Chromium Blog: More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change

http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html

by twapi • 16 years ago

138 120 16 years ago

blog.chromium.org

Just when I thought there was a chance that this topic would get a break on HN. I guess I appreciate the link, if Google hadn't tweeted about it (I'm assuming they will) I probably wouldn't have seen this link.

Their answers are right, but it's the answers that aren't present, that are more telling. They don't address why they're removing it, why they chose to do it now, or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms. In my opinion, those are the only questions worth asking.

Their answers about H.264 having little adoption with the <video> tag and about having to dually encode with the current HTML5 video scene anyway is spot on. WebM gets you native playback in every major browser but IE, with Flash fallback working in IE. There actually is a day, very soon that, Flash assisted, anything will play WebM.

Of course, hardware adoption is still a huge question mark which I noticed Google also failed to discuss further in this post.

othermaciej2• 16 years ago

Are you saying Safari doesn't count as a "major browser"?

andybak• 16 years ago

Don't most statistics put it at about 5%?

I don't know if it's "major" but it's probably worthy of consideration.

Kylekramer• 16 years ago

Given that that it has 5-6% of market share, I think it is fair to leave it out of the major browsers. Not ignorable, but hardly major. It is iffy to even place Chrome as one, even though it seems like it will be in the future.

drivebyacct24• 16 years ago

Sorta (I didn't realize how much higher their share was than Opera's). If they choose not to implement a free, open source, easily available codec because they're Apple... then they can get lumped in with Internet Explorer and enjoy the fallback to Flash. I know Jobs is a big fan.

kenjackson10• 16 years ago

And lets be clear Safari on the desktop isn't the interesting one. Its the iOS devices. The iOS devices won't have Flash to fallback on either. So basically every iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch won't be able to watch your WebM videos AT ALL. There is no fallback, unless you encode to H264.

Now maybe you can say that in this new HTML5 web world mobile Apple devices are irrelevant. I personally think you'd be wrong.

H264 is the only codec that will generally be supported on every device, either directly or by Flash. From Chrome to Firefox to iOS to IE.

rmc3• 16 years ago

Yes. Safari is a minor browser. Tiny market share.

drgath• 16 years ago

"or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms"

Are you referring to other devices running Android? I don't think Google's stance is anti-h.264, it's anti anything that isn't royalty-free (forever) in the web stack. And I agree with that.

drivebyacct24• 16 years ago

Android, YouTube, etc. I suppose the distinction of it being the "web stack" is one thing, but doesn't it seem that YouTube should fall in line with their WebM-friendly stance? I can certainly get behind it, and despite my cynicism in regards to timing, etc, I'm behind the 1000lb gorilla using their weight to bring attention and popularity to freedom.

cpearce• 16 years ago

"Of course, hardware adoption is still a huge question mark which I noticed Google also failed to discuss further in this post."

This has been discussed on the WebM blog:

"The WebM/VP8 hardware decoder implementation has already been licensed to over twenty partners and is proven in silicon. We expect the first commercial chips to integrate our VP8 decoder IP to be available in the first quarter of 2011."

http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...

"They don't address why they're removing it, why they chose to do it now, or whether or not they'll be consistent across their platforms."

Incidentally, months ago they've also blogged about why they'll keep YouTube using Flash, rather than HTML5: http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html

drivebyacct24• 16 years ago

Oh I saw that, I meant more that there are millions of mobile (and non-mobile) devices that have hardware decoding that won't be able to play WebM video anywhere near as well as H.264.

clark-kent• 16 years ago

WebM will work on all major browsers, IE9 by downloading and installing the VP8 codec on Windows, Safari by installing the codec for quicktime. Of course it will work on Opera, Firefox 4, and Chrome.

The problem is getting it on iOS devices.

Luecke• 16 years ago

When are they going to remove MP3 support from the audio tag?

