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FSF Announces Support For WebM
An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation has signed up as a supporter of the WebM Project. They write, 'Last week, Google announced that it plans to remove support for the H.264 video codec from its browsers, in favor of the WebM codec that they recently made free. Since then, there's been a lot of discussion about how this change will affect the Web going forward, as HTML5 standards like the video tag mature. We applaud Google for this change; it's a positive step for free software, its users, and everyone who uses the Web.' The FSF's PlayOgg campaign will be revamped to become PlayFreedom."
One more stamp of approval you can ad to the list when presenting to your superiors.
Chill out. We're all on the same side here. Wouldn't you, as a video host, much rather have to worry about supporting two open, royalty-free formats than several closed ones?
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It doesn't matter how this free / not free debate goes. One is a formal ISO standard, the other is whatever Google decides. How that makes H.264 somehow not open escapes me, but...
If I'm engineering a hardware codec, I want the standard that's set down in stone, just like my design is going to be (well, silicon, but you know what I mean).
Google wants to kill Flash—whether it's as quickly as possible or when they feel the time is right I can't really say, but consider a few things:
1. They've made Chrome users eat HTML5 video on YouTube in the past. If their objective is to get people to use Chrome (it is! my dear, cynical friend, it is! they want to advertise to your brain cells!) then this is strong evidence that they believe HTML5 is the right way to go.
2. Google likes Chrome being clean and minimal. They don't like Flash getting in the way—it's hideously unstable, Adobe has never been on good terms with the rest of the industry (see the origin of TrueType for one example), and, once again, my dear, cynical friend, it obstructs their ability to know what the user is doing because it is an externality.
I think if there's any reason Google delays in making motions to kill Flash, it's because they're waiting for everyone else to be ready for it. A huge (HUGE) number of companies support WebM, both hardware and software—in fact, at this point, Apple and Microsoft are sticking out like sore thumbs by being absent from the list. The writing's on the wall that WebM is going to be the de facto video currency in the next few years, because Google is such an aggressive player—and because the format isn't proprietary , contrary to what you said.
You lying, thieving, cheating, scum-sucking, dog-licking, spit-swimming, spider-eating, goat-hugging, dung-smearing, pig-kissing, frog-swallowing, mud-biting, cow-tipping, toilet-swabbing, cud-chewing, window-washing, half-warped, apple-polishing, worm-witted, chicken-hearted, lamb-lusting, nefarious, untrustworthy nasty person!
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As a video host, I won't do this. I'll leave my video in H.264 format, and serve it up via flash to the browsers that don't want to support H.264 playback via the HTML5 video tag.
The only thing that started breaking Flash's stranglehold was Apple's decision to say "NO FLASH on our iOS devices." Why? Because the bulk of "video hosts" don't give a shit about "openness," they give a shit about "how many people can watch my video," and the iOS devices represented an affluent demographic that video hosts *wanted* watching their video. So they figured out how to serve up their video without Flash.
And now, Google is saying "Let's have a standards war," which basically means nobody will invest in any recoding until the dust settles, which means they've just given Flash another 5 year lease on life. The only people who will transcode to WebM are YouTube. In the meantime, everybody else will serve up H.264 wrapped in Flash, and H.264 via HTML5 video tags to any browser that is smart enough to support it.
Hooray for "openness," enjoy your crashy Chrome-and-Flash browsing experience on any site that's not YouTube.
The choir may be the WC3 over here at MIT. The FSF putting a stamp of approval on WebM helps allay one of the big hurdles for making it the HTML 5 video standard: questions of quality. While the average consumer may not care, if WebM gets baked into the standard, that would have a large effect on how we get video on the web (and how free it is).
The ______ Agenda
Hmm... I'd call GCC pretty successful...
>while Google continues to support Flash.
