people would wake up and stop believing the "don't be evil" mantra when Google is as bad as Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, and/or Oracle.
Using your original figures 13.5 + 6.75 = 20.25% marketshare. WTF dude!?!
I was summing up WebM browsers, so I meant Opera + Firefox + Chrome. Safari was a "typo".
Care to explain this?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
You, the consumer are caught in yet another standards-war. Which side will you be on?
The receiving side, getting craploads of ads shoved down my eyeholes as usual.
music lover since 1969
The growth is with mobile devices. The leaders among them is Apple with iOS, and Google with Android, both of which come with hardware support for H.264, and no WebM hardware support (future support in... theory, but I can say, count Apple out).
This is a good point but check out what those WebM guys are also heavily pushing http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-hardware.html. Yes VP8 is rapidly catching up h.264 when it comes to hardware support on mobile devices. Fullscreen 1080p VP8 decoding on several chips due to go into Android devices. This is just another shot across the bows however. What everyone is really waiting for are the major online video content providers to flip to WebM when it is supported by enough devices. With youtube being the biggest of them all making loud steps in that direction, it seems only a matter of time before they aim the guns at the main sail. Then we get fireworks :)
But then they'd be liars since they're still supporting Flash.
They support flash plug-ins that come from Adobe. I don't remember getting an install for h.264
Does this mean that they'll be dropping h.264 support from Android as well?
Can't view that video on my android: *Your mobile device may not support H.264 video playback*
The thing is, if Google doesn't do this, and allows both formats, they are contributing to the success of H.264, and detracting from the possibilities of success of their WebM.
You, the consumer are caught in yet another standards-war. Which side will you be on?
H.264 already is a success, a resounding one. It has been for nearly a decade.
WebM is shit. Theora is shit. Why? Because H.264 is the superior codec, hands down. As someone who uses the codecs, all I give a shit about is the resulting quality/speed/size.
If you don't like it because it isn't free, that's your problem. Me? I like having superior picture quality. If that means some asshat down the line pays for a license, or that 2 cents of every Windows License goes to the MPEG group, so be it.
If that means I can't decode shit with an officially sanctioned codec in Linux because I care more about "free as in speech" than "kittens and boxes on youtube", then so be it.
If that means I can't decode shit at all using a "free" alternative such as x264 (which violates countless MPEG patents) because I ACTUALLY care about "free as in speech", and prefer principles to silly videos, then so be it.
The patent system sucks ass. No question about it.
But if you want to rail against it, you're on your own in this case, fosshats. H.264 is fanfuckingtastic. It's leaps and bounds above basic MPEG-4 ASP, and is well ahead of the "free" alternatives that are Theora, WebM, etc.
The bottom line is that we wouldn't have shit if it weren't for the work of the MPEG group. X.264, WebM, Theora, XviD, DivX, and countless others all have their roots in the hacking and reverse engineering an MS MPEG codec ages ago.
I have no problems with the morality of this - the state of the art was advanced as a result, and to do so legally would have been far too burdensome.
But to trumpet for the "free" options in this case is naive because it turns a blind eye to the origins of the "free" options. To trumpet the "free" options as well as shit on anyone who would dare support both, at their own cost, is ludicrous.
Let's be clear, this is not a war consumers have any say in. Sites will be forced to transcode and keep multiple versions of streams for compatibility with all browsers. And until they're ready with all that, they'll continue to server shit up via Flash.
The browser vendors will have no incentive to change their position, and we'll end up with IE and Safari on one side, and Chrome, FF, and Opera on the other. The end result is that users get their videos, tons of storage and processing time is wasted, and the CEOs will find another topic to get all preachy about.
You won't see a large migration of users to or from any browser in response to this move. This is no different than when Steve Jobs went on a crusade against Flash (which is still around and isn't going anywhere soon).
What everyone is really waiting for are the major online video content providers to flip to WebM when it is supported by enough devices. With youtube being the biggest of them all making loud steps in that direction, it seems only a matter of time before they aim the guns at the main sail. Then we get fireworks :)
Is the fireworks when MPEG LA starts suing Google for WebM infringing on their patents?
There is absolutely zero convincing review or proof that WebM isn't infringing on existing MPEG LA patents, and in fact if I remember they have hinted at the opposite few months ago.
MPEG-LA, that is.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Which never supported h.264 to begin with and Mozilla refused to support it?
I don't get your point.
Bottom line: This gives Flash (Player, at least) a shot in the arm.
Up to date versions of Flash player can handle h.264/mp4 video just fine - no Flash wrapper necessary. So you encode an mp4/m4v file, then add a softlink that ends in ".flv". Just one encode and your bases are covered - no Flash encode, no WebM either.
#DeleteChrome
Your post is far tl;dr. All I get out of the first half of it is that you like H.264. Good for you, you're entitled to your opinion. So is Google, so is MS, so is Apple, so is FF. Every browser maker has chosen a side - may the best codec/browser win.
AccountKiller
The question you need to ask yourself, other than a widely read analysis made by a h.264 encoder developer and the MPEG-LA vaguely announcing they were compiling a patent pool for VP8. Is there any convincing review or proof that WebM is infringing existing patents? The fact is, it hasn't been tested in court by actual patent lawyers, as no case has been filed. Google are betting they are right, MPEG LA think they are. Everyone else is sitting on the fence and supporting both.