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

Never. Google is not actively attempting to promote Vorbis or non-MP3 technologies at the moment. It'd be silly to waste resources doing that as MP3 patents are nearing their end-of-life. MP3 is already a lost battle and the patents have so little life left in them that it's not worth trying to squeeze what can be gotten out of that.

mikeryan4• 16 years ago

This seems to work under a bit of a hazy assumption that there needs to be a "baseline" video codec. The image tag has worked fine without a "baseline" image format since the dawn of the web.

If using a baseline format was their real argument they wouldn't be supporting a patent encumbered MP3 format for the audio tag, same as Firefox.

yanw3• 16 years ago

That's just petty nitpicking, the h264 patent threat in much more immediate and substantial so an alternative is needed specially since we are at the beginning of this shift and setting open standards now will save a lot of heartache in the future.

mikeryan4• 16 years ago

Its not petty nitpicking, its their entire argument. Including H.264 doesn't in any way prevent WebM from becoming the more mainstream standard. Except for the fact that likely more people would choose to use H.264 over WebM so they don't have to re-encode their video catalog using inferior tools in an inferior codec. The "Video Startups" he's defending aren't being stifled under H.264's licensing fees. The fees exist but they're pretty much negligible to a video provider compared to any other cost they are incurring. If they are really concerned for the poor video startup give them options to use the best tools for their need.

lukeschlather• 16 years ago

Were you there at the dawn of the web? I wasn't, but it's my understanding that GIF caused a ton of legal problems.

annevk• 16 years ago

The img element has baseline formats. GIF/JPEG pretty much from the start and now also PNG. If these formats were not there the img element would never have worked.

Lagged2Death• 16 years ago

>The image tag has worked fine without a "baseline" image format since the dawn of the web.

IE's historically poor support for PNG is probably the main reason so many sites still use GIFs where PNGs would be better. (Edit: And for that matter, as others have pointed out here, PNG was invented because the owners of the GIF patents threatened to sue the entire Internet.) Browser support for TIFF is an inconsistent mess.

In the case of the img tag, the most common browsers all supported two common formats pretty well (JPEG and GIF), so those two formats became the de-facto baseline image formats organically.

I think the situation with video is similar. If Firefox, Chrome, and Opera (the influential browsers used mainly by the early-adopter, techie crowd) all support one specific codec for HTML5 video, that will become the de-facto baseline video format organically.

blasdel2• 16 years ago

TIFF itself is an inconsistent mess :/

ergo98• 16 years ago

If using a baseline format was their real argument they wouldn't be supporting a patent encumbered MP3 format for the audio tag, same as Firefox.

The "if you don't fight every battle at once, you have no morals to fight any battle" angle is bullshit. It's agenda-driven juvenile sophistry, and the real world doesn't work like that.

And while I find the WebM initiative questionable (h264 is technically superior and widely supported already), I find it unbelievably boring (and predictable) how it has become a proxy for the iPhone/Android fight. I doubt the Android team had any bearing whatsoever in this decision, and every Android handset out there is just as screwed by the lack of hardware decoding.

Suddenly boring zealots like Gruber and Siegler are experts on web standards and video codecs. What a depressing day. Seriously.

TomOfTTB2• 16 years ago

If Google really wants to force WebM adoption they need to go "all-in". Set a deadline for pulling all h.264 videos from YouTube and force Apple and Microsoft to support the WebM standard.

I know that sounds worse than what they're doing but hear me out. Right now they're creating an environment where everyone will have to do twice the work to support HTML5. That's not good for anyone.

So if they're insistent on making WebM the standard they need to pull out the big guns and force Apple and Microsoft to capitulate. It'll be bitter and nasty but at the end we'll get a standard out of it and not a fragmented mess.

cracell• 16 years ago

This "twice the work" argument was clearly addressed by the post. Firefox has a much larger market share than Chrome and has already clearly stated they will not support h.264. If anyone created a problem of having to do "twice the work" it was Firefox and Google has just decided to support them in it.

