Christopher Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us

http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-h-264-what-history-tells-us-and-why-were-standing-with-the-web/

by jmillikin • 17 years ago

97 44 17 years ago

0xdeadbeef.com

DarkShikari4• 17 years ago

proprietary H.264 codec

Can people at least get their terminology right for once here? That isn't what proprietary means, and conflating "patented" with "proprietary" simply serves to confuse people.

Many free software programs are covered by at least some patents--most, I would say, simply given the size of the patent minefield--and I wouldn't call them "proprietary". It seems to me that "proprietary" has basically become an insult to be applied towards anything "less free" than what one wants to advocate.

A proprietary format has no standard you can freely read and implement. At best it requires signing an NDA and/or paying tens of thousands of dollars to look at--at worst it doesn't even exist, with the "standard" being "whatever the official implementation does" (see Microsoft Word for a great example of this). There are tons of these in video: RealVideo, for example, along with all of Microsoft's video formats before they finally opened up with VC-1. Others include On2's video formats (e.g. VP6), Sorenson's (SVQ1, SVQ3), and many others.

One of the biggest dangers of this conflation is the understatement of the dangers that proprietary formats can cause. There has never, ever been a lawsuit over an open source implementation of a "patented-but-standardized" file format--as far as I know, the common interpretation seems to be that the sellers and distributors of an application are responsible for any royalties, placing no restrictions whatsoever on the developers. See LAME, for example.

But proprietary formats are different. The law is very vague and conflicting on whether or not it is legal to even reverse-engineer such formats (it varies between countries as well). Doing so almost always requires access to the disassembled binary of the original application, which violates the EULA and potentially the DMCA. Developers can be hit with legal threats merely for releasing source code, as we saw with RTMPdump.

Of course, proprietary formats tend to be patented as well, resulting in a "worst of both worlds" situation.

Don't mix up the terminology, lest people be convinced that RealVideo or another proprietary solution is no more evil than a internationally standardized, albeit patented, option. The greatest accomplishment in internet video in the past 10 years has been moving away from that horrendous mix of Quicktime, Windows Media, and Real that was used on almost every site on the internet. Even if it means we've been stuck with Flash for playback until recently, it's better than that ridiculous mix of proprietary garbage.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1074237 has a great example of what happens when proprietary and patented are conflated: a piece of proprietary crap can be promoted in place of a free software solution.

mmastrac2• 17 years ago

All the definitions I can find for "proprietary" allow patented inventions to fall under them. Standardizing and documenting an algorithm or protocol does not allow developers to use it freely and without royalty.

One example of many from define:proprietary:

http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&...

In this case, I believe Chris' terminology is correct. You are instead describing the difference between closed- and open-source.

For x264, an implementation of H.264, it is an open source implementation of a proprietary algorithm. In Theora's case, it is open source implementation of a free (as in libre) algorithm. RealVideo is a closed-source implementation of a proprietary algorithm.

DarkShikari4• 17 years ago

How is an algorithm proprietary if I can go online to the website of the ITU, a division of the United Nations, and download a copy of the standard and go write my own implementation?

ffmpeg's reverse-engineered Real Video decoder is an open-source implementation of a proprietary specification. Depending on the country and legal interpretation, the mere existence of this is illegal.

ffmpeg's H.264 decoder is an open-source implementation of a patented, but not proprietary, specification.

ffmpeg's Theora decoder is an open-source implementation of a probably-not-patented specification.

If a definition doesn't distinguish between something freely available for all to view/implement and something which cannot even be implemented without potentially falling afoul of copyright laws and the DMCA, it isn't a very good definition.

acdha2• 17 years ago

Under this definition, what happens when Theora gets enough acceptance that one of the major patent holders investigates and determines that it incorporates something they've patented - do we suddenly start calling it proprietary or do we describe it the same way we would describe H.264: "open [or closed] source implementation of a standard algorithm which has patent restrictions in some countries"

icefox• 17 years ago

Sadly there is a submarine patent related to vorbis.

thristian• 17 years ago

Really? What's the patent number?

sailormoon2• 17 years ago

I think the number 1 thing that Ogg could do to stimulate adoption is to change its ridiculous name.

RK• 17 years ago

That same argument has been made about tons of companies/products, e.g. Google and Wii.

Think about the fact that MP3 became a household word. Granted, it's an improvement over MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, but it's not exactly catchy.

ZeroGravitas4• 17 years ago

It boggles my mind that a video codec, whose name consists of two actual human names can be continually ragged on for its name when the competitors are things like mp3, AAC [+|HE] LC, MPEG-4 part 2, MPEG-4 Part 10, H.264, Advanced Video Codec. And those last three are all the same thing!

sailormoon2• 17 years ago

All the rest are neutral technical names. And mp3 sounds kind of nice to my ear; easy to remember and rolls off the tongue.

Ogg, on the other hand, is an actively stupid-sounding word, reminiscent of a particularly moronic caveman's grunt. Theora sounds OK but is ruined by the first part, and Vorbis is again a silly-sounding word.

