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Wikimedia Community Debates H.264 Support On Wikipedia Sites.
bigmammoth writes "Wikimedia has been a long time supporter of royalty free formats, but is now considering a shift in their position. From the RfC: 'To support the MP4 standard as a complement to the open formats now used on our sites, it has been proposed that videos be automatically transcoded and stored in both open and MP4 formats on our sites, as soon as they are uploaded or viewed by users. The unencumbered WebM and Ogg versions would remain our primary reference for platforms that support them. But the MP4 versions 'would enable many mobile and desktop users who cannot view these unencumbered video files to watch them in MP4 format.'
This has stirred a heated debate within the Wikimedia community as to whether the mp4 / h.264 format should be supported. Many Wikimedia regulars have weighed in, resulting in currently an even split between adding the H.264 support or not. The request for comment is open to all users of Wikimedia, including the broader community of readers. What do you think about supporting H.264 on Wikimedia sites?"
It's an encyclopedia, not YouTube.
Wikimedia should stand their ground to provide a good reason for device manufacturers to add support for open video formats.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
If it means I can consume the non-text/image content on more devices than those that support webm/ogg then all the better.
Reminds me of the whole 'GIF vs PNG' battle in the mid 90's.
Yes they should do this. Sometimes, you can't fight City Hall - you just have to go with the flow so that your website becomes more useful to people. It's annoying that media files on Wikipedia don't "just work" on most devices, not even desktops.
I appreciate their position and somewhat support it, but they've been holding out for so long now with absolutely no effect. The only losers are the site's users. At least Mp4 is a standard, albeit not as free as idealists would like.
Wikipedia should focus on creating the best possible experience for its users rather than using its sites as a platform for ideology.
If it makes Windows 8 stop annoying me I'm for just about anything.
Is it also a form of censorship that they don't support everything else on this list?
What if I need my video in Indeo or Bink or RealVideo or WMV? They're denying me the ability to watch them! Ermahgerd!
This is not YouTube we're talking about, where its 100% about immediacy and convenience. People can download a free player--or use a non-Microsoft/Apple browser--when they're good and ready to view the Wikimedia content.
So many exceptions/compromises have been made to make iphone/apple inc. to continue their abusive practice. (Even mosh, a GPL v3 software, made an Apple store exception for it !) Doing so can only enhance their position. Their next step is to do more.
Supporting open format is snap for them to do. They should also compromise sometime.
In every meaningful sense, MP4 is the most 'open' useful video CODEC every made available. The world's BEST video encoder, x264, is open-source and free. Every worthwhile tool you need to encode, process and watch H264 video is FREE. H264 decoding is supported almost universally in hardware by everything made today.
Meanwhile, the dreadful CODEC that Google bought was created illegally by using close-source development as a method of hiding the fact that it ripped off (badly) patented MPEG standards. After Google released the source, and the truth became obvious, Google simply used its billions to pay off the various IP owners whose patents the code infringed on. Google offers its CODEC for free ONLY because Google chooses to bear the IP costs inherent in the use of its CODEC.
It gets worse. The hardware support of Google's dreadful CODEC is almost non-existent, so Google class videos are frequently decoded on the CPU, using insanely greater amounts of energy. Encoding Google class video (which always gives worse results than x264 when other metrics are equivalent) also uses far more power. And you thought Google was "politically correct" and "green"?
All Google wants is control. And Google's incompetent rip-off of H264 and now their new rip-off of H265 are all about control. With H264 and H265, the user has control, and Google hates this. So Google seeds forums like this with the usual vile shills that seek to take advantage of people whose knowledge of the facts behind H264 and its horrifically bad, originally unlicensed copy, VP8, is non-existent.
PS putting Ogg (a TRUE free sound CODEC) and WebM (Google's licensed AFTER-the-fact terrible rip-off of H264) in the same sentence is as misleading an attempt at pro-Google propaganda as you can get.
stop stifling innovation to stroke egos
Are you an idiot? h.264 is the proprietary format in use today.
By failing to support MP4/H264 they are defacto creating a means of censorship , i.e. denying the ability to watch the videos to those who do not share the same ideological stance.
This is bullshit. You're abusing the definition of censorship the way politicians abuse the word "terrorist".
MP4 is the industry standard, by choosing a non standard format they are knowingly limiting the amount of people that can view the format, really it is a braindead decision, information sharing shouldn't be about ideology. We have enough shit forced on people by governments already.
While we are be mature about it what prevents someone from creating a bot that searches for your sabotages and submit the source IP address to DDOS?
But the MP4 versions 'ould enable...
I think you accidentally a etter.
