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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."
Does Chrome really have the market share required for this move to have any effect on the decisions of web designers?
Or back to the era of having to install a huge number of plug ins. I'm personally, not happy with this move. 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.
And the open alternative to Flash is....? (Other than the subset provided by HTML5/WebM)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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
or the reality of "We've decided to stop supporting formats for things that aren't free", would be a more simple answer.
Google would almost certainly like to stop doing this, but they are practical enough to know that this isn't feasible quite yet. However, if WebM became the de-facto standard for web video then Google would be much closer to being able to realistically ditch Flash. In short, this is clearly a step in the right direction. Unless, of course, you happen to believe that we'd all be better off using H.264 to stream video.
Will people please stop citing an x264 developer's rant as an "expert opinion" on the video quality or patent risks of WebM? Next thing we'll indulge the musings of a Coca-Cola Company executive on health issues related to PepsiCo products.
Adobe claims it is a DMCA violation to make software that is interoperable with Flash video. There might be some parts of Flash that are open, but playing video sure isn't one of them.
And as for the other parts, haven't you ever wondered why there is still only one full implementation of this supposedly open "standard"? Either the Gnash guys are incompetent (they aren't), Adobe's implementation is fucking awesome in everyone's opinion and all users are delighted with how great it works and the wide variety of platforms it has been ported to (they aren't), or the claim that it's open is bullshit.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
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.
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
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
>>>a decent browser will have a full screen option.
Way to completely-and-totally miss his point. Yes the browser has a FS option, but it requires users to take a two-step option (first blow video to fill the browser; then make the browser full screen). The Grandparent poster said that's a pain in the ass, and he would be correct. Especially since many of us users don't know how to do full screen in our browsers. The old way was better (a single click via javascript).
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
You say "patent licensing" as if it was just signing a legal agreement. Their license requires significant royalties to be paid and which we must all pay.
And more importantly, if a patented piece of software requires payment of any royalties whatsoever, it instantly violates the "no further encumbrances" section of the GPL. If that software derives from or includes any GPL components, poof, it instantly loses the right to be distributed.
So if you want video on a Free Software system at the moment you must choose one of the following four options:
1. Abandon the GPL and any dreams of having a fully free desktop system. Just bow, accept that The Market Has Spoken And Freedom Is Dead.
2. Abandon the USA as a market for a regime which doesn't recognise software patents, and hope international treaties don't impose US-like silliness on the world.
3. Abandon the law. Resign yourself to breaking the law and either living like a fugitive, accepting the penalties or trying to make a test case out of your lawsuit.
4. Abandon the known patent-tainted H.264 for a (hopefully) non-patented alternative like WebM, or one for which the patent imposes non GPL-violating encumbrances.
(or, as a temporary solution, sequester the video-rendering component in third-party "dirty" code, like a Flash plugin, written using no GPL libraries, while you initiate a proper project to replace it).
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
It's a real open standard. Does it require patent licensing? Yes.
And therefore, by doing so, instantly it violates the GPL. Because of the GPL's "no further encumbrances" clause, it becomes illegal to distribute any software which both implements H.264 and derives from GPL code. The "ease" of patent licencing doesn't matter. It is flatly illegal at that point.
It takes a very strange cast of mind to translate "illegal to be distributed as free software" as "open".
Of course, if you don't care about freedom of software or even, pragmatically, about using any GPL code - then sure, "open but nonfree/illegal" is close enough, if you squint a bit and don't look closely and also happen to be in the proprietary software or device manufacturing game - anyone but a hobbyist with a Linux box.
However, some of us want to be both Free and Legal, and H.264 has simply taken itself completely out of the running in that game.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
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
Thanks for proving the GP's point but, just so you know, "cheap" isn't "free" and it most certainly isn't "Free".
But hey, if you like paying through your nose for watching and uploading videos just so you can feel "popular" go right ahead, I'm sure MPEG LA will be happy to sell you a license. Or prosecute you for breaking the law.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Besides which, even if you do live somewhere with software patents then the liklihood is you already have an H264 licence with your OS. It's certainly the case for Windows & OS X users. In fact they have an entire media framework ready and at the disposal of any browser to invoke for content it doesn't handle natively.
The whole situation is absurd. If Firefox / Opera / Chrome don't support H264 out of the box for legal / patent reasons then fine, don't ship it out of the box. Instead open up the video api so it's extensible. Better yet, invoke whatever media framework is on the OS and let that decide if the content is playable or not.
Not providing any convenient way to support other video formats is just stupid. It won't drive people to the open standards, instead it will drive them the other way, using Flash plugins and other hacks to workaround the issue.
Pure FUD. The per-decoder license fee for H.264 is $0.20, capped at (IIRC) $4M/year. Firefox could simply pay out of the pool of cash it collects from search engine referrals, or, even more sensibly, avoid the entire problem by using operating system libraries to decode H.264.
And, once again, why are you arguing as if WebM is actually unencumbered? This is extremely unlikely to be the case.
Incidentally, by damaging the prospects of HTML5/H.264, Google is effectively promoting Flash/H.264. All the same patents, except with a proprietary closed source browser plugin thrown into the mix as well. Not exactly a victory for freedom.
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