In between IE specific sites and Apple boycotting flash it's already hard to access information on the web with a device one happens to have at hand. Now with this, Android users will be locked out of content owned by anyone who managed to kick dependence on both Adobe and Microsoft. All that remains if for Apple and Microsoft to block Google search and Internet will go to good old walled garden days of CompuServe and AOL.
No, it's because hardware people hate implementing nearly the same thing over and over. Many of the acceleration blocks are fairly generic and already support several codecs (MPEG-1, WMV, etc). Even Theora can use the motion compensation accelerators on some chips.
H.264 is not a free codec and consequently, you have to pay if you wish to encode content in it or decode content encoded with it. They just are gracious enough not to charge you for streaming it.
For...branded encoder and decoder products sold both to End Users and on an OEM basis for incorporation into personal computers but not part of a personal computer operating system (a decoder, encoder, or product consisting of one decoder and one
encoder = "unit"), royalties (beginning January 1, 2005) per Legal Entity are 0 - 100,000 units per year = no royalty
The maximum bite for an encoder/decoder is 20 cents a unit.
MPEG LA is geared for licensing production and distribution of H.264 video on a commercial scale. They don't give a damn about your wedding videos until you become a national franchise.
They don't give a damn about the geek's freely distributed Star Trek fan-flick.
For..where an End User pays directly for video services on a Title-by-Title basis (e.g., where viewer determines Titles to be viewed or number of viewable Titles is otherwise limited), royalties for video greater than 12 minutes (there is no royalty for a Title 12 minutes or less) are...the lower of 2% of the price paid to the Licensee (on first Arms Length Sale of the video) or $0.02 per Title (categories of Licensees include Legal Entities that are (i) replicators of physical media,
and (ii) service/content providers (e.g., cable, satellite, video DSL, Internet and mobile) of VOD, PPV and electronic downloads to End Users).
Where an End User pays directly for video services on a Subscription-basis (not ordered or limited Title-by-Title), the applicable royalties per Legal Entity payable by the service or content provider are 100,000 or fewer Subscribers during the year = no royalty
For...where remuneration is from other sources, in the case of Free Television(television broadcasting which is sent by an over-the-air, satellite and/or cable Transmission, and which is not paid for by an End User), the Licensee (broadcaster...) pays...according to one of two royalty options: (i) a one-time payment of $2,500 per AVC transmission encoder..or...annual fee per Broadcast Market starting at $2,500 per calendar year per Broadcast Markets of at least 100,000 but no more than 499,999 television households
The Enterprise Cap for H.264 in 2011 is $6.5 million a year. H.264 is deeply entrenched in theatrical production. Broadcast, cable and satellite distribution. Industrial and military applications. Home video.
There are over 900 H.264 licensees and collectively they dwarf Google.SUMMARY OF AVC/H.264 LICENSE TERMS
Chrome ships with Flash, you know.
Very well, but now they must remove the proprietary Flash technology. Oh they won't ? OK, they are a bunch of hypocrites and liars, but you should already know that by now. BTW, H264 is not Apple, it's a standard developed by the MPEG and the VCEG experts groups together, a lot of companies, but WebM is... Google. Always Google against the whole word. This is called Hubris, and they will end badly burned if they think that they can do whatever they ant because they are so big and cool.
The question you need to ask yourself, other than a widely read analysis made by a h.264 encoder developer and the MPEG-LA vaguely announcing they were compiling a patent pool for VP8. Is there any convincing review or proof that WebM is infringing existing patents?
Let's think like MPEG LA does.
Google, which is using H.264 on YouTube and has included support for H.264 in their browser, suddenly buys On2, a company with a souped up codec that has many similarities to MPEG4. You shrug it off, H.264 has the quality, the hardware support on a ton of devices and it's the broadcasting standard. Next, Google starts pushing this WebM initiative to "replace H.264", then starts compiling VP8 videos for YouTube, then pushes for hardware support in devices, and as the last drop it REMOVES loudly H.264 support from their Chrome browser.
Now, if I was MPEG LA, I wouldn't sue or reveal my cards now. I'd wait. I'd wait for the hardware spec to be in stone and hardware supporting WebM to be produced, and used for phones. I'd wait YouTube to start using WebM for more than a little experiment. I'd wait web site owners to start publishing WebM videos.
And THEN I'd hit them with a lawsuit. If they called out the patents early, Google would try to change the codec to avoid infringing. Later on however VP8 is in stone, it's in hardware, it's in browsers, it's on sites. It can't be changed to work around any patents. And MPEG LA wins.
I'll be on the side of "screw your video, gimmie the transcript"
'course, I'd be on that side regardless of what format the video is encoded in.
I find the transcripts of porn to be less than entertaining....
So much for "getting the whole internet" on your android. Works great on my iPhone.
If you actually care about yadda-yadda, PROVIDE THE DAMN COMPARISON. The ones I've seen make it almost impossible for me to distinguish between X.264 and theora with the same file size, so give us a reason to believe you advertisement or shut the hell up.
The reason VP8 is so similar to H.264 is that this makes it easier to avoid patent issues. The parents that read on the H.264 standard are listed as part of the standardization process. So you start with H.264 as a base and then modify it slightly in the areas the parents cover to make sure you avoid those exact patents.
Yeah I agree with you it's how patent trolls do business, and from recent high profile cases, very successfully.