All told the names remind me of the worst sort of childish open source whimsicality. They paint the picture of a bunch of nerds so intent on demonstrating their lack of care about marketability that they deliberately name their project the stupidest thing they can think of. Well it worked - they certainly affected the marketability, and here we are, with the developer who stands up in a meeting and says "so, what about Ogg Vorbis support?" looks and sounds like an idiot. Well done.

I don't even like having an .ogg file on my computer, the name annoys me so much. You might say names are irrelevant and maybe they are to you, but they're not to me.

benwr• 17 years ago

There were no alternatives to GIF; no one did what GIF did. It seems to me that if every major browser supports Theora and Vorbis in html5 video we will have come out ahead of where we were with GIF: Licensing policies won't change because if they did everyone could switch to Theora. The only problem, then, is getting Theora support in Internet Explorer (it's already in FF, Opera, and WebKit).

freetard5• 17 years ago

Actually there was MNG.

DarkShikari4• 17 years ago

The amount of intellectual dishonesty here is staggering.

On the quality side what we’ve been able to do at Mozilla, with the help of the rest of the Xiph community, is to show that even though Theora is based on older, royalty-free technology, it does at least as well as H.264 in practice (although not always in theory.) If you don’t believe me check our Firefox 3.6 introduction video which is available in both Theora and MP4 formats. The MP4 version of the file is 13 and the Theora version is 8.2MB – about 40% smaller. (We actually think the Theora video looks better, too.)

Not only did he intentionally encode the MP4 really badly, which might be theoretically excusable--the MP4 file has two hint tracks as big as the entire video and audio stream, doubling the size of the file. In short, he intentionally bloated the file with junk data to make it larger.

Lying apparently means nothing when you're trying to promote your pet file format. Why are we letting these people be the voice of the free software community?

tjogin2• 17 years ago

It's not that I don't believe you, but it would be great if someone would properly encode that file as MP4 so we could see the quality and size for ourselves. I'd do it but I don't know shit about encoding video.

yuvi2• 17 years ago

Encoding it with a good encoder would require access to the source, which I don't feel like finding if it even exists on the internet.

So instead, here's the same file with the junk stripped out: http://www.mediafire.com/?yuwj5zmmw4m

Herring• 17 years ago

So what do you think about his other 5000 words?

halo• 17 years ago

>Google has a near-monopoly in online video thanks to the ubiquity of Youtube. This means that they are the effective arbiter of codec choices for HTML5 video

I don't believe that to be true, and that the true arbiter of web technologies is client support. Look at CSS3, XHTML, Silverlight, or even the "q" HTML4 element which IE didn't support until IE8.

The world revolves around what the clients support. This is why Mozilla's decision is so important. You can bet that if tomorrow Microsoft decided to support one codec over another, you can bet that everyone would move over to that single codec, regardless of its technological merits.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

Theory: Due to Google beginning to compete with them, Mozilla has sought alternate revenue streams. One of these streams is Adobe, who in the face of competition from advanced Javascript support, Canvas elements, and HTML video, has payed the Mozilla foundation to pull the rug out from under the last lynchpin in clearing the web of flash: video.

Video codecs may change over time, but once you scrape flash off, it's going to be gone forever. Theora will never gain support. By refusing to support h.264 in the near term, Mozilla hamstrings support of HTML5 video and allows Adobe time to regroup their product strategy.

krakensden• 17 years ago

... except they get a lot of money from Google, not so much from Adobe, and Mozilla is nothing like a traditional corporation- they would have very public issues dictating policy like that.

jonknee3• 17 years ago

So his history is GIF and MP3, two of the most successful and widely used formats on the internet. Two formats that users don't care/know about the IP issues and would freak out about if their apps didn't continue to work with. Ask Apple how bummed they are for boosting MP3.

Mozilla makes a decent browser, I don't need them to fight my moral battles for me. If they stick with this tactic I look forward to using the fork and waiting for Google's subsidy of Mozilla to end.

freetard5• 17 years ago

> Mozilla makes a decent browser, I don't need them to fight my moral battles for me.

It's not only moral, it would illegal for them to ship patented technology as it would be incompatible with their license. Also, GIF patents have expired now.

jonknee3• 17 years ago

It wouldn't be illegal to allow plug-in support like they do for Flash currently or to dip into system APIs when available. Nearly every computer made today ships with native (and legal!) support for h.264. They don't want to because they don't believe in h.264 for moral reasons.

GHFigs• 17 years ago

...people don’t understand that something very dangerous is taking place behind the scenes.

Fear.

This means that something that’s free today might not be free tomorrow.

Uncertainty.

But I, like many others, have reason to believe that H.264 will not be Google’s final choice.

Doubt.

myobie• 17 years ago

My issue is this: I don't want my browser deciding what plugins and/or codecs I am allowed to use.

I understand that they want to support free software, and that is laudable. However, if I intentionally install something on my computer that _can_ used, then I expect that to be used.

I just tested with Safari and I was able to play an mkv 720p file in a video tag because I installed Perian. That is how it should work.

Christopher Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 – what history tells us

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