Many wikimedia regulars
That should, of course, be Wikimedia, with a big wuh.
Can we replace the words "Posted by" with "Blindly rubber-stamped by"?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
And for these people the cost of paying for a H.264 encoder license is trivial compared to royalties they have to pay for images, video, and music.
And what about the developing world that is slowly coming online via shared community hubs? Won't they have the right to publish content too without paying exuberant rents compared to their income? The cost is trivial for everyone. I am sorry but open formats are the only way forward for a level playing field. All we are seeing with this WWF/H.264 debacle is a small amount of vested interests trying to justify extracting rents from the world population, when non are really required.
That these closed proprietary formats/DRM are clawing their way back into our "open" standards, services like Wikipedia and browsers is a testament to how committees, foundations (and once democratic institutions serving the public interest) can be infiltrated by vested interest and their purpose corrupted slowly from the inside out. It is a slippery slope, read todays news to see how absolutely low you can slide.
They should use m4v, not mp4, so that multilingual subtitles can work.
Now there is a category of people so disconnected from reality that are ok to overpay an already excessively rich phone manufacturer that refuse to support free format, and there only reaction to there frustration is to ask a poor free project to support commercial format. I wonder how many of them have donate something to Wikipedia.
But I am not so surprised. I have observed many times that a lot of people tend to be proud of what there have payed and disregards what there have not payed, even when the reality clearly show that there money was not worth the result. It's a childish behavior to ask others to fix your own false choice.
INCITEFUL POST SIR
STOP
YOUR INTELLETENT
STOP
I WISH I COULD HAVE BEEN AS SMRT AS YOU
STOP
THE END
caps aren't like yelling when caps are the truth
This idea that publishing in these free formats is difficult is just FUD. I publish videos all the time in these formats. It's just a matter of selecting the codec. The people upset are those who can't access the videos on there iDevices. Sorry- but your poor choice is your own fault. I'll stick to publishing in a format everybody who makes a conscious decision can play. I'm not buying your self-righteous self-indulgence. Be a little less selfish and maybe I'll start actually listening to your argument.
And yea- I've got the $$$ to spend as CEO and owner of a growing corporation.
Why exactly is Apple not supporting the open standard? I'd really like to hear the defence of that decision, from both Apple and you. That's what this whole thing really comes down to ... why is Apple explicitly not supporting open formats.
In my opinion, supporting H.264 is not much less wrong than the W3C moving to support DRM in the web. It ties EVERYONE into proprietary and restrictive data formats.
The unencumbered WebM and Ogg versions would remain our primary reference for platforms that support them. But the MP4 versions 'ould[sic] enable many mobile and desktop users who cannot view these unencumbered video files to watch them in MP4 format.'
Something is fucking wrong with this situation...
This seemed like a reasonable sig at the time.
The industry has adopted a standard and EVERYONE supports. Wikimedia have decided to use a adopted "standard" on ideology grounds as they don't like industry standards.
Actually information sharing is an ideology, it is the ideology that started the project. Open formats are the best way to do so because they are the only way to actually share it (as opposed to allow to consume).
Not allowing open formats and standards is to knowingly limit the content users can view. While I do think it is braindead to buy something that does that, Apple users seem to think it's cool to have limited knowledge and accessibility. If they don't think that's the case, they should force their devices to comply to standards. The industry or the market "standard" is not the information sharing standard, it's not even a standard, it is just whoever is on top at the moment.
This doesn't answer the question.
Why exactly should they? I am no apple fan. But the onus is not on them, it is on the creators of the format to provide a convincing argument as to why they should. As far as I can see the formats have no technical, quality, or resource utilisation benefits, it comes down to licensing. On top of that there is already an excellent format in place which these formats are only looking to replace based on licensing model. actions that block users from media is only ever going to alienate people even more.
probably because it is the WRONG question. The question is why should they support it? They already support the industry wide adopted standard, the community is asking them to support something that is not industry accepted at this point.
This very forum called it censorship when a government site published apps that didn't support Linux and were screaming for the injustice to be rectified. Either both actions are wrong or both are fine. Personally I am in the camp that both are wrong. Industry standards are there to make everyones life easier. If you want to support a new format then by all means support it AS WELL, but don't sacrifise the general public to your jihad.
One of the biggest sites on the web uses it, as well as many others.
Never ever seen one.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
and millions more use the H.264. besides which one of the biggest sites is only using it out of self interest because they created it. take them away and it has almost non existent support in the industry.
Never, but it can add to a list of small frustrations, getting a user to switch manufacturers next contract renewal.