And using their position as owner of YouTube to force h.264 out before WebM is ready would just hurt YouTube and make everyone with a mobile device made prior to WebM decoders being included (assuming that gains momentum) unable to watch YouTube videos.

kenjackson10• 16 years ago

The twice the work wasn't really addressed. No one really cares about the desktop. You can get whatever codec you need whenever. It's mobile that people care about. That's where HTML5 will really make a difference. Firefox is nowhere in Mobile.

If this was just about the desktop I'd say just randomly encode every video. I'm going to have every codec installed anyways. But that's not the discussion.

TomOfTTB2• 16 years ago

If they were to force H.264 out they'd clearly have to make an exception for devices that were not capable of playing WebM. To think otherwise would be idiotic (and is an obnoxious straw man argument on your part). But that's not hard to do.

So that doesn't invalidate my point which is they should either REALLY force the issue or drop it. Right now they're making a half hearted effort that guarantees fragmentation.

(As for your first point I agree with the other reply)

rwl• 16 years ago

> If anyone created a problem of having to do "twice the work" it was Firefox...

Huh? As I understand it, H.264 was never an option for Firefox due to the patent encumbrance and licensing fees they would incur for distributing it.

The people who chose to use H.264, despite knowing that the second most popular browser wouldn't support it, made twice the work for themselves.

yanw3• 16 years ago

Or release a WebM playback enabler which is more sensible and as effective:

The WebM Project team will soon release plugins that enable WebM support in Safari and IE9

easyfrag• 16 years ago

so we're back to plugins, what was the point of the <video> tag again?

CountSessine3• 16 years ago

Exactly. Removing support for h.264 + the VIDEO tag from Chrome will accomplish nothing more than what Firefox accomplished a year ago when they said that they wouldn't support h.264 in the first place. A year later and no one is serving Theora over the VIDEO tag - instead there are just a lot of Firefox users viewing h.264 in FLV containers in Flash. Chrome's stand against h.264 will convince precisely 0 (ZERO) video websites to double their CPU budget by double-encoding to h.264 AND VP8.

It's what Google does with Youtube that could really change something. If they stop serving h.264 from Youtube, then we'll all be switching to WebM/VP8.

pilif• 16 years ago

What I find funny is that half the Internet was complaining when Google announced to support H.264 in the first place when, clearly, supporting nothing but open formats was the right way to go (see Mozilla's decision to only support theora)

And now that Google is removing H.264 support again, half the Internet is, again, up in arms about the decision, using the same arguments as before.

Well, I guess this time it's the half of the Internet that wasnt complaining last time :-)

pornel5• 16 years ago

There was no WebM back then. The only alternative was Ogg Theora (even before 1.1 improvements IIRC), which Google didn't consider as suitable alternative.

Google doesn't have RMS's consistency on the matter. They balance practicality with idealism.

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

I've been trying to refrain from commenting on these stories the last few days, but oh well.

This whole debate is stupid and of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go. Mozilla supports it, Chrome supports it, Opera supports it, Flash will be supporting it in the near future, meaning any of the other desktop browsers will support it.

The only reason people are complaining is that their iPhones have H.264 hardware acceleration. Well, dude, you'll just have to deal with software decode for some videos. The world does not revolve around iOS, no matter how much you want it to.

There is no good reason to support H.264 -- WebM provides roughly equivalent features and quality and MPEG-LA will be out for blood ever more as the clock ticks down on H.264 patents.

Everyone knows that there is no valid argument here for supporting H.264 other than "but... that'll decrease the battery life on my iPad or iPhone! :(". That's life, man; technology moves forward and old things get obsoleted, even mind-blowingly shiny things made by Apple.

I find the pointless hipster-fanboy whining to be pretty grating, personally.

