YouTube Offers Experimental Opt-In HTML5 Video 265
bonch writes "YouTube is now offering the experimental option to view all YouTube videos using HTML5 in H.264 format. Supported browsers are Chrome, Safari, and the ChromeFrame plug-in for Internet Explorer. Captions, ads, and annotations aren't yet supported but are coming soon."
Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Insightful)
The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you could sign into an account on YouTube and turn them off.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, you could sign into an account on YouTube and turn them off.
And let them track how many cute, fluffy kitten videos I watch? Er, I mean how many boob videos I watch? And car crashes. And explosions! People falling off skateboards. Grr, manly videos! That's right. Anyway, I think not.
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Er, I mean how many boob videos I watch?
Youtube has boob videos?
Any time I follow a link that claims to be a boob video (purely for research purposes, of course), it has been pulled for TOS violation.
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Youtube has boob videos?
Hint for (new) competitors: support these videos and you'll quickly grow bigger than youtube!
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[...]you'll quickly grow bigger than youtube!
Haha, I see what you did there.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Funny)
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I don't see that option anywhere. Can you elaborate?
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I though the OP was referring to the crappy popup that video publishers can pepper YouTube videos with "LOLOLOLOLOLOL TEH NXT BIT IZ TEH PHAT!!!!!"
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deafies aren't the only ones who want captioning, but I do support it. There are lots of times where I'd like youtube muted and/or if they had captions in another language it would ease translation, and also enable youtube to be a useful teaching tool for other languages. Meanwhile I'd rather see ogg as an option over H264. H264 is an improvement over flash, but that issue will rage on for a while. [arstechnica.com]
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Funny)
Some of us are deaf, and would much rather Youtube caption their videos. You don't HAVE to watch it. That's why it's called CLOSED CAPTIONING. Don't like it? TURN IT OFF.
Just because you're hard-of-hearing doesn't mean you have to shout all the time.
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.Some of us are deaf, and would much rather Youtube caption their videos. You don't HAVE to watch it. That's why it's called CLOSED CAPTIONING. Don't like it? TURN IT OFF.
YouTube has closed captioning? I thought all they had were stupid popup captions that are manually added by video uploaders. Google Voice has quite a bit more training to do before closet captioning is anything like automatic or pervasive on YouTube.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:4, Informative)
The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?
Captions? They are opt-in, and they can be very useful for hard of hearing people (if the video creators do add them, that is...)
Agreed on the others, though.
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Good to see Firefox unsupported. Maybe that will show Mozilla that they really should buy a license for the best of the most superior codecs currently known -- H.264.
If a patent license is required, hell, by all means buy it and stop talking crap about Free codecs (as in Speech)! That's also why Google pays the Mozilla Corporation hundreds of millions of USD.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Insightful)
Good to see Firefox not opting into a system that pushes us towards a non-free de-facto standard.
We don't want to sleep walk into a situation where anyone who wants to encode video that they expect to be widely usable, must pay for a non-free license.
True, Firefox walks a fine line, because it could lose market share, in which case it will all be in vain. We need ubiquitous, cheap chipsets that support Theora - or something else free. That won't happen if everyone just rolls over and pays for H.264.
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Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Informative)
Part of the problem is that h264 licensing fees are generally hidden. You don't pay for a license, your hardware/software vendor does. Apple and Microsoft and Google all buy the licenses for you and include them in their products. It's hard to convey the importance of the licenses for non-free codecs if they seem to be free.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:4, Insightful)
"Apple and Microsoft and Google all buy the licenses for you"
Apple doesn't. Apple is one of the patent holders in the H.264 pool. As a result, they can instead cross-license with all the other pool members outside of the pool. This is why you don't see them listed as a licensee (google and msft are fully paid up).
In Google's case they are already so far beyond the annual organizational maximum that H.264 is fairly cheap for them, and they can't reduce their costs by using something else. But the costs are quite oppressive to start-ups and new players and makes great ammo against open source solutions.
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Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they don't want to mess around with the licensing terms, just embed VLC player and be done with it. Firefox not supporting H.264 helps Flash Video to survive.
If Firefox doesn't care that Flash can play H.264 videos then they shouldn't care that VLC can play H.264 videos.
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Is there really any demand to burn Youtube videos to DVDs in 1080p? Sounds to me like Google picked an inappropriate codec for their medium. Perhaps they chose it simply to drive a wedge between their Chrome browser which supports this codec, and IE and Firefox which do not.