But you're assuming VP8 will be found to be infringing. I'm not saying it won't for that matter. There's about 100 comments on that topic between a lot of nerds, fan boys whoever. Frankly I am not sure any of them have any idea whatsoever, whether they are or aren't infringing. I certainly don't as I am not a U.S patent lawyer which specialises in algorithms. I doubt you are qualified either really :)
All I said was this move pushes us closer to fireworks. Place your bets gentlemen, place your bets.
In addition to supporting H.264, Chrome currently bundles an embedded version of Adobe’s closed source and proprietary Flash Player plugin. If H.264 support is being removed to “enable open innovation”, will Flash Player support be dropped as well? If not, why?
Android currently supports H.264. Will this support be removed from Android? If not, why not?
YouTube uses H.264 to encode video. Presumably, YouTube will be re-encoding its entire library using WebM. When this happens, will YouTube’s support for H.264 be dropped, to “enable open innovation”? If not, why not?
Do Google expect companies like Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball, and anyone else who currently streams H.264 to dual-encode all of their video using WebM? If not, how will Chrome users watch this content other than by resorting to Flash Player’s support for H.264 playback?
Who is happy about this?
Pragmatism my ass. They are shipping WebM because they own it. It's a new standards war that Google wants to win. Not because it's 'free', but because it has Google's name on it. To claim this yet continue to ship proprietary flash support in the same browser just looks bad, and makes the entire premise hypocritical.
It's bullshit.
Yes, note that firefox doen't ship H.264 either. In Europe, Firefox + Chrome share is 52.69%, IE 37.52%.
Worldwide Ubiquity of Adobe Flash Player by Version - December 2010
Europe
v9 and below 99.7%
v10 99.5%
v10.1 86.2% [up 10% from September]
The other regional - and global - numbers are - for all practical purposes - the same.
The fundamental problem is that the independent - proprietary - developer like Adobe doesn't have to wait for the global standards committee to get its act together.
It doesn't have to give way to anyone's notion of ideological purity or political correctness.
Flash Player Version Penetration
Except H.264 is the best codec. Google didn't choose WebM because it's better, they chose it because they own it and (purportedly) because it's open. They did not choose it for being a high-quality codec, they chose it for entirely meta and political/ideological reasons.
HTML5 video is not a replacement for flash video. It provides a limited subset of the functionality flash currently provides, and that's all it will ever provide. Most importantly for most producers of online video it has absolutely zero capabilities for DRM. I know everyone on slashdot hates DRM, but content providers don't. Youtube may get rid of Flash entirely some day, but it won't be replaced by HTML5. Despite the prognostications of Lord Steve, HTML5 video(and for that matter HTML5 as a whole) isn't really going to have any kind of significant impact on the web, and so it doesn't really matter what codecs the browsers bitch and moan about. Hell Firefox is already using the OS for 3d rendering in Firefox 4, so there's no reason to suspect they won't cave on using OS codecs for playback anyway.
oh oh oh I'm so buying one like nao!
/end off satirical anti-delusionalturfer rant/
I'd love Apple if they deliver teh whole intarwebs that I'm missing already! OMG! I found MY intertubes are not the coolest tubes yet!
ps. The video above works on an ADAM tablet and unlike some toy tablets I can stream it to my 42" LED TV. So much for the magic? Node3?
Flash wrappers are the legacy way to put video on a web page. If you wrap the h.264 decode up in flash than the licenses for the decoding support are Adobe's problem. Flash works in pretty much any browser anywhere the user is willing to install the plug in. I don't see Google as having any issue with that. What is pretty clear is that the HTML 5 video tag WILL replace those flash objects for sites with simple needs at least, sites like Hulu, netflix, et al will continue to use other tech.
Open browsers can't for license the software they'd need to implement native decoding of h.264 to handle the video tag, yes plugs and external handlers could be uses as kludgy workarounds but that would tilt the table in favor of the mainstream commercial browsers. Google has a vested interest in getting content encoded in their format, and its open so anyone else can use it as well, it is also the technical equal of h.264. Even though Google will gain leverage in the content industry in general through this they can never really hit anyone to hard over the head with it because of the openness, I for one hope they enjoy success in pushing WebM as the way to do video going forward. I don't use chrome but this means I am going to have a better experience in my browser of choice, Seamonkey, and Google is not trying to take that choice away from me unlike the folks pushing the h.264 browsers.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Prove it. Give us a side-by-side with the latest version of Theora and let us decide. I've seen this:
https://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html
This was done a year ago, and I really can't decide which is better. You are just full of shit, aren't you?
In between IE specific sites and Apple boycotting flash it's already hard to access information on the web with a device one happens to have at hand.
There should be no reason that it is hard to access INFORMATION using whatever device you have at hand, unless it is stored on some lame site that puts everything in a flash app. Just write your content using valid html and you're done.
Sure, video may be tricky right now, but that's about it. I don't tend to be a media consumer on any platform, so this really is a non-issue for me. If anything, I prefer it when all the junk on websites doesn't render, and it makes it that much easier to find the aforementioned INFORMATION.
H.264 already is a success, a resounding one.
And still an illegal one if you live in the USA and want to distribute an encoder/decoder built using GPL source code.
Any media playing solution which requires getting arrested is not really a 'success'.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Do you remember when you needed external plugins to view ANY graphics online? I do. How about SVG graphics? That works in the browser now also.
The part you hate being forced to do is -exactly- what Google is trying to fix. You just are not learning from the past. The problem will fix itself as long as we don't give any entity ownership of the web formats.
I also applaud Apple for their efforts to kill Flash.
I remember On2 used to say VP8 (WebM) had far better quality than H.264.
