Examining the HTML 5 Video Codec Debate 459
Ars Technica has a great breakdown of the codec debate for the HTML 5 video element. Support for the new video element seems to be split into two main camps, Ogg Theora and H.264, and the inability to find a solution has HTML 5 spec editor Ian Hickson throwing in the towel. "Hickson outlined the positions of each major browser vendor and explained how the present impasse will influence the HTML 5 standard. Apple and Google favor H.264 while Mozilla and Opera favor Ogg Theora. Google intends to ship its browser with support for both codecs, which means that Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg. 'After an inordinate amount of discussions, both in public and privately, on the situation regarding codecs for and in HTML5, I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that there is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,' Hickson wrote. 'I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined.'"
why does the codec have to be in the spec? (Score:5, Insightful)
irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
"Apple is the only vendor that will not be supporting Ogg"
Except IE, which doesn't support, and has not announced plans to support, anything. Until they decide what they're going to do, it really doesn't matter what everyone else is doing.
Major browser vendors (Score:5, Insightful)
Right, while convenient, that doesn't strike me as a very comprehensive list of "major browser vendors".
There was a simple solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
They could have simply specified that a browser must support ONE of the two options, h.264 or Theora. This would have at least provided a reference to websites, such that they can guarantee that they need support no more than two codecs. Without a standard, they can't necessarily guarantee that a browser will support either. A third party browser may come by and decide to implement nothing but MJPEG since it isn't specified.
I mean, there are legitimate concerns in both camps. Theora's hardware support is non-existent, and h.264 has expensive licensing fees. So why not allow browser manufactuerers to pick the one that best suits their position, rather than leaving it undefined entirely?
A guarantee of at least one of two being supported is better than no guarantee at all.
Hardware Encoders (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does it care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used? Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
Re:why does the codec have to be in the spec? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because otherwise you end up with the case that no one codec works in all browsers, so websites will have to support both formats by encoding all their videos twice. Instead, I suspect most website owners would just say "yeah....OR I could just keep doing it in flash and only worry about 1 format that can work in all browsers."
Re:Translation (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does it care? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a toughy (Score:3, Insightful)
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Since it seems pretty likely most web users couldn't care less about open vs. closed software, the answer seems obvious - go with h.264, the superior but closed codec. And do it now before Microsoft wades in and decides to muddy things up with more embrace/extend/extinguish shenanigans.
Pick one and market forces will encourage support (Score:1, Insightful)
If they can pick one that 80% of browsers will support, say Firefox, Chrome and Internet Explorer, then all the small players like apple and opera will support it eventually or their users will start to complain.
I only see the real problem is if the two largest vendors cannot agree. Let the small players go jump in a lake.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps someone on the Xiph board did something to one of Apple's Media guys when they were kids or something?
Apple simply does not like free codecs because if customers are allowed to use them, then the corporation loses some control over the customers. That's the reason why people should refuse to buy anything from Apple and other companies with similar attitude towards their customers.
Re:Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be nice if Apple would go ahead and support OGG Vorbis and OGG Theora. Can any lawyerly folk give an idea of the worst possible scenario here? Someone steps forward claiming to have patented something in OGG, and Apple is forced to either strip support or pay a licensing fee?
On the other hand, their method of supporting the video tag seems somewhat reasonable. It looks like any format that Quicktime supports, Safari will support in the "video" tag. It's not hard to go download the OGG Theora codec online, and then Quicktime will support it. Same with DivX and Xvid and anything else.
No, it doesn't really solve the problem of having a single video format that you can assume everyone can play, but it's sort of a reasonable way of approaching the problem IMO. Too bad the government can't just take patents as eminent domain with some kind of pre-set compensation for the inventors. I kind of feel like we'd all be better off if the issues surrounding H264 could just be settled once and for all, without waiting for the patents to run out.
Re:There was a simple solution... (Score:5, Insightful)
HTML doesn't specify what image format must be supported (PNG, GIF, JPG, etc); why is video any different? If HTML had specified GIF explicitly up-front, we'd all be in trouble when UniSys became dicks about it.
Let the market decide. If h.264 succeeds despite the extra cost, it means folks found enough value to justify the cost. If DivX or VC1 come out of nowhere to take over the web we won't be left with an out-dated standard. If a sleeper patent hits Theora hard we'll be glad we didn't lock ourselves down.