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From the VLC FAQ:
Is VLC legal in all countries?
Probably not. Specially DeCSS module might violate DMCA (and similar laws) and some codecs would require licenses for personal/commercial use. There haven't been any court cases related to VLC but specially companies should make sure they pay license fees to license holders if they use VLC commercially and use patented formats or codecs.
Essentially the licence is not for implementing the codec, but for using it. If you use VLC to encode video, then broadcast that video (including on the Web), then at least in some countries, you have to pay the patent holders.
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Essentially the licence is not for implementing the codec, but for using it.
So, technically speaking, VLC users that install/use the h264 decoder of libvacodec owe licensing fees?
That's... kinda funny.
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It's not just a matter of money. It's a matter of Firefox not being able to be redistributed by downstream distributors unless they _also_ buy the license. As in, it would effectively stop being free software in the "can modify and redistribute" sense.
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They should just use the underlying system's video system and be done with it.
On Windows, this would be DirectShow. You'd have access to all the codecs on the user's pc then, without the browser needing to pay any royalties at all.
Re:Should be a selling feature... (Score:5, Informative)
That's been seriously considered. The reason it's not being done (yet?) is described at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2009/06/directshow_and.html [mozillazine.org]
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>The three most annoying features of YouTube won't display? Where do I sign?
Im sure the HTML video tag will be wrapped within a flash box to produce ads and stupid annotations.
It's about time. (Score:3, Interesting)
Flash has always been a Band-Aid on a gangrenous ulcer. If you aren't [un-]lucky enough to be running Windows it sucks up gobs of CPU time to decode even the teensiest thumbnail of video, which is incredibly annoying when you visit websites that are plastered in Flash ads. HTML5 has its problems, but it's worlds better than what always seemed to me like the Next Coming of Java.
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Agreed. I've got NoScript running in most of my Firefox sessions so don't run into Flash problems that often (as Javascript is often used to start Flash) but in working a little with chrome and the FlashBlock extension that seems to be an even better approach.
Now the question will be whether there will be a way to disable the nasty HTML5 video options when advertisers start to abuse those as well. Video should always be "at the user's discretion", precisely because there are probably hundreds of millions
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you don't need flashblock, noscript blocks flash just fine. Just tell it to block flash and to apply restrictions to trusted sites as well.
I wouldn't want a HTML5 only Web now (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash is already on my Symbian phone and various other platforms. Will HTML5 advocates spare time to non cool (!) platforms to code a codec/driver along with testing thousands of different setups to show their Theora video which is clearly missing 2-3 generations in video codec development compared to H264?
Google, a multi billion giant can roll out a good "quicktime interface" for youtube, can even add extra features to it but it doesn't really mean HTML5 with codecs which nobody can agree will crush Flash.
BTW; if you are concerned about Flash CPU usage, use 10.1 beta which has GPU decoding under Windows. I have seen it using almost nothing while playing 1080P video over youtube.
I keep testing Theora and sorry to say, I don't think it will take off unless Google does some amazing thing and make the VP7+ codecs open, free as in freedom. Now that would really change entire media universe. Hopefully they purchased that codec company for that reason.
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BTW; if you are concerned about Flash CPU usage, use 10.1 beta which has GPU decoding under Windows.
Great, so if I want decent performance out of one of the most popular internet video services, I am tied to Windows. Yuck.
I think even Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall for Flash. However, if you no longer need Flash to view videos on the web that's just one more reason why you don't need Windows. Luckily for us, Microsoft wants all of us to replace the horrible Flash with the new and improved Microsoft Silverlight. :p
Thanks, but no thanks. I'm one of the ones hoping for HTML5 video to take off.
Re:I wouldn't want a HTML5 only Web now (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah I tried that. I had to move back down to 10.0 because while the performance was better, videos looked like crap because hey, guess what, 10.1 doesn't have nice-looking video scaling! I'm sorry, but I'd rather have Flash eat my CPU alive than feel like gouging my eyes out due to uneven pixelation.
--- Mr. DOS
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Still no good (Score:2)
When I go on digg.com/videos and see a Top 10 XYZ videos of 2009, there will still be 10 embedded flash players on that page and will bring my system to its knees. This is only good for viewing youtube.com and not for people who embed stuff.
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On the Mac/Safari I use ClickToFlash, which turns off auto-run on all Flash content and lets you click specific flash panels if you want to run them. (It also adds a menu selection to let you turn on all Flash for a given page or override the settings for a given site.) Further, it can recognize YouTube URLs and redirect you from the Flash to the h.264 if available. That single feature is worth more than any speed increase in any other browser... hopefully it spreads.