Except H.264 is the best codec. Google didn't choose WebM because it's better, they chose it because they own it and (purportedly) because it's open. They did not choose it for being a high-quality codec, they chose it for entirely meta and political/ideological reasons.
Yes. The chief of those meta issues being that distributing any Free Software implementation of H.264 in the United States of America is illegal due to software patent law.
I don't know about you, but where I come from, not getting arrested is a pretty good driver of technology choices, and yes, does tend to trump 'quality' issues. A slightly higher-quality video codec, distribution of which breaks the law, is not even a starter. It simply cannot compete with WebM in the GPL-derived software market at all.
It's certainly very sad that the makers of H.264 have deliierately put their product outside the realm of rational economic choice by using the big patent gun to make its distribution in GPL-compliant form flatly illegal, but, well. Destroying a whole class of potential users of their own product was their choice, even if it wasn't a sane one.
Google, however, have only one economically rational law-abiding choice left open to them if they want to distribute a GPL-derived media player, and that's to use anything but H.264.
I admit I find it rather strange that you consider legality to be a mere 'meta' issue. Do you regularly break the law in your daily business life, and expect others to?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
>H.264 already is a success, a resounding one. It has been for nearly a decade.
Technically good, and completely useless legally and morally to an open and free web
>WebM is shit. Theora is shit.
Technically, Theora is fairly bad (but still usable in a pinch), and VP8 is alright. Both are excellent for the health of the free and open web.
That is all that matters.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
So why don't you protest their lack of WebM? And that goes for all of you Mozilla (and now Google) critics, you don't seem to want choice, you seem to want to force H.264, but complain that Mozilla and Google are pushing right back. What is that I hear, its a business decision? It is for Mozilla, Opera and Google as well, fuck this attitude that only short term gains and CYA maximization are legitimate choices.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It's short term vs. long term thinking. We can have a slightly better codec thats got a thousand patents on it or we can have one that isn't patented. We are talking about a very slight difference in quality here.
Yes the patented codec may be slightly better now, but if an open codec becomes the standard then in the long term we're better off as it will be easier for people to make improvements to it.
With a patented codec we have to pay. Sure it may be cheap now, but further improvements to it will also be patented which means it will never be free. And over time the price will rise and it will become less likely anyone will be able to come up with a codec to compete with it, not because no one else has the skill to do so, but simply because it will be illegal because of the patents.
We have an opportunity to get free of all of this. Yes we have to sacrifice a small amount of quality today. And it is a very small difference in quality we're talking about. But if WebM becomes the standard then you'll have a lot of companies working to improve it. if H.264 becomes the standard a lot of companies will work to improve it. The difference is that one will be patented and the other won't.
I'll be on the side of "screw your video, gimmie the transcript"
'course, I'd be on that side regardless of what format the video is encoded in.
OK, here you go:
"In, out, in, out, in, out, in, out......OOOOhhh....aaaaaaah....(smokes cigarette)"
Sure you don't want the video?
Be mindful of certain industries that will cast significant weight in any online video format war. And their customers ain't settling for the transcript.
The problem is that h.264 is the standard on all video hardware equipment and BR players, and the manufacturers are not going to change that. Even if you transcode your video, you must pay the royalties for h.264 because you used it in your camera. It is a method patent for encoding/decoding video. Google has no say in the hardware business. These patents make using professional video equipment very, very expensive, like over $100,000 for equipment little better than you have in a camcorder in terms of digital resolution. It was designed to keep the price of such equipment as high as it was in the film days.
>>>if Google doesn't do this they are contributing to the success of H.264
So??? H.264/MPEG4 is the best video codec ever developed. Not supporting it is as illogical (and stupid) as not supporting MPEG 2 or MPEG 1 or MP3 in the browser.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Amazing. I got about 1/2-way through your comment and had to scroll back up because I assumed I was only seeing it due to my +6 troll/flamebait filters and was wondering which it was (although more vindictive moderators will toss in the occasional offtopic). Sometimes I forget that /. is first, and foremost, a FOSS-at-all-costs site. Perhaps that's slowly changing.
Anyway, excellent rant. I liked it, even if it didn't get rated troll. If only I could have sent this to you privately since it actually is incredibly offtopic.
and i've just dropped support for chrome.....
Yes. The chief of those meta issues being that distributing any Free Software implementation of H.264 in the United States of America is illegal due to software patent law.
Nobody gives a shit. Not even MPEG-LA.
I don't know about you, but where I come from, not getting arrested is a pretty good driver of technology choices, and yes, does tend to trump 'quality' issues.
Who has gone to jail, or has been threatened with jail? Certainly, jail time is not likely to be preferable just for a higher quality video format, but your argument is a bullshit, imaginary strawman.
I admit I find it rather strange that you consider legality to be a mere 'meta' issue. Do you regularly break the law in your daily business life, and expect others to?
The "meta" part of your particular argument is the open source caveat. Nobody (relatively speaking) gives a shit if their media player is open source.
Every human on Earth can use H.264 legally. Every human on Earth can even use H.264 in conjunction with open source software legally. Every human on Earth can even tightly integrate H.264 with open source software.
The only thing that can't be done is tightly integrating H.264 with *some* open source licenses (primarily, GPLv3).
Your argument is not relevant to most people, however video quality, battery life, and performance are universally relevant to everyone who desires viewing video.
I remember a time when we did our own checks rather than swallowing the marketing bullshit from the creator of a product.