The day youtube stops serving flash and requires WebM will be the day Flash dies.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
H.264 is less of an open standard than even OOXML. The H.264 specification was developed by a standards body which is only open in the sense that anyone who can pay the $40k per person per meeting fee to get a voting seat can participate. The H.264 specification is hideously complex and terribly expensive. There are no free software implementations of the complete specification, and certainly none which are legally licensed. Unlikely other areas of software, the patents over H.264 are actively and aggressively enforced both in the US and all across Europe.
Flash is far from a paragon of openness. But they too have releases specifications— and for free, if not all that complete. When it comes down to it, the internet doesn't need that much of a push to get off flash, it's going to happen naturally. The only question is what will we have when flash is gone? An web encumbered by proprietary technology (which is absolutely what H.264 is— it is owned and controlled by a single managing agency) or an open and freely licensed web?
So go on, keep spreading that FUD. If you get really good at it perhaps MPEG-LA start cutting buying you houses in Hawaii with their spoils.
It might just be late, but I have no idea how you are reaching this conclusion. Are you aware that Adobe is one of the companies that has pledged to support WebM?
The fight to adopt WebM has nothing to do with WebM vs Flash. The fight is h264/html5 vs WebM/html5. Take a quick look at this page:
http://www.youtube.com/html5
The day youtube stops serving flash and requires WebM will be the day Flash dies.
That depends on when that happens. If it is at a time when there is little support for WebM, or little interest in Youtube, it might be the day that Youtube dies.
... and then they built the supercollider.
Ah yes, the famous open, patented, royalty-encumbered standard. Except for the open part
Are you aware that Adobe is one of the companies that has pledged to support WebM?
Only as a means of prolonging their Flash player. I wasn't aware that Adobe makes a web browser, so I'm not sure why we should care about Adobe's position. Also, Adobe has been very hostile to open formats, so again, why should we take those statements seriously?
The fight to adopt WebM has nothing to do with WebM vs Flash. The fight is h264/html5 vs WebM/html5.
That's fucking ridiculous. The argument should be HTML5 versus proprietary plugins. This is the whole point. Google (among others) is trying to re-frame the debate as a war between different video CODECs, when HTML5, as a standard, should be CODEC-neutral.
Basically, partisan forces are fucking with HTML5, and HTML5 will suffer because of it.
... and then they built the supercollider.
You mean, except x264, which is by most accounts, one of the most *full-featured* H.264 implementations available... right?
That's understatement by a mile. Flash is a closed, proprietary standard. There is nothing "open" about it.
That's correct - Apple's refusal to put Flash on iOS devices signalled the end of Flash as the ubiquitous video playback wrapper on the web. Google's refusal to continue supporting H.264 has simply prolonged Flash's lifespan by a few years.
Let's be very clear here: H.264 is an "open standard" - anyone may get a copy of the spec and implement it, and expect that their encoder/decoder will interoperate well with any other piece of software or hardware that implements the H.264 standard. What H.264 is *not* is a "free standard" - it's got patents, and royalty fees required for some uses of the standard- basically, if you're making money off of H.264, you need to pay a fee to the MPEG-LA consortium. There is nothing preventing Google from allowing its browser to support both types of video for playback via an HTML5 video tag, but only providing WebM-encoded videos on their hosting services. You can't say that you're dropping H.264 support in the interests of "freedom" while continuing to embed & support Flash - at least, not with a straight face.
Nobody is arguing this because everything will be HTML5 eventually. I linked you to youtube's page where you can test drive their HTML5 player with h264 content or WebM content depending on your browser. Google owns Youtube.
HTML5 is codec neutral, it can embed h264 or webm content. The debate is what to embed. It's simply GIF vs PNG all over again.