Re:It's a toughy (Score:5, Insightful)
Inferior standard. Judging from HTML4, by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today so alleged superiority buys us very little, there'll still be a time where people interested in performance ignore the standard altogether. On the other hand, H.264's patent concerns will be with us for the next ~20 years, so Theora's advantage in ease of implementation will likely hold up for a much longer time.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:4, Insightful)
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles. We make the sites and we tell people what browser to use. FireFox didn't install itself on grandma's computer - that was us.
Re:Why does it care? (Score:3, Insightful)
> Why does the HTML5 spec care what codecs are used?
You somehow missed the whole discussion, didnt you? If a spec shouldnt care in what way content is encoded it is trying to show, what _should_ it actually care about?
> Why doesn't it just provide a way to specify which codec the author used to encode the
> media file, and let the browser prompt the user to get it if needed?
And where should a free browser get a patented and thus non-free codec from? Or did you actually mean that a free browser should serve as a sales vehicle for proprietary content codecs? Do you imagine what a mess the web would be if for example, browsers wouldnt have a few standardized image formats built in, and would ask you every time you go to a new site to purchase some other proprietary format the images on the site happen to be encoded in?
One basic codec you as a developer can rely on, that everyone has installed, is a good thing (tm). If you want better quality, better compression, whatever, you can always bog your user to install your proprietary pay-for stuff, but whats so fundamentally wrong with a free codec everybody can use, that so many sides are opposing it?
Re:There was a simple solution... (Score:3, Insightful)
Theora's hardware support is non-existent
Huh? Theora would have hardware support fired up within three blinks of its ratification as part of HTML5 and the release of browsers supporting it. For many (most? all?) instances, such "hardware" support is often implemented on DSP core(s), not a dedicated ASIC just for a specific codec, making the update just a matter of new firmware for existing systems.
Allowing a "pick one" scenario means that third-party content providers have no freaking clue what format they can present their data in for their users. The worst of all worlds: everyone has to transcode and store video into N different formats, because the industry can't get their ducks aligned...
Re:It's a toughy (Score:3, Insightful)
The desktop application market never vanished even after web apps became popular, so why assume that plugins and applets will not be worth fighting for?
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why does it care? (Score:4, Insightful)
At present, any time I'm surfing the Web and I get a popup telling me "You need to install 'X' to view this video", I assume it's a virus. I'd actually prefer to keep it that way... it's simple, at least.
Re:It's a toughy (Score:4, Insightful)
Why the false dichotomy? The market had already voted long before W3C threw in the towel. Apple wasn't going to budge simply because its hardware platform was geared for h.264. It would render the hardware obsolete because now you have to run a software decoder for Theora, sapping the battery for processing that a dedicated, low power h.264 chip already does.
The problem with the 'open standard' is not necessarily its inferiority, per se, but its complete, utter lack of general market acceptance.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless of why they have some hatred for Xiph who cares what Apple's doing?
Ipod and iPhone owners care. Content providers looking to target iPod and iPhone owners care.
Apple will either lose market share as people switch to a browser that doesn't suck or they'll cave and use Ogg.
You're oversimplifying. This about more than just Web browsers. It is also about content services. When you don't have Google's Youtube on board with Ogg and you don't have iTunes on board with Ogg and it won't play on iPhones or iPods and you have little likelihood of that changing, specifying Ogg in the spec results in the spec not gaining widespread implementation and failing.
Are we just going to stop bothering to innovate because Apple won't give us its blessing?
Apple is one of the companies pushing HTML5 and already implements it in Safari. They aren't holding back progress so much as trying to push it in a different way than what Mozilla and Opera want.
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles.
I'd say the content providers have as much or more influence than browser developers. If the video element is implemented in a way content providers like iTunes and YouTube are not happy with, then it will be ignored by them and we''ll be stuck without any progress and a Web still locked into a fragmented mix and dominated by Flash video and Silverlight.
Re:why does the codec have to be in the spec? (Score:2, Insightful)
Except that most browsers don't include Flash support, and browsers do exist on platforms for which there is no Flash.
Browsers don't just exist in desktop OS's anymore -- that's one of the big reasons for HTML5.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple uses open standards in their MobileMe / .Mac implementation. They also write standards-based server components, like CalDAV. Their platforms' preferred 3d library is OpenGL, another open standard.