Websites have a couple of months to update ... Chrome OS gets released not long after that deadline. Perhaps Google didn't want to tell netbook makers they had to add the cost of an MPEG-LA genuflect to every Chrome OS device?
"Ahh! I see you're in that indeterminate Schrodinger state where - oh, uh
As Mozilla, Opera and now Google have committed to not shipping H.264 support, any website not factoring that into their decisions isn't being very smart. Firefox is over 1/2 of net users in some countries. Worldwide, Firefox is at 23%, Chrome is at 10% and Opera is a bit over 2%.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Meh. I never really saw the point of Chrome anyway. Safari works just fine for me.
I have it installed, but I only launch it when I need yet another browser so I can have one logged into my Drupal engine as admin and another as anon or a user.
No big deal.. I just won't use chrome.
It's not like we're starving for web browser options. God forbid I only have access to Safari, Firefox, Flock [firefox core], and IE through Parallels. What ever am I doing to do without you Google Chrome??
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
I'm one of your fans on here. Here's why I don't like H.264, for starters I run Linux on a few of my systems and there's no Quicktime available on it. On my Windows systems I don't install Quicktime because it's bloated. It tries to run ALL the time by default, seriously what a ridiculous thing for a media player. Not to mention that it installs a bunch of unrelated junk - like Bonjour.
I've used H.264 for quite a while. I was thrilled when it became available as a streaming format under Flash.The superiority of H.264 is debatable however, just like the debate between Ogg/Vorbis and MP3. End users can't tell the difference anyway. Google has a huge monetary cost associated with using an inefficient codec - YouTube. That cost would dwarf licensing costs by a long shot.
I think we're literally seeing intelligent people at Google advocating a technological change which ultimately is in the public interest. You can't support open source software while proprietary systems like H.264 are in use. It creates an artificial barrier into entry in the market to free software by causing unwitting users to entrust their personal information to a format they must pay to use. There's no positive for ordinary people with H.264, none. Google has just gained a lot of points in my book.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
Why is Apple against WebM? I know they've been pushing H.264, but do they actually have anything to gain by H.264 becoming the defacto standard instead of WebM? Wouldn't they prefer not paying royalties?
IE9 supports WebM if (and only if) the codec is installed on the system, which is as choicy as choice gets. Safari says no, though.
Less choice is so much more convenient for me. I love being forced to use Quicktime/Flash/Silverlight to view online video content.
And to have only one operating system and application maker. MS is de facto monopoly in OS. With that monopoly it is so easy to kill markets for applications also. Which we are seeing in corporate networks.
To my eye, Google is liberating the IT-market by open source. Of course, any company is bad if given a monopoly.
Chrome, Opera and Firefox are the only browsers that currently do Theora. They are also the only ones that do WEBM.
Sounds like you don't know what the @#$@ you're talking about. Using Theora alone is enough to support all the WEBM browsers in all versions— in fact it's enough to support all the HTML5 browsers _except_ the apple products. (I could say the same with WEBM, except that it's only supported in the latest/prerelease versions)
The prohibition against script initiated fullscreen has been removed from the HTML5 spec— too bad from a security perspective, since a rogue page can take over your screen and totally give you a trojan UI— but your full screen complaint will be addressed once the browser vendors catch up to the latest version of the spec.
Theora might not be amazing, but it's perfectly reasonable compared to codecs of a similar vintage. It usually beats xvid at the same rates. And yet most of the movies on pirate bay seem to be still coming out as xvid without the world ending. I think you're exaggerating Theora's suckage.
In the long term, they are all patent free codecs. All you have to do is wait.
I don't know any of the technical merits of these standards, but FFS calling it something nondescript like H.264 is not the way to gain popular mindshare.
Joe Sixpack might be using it right now, but he has no idea that he's using it, so he has no reason to care if it's dropped.
Give it a catchy name, then put out some demos. Soon Joe Sixpack will start demanding it by name.
Not only this but 90% of the H264 development came from companies whos business is computers and A/V electronics, not codecs. They contributed to H.264 because that was the thing to do and, hey, some patent income is nice too.
If the public says "we won't use that licensed crap" then most of the developers won't contribute to the licensed crap— they'll contribute their efforts to royalty free initiatives instead.
This is the first move I've read about that Google has done to use their power to strong arm the industry into doing what it thinks best. Considering it normally just tries to heavily sway people in a direction without forcing a choice on them (Chrome or no Chrome) I'm finding this really disheartening. Microsoft also likes doing this by simply building whatever they want into their OS and people just eat it up cause they have little to no choice. Google should know better then to start treading down the same path as Microsoft. I can understand that they're trying to help the open source community, but they really aren't putting what they're doing into perspective as many posts on here have indicated for numerous reasons, putting aside taking away choice from their users.
When people get the choice of either seeing the latest funny video flick or obeying to the principles of GPL, well, we both know which one wins, by a huge margin.
Therefore maybe the problem is not H.264, but GPL?
H.264/MPEG4 is the best video codec ever developed.
Horseshit. The well-known, 1 year old comparison with Theora convinced everyone that even at low bitrate, the end result looks almost the same. Provide a convincing side-by-side, or shut up.
Not supporting it is as illogical (and stupid) as not supporting MPEG 2 or MPEG 1 or MP3 in the browser.
Welcome to the real world, with its laws and regulations. Supporting H.264 amounts to supporting software patents. You don't want to rape chi... Er, support software patents, do you? Well, then, let this "superior" algorithm crash and burn, and let it be a lesson to anyone who tries to enforce a monopoly on abstract ideas, math even.