I disapprove of ad-blocking software
Works great in my side by side comparison (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Works great in my side by side comparison (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect the actual amount of detail in the pictures is the same, but the way it's smoothed in the Flash version looks a hell of a lot better than how Chrome handles it. It's even worse in motion, because the size and type of artifact changes depending on whether areas are moving, unlike the Flash version which is consistent.
Presumably it's just different options being passed to the 264 codec, but without any obvious way for me to change them it's verging on painful to watch.
Now all we need... (Score:2)
...is the Firefox team to get over themselves, and integrate ffmpeg, for instant support of every format out there!
But I bet they will bitch and scream again, mentioning some “non-freeness” of H.264, despite nobody having cared about GIF support or anything, and ffmpeg being free and with H.264 support.
I hope Google tells them: Either you support it, or the money deal ends right now.
Re:Now all we need... (Score:4, Informative)
> and ffmpeg being free and with H.264 support
Free in what sense? You can use their code in your code. Your code would then not be able to be distributed to users unless you pay the relevant patent licensing fees. The Mozilla Corporation could do that, but then any other Firefox distributors (e.g. Linux distributions) would not be able to distribute Firefox without either removing this functionality or paying the relevant patent licensing fees. Anyone doing a custom build of Firefox and distributing it could be sued by MPEG-LA to recover the money due them.
Effectively, Firefox stops being "free" for practical intents and purposes. It's still "open source", but the only thing you can really do is contribute patches back to the main repository, unless you pay up the patent fees.
That's not exactly a desirable situation. We might end up there, but as a first cut trying to avoid it is a good thing.
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But I bet they will bitch and scream again, mentioning some "non-freeness" of H.264, despite nobody having cared about GIF support or anything, and ffmpeg being free and with H.264 support.
In many jurisdictions, ffmpeg is only Free as in Beer, not Free as in Speech. Firefox doesn't want to give up broad international distribution or its corporate status.
crashes chrome on linux HARD... (Score:2)
crashes chrome on linux HARD...
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crashes chrome on linux HARD...
Which is it? chrome only (so it is not HARD) or the whole system (meaning it could well be X/the display driver that bring the system down).
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I doubt YouTube is going to go ahead and reencode everything to Theora. Firefox needs to get its act together and at least take advantage of OS-supplied h.264 when it's available. Everyone likes to whine about patents for h.264, but there are free/oss decoders available and the best h.264 encoder is probably the open source x264. Considering that Theora isn't guaranteed not to contain patented technology anyway (it's just not known to), I'd say h.264 is a pretty good option with better support.
Consider that
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Is anyone seriously thinking that Google will triple* its storage capacity just to have a Theora version for Firefox users and then waste twice* as much bandwidth for those same Firefox users?
* every time I hear about Theora people say it needs twice the bandwidth to achieve the same video quality as H.264
Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? (Score:5, Informative)
Why throw around bullshit claims based on nothing more than your vague and absurd assertion that "every time you hear..."? You can easily search for that info yourself, which would take less time than it took to post to slashdot. For example, you have this purely subjective analysis [osnews.com] which was done by encoding Theora and h.264 files with equivalent size and then having a dude claim what image he preferred. Although he claimed that h.264 was better according to his own personal tastes, you can easily see for yourself that, when comparing Theora and h.264, you get pratically the same quality with the same file size. It's the same bandwidth, same size, practically (and in some cases) indistinguishable quality and although Theora's developers had to intentionally avoid more efficient algorithms due to patents.
So who exactly is spewing those bullshit, FUD claims of "Theora needs triple storage capacity and wastes twice as much bandwidth"?
Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't say that Theora needs triple storage capacity. I said that Google would need to triple their storage capacity, the first 100% being taken by H.264 files (obviously).
As for that page you linked to, look at the screenshots. There's nothing subjective about them, H.264 is the clear winner. If you can't see that then you need to calibrate your monitor. Same bandwidth = lower quality results using Theora.
Re:What about firefox (ogg video)? (Score:5, Informative)
Being a codec snob is trendy.
The reality of it [xiph.org] is much less exciting.
Youtube already supports several versions of the files, they could probably drop the flash 7 compatibility in exchange for Theora. In terms of numbers of client Ogg/Theora for firefox is probably a better deal than flash 7. Adding one more to a half dozen isn't a tripling.
