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Mozilla Debates Supporting H.264 In Firefox Via System Codecs
An anonymous reader writes "Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of a universal video format that is supported in all browsers. Mozilla previously rejected the popular H.264 video codec because it is patent-encumbered and would require implementors to pay royalty fees. The organization is now rethinking its position and is preparing to add support for H.264 video decoding in mobile Firefox via codecs that are provided by the underlying operating system or hardware. The controversial proposal has attracted a lot of criticism from Firefox contributors, including some employed by Mozilla."
If the purpose of Mozilla is to provide high-quality, standards-compliant products, then this is the smart move. If the purpose is to advocate for all things open source, then this is a bad move. The project is made up of people from both those camps, so there is going to be much gnashing of teeth over this, and the mandate from on high without discussing it isn't going to make it any more pleasant.
Nevertheless, Google's lack of commitment to removing h.264 from Chrome doesn't help. Maybe Google could buy MPEG-LA and end this nonsense once and for all?
Or pay $$$ for proprietary tools for developing websites.
One of the reasons I hated flash was the web was no longer open. 10 years ago you could use Linux to develop web pages because it had cool xml, php, database and other tools. Then flash and Adobe came around and turned it into a win32 and to a much lesser extent mac platform.
All the good candidates with the right skills had these $2,000 tools as HR check listed flash, flex, dreamweaver, illustrator, etc.
I view h.264 as another tie in to expensive tools that force you to pirate and not update your own pc just be job competitive. That is against the spirit of the web. No free tool can exist because h.264 is licensed and proprietary.
http://saveie6.com/
It only stands to reason that if you're using standard system APIs to access codecs that have been purchased or installed by the user/owner, then ALL of those codecs should be usable, not just the free ones.
What's the point of having a general purpose browser if you let it get polluted by political arguments about which codecs the USER installs? Using system codecs is not "polluting the code" -- it's letting the user decide.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Google promised they'd drop H.264 in Chrome... and then never did. Recent queries about the state of that promise are met with curious silence.
XP supports h.264 just fine. You can get lots of h.264 decoders and encoders for XP. It's just that Microsoft hasn't extended licensing of h.264 to XP (it costs money).
The DRM thing is a non-issue. "Protected Path" is a DRM technology for use in specific use cases - e.g., playing back Blu-Ray movies, where a software playback app MUST use measures to protect the stream. So if you want to play back Blu-Ray, you need Vista or Win7.
Heck, XP plays h.264 just fine - if you ever view YouTube videos in 720p or 1080p (and sometimes 480p) YouTube is sending you an h.264 stream.
h.264 has nothing to do with copyrights - it's just that the algorithm uses a lot of patented technologies and it's the patents that require paying royalties to use (you can make agreements with every patent holder, or just pay a flat fee to the MPEG-LA). The mateiral encoded in h.264 is copyrighted.
So an XP user has at least three ways to play back an h.264 video without spending a dime. First would be Flash player which includes h.264 support for videos. Second is iTunes/QuickTime which provides its own h.264 decoder for free. Third is to install VLC.
Those companies didn't have to implement WebM because they already had implemented H.264. In format wars Johnny-come-lately = also-ran. Plus why use a competitors' format, WebM, when you can use your own ? People are quick to call "patent trap" when Microsoft releases something "open", but when it's Google everyone has to trust blindly ?
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
"Adoption of the HTML5 video element has been hampered by the lack of (software vendors like Microsoft and Apple implementing WebM)" is closer to reality
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla
Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Not to mention that for mobile devices, in many cases the hardware support for WebM is missing. H.264 is what almost all cameras record in now. H.264 is what professionals use in BluRays etc. H.264 is what pirates tend to use. Almost everybody, everywhere is using H.264, apart from the WebM beta on YouTube I haven't seen it used anywhere. Firefox represents one web browser, zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM. The rest of the world will continue to work with H.264, while Firefox is worked around with Flash/H.264 until Mozilla either changes their mind or becomes irrelevant. Which I suppose is the case on mobile, I can't even find them on the mobile browser stats.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
How few? In 2027.
Summary: http://www.osnews.com/story/24954/US_Patent_Expiration_for_MP3_MPEG-2_H_264/
Patent break-down: http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_lists#H.264_patents
To quote the summary
H.264 is a newer video codec. The standard first came out in 2003, but continues to evolve. An automatically generated patent expiration list is available at H.264 Patent List based on the MPEG-LA patent list. The last expiration is US 7826532 on 29 nov 2027 ( note that 7835443 is divisional, but the automated program missed that). US 7826532 was first filed in 05 sep 2003 and has an impressive 1546 day extension. It will be a while before H.264 is patent free.