Clearly they support many open standards, so it's not just about control over their customers.
Re:Like Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
The market has already decided. But it wasn't decided because of software, it was decided on hardware. Theora does not have a dedicated hardware decoder that hardware makers can pull off the shelf and incorporate into their devices. h.264 does. And, when you take into consideration the sheer number of devices that have that chip installed (virtually every 5th generation iPod and forward from Apple) it becomes very easy to tell that h.264 was going to be the winner.
Re:Like Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
All I can say is "Fuck Apple".
Re:Translation (Score:1, Insightful)
We're stuck with Flash video because Apple's iPhone doesn't support Flash? Is that right?
I agree that someone needs to take his head out of his ass.
Re:irrelevant (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it does matter, it's just that the matter is far from settled.
Honestly, I think it is possible to overestimate the power of Microsoft's vendor lock-in. If they don't get in gear and really compete in the browser market, it's only a matter of time before it bites them in the ass. They've already lost of decent chunk of the market to these other browsers.
If these browsers get to the point where they're all offering a clearly superior experience on the web, and Microsoft is still dragging their feet, they will eventually become irrelevant themselves.
Re:There was a simple solution... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a good point, but the bandwidth and storage requirements of images pale in comparison to video. I've had to make sites using GIF for IE6 and PNG for browsers that don't suck (to take advantage of the alpha channel). It was a PITA, but the extra storage requirements were not that big a deal. Doing the same with video would be much more of a problem, even with today's cheap storage.
And that is a trivial problem (Score:2, Insightful)
If HTML5 had required Theora support, there'd be two or three months delay and then all the ASICs you could shake a stick at would be there.
Apple use H.264 and so their iPod/iPhone/et al demand an ASIC for it. But until Apple wanted one, there wasn't one.
For full systems (notepad/tablet/laptop/PC) there would be a mod to the graphics card driver and there would be hardware accellerated Theora. Two weeks tops.
But there WILL NOT be a patent free H.264 for another 17+ years.
Odd you forgot about that beam in the path of the Free Market when it comes to the bloody PATENT. Very free market, that is...
Re:It's a toughy (Score:2, Insightful)
Ugh... bulky .WMV files are all I get in those "Subject: FW: FW: Fwd: FWD: FW: WOW NEATO LOOK AT THIS!!!" emails from retired relatives. Seems MS has one niche in the market nailed; the niche that doesn't understand how to post and/or send links of videos that are posted on websites.
Re:why does the codec have to be in the spec? (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole point of the element is to allow content providers to choose one of the always supported formats and therefore know a-priori that it will work in the user's browser. A "choose one from this list" strategy, or creating a new plugin-hell for codecs doesn't accomplish this end.
I disagree - the video element explicitly allows for several source files, so the whole point is not to allow only for one codec, or to mandate several codecs which are supported by everyone. That would have been nice, but hasn't been possible. As it is the video element is now being treated more like the image one - different browsers will support different image formats, but most will support a few core ones.
The whole point of the video element is to allow pages to easily embed video files (as opposed to the messy complicated method using object elements). The video element allows for several encodings in order, so the process of choosing a codec is transparent to the user, so long as you can give them something they can play, and is painless for the provider, given that there are free options for converting to ogg.
So it's quite possible right now, in theory at least, to serve video that every browser on every device can play (h.264/ogg/flash) - here's an example [camendesign.com].
Life would be great if there was one clear unencumbered codec with no drawbacks, or at least a choice of a few (as there are for image formats), but there isn't one clear winner (ogg theora has definite disadvantages, the most important being lack of hardware support and quality issues). I think Apple should support Ogg, and see why Mozilla resist h.264 - there are strong arguments for both sides.
In the meantime the video element makes presenting video possible without a plugin with any sane browser (i.e. not IE), and is a step toward native browser support when people converge on a codec (or several) as they did with image formats.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:5, Insightful)
We (developers) are the ones that determine who wins the browser battles. We make the sites and we tell people what browser to use.
Woah woah woah. That's a huge misconception that needs to be squashed right now: We, the content providers, do not tell the customer what browser to use; rather, the customer tells us what browser they're willing to use to view our content.