Y.M. All your grand children have to do is wait.
As the GP pointed out, every improvement will be patented. And the improvements will be incorporated into the spec. They will be in the spec just to keep it non-free. Otherwise the MPEG-LA would run out of business!
What a joke. Wouldn't it be better to drop Chrome? After all, of 13 different web browsers that our team has evaluated, Chrome was the BIG LOSER. Instead of hacking Firefox and claiming that they have done anything more than botch things, why don't Google's "experts" try and fix their useless search algorithm?
Judging by the massive number of patents that MPEG-LA has in its 8 patent pools (of which H.264 is only one of the patent pools, with hundreds of patents in it), I'm pretty sure that Hello World infringes.. so VP8 has no shot.
..and on top of that, even if MPEG-LA doesnt happen to have patents in its pools that hit VP8, its members have hundreds if not thousands of patents for each one of the patents in those pools.
Think about how many related patents Microsoft has that didnt end up in the pool, and then think about how many Dolby (whos business is digital audio) has.
The only chance Google has is if they have acquired a patent that H.264 is infringing upon, in which case Google may possibly become a patent-holding member of MPEG-LA and would thus be free from lawsuits for any of the patents in MPEG-LA's pools.
"His name was James Damore."
Huh?
You know the fees for H.264 are paid by the handset manufacturers and not Google. Android can continue to use H.264 and WebM. In fact someone can write a H.264 codec for Chrome in an extension if they wanted to, Google just want's to kick it's Apple dependency, which is far worse then an MS dependecny, MS only wants my money, Apple wants my money and my obedience.
Google hasn't banned H.264, it's just removed it from the default config. Are you using a platform that gives the manufacturer total control over what you do? If so, I'd be more concerned about getting away from that then what Google is doing.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
There is a difference between free and open.
Firefox developer Robert O'Callahan writes about why Firefox doesn't use (DirectShow) system codecs. It is also worth noting that neither IE nor Safari use a codec system their vendor doesn't control.
Call me crazy here, but wasn't YouTube converted to h264 years ago for compatibility with the Flash-less iPhone? What's Google going to do, release a browser that's incompatible one of their own websites?
"even though H.264 is widely used and WebM is not"
Citation Needed!
In MP3 vs Vorbis nearly all agreed that Vorbis could produce superior sounding files at the same bitrate but there is nowhere near such a consensus with H264 vs WebM. Further, in the audio format wars there was also AAC which was considered better than MP3 and trades blows with Vorbis. MP3/AAC combined were too big too stop and had popularity/quality on their side. I agree the patent issue was pretty much the same though.
One thing that is curious though is that the "WebM" browsers don't have people clamouring for them to support the MP3 codec...
At this point, google is beginning to struggle for relevance. After years of flirting with their new services, I primarily use the ones they are good at -- search, email, and maps.
1) YouTube is neither here nor there. Sure it's got a great catalog but if youtube disappeared tomorrow, something else would reign.
2) Chrome is a nice browser but it doesn't over a substantially different experience from Firefox or Safari. If Chrome disappeared tomorrow, I doubt I would really be bothered.
3) Reader is a decent RSS browser but it's really only useful because I spent so much time setting up my NetNewsWire feeds in 2006 and exported that file. I still have the file and imagine there are others that can be used.
4) Translate is fun however it's not really critical to anything I do, more it's a nicety.
5) Checkout is an abomination and it would be brilliant if it just went away.
Google is tremendous at search, mail, maps and video. The first three are 'mission-critical' to my life and if Google said tomorrow "that's going to be a £10 a month fee", I would happily pay.
Everything else is nice free stuff where google has a presence but I wouldn't say either they are mission-critical or the best technology.
In this codec battle, as a Mac user, I will say "goodbye" to any service changes google makes that requires me to get crazy with plug-ins or extra effort. I understand google's moves however I think their ego is a bit overinflated as to their relevance beyond search, email and maps.
Honestly, I cannot really be bothered. If they make themselves irrelevant to me, so be it.
Android comes with support for H.264, which left hope that it would become the standard and be useful on android phones.
Now it appears that Google are turning their back on it.
pity.
This is all a big fight against Apple, and rightly so. Adobe are supporting VP8 as well as H.264. Flash will play all formats, we won't need loads of plugins, just flash. Yet again, flash steps into the breach where a mess of formats are battling it out.
America, Home of the Brave.
You can rely on gstreamer, which is perfectly capable to play h264 if you have x264 installed.
I do, and I bet you do too; pretty much any driver does, for starters. The law has grown beyond the point where any individual can even comprehend it, yet alone abide by it.
I am trolling
Except the "standard" has already been set in stone. There are outright bugs in VP8 that damage quality, but google refuses to fix them because that would break compatibility with existing bitstreams. Which reminds me of the story of make's creator refusing to change its stupid tabs/spaces handling because he already had ten users.
I am trolling
Sounds a bit like BETAMAX/VHS and Bluray/HD DVD days.
Pragmatism my ass. They are shipping WebM because they own it. It's a new standards war that Google wants to win. Not because it's 'free', but because it has Google's name on it. To claim this yet continue to ship proprietary flash support in the same browser just looks bad, and makes the entire premise hypocritical.