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Crappy webcams ? Do they need H264 ?!? (Score:3, Informative)
Well technically yes. Theora produce slightly more blurry frames for an equivalent bitrate.
Now the big question: do we *really* need the added quality of H.264 ?
For fuck's sake, it's Youtube we're speaking about.
The website filled with small home-made video done using crappy webcams. Or feature botched TV-grabs. Where the people who upload video don't actually really have a clue about codecs and thus their creations have been through several conversions, each time with the corresponding drop of quality.
Argu
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No one is asking Yotuube to remove support for H.264. Just to add suport for Theora, even if it is at H.263 quality and bitrate levels.
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1 - you say "triple" then you say its in fact only double
He means, triple the storage, and double the bandwidth.
That is, they'd store both versions, one of size x, one of size 2x. x + 2x = 3x.
When a H.264 version is viewed, they'd transmit x bytes.
When a Theora version is viewed, they'd transmit 2x bytes.
This assumes the GP's assertion that for the same quality, Theora is twice as big. I can't speak to that.
I would say though; Google doesn't seem to consider storage to be expensive. At some point Google might decided that on the fly transcoding isn't expensive. I
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If you have 1$ and triple it, you get 3$. If Google needs 100MB to store the H.264, then needs 200MB to store the Theora file, then they would need to triple their storage capacity. To stream the 200MB Theora file would then require twice as much bandwidth as the 100MB H.264 file. What's so hard to understand about that?
As for your xiph.org link (oh yeah, no bias there I'm sure), he says himself "In order to avoid any possible bias in the selection of H.264 encoders and encoding options, and to maximize the
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Storage might be cheap for you and me, but if Google requires a few pebibytes of storage, "only 1.5 times the storage" is going to be too costly just for Firefox and Opera users.
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This could be good. If only you could use it on Porn. Damn it, RedTube and YouPorn need to get with the times.
Re:Hmm (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
No. Firefox is Ogg/Theora + Vorbis only (Score:5, Informative)
No. Firefox video tag is free formats only. Tools like mplayer are a cesspool of security holes— they aren't designed to be exposed to hostile content. The video tag requires pretty deep browser integration, ... only apple supports using the native infrastructure and even they disable 99% of their features for security reasons (e.g. try a mov with hyperlinks in it).
Mozilla is committed to an open web, and you can't get their with a wink and a nod and asking users to install codec software which is illegal everywhere in the developed world. (Including europe. I'm so tired of seeing people characterized codec licensing as a US thing— there are more European patents on codecs than US patents)
Re:No. Firefox is Ogg/Theora + Vorbis only (Score:4, Insightful)
Technically, the European parents aren't legally enforceable as there is currently no provision for patenting software (even though the EPO accepts applications for and issues such patents) within the EU.
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If the OS includes the codec it doesn't matter. They handled the embed and object tags just fine. Uses Windows Media Player on Windows, and Quicktime Player on the Mac.
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Mozilla will be made to support actual video content. Just give me time to learn the extensions API.
Also, stop acting like anyone actully cares about the legal status of codecs. If anyone did then ffmpeg, vlc, etc would not exist. The only important issue here is if the video works when I go to youtube.
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Mozilla is in the same boat as Internet Explorer and I for one predict that FireFox development is going to get slower and slower and slower.. still not sure that they will do a full rewrite like last time.. thats still up in the air.
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Some videos [youtube.com] seem to play while others [youtube.com] report that there isnt a supported video format available.
Maybe Opera is only supporting Theora at this time?
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Last I checked, Opera only supports Theora, yes.
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Trying out with chromium (binary package) at the moment, does not work, neither do firefox 3.5. :(
"Your browser does not currently recognize any of the video formats available.
Click here to visit our frequently asked questions about HTML5 video."
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Ok, so it is due to distro package maintainer, they disabled to avoid legal problem with h264
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Most video chipsets these days are including hardware support for H264 decoding. This includes the chipsets in devices like mobile phones, MP3 (portable media) players, and set-top boxes.
What do they call PDAs nowadays? (Score:2)
if you're still using a PDA then you're a couple generations back anyways.
Not everyone needs a cellular radio and a 2-year contract. What is the latest popular term for a smartphone that can make calls only over Wi-Fi? A "smartpod touch"?
Netbooks all have H.264 hardware acceleration
I'd like to know where you got this information.