Why do you think so many "IE6 approved" sites still exist? Because those website's operators desperately want people to continue using IE6? No, they do it because a very large number of people are still using IE6 and are going to continue using IE6 regardless of what browser we mighty developers to try "force" others to use.
As someone else pointed out above, the problem with trying to hardball Apple into playing nice is that Apple will just sit and wait. When website developers go to create their sites and try to ensure cross-browser compatibility, their response to the problem will NOT be "Oh, Apple is just being douchebags. I'll just not bother supporting Safari until they support Theora." Instead, what they'll probably say is, "Hey, flash videos work in every browser. Why should I bother using this stupid VIDEO tag?"
Re:It's a toughy (Score:2, Insightful)
encourage browser vendors (Score:3, Insightful)
If the H.264 folk were smart they'd encourage browser vendors to support H.264 and license it to them for free. Why? Because that would ensure that H.264 becomes the dominate standard, and open the floodgates to users creating and uploading and playing H.264 video.
In the meantime, the H.264 group makes its money off the hardware guys, as now every computer, notebook, phone, and media device will need low-power dedicated H.264 hardware decoders.
Both? (Score:2, Insightful)
Can there not just be support for both?
If a browser vendor doesn't implement them both then it's their market share that will suffer, so browser vendors really would have no choice.
So... Why not implement both standards?
MPEG-LA licensing is a fucking bitch (Score:5, Insightful)
and a poster child against software patents. It's *very* expensive for small players, it's incompatible with free media, the terms are almost impossible to comprehend (or at least you need several "IP" lawyers on staff), plus you aren't even assured that you won't be sued in Texas by some scum sucking, syphillitic pus-drinking, rotting corpse-devouring and worm-infested defecation-eating patent troll.
The H264 scumbags are a scourge (Score:3, Insightful)
They're not content with having hardware makers pay, they charge for encoding, decoding and software, if they can get away with it.
Re:Apple and Xiph (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that it's open source or royalty free doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once Apple or Microsoft use it.
Likewise, simply because the MPEG LA controls the licensing of KNOWN patents for H.264 doesn't mean there are no patent trolls ready to file a lawsuit once it gets adopted as a standard.
There is also no assurance that the MPEG LA won't try to monetize their position as the sole licensing authority for H.264 if it were to be adopted into the standard. Unisys anyone?
So Apple's case would only be plausible if they can show that there is any reason to believe that the software-patent-related risk is higher for Theora than H.264, and they have not done that.
Re:why does the codec have to be in the spec? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guestimating roughly 1000% of those platforms that currently don't support flash, won't ever support HTML5.
These platforms will be replaced by updated/new platforms which may just as easily support Flash or HTML5.
The existance of these platforms is therefore of no influence to deciding between HTML5 and Flash and a non-issue.
Re:why not both or more? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even Linux users can "legitimately" use WMV if they want.
How?
Re:And that is a trivial problem (Score:3, Insightful)
If HTML5 had required Theora support, there'd be two or three months delay and then all the ASICs you could shake a stick at would be there.
It's not nearly that "trivial"...
These days it's not about simple decoders/ASIC chips, it's about complex SoCs that require a huge amount of development, testing, reference software/drivers, etc (not to mention manufacturing, marketing, sales/design wins, and application development/integration before it gets into a CE device...)
And those SoCs with H.264 support are already in literally hundreds of millions of set-top boxes, phones, portable media players, Blu-Ray players, and even connected TVs and receivers. It would be a joke trying to push a "standard" requiring Theora that immediately shuts out that many existing devices.
Then again, I don't think H.264, Theora, or any other specific implementation of a video codec should be required in an HTML standard...
Re:Like Capitalism (Score:3, Insightful)
Pretty much every new video-playing device these days does h.264. iPods, iPhones, Zunes, Xboxes, PS3s, PSPs, Nokias, Palms, every Blu-ray player...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_devices_that_support_H.264/MPEG-4_AVC [wikipedia.org]
To think h.264 is somehow limited to Apple is kind of nutty.
Re:Major browser vendors (Score:2, Insightful)
Microsoft hasn't commented, which isn't the same as supporting neither. However, considering that silverlight 3.0 is slated to support H.264, I suspect that says a lot by itself.