9oliYQjP• 16 years ago

This is a standard negotiating tactic. Google will back down once they prove that WebM is a real threat to MPEG-LA's business model. They'll do this because you'll find Google getting an exclusive sweet deal from MPEG-LA for streaming h.264 on YouTube (which is what they really care about). Once that happens, h.264 will be back in play on Chrome, leaving FireFox and Opera as the odd browsers out. Which, incidentally, is great for Google because users of those browsers will just switch over to Chrome.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

By similar logic, Chrome is just a ploy to get Microsoft to make Google the default search in IE, and Android is just a ploy to keep Apple using Google Maps on the iPhone.

This could be true, or it could actually be that Google wants people to use a format that works on Linux, OS X, and Windows. Not everything is a conspiracy or a ploy, you know.

mikeryan4• 16 years ago

There is no good reason to support H.264

What?

Except for the fact that as a video site, all of my existing video is already in H.264. All of my encoding tools support H.264. Every other device I need to stream that video content too including mobile devices, tablets, Connected TV's, Blu-Ray players and Over the Top boxes (Roku, Boxee) support H.264 (generally at the hardware level).

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

The same argument applies to video sites. We shouldn't be held back and stuck on a proprietary format just because you don't want to write a script to go through and re-encode everything to WebM.

H.264 heretofore has been "the standard", so of course most existing devices will have better support for H.264 video than for the not-even-one-year-old WebM. Google and Mozilla are attempting to change that to avoid a repeat of GIF or even MP3.

The argument boils down to "I don't want to put in the effort to switch to the new stuff, and my old stuff likes the old stuff better anyway, so Google is a jerk for trying to make the old stuff less common." And that's just a silly argument that could easily be applied to any number of things in technology, which is a very fast moving field. Things change a lot in this space and it's just one of those things you have to accept.

Google has not obliterated or disabled your H.264 decoders. You are welcome to keep H.264 video around all you want (according, of course, to your license terms with the MPEG-LA). Removing native support from Chrom(e|ium) does not mean that all H.264 video is now magically broken or unplayable. If you are happy with H.264, you are free to continue to use it.

abdulla2• 16 years ago

Let's rephrase this:

"Except for the fact that as a web site, all of my existing HTML already works in IE6. All of my HTML tools support IE6. Every other device I need to view web content content too including Windows mobile devices, Windows tablets, and Microsoft Web TVs support IE6."

These same arguments have been used before, imagine if they were successful at deterring open, royalty-free innovation --- where would we be now?

VengefulCynic• 16 years ago

Ignoring the cost in ignoring the revenue from millions of iOS users, let me focus instead of the looming legal question of WebM. If Google were to indemnify WebM users (sites who encode in WebM, developers who release decoders, OEMs who release hardware decoders), I would be much more willing to embrace WebM. As is, there is a very cogent argument to be made that the MPEG-LA group has already suggested that some of their patents may be encapsulated in WebM and users could be opening themselves up to lawsuits as co-defendants with Google. H.264 isn't free, but it's a known cost and licensing from MPEG-LA indemnifies you from any legal costs that might be associated with patent trolls popping up to sue you to death.

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

This point has already been discussed a lot, but I'll just review it quickly for you.

Basically, if you use any software at all, you can't go around living your life in constant fear of patent threats. WebM is probably safer than most because you have a big entity to fight most of your battle for you, presuming such a battle ever materializes.

Of course it's possible that MPEG-LA will be angry to see their H.264 revenue stream run consistently drier and sue in hopes of retaliation and a declaration that all WebM users must pay MPEG-LA royalties anyway. There's no guarantee that this will happen, however, and that MPEG-LA hasn't made an attempt to "nip this in the bud" demonstrates that they may not be all that certain they have a case here.

Google released WebM explicitly to circumvent the restrictions with H.264 so I suspect they did their due diligence and deviated from the H.264 patents in the necessary ways, but as above, there's nothing you can do if you irritate a group that has money and lawyers and wants to try their hand at milking something out of you. That's a general fact of life whether you use WebM or not.