Not to mention Google and everyone else seems to be missing the gigantic elephant standing over by the potted plants: Hardware acceleration. Pretty much ALL consumer mobile devices support H.264, along with just about every desktop, laptop, netbook, hell I've even seen cheapo DVD players at the Wally World with H.264 support. Now figure in the amount the OEMs have invested in all those H.264 chips, along with the fact that all those consumer devices will have to be chunked (great for the environment) thanks to WebM killing the battery, along with the fact that WebM brings nothing substantial to the table, not better file sizes, not better quality, pretty much the ONLY selling point is "free as in freedom man, yeah!" and even that isn't assured since Google refuses to indemnify users of WebM which opens OEMs to patent trolling, frankly I'd say it has about as much of a chance as Vorbis does of killing MP3 at this point.
If it would have come out 5 years ago I would have given it decent odds, but it is simply too late to the party. Like Vorbis found out if you wait too long so that both momentum and device support is firmly behind a standard, proprietary or not, trying to build any support is damned near impossible. I have a feeling this is gonna be Google's Vista, where they find out that they can't just get the market to jump on board simply by having the name Google. There are simply too many chips, too many websites supporting H.264, oh and did I mention a little thing known as iPad? or iPhone? Maybe Google has heard of those. If they think folks are gonna give up their iPads and iPhones just for Youtube they are in for a RUDE awakening. With H.264 any website developer can simply leave a "raw" H.264 for iDevice users and wrap it in a flash container for everyone else! Tada! everyone is supported. With WebM you are gonna kill battery life or have to toss all the devices supporting H.264 and for what? Youtube? It isn't like there aren't a bazillion other sites out there and if Youtube kills H.264 support I'm sure there will be a dozen new ones happy to take those viewers. The ship has sailed Google, the fat lady is down the street eating a sandwich.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Is it funny he mentions webkit - maybe you should really look into what the engine of Chrome is based on. The same for mentioning Cocoa what the fuck has this to do with a videocodec ? And OpenCL also closed ? The fact that Apple doesn't use its weight to introduce closed tags, events like MS did with IE, ... .
But then again this Slashdot - new for people with delusions and where everything is black and white.
You can't patch in hardware acceleration. It's either there or it's not. In the case of WebM, it's not.
My concern with the patents on WebM boil down to the simple fact that Google won't indemnify users.
MPEG-LA won't indemnify you either. If someone outside their patent pool sues you, they're not going to be helping.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
but if I somebody brings a suit against me tomorrow, I may have to spend way more than I ever would have spent on H.264 royalties to defend myself.
So what is the difference to H.264 ? They also don't indemnify their users, so there is NO reason to prefer one over the other, the risks are identical.
Move Sig. For great justice.
So why did we go for h264 then? When it came there was only MPEG2 hardware chips. In your line of thought no change should ever take place. Why buy TV when there is nothing on. That was the big question in the 40- and 50s. And There *are * hw chips for webm. And more is being produced. In 2 years you can bet every phone have it. Hopefully by then no one will even remember h264.
You mean, except x264, which is by most accounts, one of the most *full-featured* H.264 implementations available... right?
Feature-wise it's good, yes, but it's not legally licensed and thus it's actually illegal to use in many places, most notably the US. That's the whole point.
Let's be very clear here: H.264 is an "open standard" - anyone may get a copy of the spec and implement it, and expect that their encoder/decoder will interoperate well with any other piece of software or hardware that implements the H.264 standard. What H.264 is *not* is a "free standard" - it's got patents, and royalty fees required for some uses of the standard- basically, if you're making money off of H.264, you need to pay a fee to the MPEG-LA consortium. There is nothing preventing Google from allowing its browser to support both types of video for playback via an HTML5 video tag, but only providing WebM-encoded videos on their hosting services. You can't say that you're dropping H.264 support in the interests of "freedom" while continuing to embed & support Flash - at least, not with a straight face.
Of course "we" can. Dropping H.264 is an intermediary step in getting rid of Flash too. There is nothing wrong in doing things in steps.
And what you're saying about being allowed to freely implement H.264 encoders or decoders is not correct: you may not implement either without a proper license. Consuming H.264 content is also only free if you are using it with a properly licensed decoder, and serving H.264 content to end-users is only free if you cannot make money out of it and all the content must have been created with a licensed encoder.
