Google, H.264 and Video on the Web

http://farukat.es/journal/2011/01/488-google-h264-and-video-web

by KuraFire • 16 years ago

17 26 16 years ago

I'd love to see the diagram scaled by global web share, and perhaps with a fourth colour for those delivered "via Flash". I think you'll get a completely different feel for what the data is trying to tell you. Of course individual web developers should scale it for their own web audience before making any decisions.

(Some other minor notes on the contents of the table: WebM is confirmed for Firefox 4, due in the next month or so, and you do say the chart reflect a few months from now. Desktop Safari supports WebM just as much as IE9 except it already does it and also supports Theora in that same manner, Microsoft have just been more vocal about their potential support of WebM and nothing else. I'd drop IE9 to "with user installed codec" for WebM and raise Safari to the same for WebM and Theora. Finally, IE8 and below aren't going to get WebM unless some very minor plugins, like ChromeFrame or OpenCodecs, get Flash-like penetration levels and if you're allowing that then basically anything is possible. Oh, and does Android support HTML5 video tag H.264 or just Flash video H.264 via the browser?)

butterfi• 16 years ago

Nice review of the issue! Personally, I'm not that excited over one browser, or even two, adding or dropping video support. I develop for a spectrum of users/browsers and if the technique doesn't work across browsers, I avoid it. Managing a collection of online video means you want the easiest encoding with the longest possible shelf life, combined with simple deployment across platforms.

luigi• 16 years ago

Good stuff, the most fair coverage I've read on this.

Because there has been no actual withdrawal timetable announced, I wonder if the Chrome Team is waiting for the moment when it will least hurt their users: full WebM support in YouTube or something like that.

I think the Chrome team can claim ideological consistency because they only support closed technologies through plugins. Flash, Quicktime, Java, and PDF are all supported through plugins. The Chrome team is making the statement that H.264 doesn't belong on the open web, and that's why they're removing first class support for it.

watty• 16 years ago

How does it hurt their users? This is saving Google money and promoting their encoder. Chrome users can still view H.264 in the browser without having to download anything extra (through bundled Flash).

vetinari• 16 years ago

Most fair coverage? You must be joking. His opinion "If you don't agree with me, your view is ideological" is stated 6 times.

I don't see how you can call this article even approaching to be fair.

KuraFire3• 16 years ago

I think you should re-read it and read more carefully, this time. All mentions of ideological are w.r.t. what your considerations are for choosing which video codec to use, and have nothing to do with whether or not you agree with the piece itself or the opinions stated within.

kenjackson• 16 years ago

Good balanced article.

If I had Google's ear I would tell them that they may think they're at an inflection point on HTML5 video, but they're too late. There are likley just two results: (1) They get steamrolled and everyone moves to H264. Or (2) <video> effectively dies and Flash stays strong (Flash should play both sides to push this agenda).

Google should instead be working on a great free 3D codec.

ZeroGravitas2• 16 years ago

You can watch 3D WebM videos today (with nightly Firefox 4 and nVidia glasses at least) but I don't think the 3D extensions to Matroska that make this work have been standardised into WebM so it's maybe just a fluke that it works.

jasonlotito5• 16 years ago

> "Their stated reason is for the sake of “openness” on the web, but that’s a ridiculous claim because they embed the not-open-at-all Flash player inside the browser, and will continue to do so."

Adobe Flash. Not Google Flash. Google isn't putting resources into making Flash for Chrome. Adobe is. Google is simply stating that they won't put resources into H.264. This doesn't mean you can't have plugins for Chrome that do this. Just that Google isn't going to do this.

The same reasoning you provide for Google supporting H.264 can be applied to Apple and Microsoft as well for supporting WebM and Theora.

grayrest• 16 years ago

I've always been under the impression that the reason Flash is embedded in Chrome was for security reasons (faster time to patch+auto patch) and not ideology ones.

All the outcry over this I've read is basically a complaint that you can't ship one codec for HTML5 video, which you've never been able to do. That's what the whole argument over the video tag has always been about. The only difference this makes is that this cements the split instead of everybody expecting Firefox and Opera to give up and adopt H.264. If you were willing to ship just H.264 and flash fallback for Firefox/Opera, why wouldn't you be willing to ship H.264 and flash fallback for Chrome?

jasonlotito5• 16 years ago

> why wouldn't you be willing to ship H.264 and flash fallback for Chrome?

The same people with a problem with this have a problem with Flash, I imagine. I also imagine a large number of people complaining are Chrome users who think they know a thing or two about videos online.

Most of the arguments against Google doing this are smug, illogical, and stupid. Gruber asked a bunch of stupid questions, and a bunch of lemmings followed along asking about Flash. I'll go so far as to say if you're one of these people asking about Flash in Chrome, you are ignorant and wrong.

GHFigs3• 16 years ago

If you were willing to ship just H.264 and flash fallback for Firefox/Opera, why wouldn't you be willing to ship H.264 and flash fallback for Chrome?

Because it means I'll have to recommend that people use Internet Explorer.

svlla• 16 years ago

But... Google is putting in resources toward integrating Flash into Chrome. The Chrome Flash version is actually different than what is even publicly available from Adobe. My version of Flash that comes with Chrome is 10.1.103.19. The latest version available from Adobe directly is 10.1.102.64.

So Google puts its own resources toward a plugin (Flash) that, itself, can play H.264 video. I find this interesting to say the least.

drdaeman2• 16 years ago

Version number increase may mean either: 1) Adobe provided Google with a newer build, than it publicly offers. No Google resources are spent on Flash. 2) Google got Flash from Adobe and actually did some work to improve it.