Someone who switches from an iPhone will lose all his purchased videos, all his purchased books, and all his purchased iPhone apps. Only the music is DRM-free. He would have to re-buy everything else on Android, provided that they're even available on Android and not exclusive to iTunes. The iPhone, for example, is the only phone that can stream video from Amazon.
Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
Does "purely philosophical" include the simple fact that nobody has yet donated an encoder license to Wikimedia Foundation?
Is "strongarm" an appropriate word for what Apple is doing?
Apple has been strongarming on its mobile platform since around 1998 when the MessagePad 2000 came out.
What exactly is their reason for not supporting an open format?
One reason is battery life, as it'd have to be decoded on the CPU instead of on the dedicated MPEG ASIC. When you really need to make a call, you don't want to lose touch after having watched a bunch of videos earlier in the day. The other is Nokia's decision to assert its patents against the use of VP8.
The people upset are those who can't access the videos on there iDevices.
The HTC Dream didn't exist when the original iPhone came out, and when Android came out, iPod and iPhone were still using DRM on music. What viable alternative was there when people first started to get locked into the iEcosystem?
You must not have a lot of friends with land-line phones (which can't text) or flip phones (on whose numeric keypad texting is incredibly tedious).
Though the GIF battle ended, the war continues on the MPEG-LA front.
Let the contributor opt in/out.
Or doesn't anyone do compromise anymore?
--dant
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
As far as I can see the formats have no technical, quality, or resource utilisation benefits, it comes down to licensing.
H.264 would require Wikimedia Foundation to utilize more of the resources (that is, money) donated to it.
h.264 war is lost - there is too much entrenched.
But the next gen codec war is not, and in the battle between h.265 and VP9, there aren't as much legacy to worry about. If VP9 is completely royalty free, guess what? The industry consortium will pick it, even if it is inferior to h.265 because being able to crank out parts with VP9 decoders for free means more profit for them. (And didn't Google pretty much pay off all royalties for VP9?).
Standing your ground may win you the battle, but if you lose sight that h.264's relevance is going to diminish in the next few years to be replaced by the next gen h.265, then you've lost the war. Best to move on, and put your energy into promoting VP9 so it becomes standard.
bullshit. h.264 will be around for a long time, and the patents will expire in about a decade. h.265 will be there, but h.264 will be an option in most cases.
A bunch of MPEG2 patents are going to expire in 2015. MPEG2 is popular, it is the compression used in DVDs. I would try to define of subset of MPEG2 that doesn't use any unexpired patents, as of january 1, 2016, or some other date, and use that as the free video format for the forseeable future. Yes, it will use more bandwidth, but there are always tradeoffs.
and what is this giant media site that exclusively supports webm as opposed to h264? not even youtube does that?
What open video formats are you talking about? From where I'm sitting, there aren't any.
VP8? Owned by Google. NOT FREE! But it's CC3 ... libvpx is BSD .... No, it's CC3, so non-commercial works only. Yes, I'm talking about commercial works here!
H.264? Owned by MPEG-LA. NOT FREE! That, requires payment of royalties if I intend to sell a video in that format.
So tell me again? What open video format exists that I can sell a video, and not have to pay any royalties out on the format, or is required release as non-commercial? That's right, they don't exist!
Yes! I'd like to sell movies that I make, and not have to pay royalties out for the format they put out under. How hard is that for the tech. community to understand! Because everytime I bring it up, either on the web, or in real life, nobody can speak a word!
And before you get defensive, an Open Video Format does not require that it not be a profitable format!
software decoders eat battery.
hardware support for codec is required, and this generation's hardware doesn't have OGG or WEBM
H.265 is already planned to go into 2015 devices (TVs and BD players) in order to support upcoming features like 4k and HDR - but, there is still a chance to get VP9, etc in there.
Netflix and Amazon aren't waiting until 2015 to anchor their position as the leading providers of 4K video.
Netflix says video streaming of its programming in ultra-high definition will work for buyers of new UHD sets from LG, Sony, Samsung, Vizio and others upon purchase.
That's because Ultra HD models from those makers will include the Netflix app and chips that decode signals in the so-called High Efficiency Video Coding standard, or HEVC.
The chip is required to decode signals that Netflix Inc. will compress by more than 100 times and squeeze through the Internet at a speed of 15.6 megabits per second. That's a download speed widely available from Internet providers in the U.S.
Netflix app to stream "Ultra HD" 4K video on new TVs
That'd be fine if it were a programmable DSP or a pixel shader doing most of the work. But I've read that a lot of MPEG ASICs have the entropy codes, pixel predictors, transforms, and other parts of an MPEG codec baked directly into the silicon. Some of them just take an MPEG bitstream as input and spit out pixels and audio samples as output.