Because x264 is far more advanced - mpeg2 couldn't do HDTV without insane bitrates.
I think GP was referring more to various "oolitical" FSF campaigns, like the one against "tivoization", or against Win7. Which this one seems to be as well.
GCC is just a product, it's not like FSF specifically endorses it over proprietary options (rather than just generally saying "free software is better", which applies to all FOSS).
It seems more likely to me that is some kind of power play. They want to piss on Apple & Microsoft's parade by forcing them to dance to a tune played by Google. Google will be stewards of this codec and if it becomes a web standard they may force their competitors to support it (e.g. in their browsers & desktop / phone operating systems) or risk looking "non standard". It diminishes their competitors offerings just like supporting Flash in Android did.
Secondly, if Google have such an enormous ongoing investment in H264 then they must be paying a pretty penny to MPEG-LA and possibly a lot more when certain web moratoriums are up. I would not be surprised if they are waving this codec around to threaten MPEG-LA to either drop or modify their existing licensing agreement.
So I don't think Google are doing this for reasons for altruism and I don't believe they'll never support H264. WebM is just a stick and they may well do an about face when it serves its purpose.
What stops Google from total control?
This is a serious question.
Google owns both WebM and VP8 - their only licensing obligation is to keep some of the source viewable.
Google now defines how VP8 encoded and decoding works and the quality, etc.
Google defines what specific features and version of WebM and VP8 that Chrome will support.
No matter how 'open' WebM and VP8 are now, what Google says and what Google supports is now the 'standard' and will be the single controlling voice for all video on the web.
This is more power than any other company has tried to obtain.
What prevents Google from changing WebM so that in two years, it breaks compatibility with previous versions, rendering hardware absolete?
What prevents Google from defining the quality of the codecs used for their own purposes?
What prevents Google from getting this accepted by the world, and then adding in advertising data and decoders that report information back to Google?
I understand that WebM and VP8 are 'open', but if Google only supports what they want, they are the sole voice in the format and standard, as anything outside their 'supported' guidelines will fail to work in Chrome/Android/etc.
Right now, this looks like another Google project that uses the work of others and then takes control and sells it at a good thing because it was based in open software.
Even Microsoft with WMV turned it over to a standards body to oversee the format that ensures compatibility and consistency - something I don't see Google doing, and WMV is a closed format 'standard' aka VC1. At least we are assured that a VC1 encoded BluRay Disc will always play, as Microsoft can't monkey with VC1 and destroy compatibility or mess up quality, etc.
I am seriously looking for some good answers, as this has me a bit scared to the level of control Google is getting if people blindly accept this.
I think you underestimate the size of YouTube. It's way bigger than all other video hosts put together. If a WebM browser gives you the best YouTube experience, that's what people will want. And with Firefox's sizable market share on the desktop, and Chrome's market share on smartphones, I'd say WebM cannot be ignored.
And if YouTube offers video in either HTML5+WebM or Flash+H264, iDevice users definitely have a problem.
Hardware acceleration means a wide range of things. It can mean implementing the entire algorithm in hardware - feed in an H.264 bitstream and get out decoded frames. It usually doesn't. Hardware makers are much more keen on code reuse than software makers, because bugs are much more expensive, and most hardware acceleration for video playback already needs to support multiple codecs (H.264, MPEG-4 ASP, MPEG-2).
In a typical device, 'hardware acceleration' for H.264 means two things:
The 'hardware decoder' is actually a software decoder that runs in the DSP and uses the specialised accelerator units. For something like VP8, it's relatively simple for to provide a firmware upgrade that adds a decoder using the existing hardware. For something like Dirac (which uses DWT instead of DCT, for example), it's much harder.
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It's fairly well known that VP8 (the video codec in WebM) infringes on H.264 patents
I believe the expression is 'put up or shut up'. VP8 was created by On2 to work around H.264 patents, and sacrificed some quality in doing so. If you can cite a patent that is infringed by VP8, please do so.