Mozilla already plays H264 video embedded in flash contents through an external flash plugin. Today.
So why would it be controversial to allow another plugin to do the same?
)9TSS
They shouldn't "support H.264" but rather, they should support any unknown (to the browser) codec by trying the OS.
There are two different issues going on here, and the Mozilla team got one of them right and one of them wrong.
Let VDPAU/VA-API/whatever deal with it. All of it, and Mozilla won't have to maintain Theora or WebM code, either. Then they can get back to hunting for memory leaks. ;-)
They won't, just like they don't know that now. Stuff will fail. And if when does, maybe the browser can tell the user to get off their ass and go vote for a change.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
List of H.264 licensors :
Apple Inc., Cisco Systems Canada IP Holdings Company, Cisco Technology, Inc., DAEWOO Electronics Corporation, Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation, Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, France Télécom, société anonyme*, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. , Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hitachi Consumer Electronics Co., Ltd., JVC KENWOOD Corporation*, Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., LG Electronics Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, NTT DOCOMO, INC., Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, Panasonic Corporation, Polycom, Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., Sedna Patent Services, LLC, Sharp Corporation, Siemens AG, Sony Corporation, Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Toshiba Corporation
List of companies supporting WebM:
Google, Mozilla
All the above companies can make use of H.264 knowing they won't get screwed because they are on the inside. What guarantee do they have they won't get screwed by some patent covering some of WebM ? A lot are competing directly or indirectly with Google, what guarantee do they have Google won't screw them ? A lot of those companies are developing hardware right now that has existing H.264 hardware decode and/or encode support (already an industry standard), what would they gain by throwing that away and starting from scratch and coming to market god knows when ? Face it: WebM hasn't got, and never had, a shot. Either it's a cheap viral marketing campaign for Google or someone up there is pretty deluded about their clout in the tech world.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
In this case, I would be willing to be that the reason is that the pirate groups have now made x264 the defacto standard for standard definition TV. AVI is falling by the wayside, and therefore Mozilla is just keeping up with the tech savvy of the interwebs. http://torrentfreak.com/bittorrent-pirates-go-nuts-after-tv-release-groups-dump-xvid-120303/
Companies that won't support H.264: Mozilla
And Opera
Companies that won't support WebM: Many...
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
zero devices and a microscopic share of the whole video format ecosystem but think the whole world will bend to their will for WebM.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
Except that PNG is objectively better than GIF, while WebM is objectively worse than h.264.
These changes will occur in the next couple months
Posted over a year ago, and guess what, h.264 is still there.
WebM supporters: Free Software Foundation, Participatory Culture Foundation, Xiph, Android, Codecian, Collabora, CoreCodec, Digital Rapids, FFmpeg, Adobe Flash Player, Flumotion Services, Google Chrome, Grab Networks, iLink, Inlet Technologies, Oracle Java, Matroska, Moovida, Mozilla, ooVoo, Opera, Oracle, Harmonic Rhozet, Skype, SightSpeed, Sorenson, Telestream, Tixeo, Ucentrik, VideoLAN, Wildform, Winamp Media Player, Wowza Media Server, XBMC Media Center, Allwinner Tech, AMD, Anyka, ARM, Broadcom, Chinachip, Chips&Media, C2 Microsystems, DSP Group, Freescale, GeneralPlus, Hisilicon, Hydra Control Freak, Imagination Technologies, Shanghai InfoTM Microelectronics, Leadcore Technology, Logitech, Marvell, MIPS, MStar Semiconductor, nVidia, Qualcomm, Rockchip Microelectronics, RayComm Group, SEUIC, Socle Technology Corp., ST-Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Verisilicon, Videantis, ViewCast, ZiiLABS, ZTE Corporation, Anevia, Brightcove, Delve Networks, Encoding.com, EntropyWave, Flumotion Services, HD Cloud, HeyWatch.com, Kaltura, Media Core, MetaCDN, ooyala, Panda, Panvidea, Sorenson 360, thePlatform, VideoRX.com, VMIX, YouTube, Zencoder
And Opera
Actually, according to Opera itself:
Opera Mobile's support of particular video codecs is device-dependent: WebM and H.264 are supported, if available on the platform.
So Opera is not refusing to use the system codecs on mobile, like Firefox is.
Which? Microsoft and Apple? So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins. Blah blah everybody blah blah.
Opera is practically insignificant on the desktop and they support H.264 on the mobile. And yes IE does support H.264 it's everything else they only support via plugins.