If you're really worried about the FUD MPEG-LA puts out to scare you into paying protection money, then I guess you are free to pay that, if it makes you feel happier. But "Google shouldn't promote free standards because it might make someone angry and then they might sue you" is just not a very solid argument -- we can't refuse to do anything because someone might sue us. There will always be vultures out there, and we can't stop progress because of them.

kjksf• 16 years ago

Except it's not true: you pay MPEG-LA to license known patents under their ownership. They don't indemnify you from patent lawsuits stemming from patents they don't own.

They say so explicitly on their website:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx Q: Are all AVC essential patents included? A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent.

So there's no different in that respect between WebM and h264.

magicalist3• 16 years ago

Recently I've become quite worried about using Linux for the same reason. Microsoft has suggested several times that some of their patents may be encapsulated in Linux and users could be opening themselves up to lawsuits. Now, they haven't mentioned the actual infringed upon patents or where Linux has done so, but they could at any moment.

More seriously, MPEG-LA indemnifies you from nothing. However, like the webM license, you lose all right to associated patents if you sue a licensee, so there is some protection there (in both cases).

patrickaljord• 16 years ago

> As is, there is a very cogent argument to be made that the MPEG-LA group has already suggested that some of their patents may be encapsulated in WebM

They've been saying the same about Vorbis for the last 10 years and yet never sued anyone. By the way, Vorbis is being used a lot by the billion dollar video games industry.

> H.264 isn't free, but it's a known cost and licensing from MPEG-LA

Actually no, MPEG-LA and its users have been sued many times by patent trolls, read up the wikipedia article. H.264 is no safer, the MPEG-LA is just good at spreading FUD.

bzbarsky2• 16 years ago

As it happens, MPEG-LA doesn't indemnify you from anything. They even say so on their website, though it's carefully hidden. But people would really like to believe their licensing fee paid for that sort of thing, so don't bother to check what the actual licensing terms are.

toddheasley5• 16 years ago

I've been trying to refrain from commenting, too, so that's one thing that we have... had in common.

> ...of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go. Mozilla supports it, Chrome supports it, Opera supports it, Flash will be supporting it in the near future...

First of all, including Opera in the list of those in favor of WebM is a lot like including Iceland in the Coalition of the Willing. If you live in Iceland, you probably overestimate Iceland's importance, but it undermines the intent of making a list in the first place. The flip side of this is that, while Internet Explorer probably won't support WebM unless Google indemnifies adopters, IE is almost as irrelevant as Opera in the arenas of both web video and The Future. Here's where we really are:

* Apple likes H.264 for the following reasons: * The licensing and liability is known, and Apple can afford to pay. They don't care if web video ends up being a high stakes poker table, because they're a high roller. * H.264-encoded video looks better than WebM video and takes up slightly less space. * Most current graphics silicon supports hardware decoding of H.264, which allows for video playback that is both gorgeous and economical. * Mozilla liked Theora because they can't or won't pay to license H.264, and Theora was the only open source candidate they could find to run in the election. Free is more important than good. * Google likes WebM for the following reasons: * They can control its development. * It is, so far as anyone knows, unencumbered by patents, so no licensing.

I say "so far as anyone knows" because that's what Google is saying by not indemnifying WebM adopters. If you're worried about a theoretical MPEG-LA licensing gotcha, then you have to be equally worried that, if/when WebM adoption is significant, patent trolls won't show up with claims of infringement. At least with H.264, the licensing terms have been stated. YOU personally may not be worried about either scenario, but you're probably not weighing whether you should produce graphics chips that decode WebM. Does anybody on this forum want to argue whether the chipmakers who've pledged to do WebM decoding aren't nervously watching to see if more Android hardware makers get sued? By not indemnifying adopters, Google is essentially picking an open source fight in a crowded bar and then ducking out the side door.

>The only reason people are complaining is that their iPhones have H.264 hardware acceleration. Well, dude, you'll just have to deal with software decode for some videos. The world does not revolve around iOS, no matter how much you want it to.