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True, true, but the GP specifically bemoaned BOTH "my phone and PDA", so he/she DOES have a cellular radio (not sure about the contract)
I make so few calls that my Virgin Mobile USA bill runs me $5.35 a month. I don't think any smartphone's plan comes anywhere close to that price, and I don't need to be online away from places where I can already get Wi-Fi. So a smartphone isn't for me.
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Mod parent troll (Score:2, Interesting)
Mozilla cannot legally support H264 without releasing a closed-source version of Firefox.
Plugin/Add-on? (Score:2)
So, why not a closed-source plugin? Why would they need to close the entire browser source code just to support a video codec which should be able to be punted into a loadable library?
Re:Plugin/Add-on? (Score:5, Insightful)
Adobe already released a closed-source plugin to play H.264. It's called Flash Player.
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Personally, I'd be willing to drop something reasonable, like, say, $1.99 one-time to buy a license to use an H.264 codec (as long as it was of sufficient quality and did things like taking advantage of available hardware acceleration features of my CPU and GPU). I prefer open source, but I also accept that a lot of R&D, and Engineering went into creating H.264, and I don't mind paying a *reasonable* fee for something like that. I'm sure RMS would disagree, but I've always disagreed with RMS, and as lo
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No problem with that. You should already be able to do that with a 3rd party plugin.
Sorry, I was thinking in terms of the whole thread, starting with, "You can't use it in firefox because mozilla refuses to support H.264". Mozilla isn't going to bundle h264 support in the browser, but it's not an open-source/closed-source problem and it has nothing to do with your willingness to pay. It has to do with their unwillingness to pay a licensing fee per download.
Mozilla could rely on 3rd party plug-ins, or t
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Mozilla can't embed VLC?
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Fud fud fud fud (Score:2, Informative)
Theorarm [wss.co.uk] decodes Theora full screen video at about 110 FPS on my jailbroken iphone. The hardware support thing for h264 is mostly an issue because of h264's utterly obscene cpu consumption, Theora is much more thrifty. The "doesn't work" thing is entirely manufactured by the device makers (e.g. Apple) having a direct monetary interest on a format that they get royalties for being adopted.
Mozilla doesn't just refuse. Legal licensing of the codec would be 10% of their annual budget. Do you really want 10% o
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No one huh? [dailymotion.com]
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
Old technology? Since when is technology's age any relevant to it's value? Electricity was discovered centuries ago and we still rely on it up to this day. Do you believe that just because it's old technology it should be simply be abandoned without any relevant and rational reason to justify it?
And for your information, Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality. So, that's also not it.
Regarding that "hardware accelerated" bit, do you know what it takes for a codec do be "hardware accelerated"? It only takes the will of the manufacturer to offer hardware support for a specific format. The h.264 codec isn't magical nor is the Theora codec cursed. In fact there are Theora hardware decoders in the market already [xiph.org].
So please refrain from spewing ignorance and/or FUD. Theora may eventually stumble on relevant shortcomings but hard
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
>Theora is on par with other formats such as h.264 in all relevant categories such as file size, bandwidth and encoding quality
Much as I support Theora (i.e. totally), that is not even close to true. It is maybe comparable to MPEG-4 ASP (divx, xvid).
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as h.246 is non-Free, it is irrelevant.
Re:Hmm (Score:4, Informative)
As long as Theora isn't implemented in video chipsets, it is irrelevant. I think more people care about decent performance than RMS-approved GNU/Freedom (Free as in beards).
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Well...they had no problem making the embed or object tags work. Why would this be different? They can use Quicktime or Windows Media Player or whatever media plugin depending on your platform.
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Like Theora? The problem with that codec is that its based on pretty old technology. Google probably isnt interested in paying a bandwidth premium. It looks like this move is Google telling the rest of the industry to standardize on H.264 via licensing deals.
Re:Well, that kind of sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Have any proof Theora uses more bandwith? Old doesn't mean bad, HTML is old, so is TCP/IP and UNIX
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H.264 is the codec used in youtube when you play videos with the flash player. This HTML5 video viewer just reuses theses videos, only the html client code changes. Using other codec means reencoding all their videos in a different video format, which must not be easy. Specially when the alternatives are worse (theora) or not ready (dirac).
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Yes it does, but google serves up a special version that puts you into the youtube app anyway, it's easier to use anyway.
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All the much better I say. Especially since t
Re:Exterminate all Mudslums (Score:4, Funny)
All religions are nuts.
my God is currently using His noodly appendages to fire a meatball of death upon you for this blasphemy