We don't know which one it is, but personally, I'd consider (1) to be more possible than (2).

jasonlotito5• 16 years ago

Sorry, by resources, I meant real resources building an implementation of H.264 and supporting that in an official capacity, and assisting Adobe's implementation of Flash. I'm pretty sure that the resources needed to implement H.264 was on a different scale then providing assistance with Adobe.

This all ignores the fact that Google's involvement was improving the plugin experience alongside Mozilla, and it wasn't just benefit Flash.

Even still, all this is to say that it's still Adobe's version of Flash that goes into Chrome. Google isn't writing their own Flash implementation. What this means is that someone could build and H.264 plugin for Chrome. Google just doesn't want to be the person to do this. Considering the fact that handling this plugin would likely cost them money, I don't see a problem with their decision.

haberman• 16 years ago

> If you charge your visitors for the videos, you’ll have to pay royalty fines, but if you offer the video for free you won’t have to worry about that, ever. Ever? Yes, ever.

The "Yes, ever." link points to to http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachme... , which says (emphasis mine):

"MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to end users (known as Internet Broadcast AVC Video) during the next License term from January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2015."

I don't see how "until the end of 2015" means "forever." It's also not clear whether this covers free software or just content publishers.

In other words, it looks exactly like the prelude to another GIF bait-and-switch.

KuraFire3• 16 years ago

There is a separate statement somewhere released by MPEG LA that extended that particular policy to “forever”, explicitly stating it would thus exceed the previous deadline of December 31, 2015. That applies only the two conditions outlined in the article _combined_ though.

app• 16 years ago

Great article. I drew that very chart this morning trying to sort out the implications of this change.

> "As a side note, it would be great if MPEG LA would simply open up the licensing terms for H.264 and make it royalty-free forever for 1: browsers to implement it, and 2: people on the Internet to produce & sell video with it."

How hard would this be to do? Is that all that prevents FF/Opera/Chrome from supporting h.264?

Hadamard2• 16 years ago

Actually it is far from hard. Most of the MPEG-LA money comes from embedded devices. Strange enough that GooGuys didn't think enough. The web is - alas - nothing. All mobile content created today is h.264. Sony, Nokia, Samsung, LG (Marvell, Quallcomm, Samsung, Nvidia) will not be so quichk to dump H.264. YouTube of pure WebM? Transcoding all H.264 to WebM? Great - GooFool will have to pay MPEG-LA just as they pay today!!! Decoder and encode fees are equal to the price of a full CoDec. Free streaming like YouTube is free anyway. Till you'll have WebM acceleration for encoding on mobile phones MVC H.264 will dominate anyway (3D) where WebM isn't even thinking of what should be done. It seems that the most likely result (instead of saving FireFox, which is losing share) will be Chrome losing share for Maxthon (100% free with H.264 and HTML5), IE9 and Safari... Good job Goofools, you have just turned into a Steve Jobs.

drdaeman2• 16 years ago

> Their stated reason is for the sake of “openness” on the web, but that’s a ridiculous claim because they embed the not-open-at-all Flash player inside the browser, and will continue to do so.

I'd not go as far as calling this ridiculous. True, this feels wrong, but it's a fairly weighted decision - average users would tolerate "old" Flash-based fallback instead of native HTML5 <video> (most users won't understand the difference), but wouldn't tolerate lack of ability to play Farmville.

> WebM become the open standard (or codec) for video on the web, but the thing is: not right now

Unfortunately, "not right now" means "never". Google is already late with this decision, but as HTML5 <video> is not too widespread, there's still a possibility that they'll overturn the situation.

H.264 removal was a bold move, and its short-term consequences would hurt both users and developers, that's for certain. There are several various predictions on how the long-term outcome will be, and we could only guess which one is right.

KuraFire3• 16 years ago

> "I'd not go as far as calling this ridiculous. True, this feels wrong, but it's a fairly weighted decision - average users would tolerate "old" Flash-based fallback instead of native HTML5 <video> (most users won't understand the difference), but wouldn't tolerate lack of ability to play Farmville."

I agree that cutting out Flash would have a MUCH bigger detrimental impact on the user experience than dropping H.264 does; mentioning this was just to point out that their seemingly altruistic-ideological claims about the “openness of the Web” were fundamentally fallacious. If openness of the web was truly so important to them, how do they justify dropping H.264 but not Flash, which is arguably far more threatening to the "openness of the web"?

> "Unfortunately, "not right now" means "never". Google is already late with this decision, but as HTML5 <video> is not too widespread, there's still a possibility that they'll overturn the situation."

I don't believe this is really true. WebM, as it stands, will at some point take off, be put to the test in court trials over patent litigation, probably come out clean or with a one-time-then-safe-forever settlement, and take over market share from H.264. This seems almost inevitable to me, simply because right now H.264 is the de-facto standard but it has nowhere to go under its current licensing scheme. It's not compatible with the web as it is today. So the only thing that would keep WebM from taking off is MPEG LA changing H.264 to be "web compatible" i.e. royalty-free for use on the Web. But if they do that, then there's no real need for WebM to take over, either.

Hadamard2• 16 years ago

History tends to repeat itself. What will happen when MPEG-LA will establish a WebM Pool of Patents as they did with VC-1, making sure EVERYBODY knows the royalties for WebM will be at least as high as for H.264 FOR LICENSEES. For users infringing H.264 patents there will be no cap, of course. Google will never shield any WebM user, just as Micro$oft did not with VC-1. And mind you, WebM includes obvious (like the Intra mode coding) infringing of H.264 patents.

Google, H.264 and Video on the Web

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