IE9 will support VP8 and H.264 video

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

by zaatar • 16 years ago

82 34 16 years ago

zaatar2• 16 years ago

The IEBlog (and all other MSDN blogs) is down for maintenance and cannot take comments, which is why the post is on Windows Blog. People can voice feedback via the comments on the blog post should they choose to :)

jf• 16 years ago

Thanks for posting this to HN Ravi!

johns• 16 years ago

"when the user has installed a VP8 codec" is an interesting caveat they made sure to mention twice. Is the user going to have to download something additional? If they have another browser installed with VP8 support does that install it in a way that IE will use it? If it doesn't ship with the browser, its nice that they will support it, but it's not as big a deal as shipping with support built-in.

qeorge• 16 years ago

Good questions, I wondered the same. Here's my assumptions:

1) If the user already has a VP8 codec on the machine, it will use that.

2) One way to get the codec would be installing an IE9 plugin, similar to how you have to install a plugin for Flash.

Would be great to see some official clarification though.

kilian• 16 years ago

Here's hoping Google will use Youtube to tell people to "download this plugin". It works for Flash, so why not? :)

mcav• 16 years ago

Microsoft shoves so many automatic updates in Windows as-is... they ought to just shove a codec down that pipeline too. Unless they still want H.264 to win...

Raphael_Amiard• 16 years ago

Well what seems the most likely is that they fear a bit of a patent war around it and want to be sure they won't be held responsible.

rbanffy3• 16 years ago

Does it mean that IE8 would be unable to play a given video even with the proper codec installed?!

This is absolutely insane.

m_eiman• 16 years ago

Is it possible to detect which codecs are installed using javascript? Having to throw up a "You need to install this thingie from over here" is bad, but a lot better than just getting a default "something is broken with the file you're trying to play" message" a'la Windows Media Player.

enomar• 16 years ago

What are the implications of "when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows"? Does this mean users will have to install the codec for VP8 videos to be playable in IE? If so, that seems like a half-measure...

tzs• 16 years ago

The implication is that Microsoft realizes that some people, believe it or not, might want to use VP8 in a context other than web video, and so the proper place for the codec is installed as part of the system, where it can be used by all video playback software, instead of built into the browser where it is only useful for web video.

zweben• 16 years ago

If that's what they want to do, they could still have the IE9 installer install the codec system-wide, but it doesn't sound like that's what they intend to do.

tvon2• 16 years ago

> In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

In other words it will work just as well as any other codec that requires support to be installed?

kevingadd• 16 years ago

Previously you had to use Windows Media Player, Quicktime, etc. specifically to play back videos in IE. Now you will be able to use <video> and IE will look for video codecs (instead of browser plugins) to decode that video for you. A significant improvement.

tvon2• 16 years ago

I was under the impression that any codec supported by the system (Quicktime or Windows Media Player) could be embedded/played, e.g. that while Apple wouldn't support Theora by default, it would work if you had the Theora codec installed for QT. Not sure where I got that from, it could well be very wrong.

But still, if the user has to download something to support it, how is that better (or different) for the user than a plugin?

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

Just last week they announced that IE would only support the H.264 codec. They didn't get into details but it was clear that even if you had e.g. Theora installed they wouldn't use it for HTML5 video tags.

This appears to be a partial reversal of that so that VP8 will be whitelisted and played as long as it's installed, but other random codecs won't. Which is probably a sensible security precaution.

rbanffy3• 16 years ago

> Which is probably a sensible security precaution.

Why not sandbox the video codec? It's not like it needs to even read more than a single given file. Heck. It's not like it even needs to read a file - it only needs a data-stream from where to read compressed frames and a callback pointer so that it can give them to whatever displays them.

brolewis• 16 years ago

There was an article earlier on HN (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1361442) that talked about there still being patent concerns with the new codec and so it seems like Microsoft may wanting to avoid being named in any potential suits by requiring the end user to install the codec rather than providing it by default.

stuntmouse• 16 years ago

"As we said at MIX recently, when it comes to HTML5, we’re all in." Canvas too?

endtime• 16 years ago

As soon as I read that sentence, I wondered the same. Sadly, no news yet, at least according to http://www.osnews.com/story/23229/IE9_HTML5_Video_Will_Be_H2....

>HTML5’s features are rather broad so whilst no word on HTML5 Canvas has been mentioned yet, Microsoft did commit to HTML5 Audio and Video which were demonstrated at their developer’s conference MIX10.

zaatar2• 16 years ago

This is the most you’ll find on this topic publicly: http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/NicFill/Channel-9-Live-at-MIX...

ghshephard• 16 years ago

Obviously a desire to avoid being sued for patent infringement. But, with google shipping VP8 as part of chrome, wouldn't any patent holders go after them as well? Doesn't google provide some form of air cover for other browser makers that might want to include VP8 in their browser?

kogir• 16 years ago

My sneaking suspicion is that the video element in IE 9 will happily play any video for which a codec is installed. It'll of course guarantee H.264 since the codec ships with all supported versions of Windows, but there's no real reason for it to refuse to play a video it has a codec for.

wmf2• 16 years ago

MS has said that IE 9 has a codec whitelist so it will not use any random codec you have installed. http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2010/04/html5-video-in...

hapless• 16 years ago

This says that they'll support VP8 as an installed codec, but this doesn't tell us much about WebM. What about the container format, Matroksa? Vorbis audio support?

wmf2• 16 years ago

They'll have to support all three or it won't work. I'm guessing that Google is actually writing the code so all MS has to do is add Google's Media Foundation components to the IE 9 whitelist.

dschobel• 16 years ago

Am I crazy or is the absence of a single mention of Google in that post completely conspicuous?

henrikschroder• 16 years ago

It's standard for any communication from Microsoft to never name their competitors if they can avoid it.

modeless• 16 years ago

If it requires an install it will be irrelevant because Flash will support VP8 and is already installed.

rbanffy3• 16 years ago

They'll say anything to grab some headlines away from Google today.

So predictable...

Calamitous• 16 years ago

Will it also support "HTML"? Maybe even "CSS"?

kennu• 16 years ago

Both Adobe and Microsoft seem to be talking about VP8 only, not the full WebM stack including Vorbis audio and Matroska containers.

It smells like they are leaving room for their own media streaming formats and servers, and only nominally claiming some kind of support for VP8 without audio or file/streaming support. WebM needs all three to be an open platform for creating, streaming and consuming video content.

yatsyk• 16 years ago

> In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.

Idea for next blog post:

In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support canvas, svg, css3 when the user has installed a Google Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer.

IE9 will support VP8 and H.264 video

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