By failing to support MP4/H264 they are defacto creating a means of censorship , i.e. denying the ability to watch the videos to those who do not share the same ideological stance.
This is bullshit. You're abusing the definition of censorship the way politicians abuse the word "terrorist".
I can not view H.264 video on my system. I compile everything myself, and the source it is not available in a form that is legal for me to compile the codec, or interact with hardware that can decode it.
If the kerfuffle over this has one positive outcome - it will be the insufferable, ridiculously self-righteous Wikimedia users leaving en masse and making Wikimedia a much nicer place to contribute again...
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
If someone can take a principled stance against this, they should. Right now the only entities with a spine are the ones who aren't for-profit, and none of them can stand up to it, and end users should really be supporting them. Do we really want Google and the MPEG-LA to dominate like that, knowing what happens every time companies dominate something like that?
Well said. A reference on your betrayal of Google: http://news.cnet.com/8301-11386_3-57612525-76/vlc-steps-into-next-gen-video-wars-with-vp9-hevc-support/
"So one of the MPEG LA companies may well have a patent which would necessarily be violated decoding WebM."
Of course, one of the WebM patents may precede and be unlicensed by MPEG-LA. A patent troll could have a patent necessarily breeched by the H264 license. In neither case are you given a license to the technology nor protected by MPEG-LA from a lawsuit for using it, and being that you will have to pay to use it, you will have to be commercial, making it a ripe target for some more skimming.
So I guess this means that H.264 is not usable, eh?
No?
Well, then, if it's not a sufficient reason to say H264 is unsafe and troublesome, then it's not sufficient reason to say WebM is unsafe or troublesome.
Just because ONE application maker doesn't want, for reasons unconnected with utility or practicality, to support WebM, why should Wikimedia stroke Apple egos and make an exception for them?
"But I've read that a lot of MPEG ASICs have the entropy codes, pixel predictors, transforms, and other parts of an MPEG codec baked directly into the silicon"
most of the heavy lifting done by ASICs are for processes that are inherent in video compression and out of patent or unpatentable.
Rockbox does slightly (and only slightly) worse on battery life because it cannot take advantage of hidden knowledge of how the hardware is dealt with, but it plays Ogg formats fine, accelerated, and the impact on battery life too small to be measured against the other options for battery differences. E.g. pick a video or music that is more efficient in one than it is in the other and you get a different balance.
They don't need to pay for encoder software. Almost everyone by now already has access to a properly licensed h.264 encoder. I've got three, not counting the ones built-in to devices (4 cameras, 2 phones, 1 tablet)- Quicktime, Compressor, Sorenson Squeeze. Wikimedia can just require the proper h.264 formats they want to support (size, bitrate, hinting, etc.). Post it on their video uploader/info page, test for it with a number of utilities, reject it if it doesn't meet the requirements. Presto... no encoder needed. Hands are clean. They can then still support the open video formats and transcode it to those formats just like the Internet Archive does with MP4 files that it receives.
Users: free playback, access to more educational videos
Wikimedia: no encoder license, transcode to open formats
Contributors: already have encoder and can contribute more
Net result: Wikimedia still supporting open formats, adds to the commons by transcoding video, pays nothing to h.264 companies, now has accesses to more videos
Posting anon to keep moderation (Immerial)
By failing to support MP4/H264 they are defacto creating a means of censorship , i.e. denying the ability to watch the videos to those who do not share the same ideological stance.
This is bullshit. You're abusing the definition of censorship the way politicians abuse the word "terrorist".
I can not view H.264 video on my system. I compile everything myself, and the source it is not available in a form that is legal for me to compile the codec, or interact with hardware that can decode it.
Thanks for this, but um, why did you post it to me? It's irrelevant to my point. It's meaningless.
"It has no support if you ignore the fact that it has support."
Stunning argument.
The power to TAX something is the power to restrict or destroy it.
Ask why nearly ALL the device makers are so afraid of unencumbered, "untaxed", video and audio codex?
Technically, Apple does support motion JPEG as a video format on OSX which is a royalty free format. MPEG-1 is also probably royalty free as well and is supported on OSX Safari. However, even Ogg Theora beats those formats on compression.
(Of course, without Apple's objection to Ogg Theora, it would probably be a required codec for HTML5.)
As I understand that press release, MPEG-LA has committed to refrain from charging a royalty for making already encoded videos available to the public without charge. It didn't mention anything about royalties for obtaining lawfully made encoder software in the first place, such as the encoder needed to thumbnail a 1080p video down to 720p, 480p, 360p, and 240p.