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No, it's only encumbered by patents if the patents present an encumbrance to use. My dictionary defines an encumbrance as a burden or impediment. Google has provided an irrevocable, royalty free, license to all of the patents in WebM. From the perspective of implementors and users, those patents no longer exist. They provide no burden or impediment, unlike the H.264 patents, for which you must buy a license from the MPEG-LA.
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From Texas Instruments.
Mod parent up. Adobe doesn't want to keep supporting Flash Player - it's a money sink! No one pays for Flash Player (except the mobile version), but people pay a huge amount for the authoring tools. If HTML5 video, audio, and canvas tags can do everything that Flash can do, then Adobe would be happy to let other companies invest money in the non-profitable components while they continue to work on the profitable parts...
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H264 is an open standard and if you pay your money you won't be sued by the patent pool.
If you need permission to use it, is it really open? I think that's the main point people seem to disagree on here.
Yes -- this question really cuts to the heart of the issue for me. Personally, I object to describing a standard as "free and open" unless it is possible to write and distribute a GPL implementation in such a way that Linux distributions can safely package and include it. WebM is open (the specifications are available to anyone and anyone is permitted to implement them) and free (anyone can obtain a non-exclusive, perpetual, sub-licensable license to all of the necessary patents).
Pirate Party UK
But then Google got greedy, and thought "Why can't I have Adobe's position"
Has Adobe open sourced the Flash player under a permissive license since last time I was looking? Because failing that, Google can't be trying for Adobe's position. Personally, I'm confident the video tag will win over flash, even if the latter stays as a backup solution.
And Google's push is pretty weak - Youtube still pushes H.264, Android still plays it.
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Can Google provide us, h264/mpeg sp accelerated device owners, such as less than a billion feature+ phone owners a software to play WebM?
As has been pointed out (several times over the current spate of similar articles) - h264 "hardware decoders" are not composed entirely of hardware at all. They invariably contain a significant software component in the form of firmware. In theory in many current phones the devices can be updated to work with WebM/VP8 in addition to h264. Whether this can be done in practice without sending the phones back to the manufacturer remains to be seen.
There should also be some kind of remote chip attachment innovation as satellite boxes, dvr and like billion of devices won't accept "new software" as they do their job on hardware level.
Next, they should replace the satellites as entire industry adopted h264 a long time ago.
No one is suggesting replacing h264 on existing DVR and Bluray devices or on Satellite or Digital TV transmissions. The only intent is to promote WebM for Web based video - the clue is in the name!
Don't you wish you hadn't wasted 3 seconds of your life reading this sig?
Flash is a closed, proprietary standard. There is nothing "open" about it.
SWF is actually very open, according to what I've read, since May 2008. Even RTMP is part of the open spec now.
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It seems necessarty here to insert a reminder about what H.264 is and where it comes from:
H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is a block-oriented motion-compensation-based codec standard developed by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It was the product of a partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT).
H.264 is perhaps best known as being one of the codec standards for Blu-ray Discs; all Blu-ray players must be able to decode H.264. It is also widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube and the iTunes Store, web software such as the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight, broadcast services for DVB and SBTVD, direct-broadcast satellite television services, cable television services, and real-time videoconferencing.
The H.264 video format has a very broad application range that covers all forms of digital compressed video from low bit-rate Internet streaming applications to HDTV broadcast and Digital Cinema applications with nearly lossless coding. With the use of H.264, bit rate savings of 50% or more are reported. For example, H.264 has been reported to give the same Digital Satellite TV quality as current MPEG-2 implementations with less than half the bitrate, with current MPEG-2 implementations working at around 3.5 Mbit/s and H.264 at only 1.5 Mbit/s.
The Digital Video Broadcast project (DVB) approved the use of H.264/AVC for broadcast television in late 2004.
The Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) standards body in the United States approved the use of H.264/AVC for broadcast television in July 2008, although the standard is not yet used for fixed ATSC broadcasts within the United States. It has also been approved for use with the more recent ATSC-M/H (Mobile/Handheld) standard, using the AVC and SVC portions of H.264.
The CCTV (Close Circuit TV) or Video Surveillance market has included the technology in many products. The introduction of H.264 to the video surveillance industry has meant the ability to stream high resolution at lower bit rates has substantially improved. H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, List of video services using H.264/MPEF-4_AVC
The implications for the global hardware manufactuer - the OEM - are clear:
Whatever the fate of WebM, you will be licensing H.264 and HVEC/H.265 across your entire product line. This is not a problem for companies the size of Mitsubishi Electric, Panasonic, Philips, JVC, Sony, or Samsung.
Not a problem for AMD, ARM, Apple, Intel, NVIDIA or Microsoft.
Google is the new kid on the block. HVEC should be final in about two or three years.
HEVC aims to substantially improve coding efficiency compared to AVC High Profile, i.e. reduce bitrate requirements by half with comparable image quality, probably at the expense of increased computational complexity. Depending on the application requirements, HEVC should be able to trade off computational complexity, compression rate, robustness to errors and processing delay time.
HEVC is targeted at next-generation HDTV displays and content capture systems which feature progressive scanned frame rates and display resolutions from QVGA (320x240) up to 1080p and Ultra HDTV (7680x4320), as well as improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color gamut and dynamic range. High Efficiency Video Coding
The implications for the content provider are also clear.
WebM is not a theatrical production codec.
It is not a theatrical, broadcast, cable or sattelite distribution codec. It does not support content protection.
The H.264 base Netflix client is baked into every HDTV set, video player and video game console sold in the U.S.
There are clients for th
Video compression is a patent minefield, and indemnity is pretty much an absolute requirement these days if you expect to be taken seriously.
Alright then, name one format that does offer indemnity.
Here's some help: MPEG LA doesn't.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
There are no 800 pound gorillas. Very obese gorillas held in captivity may top out at 600 lbs at most. A healthy, strong, alpha gorilla out in the wild would weigh no more than 350-400 lbs. 800 pound gorillas are pure fantasy.
Two men are flying in a hot air balloon and realise they are lost. They see a man on the ground, and shout down to him to him, "Can you tell us where we are?"
The man on the ground replies, "You're in a hot air balloon, two hundred and forty feet off the ground, heading due West."
One of the men in the balloon says to his companion: "That guy must be an actuary: his information is completely accurate, but entirely useless."
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Over 20 Hardware vendors are working on WebM hardware acceleration right how, including Broadcom and Qualcomm.
Now figure in the amount the OEMs have invested in all those H.264 chips, along with the fact that all those consumer devices will have to be chunked (great for the environment) thanks to WebM killing the battery,
No, it means developers will have to support those devices until they fade out. Considering that most people replace their phone every 2-3 years anyway, that won't take too long. The only real problem here is if Apple refused to implement WebM even after hardware acceleration is available.
Three years ago, H.264 support on mobile devices was all but non-existent as well. There is no reason why WebM can't be just as widely distributed as H.264 in another three years if industry decides to support it. This isn't like Ogg Vorbis and Theora where the only supporters were FLOSS hobbyist. It is being supported by the biggest internet video company in the world, the biggest mobile chipset manufacturers in the world, the second and third biggest browsers in the world, and the second biggest (and fastest growing) mobile OS in the world. Hell even Flash is supporting it. Furthermore, unlike MP3->Vorbis transition, users won't have to do a thing to start using it; it will be entirely transparent to them.
Yes, it is possible that it won't succeed, but it is also very possible that it will, and if it does the web will be better off for. I don't understand the hostility that people have towards attempting to make things better, just because there is a chance it will fail.
I do think that the codec could be vulnerable to a patent battle. Unless Google are indemnifying WebM, you may well find that MPEG-LA or individual stakeholders pick particular sites to be the target of lawsuits.