Yeh google should remove all support for h264 in android. Oh thats 60% of smart phones. woops. And remove flash and h264 from youtube. Should make webM relevant then. How many sites do you use which have videos?
And here's really the clue, there's no indication Google is actually doing any of these things. Chrome still ships with H.264 support, every Android phone ships with H.264 support, YouTube's WebM is in eternal beta while everything is standardizing on H.264. Mozilla has been standing on the other side waiting for Google to join them but they're not coming, it's like threatening to migrate from MS Office to LibreOffice to get a better price but in the end you're staying on MS Office anyway. And Mozilla is now standing there dumbfounded saying "but but but you said you were migrating". It's not Firefox and Google, it's just Firefox and wishful thinking.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No. WebM is technically worse than h.264. How much does that count is subjective.
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So to on each side then.. And guess what; Microsoft don't support h264 in IE, they just support plugins.
Internet Explorer 9 supports two, and only two, codecs in the HTML5 video element. IE9 supports H.264 and it supports WebM if the codec has been installed. No other codecs are supported, not even, for example, Windows Media Video.
Okay, I just did some rough calculations on the support for HTML5 video codecs by browsers (source), weighted by browser market share (source via), including both desktop and mobile browsers. What I got was:
Theora: 41%
WebM: 37%
H.264: 41%
None: 40%
These numbers add up to more than 100% because some browsers support more than one codec. Looking at single codec support I get:
WebM and not H.264: 17%
H.264 and not WebM: 21%
What it amounts to is that FF + Opera(Desktop) have close to the same market share as IE9 + Safari (OSX & iOS), so they just about cancel each other out. IE9 market share is growing slowly (thanks to not supporting win XP), so there's still a couple of years for WebM to gain traction before declaring H.264 a sure winner for HTML5 video.
True. And WebM comes with an uncertain future as that same patent troll organization will probably come after the first well funded WebM implementer. At this point in time it is unknown whether they would succeed in showing that WebM violates any existing patents. However it is a virtual certainty that they will try and that it will be expensive to defend against. This is why folks like Microsoft and Apple have stayed away and simply said that they will use WebM if there is already a plug in on the system that implements it. Whoever writes and distributes that plug in gets to battle the wrath of the h.264 patent trolls.
Actually, a big reason Microsoft and Apple wont touch VP8 is that they hold H.264 patents and are members of the H.264 patent pool and that because of the extremely broad patent grant attached to VP8, supporting it would mean giving up the rights to use their patents as part of a future VP8 patent pool and extract money from those who ARE using VP8.
Being technically worse, when trying to win customers from a competitor which is already entrenched counts for everything. Really, other than pie in the sky idealism, there is zero reason to use WebM/VP8 - the content generation tools aren't there, inbuilt operating system/device support isn't there, and the CODEC itself is inferior. Other than for political reasons - which the average user has ZERO care for, it is lose-lose-lose. Thus, the average user won't use it.
If you want to win customers over, build something BETTER, not some half-assed attempt that has no hardware or commercial software support and due to inferior performance, never will do.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Actually, h.264 is "openly" patent encumbered, with a well known licensing policy. WebM/VP8 is on shaky legal ground; there is only google claiming it is "open" and "free". It has yet to be tested in court, and an analysis of the code/algorithm shows siginificant similarities.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
So I guess after you paid the h264 racket nobody else can come and sue you because of some unknown paten, rightt? Tought not.
I'm glad we don't have this kind of idiocy around here.
Rethinking email
Thus, the average user won't use it.
BS. The "average" user will use whatever youtube, hulu, netflix, funnyordie, xtube, pornhub, etc etc spit out at them.
The past has had real player, quicktime, wmv, mpeg*, flash (with multiple video codecs), silverlight (multiple codecs), etc etc etc etc. Neither WebM nor h.264 is going to be the format to end all formats.
We're down to only two formats now in this spec. This should be easily fixed with a combo of:
a) let the browser support both via plugins of some sort (or OS media layer calls)
b) let the site detect and send the supported format.
Maybe that's not ideal, but your average user won't give a rats ass. h.264 has the technical/performance edge, and WebM has the open edge... there is no clear winner (you may define one, but others obviously do not). There's no point in wasting any more time arguing about it until h.264 clears the patent roadblocks or WebM catches up in hardware and software support.... just plan to support both, and ALL your users will be happy.
Well that sounds like "head in the sand" to me. From someone qualified who has analyzed the code in detail:
If google was confident they were in the clear, they wouldn't be stuffing clauses in the license to the effect of "if this code infringes, you're on your own!".
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.