That is a very big component to the complaining: I can't watch your idealism on my iPad for the duration of a 6-hour flight. And you're right, the world does not revolve around iOS, but the video world does revolve around H.264 right now. If you're not shooting with actual film, then your video workflow literally starts and ends with H.264.

And maybe more to the point web video does revolve around iOS devices, because iOS users watch orders of magnitude more video than anybody else.

> WebM provides roughly equivalent features and quality

If by "features" you're excluding fast, economical encoding and decoding and by "quality" you're excluding picture quality. "Roughly equivalent" is just weaseling around admitting H.264 looks and works better. Someday... who knows? Someday GM might make a better car than Toyota, but for now, GM is stuck saying things like "[our] quality can't be beat by Toyota."

> I find the pointless hipster-fanboy whining to be pretty grating, personally.

And the hipster-fanboys doing the pointless whining harbor deep suspicions that people who are willing to trade their audio and video playback quality today for the open source promise of adequate video someday don't really care much about audio or video.

haberman• 16 years ago

> I say "so far as anyone knows" because that's what Google is saying by not indemnifying WebM adopters. If you're worried about a theoretical MPEG-LA licensing gotcha, then you have to be equally worried that, if/when WebM adoption is significant, patent trolls won't show up with claims of infringement.

Does MPEG-LA indemnify its customers against patents by others (such as Google)?

Google and MPEG-LA both have a bunch of patents that apply to somewhat similar codecs. The only difference is that everyone knows Google's not going to be a jerk about it. Who knows, other patent trolls might turn up that attack MPEG-LA customers.

> By not indemnifying adopters, Google is essentially picking an open source fight in a crowded bar and then ducking out the side door.

Google's not "ducking out" of anywhere: it will be probably the biggest WebM publisher out there because of YouTube. Of any WebM publisher, they'll have the biggest target on their back. And by pushing WebM so hard, clearly Google thinks this is a battle they can win.

statictype2• 16 years ago

The flip side of this is that, while Internet Explorer probably won't support WebM unless Google indemnifies adopters, IE is almost as irrelevant as Opera in the arenas of both web video and The Future.

Internet Explorer still has a larger market share than Safari and iOS devices are barely a blip on the radar. By your logic, only Firefox, IE and Chrome should matter.

I can't watch your idealism on my iPad for the duration of a 6-hour flight

Well, we're not talking about videos that you load and play and you're iOS device. We're talking about video that is embedded in web-pages. Are you watching those during your 6 hour flight?

And maybe more to the point web video does revolve around iOS devices, because iOS users watch orders of magnitude more video than anybody else.

I'm reasonably sure you're greatly overestimating how much web-based video iOS devices consume.

abdulla2• 16 years ago

The other thing that bothers me is that people are screaming blue murder as if they had no alternative choice of browser. If you don't like Chrome's decision (or Firefox's, or Opera's), use another browser. You can still choose to use Safari or IE.

ugh• 16 years ago

H.264 hardware is everywhere, you shouldn’t imply that it is only in iPhones.

marbletiles4• 16 years ago

> This whole debate is stupid and of course WebM exclusivity is the right way to go.

This whole debate is stupid and of course WebM exclusivity is the wrong way to go.

An "of course" is a really lame way to enter a debate, because it says that everyone take the debating so far seriously are idiots, which I don't believe the rest of HN are. The other alternative is that it's much more nuanced than "of course" allows, you just haven't understood the debate.

> The only reason people are complaining is that their iPhones have H.264 hardware acceleration

No, people are complaining for many other valid reasons. Like: the digital video world runs on H.264, it has deep, complicated, expensive internal toolchains to support it, legacy archives encoded in it, basically entire businesses built around it. The video production world is far larger and more complex than you're picturing it. A "script" isn't nearly enough to do what you're talking about; suggesting you just need to point ffmpeg at a hard drive of stuff has dramatically underestimated the scale of what's involved.