The thing that really amazes me about this (Score:3, Insightful)
..isn't that Apple is holding things up. It's that they're holding things up because of lack of decoding hardware for a tiny device. Wait a minute, who the fucks watches video on a tiny screen?
Developers, don't answer that. Yes, I know your handheld device can play the video. I'm sure you're very proud.
I'm asking the users. Are there any? I know many iPods have shipped, but what are you people doing with them? You're watching video on them? Really?
No, really: who the fuck is watching movies on a 3 inch screen? And if that's you, are you actually happy with it? When you want to watch some video, your first instinct is to reach for your battery-powered thingie?
This obscure corner case is what is going to hold video back for everyone (including the desktop users and PVR users) for 20 years, until the patents expire?!
Firefox will NEVER support H.264 (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless there is a miracle and Software Patents are deemed illegal, Firefox will never support H.264. Being tri-licensed at least the GPL/LGPL would prevent Mozilla from licensing H.264.
Re:Like Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
Again, this isn't just free software that licensing this will damage. End users will pay the price for licensing. It's not free; not even freeware.
And no, "free software" as a collective is not going in one direction. When the hell has any one type of software ever done that? Is "propietary software" going in one direction, too? Sure, parts have objectives - Gnome is going their pretty nifty Gnome Shell (which has no "me too" in it, I can assure you) and KDE is simply interested in polishing what they've got so far. The Linux kernel is working out filesystems and making things faster, all the while adding drivers. As a collective, these projects are making progress, but not in any distinct fashion. But then again, are all of the programs installed on the average Windows box also cohesively working as a team? I dare say not. You have a double standard for free software because you lump them together as if they should be a team, which is ludicrous at best.
Re:Like Capitalism (Score:4, Insightful)
The key here is that pretty much everyone else is either going to be neutral on the codecs or is going to be seeking the least encumbered. If Apple wants to cripple its products, then I say "Fuck them". Apple is rapidly taking Microsoft's place as being the most pernicious abuser of vendor lock-in ploys. I could care less whether those poor little iPhone and Safari fanbois can't watch online videos because Steve Jobs and his pack of well-trained corporate trolls somehow think that trying to ignore open standards is a worthwhile pursuit. There is enough penetration by players like Google and Mozilla now that I think giving a bunch of worthless assholes like Steve Jobs and Co. the one-fingered salute can probably fly. It ain't 1985 any more, and those retards at Apple will either wake up to it, or find, once more, they're taking good hardware and marginalizing it.
Re:It's a toughy (Score:3, Insightful)
See, you're not looking towards the future. You need to be thinking what browsers people will be using. See, you keep thinking that everyone in the future will be sitting at home on a computer. You keep thinking that whatever browser people will be using, they'll have myriad choices on what device they will be using it on.
More and more people will be using mobile devices to do surfing, watch videos, etc. This comes back to hardware. What devices currently have a hardware decoder for Theora? How many in the future will? I would place my chips on h.264 being on more future devices looooooonnngggg before I see them with Theora.
Which market? The browser market is currently tipped toward Theora, because Firefox, being an open source project, is unlikely to implement H.264
But what stops a hardware device maker from including them with its device? Again, your thinking is too limited.
And that is my greatest criticism for OSS (yes, I know generalities)--it only thinks of its own self-importance, too busy playing 'me too', and not taking the big picture into consideration when developing a strategy (if one is even created at all).
Re: "No standard codec", "too many plugins", etc. (Score:3, Insightful)
"Both codecs are free"
No, they're not. H.264 is patented and you have to pay royalties: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing [wikipedia.org]
No mention of Dirac!? (Score:3, Insightful)
What interests me is the fact that in these discussions about Theora being an old and antiquated codec, nobody seems to know about Dirac [diracvideo.org], which is a modern video codec quite comparable to H.264 developed by the BBC.
Dirac is specifically designed to be free in the sense we love, and they have specifically checked to make sure it doesn't violate any patents, etc.
It is supported in recent versions of FFMPEG, and since VLC 0.9.2. Support for it is maturing quite fast, and I don't understand why Mozilla didn't include support for it in their HTML5 video implementation.
Since Opera implements <video> with GStreamer, it should already support Dirac if you have the support installed.
Just use OGG (Score:3, Insightful)
I see no problem. Apple doesn't want to support OGG, I couldn't care less. They'll come around eventually if it becomes popular.