If web browsers had chosen to uniformly support Theora, I strongly think WebM would have been less likely to appear. These are just old ghosts coming back to haunt people. Your karma people. :3
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
This might be futuristic talk as of right now, but I can see a scenario where automagic interactive full screen video can be abused to show you a fully functional browser window. Especially nasty with a Chrome notebook or the rumored MacBook (light).
> Then there's the part where the HTML5 spec forbids allowing JavaScript to fullscreen the video.
Which is a Good Thing (tm). I for one don't want a "video" emulating my browser and grabbing passwords and the like. Sure, I would figure it out sooner or later. You might, as well. Will your mom?
Thankfully, _some_ people care more about security than about bling.
Just about half of the occasions I chose the idealistic route and opted for a open and free solution/standard, I got stuck with an inferior product compared to the "evil" "closed" product on offer.
This usually meant giving up some luxury or some polish. What mattered in the end is that it got the job done.
This is not an option in this case. I can be as idealistic and hell-bend on being "open" as I wish but WebM simply does not give me the end result I need and is therefore useless for what I want to do with it.
Even more differentiation will hurt HTML5 not to mention companies that want offer solution based on such standards.
We can not un-see what possibilities are there with h.264 and HTML5. I tried implementing WebM along side it, but is is jerky and slow. It does not respond well at all.
I can not sell a solution that works in one browser and sucks in another.
I think I'll better stop my support for chrome. seems fair enough.
> Horse shit.
It's customary to mark titles specifically, but at least you were kind enough to qualify your own statements.
Mozilla would not solve anything, it would just shift the problem. And what if the underlying OS does not have any way to decode H.264 for exactly the reasons GP pointed out?
So yes, "horse shit" is the correct description for your statement.
And the hardware will accellerate WebM. There's a lot of acceleration that is common to all high-compression video codecs. So it won't kill lots of current mobile phones in any significant way. All they'll have to do is change the firmware to allow WebM as well as H264.
> Or, people can just use the hardware and software they already paid for which supports H.264.
How long will it take for hardware vendors to include a Free codec when they see market demand for it? Other than the natural life-cycle it takes to introduce new silicon. And yes, I am aware that those vendors might need to shell out for the VHDL/similar. But that's still less than with H.264.
I vote open standards!
Google is risking criticism for the greater good, forcing change and encouraging the adoption of an open standard.
Nobody said doing the right thing will be easy. There will be hiccups, but it will be worth it.
I thought Mozilla was going to support H.264 in their FF4.0. So why would Google do the opposite and REMOVE the functionality?
I made a little userscript that more or less depends on Chrome's H.264 support so I can properly watch video on Gametrailers. Guess that deal's off unless I simply don't update Chrome.
I am not devoid of humor.
... and with that decision, we'll be uninstalling Chrome from all 184,000 of our corporate PCs and laptops. Our intranet depends heavily on H.264 and believe me we won't be retooling any time soon.
Um, if you can't distinguish between x264 and theora then you're in no position to be making any judgements on x264 vs vp8 - in fact, I'm surprised if you can tell the difference between any video codecs from the last ten years or so, theora vs x264 is not subtle. Which probably puts you in with most of the population in not caring about video quality - but accept that there are people who do.
I am trolling
Except H.264 is the best codec. Google didn't choose WebM because it's better, they chose it because they own it and (purportedly) because it's open. They did not choose it for being a high-quality codec, they chose it for entirely meta and political/ideological reasons.
When deciding which software is "best" for any particular purpose, the price and the license terms are a factor.
This is a dumb move! Adobe will be very happy with this.
This will kill video tag and not H264. Content providers will just ignore video tag and use Flash. ;)
Do you think Youtube will provide only WebM videos? Off course they can ignore half of market
And Apple is using their position to negatively affect the CUSTOMER.
How does another patent format make WebM (or ANY patent free format) a detriment to the customers? After all, you would STILL have to patent the new format if you paid for H264, so I feel you haven't made a case as to why not paying for H264 is a detriment.
And, just maybe, WebM will mean that the next format won't be patented, since the content industry have a need to get better video out to customers cheaper, which, since the biggest cost of video is the size of the bitstream, means better compression pays for itself in reduced costs, and who needs patent protection on the algorithm to make money then?
And Chromium and Firefox support H.264 if you hack it in, that's even choicyer... Defaults is what matters. (Safari uses system codecs as well).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Safari "supports WebM if (and only if) the codec is installed on the system". Not in some future version, but today.
http://developer.apple.com/library/safari/#documentation/AudioVideo/Conceptual/Using_HTML5_Audio_Video/Device-SpecificConsiderations/Device-SpecificConsiderations.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009523-CH5-DontLinkElementID_13
I've never heard of anyone going to jail for infringing a patent.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
That's up to the carrier to pay royalties for inclusion. Most Android phones have the codex. Some don't. Basically, you made a choice and seemingly a poor one in this particular aspect. Seems the paradox of choice is extremely apropos in your case.
Tomorrow it will be H.265 or something. It will have fresh patents. They will make it available for free while jacking up the licensing on H.264 so everyone will switch. So we can go with Googles efforts to get us to switch to free - permanently. Or we can wait for the next round of pay-or-upgrade from the patent codec folks. Either way things are going to change. Oh, and H.264 will probably be removed from the worlds most popular video site real soon now so "everywhere" is temporary. Oh, and by permanently I mean that if Google wanted to force the web to change codecs again, they could not motivate people by jacking up the licensing fees on WebM - you can (and should) get it today under perpetual royalty-free terms.