Or, reasons like: they want the video tag to succeed, and this decision essentially entrenches Flash for another five years at least.

In an h.264 world the video tag had the combined support of three major desktop browsers, iOS, Android, a tonne of shipping mobile and embedded hardware, a Flash fallback and crucially it was an easy implementation for all the video content producers, with no re-encoding required. That's plenty enough to give it a good beachhead and momentum away from all Flash all the time.

In a WebM world, you have the support of Firefox, Opera and Chrome. No shipping mobile support. No shipping embedded support. No shipping Flash implementation. No video producer support. No video toolchain support. And it's a small technological step backwards, to boot!

> I find the pointless hipster-fanboy whining to be pretty grating, personally.

I find underinformed freetard passive-aggression to have no place here, personally.

prodigal_erik3• 16 years ago

Codecs have come and gone all the time. Your best bet for the web as late as 2007 was transcoding to VP6. How could anyone invest in a toolchain that can't support any codec other than H.264, knowing such a poor design wouldn't have been viable just a few years before? Did they think the industry wouldn't agree on any improvements, ever?

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

Your comment basically says "But, we already have all this expensive stuff for H.264! We spent a lot of time and money buying it and figuring out how to make it all work! I don't like this new thing."

While your expensive super-duper video authoring toolchain does not now support WebM, if Google has its way, it one day will and you'll encode WebM/VP8 just like you encode H.264 today.

The lack of scriptability seems to stem from using tools that are hard to script. ffmpeg is just fine for most people that are going to be using the <video> tag. If your tools are hard to script, you may want to ask the vendor for better tools.

You're right that support for WebM is not as wide as is support for H.264. The theory is that it soon will be.

Nobody is forcing you to convert your H.264 videos today. If you want to wait until support is more widespread, then that's just fine. Chrome is not some devastating loss for the <video> tag here, its userbase is relatively minor.

Also, do you have any merit behind your statement that VP8 is a step backward? I'm aware of Dark_Shikari's post on the matter. I don't think it definitively shows that VP8 < H.264. Do you have anything else? Some sources have claimed VP8 is much better.

ZeroGravitas4• 16 years ago

So this is a bad decision because one technology you like is already entrenched so there's no point fighting it, and also a bad decision because another technology you don't like is so entrenched that it'll be around for years because Google won't fight it (in one very particular way, which happens to benefit Apple most).

Many of your arguments are valid against WebM (basically lack of maturity, support) but the exact same arguments can be made about HTML5 video with any codec (not supported by the majority of bowsers, it's not a standard yet, where is the DRM, hardware acceleration is patchy, captioning support is still sketchy, easy switching between streams etc.)

The set of those who oppose Flash as a closed web technology yet don't believe in royalty-free web standards is much larger than I thought it would be. But it seems to be mostly the cultier end of the Mac fanbase. It's a bit of a shame that they can't just come out and say "this affects me because Apple supports neither the current defacto standard H.264 via Flash, nor the coming de jure standard WebM via HTML5 on my portable iOS devices". (Note that the more normal Apple users were already annoyed, at Apple, for the first half of that lack of support on their iPads.)

Flash is in no-way teetering on the brink, and this decision by Google has minimal impact compared with the fact that 99% of web video is served via Flash. The only thing likely to make a dent in that number is changes at Youtube. So if you really hate Flash that much, I'd stay on their good side.

smackay• 16 years ago

Is the current lack of support in WebM for mobile devices really an issue? I know the carriers would love you to burn through your monthly data allowance as fast as possible but my understanding is that generally (with the exception of South Korea and Japan) there was little interest in viewing video on mobile devices. I tihnk that is likely to change but it will not be hampered by the poor support in current generation hardware.

Tloewald2• 16 years ago

All the arguments against h264 apply equally to proprietary fonts only more so (since they're not even free as in beer for the next few years).

