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."

Comments

Defining the purpose of Mozilla

[Tumbleweed]

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?

Re:Defining the purpose of Mozilla

[BZ]

No, the purpose is a free and open web and has been all along. Which is why Mozilla is doing various non-browser things (opposition to SOPA/PIPA, the Do-Not-Track header, B2G, BrowserID, etc, etc).

It just happened that while there was a browser monopoly the most important thing standing in the way of an open web was the existence of the browser monopoly, and the best way to fight it was to create a better browser.

Re:Defining the purpose of Mozilla

[rjstanford]

If the purpose is to advocate for all things open source, then this is a bad move.

This is almost as silly as saying that, to advocate for open source, Linux kernels should refuse to run closed-source software.

More reasonably, consider that all modern operating systems provide a codec library. Firefox is one of the very few products that provides its own, out-of-sync one. Its a throwback to the times when every program used to include its own graphics, sound, and printer drivers. We moved away from those times for a very good reason.

If the Mozilla Foundation wants to make sure that all Firefox users can view at least the same subset of videos, they could always include and install a variety of freely licensed video codecs into the O/S store, and have that as a default part of the Firefox installation scripts. Of course, then the users' experience might be better in non-Firefox products also...

Re:Defining the purpose of Mozilla

[Zenin]

"Its a throwback to the times when every program used to include its own graphics, sound, and printer drivers. We moved away from those times for a very good reason."

There's a reason why VLC can play basically anything, on any system, far better and more reliably then anything else on the planet. And it sure as hell isn't because they're leveraging whatever maze of codec hell happens to be lying around a user's system.

System codecs were a nice idea in theory that never delivered in practice. Too many bad codecs included with every random software application that all register themselves to try and be the first priority codec for every format for the entire system... Did I mention there's no sane way for users to adjust codec priority order? The best of tools are 3rd party and at best can be described as incredibly cryptic. And they each are trying to reinvent that wheel because the ones actually shipped with the base OS are themselves, bad.

Mozilla using system codes would increase crash reports 100 fold overnight, as well as security breaches, 99.9% of which would have nothing to do with Mozilla but damned if the users know or care about the distinction, and there wouldn't be a damned thing Mozilla could do to fix it if they wanted to.

Re:Wasn't Chrome supposed to drop H264 support!?

[Billly Gates]

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.

ANY native-supplied codec should be usable

[msobkow]

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.

Re:Wasn't Chrome supposed to drop H264 support!?

[BZ]

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.

Re:WebM

[CharlyFoxtrot]

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 ?

Re:WebM

[Kjella]

"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.

Hypocrits!

[pesc]

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?

Don't make it about H.264

[Sloppy]

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.

1. The don't want to implement something that is illegal to implement (or even use!), e.g. patented codecs without permission. Mozilla made the right call on this, all along. Free Software can't implement H.264 without "going underground" (which is itself a loss of freedom, romantic though it be).
2. They want all Mozilla users to have the same experience, so they define it as "intolerably bad" if one Mozilla user can play codec x and another Mozilla user can't. Mozilla got this wrong; it's not "intolerably bad" ; it's "regrettably bad." It's something to be angry about, but the decision is out of your hands. There isn't anything Mozilla can do that will cause it to be, that all users can play all codecs. That battle is over until we have patent reform (or until patents expire in a decade or two). Until then, a balkanized web is something we simply must live with. That's the political world you live in.

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. ;-)

how will Web developers know when they can and cannot count on system codecs?

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.

Piracy drives technology

[Snowlock45]

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/

Re:WebM

[Goaway]

Except that PNG is objectively better than GIF, while WebM is objectively worse than h.264.

Re:WebM

[mrnobo1024]

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

Re:WebM

[Kjella]

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.

Re:WebM

[icebraining]

No. WebM is technically worse than h.264. How much does that count is subjective.

Re:WebM

[theweatherelectric]

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.

By market share they are about even.

[pavon]

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.

Re:WebM

[jonwil]

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.

Re:WebM

[smash]

Cute twist you're trying to pull -- make a realistic statement mixed with falsehood. WebM is Open Source, h.264 is proprietary. Both are 'free' to use but there's much, much more likelihood that at any point in the future h.264 could implement 'fees'. Or maybe you're just naive and inadvertently mixing 'open' with 'free'.

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.

Re:WebM

[unrtst]

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.

Re:WebM

[smash]

Sounds like FUD to me.

Well that sounds like "head in the sand" to me. From someone qualified who has analyzed the code in detail:

Finally, the problem of patents appears to be rearing its ugly head again. VP8 is simply way too similar to H.264: a pithy, if slightly inaccurate, description of VP8 would be “H.264 Baseline Profile with a better entropy coder”. Even VC-1 differed more from H.264 than VP8 does, and even VC-1 didn’t manage to escape the clutches of software patents. It’s quite possible that VP8 has no patent issues, but until we get some hard evidence that VP8 is safe, I would be cautious. Since Google is not indemnifying users of VP8 from patent lawsuits, this is even more of a potential problem. Most importantly, Google has not released any justifications for why the various parts of VP8 do not violate patents, as Sun did with their OMS standard: such information would certainly cut down on speculation and make it more clear what their position actually is.

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!".