Or maybe the problem is the software patents?
Say it, don't SPRAY it.
And who gives a fuck? Please, let me know. Brown paper bag is optional.
Sure, YouTube is the 900-pound gorilla of web video, but pornography has been an underground driver of video formats since 8mm film. Until the iPhone, Flash was the de facto standard for web video, including porn. iOS devices, however, offer only one avenue for porn (the web, since porn apps are not allowed in the App Store), and only one supported video format (H.264). You can bet that porn sites want to capture mobile porn customers (don't look so shocked, of course people want to watch porn on the go, and don't forget iPads). There has been plenty of time for petabytes of pornographic video to be delivered to iOS devices, probably starting mere minutes after the release of the original 2G iPhone.
Will porn sites start delivering WebM video? They tend to be run with an eye toward keeping costs down, so hosting multiple versions of the same video, and especially recoding existing video, probably isn't in the cards. The cost for MPEG-LA licensing may be prepaid (especially for whatever encoder they use), may be negligible, or they may simply ignore the licensing entirely and expect that any individual site is too small to be worth suing. I'd bet on porn video on the web quietly ignoring WebM and sticking with H.264 delivered directly or to a Flash player. Anyone savvy enough to insist on a Free/free codec is probably unwilling to pay for porn anyway, so they are hardly hurting their market.
Ultimately, Google can't force WebM on anyone. The only weapon they have to wield in this is YouTube (Chrome really isn't much of a weapon in the market at this point in time), and they'd alienate everyone using iOS, not to mention everyone with an Android phone too slow or old to run Flash, if they stopped delivering H.264. Would it change anyone's mind, or would the YouTube app on the iPhone be replaced with a Vimeo app? Supporting less rather than more has worked for no one but Apple, they only pull it off by making it up in other ways (e.g. polish), and even then they alienate a segment of the market as a result; Apple's high margins allows them to concentrate on a smaller market, whereas Google's need for eyeballs for ad revenue means they can't afford to alienate large groups of people.
Whether you believe that none of the (enforceable) MPEG-LA patents apply to WebM or not (I suspect some do), and whether you believe that there is something morally superior to WebM over H.264 (iffy), it's hard to believe that it has any chance of defeating H.264 in the market (I obviously don't). I'm prepared to be wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.
The problem with WebM is that no court has ruled that it does not infringe other video compression patents (of which there are many). Thus major businesses will be reluctant to build it into their products without full indemnification from Google--which I have not seen offered.
A patent grant is only as good as the patent rights behind it. If WebM is found to be infringing after deployment (as GIF was), a patent grant from Google will not shield users of WebM from liability.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So when are they going to drop mp3 support... talk about an entrenched format. Aside from the IT crowd, no one will care and just install another plugin and go on with their merry way. I don't think this move was one of principle ("don't be evil"), it was a calculated move in order to make google more money down the line.
I can only imagine the plethora of goods and services such an august, benevolent organization has showered down upon all of humanity.
> Speaking of H.264, I've got an H.264 decoder in hardware, in my fucking video card. Where is that feature in Flash?
> Standard as of Flash 10 for Windows, and Flash 10.1 for Mac OS X.
The current version of Flash crashes for me when I play video. Search the adobe forums and you will see hunderds of posts "flash crashing browser". It's been like this ever since version 10.
The only solution is to disable hardware acceleration: http://forums.adobe.com/message/2922923
A simple Wikipedia search shows that "The last US MPEG LA patents for H.264 may not expire until 2028."
I don't know about you, but I consider 17 years a little more than a few years.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
In terms of just straight vector animations, either canvas+JavaScript or SVG. In terms of interaction with vector animations and raster graphics or video, canvas+JavaScript.
What tool do you recommend for artists to create animations that are played back using a canvas+JavaScript engine? For example, what would someone use to make the next Badgers?
Everyone is on board, but (at least for decent performance with vector graphics, where current IE releases lag significantly)
Windows XP will never get IE 9, which depends on DirectX technologies introduced in Windows Vista (or introduced in Windows 7 and backported to Vista). The closest they'll ever get is the Google Chrome Frame plug-in, whose installation I predict corporate IT departments will be more reluctant to authorize than Adobe Flash Player.
Guys, be serious.
imo, the only reason WebM is free is that nobody cared to assert patents on it. Microsoft has already tried creating a 'royalty-free' codec, and ran into patent problems pretty soon. I have a feeling we'll see the same thing happening in the WebM case.
The reason for this is that video compression is (a) not trivial, and (b) heavily patented. Patents are slowly lapsing, but it'll take another couple of years even for MPEG-2 to become free. More modern techniques will be covered by patents for even longer.
Actually, thinking long term would be using the superior format, knowing that the patents will expire within 20 years (in fact, most of them will expire long before then).
Not twice, but at least in 12 different formats and dimensions for mobile, that is what we do,
unless you do not care about iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, LG, Nokia, Samsung, Windows Phone, Windows CE, etc.
Plus at least a bunch of different desktop format in various quality settings from low to high bandwidth.
Well, MPEG-LA right now is ignoring patent infringement by individuals, otherwise they might be suing Linus Torvalds for patent infringement. In this post, he clearly is using the unlicensed patent encumbered gstreamer ugly plugins:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=439858#c19
Chrome supports H.264 out of the box now, not in some future version. Chromium will always support H.264 if you are willing to do the work. The choice remains, but only one side is slammed by a large number of hypocrites.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.