If font-family can designate a non-free/open font then video can designate a non-free/open codec.

cookiecaper9• 16 years ago

<video> in fact can specify a non-free codec. This isn't about the types of codecs that should be allowed to be included in <video>, it's about the types of codecs a browser vendor will support out of the box.

Fonts are much smaller than video decoders so they can be sent over the wire, making the whole licensing and distribution thing the problem of the person using the font on his site. Fonts are all decoded by the same free code, whether that font is free or not.

There is no facility to transmit a decoder for the use of <video> tags on your page, and no one would do that anyone because it would be a huge nightmare to make sure you're sending one that can run on the user's platform, the browser would be forced to allow execution of an arbitrary binary block that could very well just be posing as a video decoder, and then all sites would have to pay for the rights to distribute the license. It just doesn't work. The browser has to include the decoder locally, so the browser vendor has to decide if he's going to pay for the license for a H.264 decoder or not.

slackgentoo2• 16 years ago

FYI, the person in charge (Mike Jazayeri) previously worked at Microsoft. I am not suggesting anything, just find it is quite interesting.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

It's almost like employment is some sort of contract instead of some sort of religion.

slackgentoo2• 16 years ago

I think it is interesting to think how a person's past (work) experience may influence the person's current thinking and judgement. Nothing else.

weixiyen2• 16 years ago

Not sure why Google is getting so much hate. I would direct it at the following instead:

- MPEG-LA

- Firefox

- Opera

I'm not sure what everyone expected here. There was no way that h.264 would be the standard format for the video tag.

This is one of many moves to push WebM forward as the undisputed standard. It's been less than 1 year since public announcement of WebM, and Google IO is around the corner in May '11. Expect more positive news on the WebM front.

There are 3 major arguments left standing against WebM

1) h.264 is better than vp8

2) prevalent hardware support for WebM

3) iOS

Would anyone really be that surprised if 2 of the 3 are addressed within the year?

jsz0• 16 years ago

I'm not sure what Google's motivations are but they are taking a huge risk here. If WebM gets a strong patent challenge, or isn't widely adopted/supported for other reasons, then Google is going to demonstrate their ability to pick the wrong horse in a very high profile way. It will be interesting to see what type of fallout that creates. Imagine a new world where Google, with all of its power, cannot influence the future of the web? I think that would have some major ramifications.

rtrunck• 16 years ago

Has Google donated the patents they hold encompassing WebM to the public domain?

mbrubeck• 16 years ago

No, but the WebM license includes a perpetual, royalty-free patent license: http://www.webmproject.org/license/additional/

The patent license is irrevocable unless you file a suit against VP8 users claiming that VP8 violates your own patents. (This is a common clause for open-source patent grants; basically it means that Google can still use its patents "defensively" as a deterrent against other patent suits, but it can't use them in an "offensive" first-strike.)

benreesman• 16 years ago

let's all acknowledge this controversy for what it is: an apple vs. google popularity contest. and with that said: suck it apple. suck it long, and suck it hard.

sent from my iPhone.

protomyth• 16 years ago

I just don't get why my reaction should be different for WebM than it was from OpenXML. A "standard" controlled my one company is not something I think I can trust.

extension• 16 years ago

H.264 is just not going to work for web video, even as a defacto standard. Firefox will never support it and it prevents any small time player from entering the browser game down the road.

It's also a serious risk for big corps who don't have a license. Keep that in mind when you criticize Google. You're asking them to expose themselves to liability (or pay huge license fees).

If we're going to the trouble of phasing in a <video> tag that will take years to become viable, we might as well throw in a properly unencumbered codec that will also take years to become viable. Why bother with <video> if it's just going to go rotten as soon as it gains critical mass and the patent trolls pounce?

Nothing critical is breaking today, we're just going to have to wait a bit longer to play with the shiny new video tag, which is well worth it to have it done properly. Just be glad that one of the tech megacorps is pushing for standards and freedom as part of their business plan. Usually it's the other way around.

Chromium Blog: More about the Chrome HTML Video Codec Change

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