HTML 5 drops open source video codec

http://www.zdnetasia.com/news/software/0,39044164,62055739,00.htm?scid=rss_z_nw

by acangiano • 17 years ago

54 33 17 years ago

eli• 17 years ago

Well, it's that they gave up on picking a codec in the standard, not that they abandoned Ogg for something else

seldo2• 17 years ago

It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg -- hardware support seems a silly reason from Apple, who manufacture their own hardware, and the "patent landscape" for the open-source Ogg seems even less likely. Do they still cling to a dream of Quicktime becoming the web standard, after the <video> tag kills Flash?

The only people who should be pleased with this announcement are Adobe. Moving away from Flash will be an uphill struggle, and this makes it just a little bit harder.

tptacek• 17 years ago

I like the idea that anyone who has any hardware capability, or even significant hardware capability, can just whip up an Ogg chipset and roll it out to millions of installed devices. Hey, why doesn't Centrino 2 support Ogg? Intel must be clinging to some krazy dreams.

seldo2• 17 years ago

The mass adoption of all elements of HTML 5 is 5 years off; far longer than Apple's hardware product cycle. If Apple wanted to start supporting Ogg, they could build it into their hardware in that timeframe.

Also, it's not like their hardware can't support it right now; Ogg video in Firefox 3.5 runs just fine on my Mac.

ZeroGravitas3• 17 years ago

It's somewhat amusing that it's Apple holding out hardware implementations as the key when for years they've included chipsets in their desktops and laptops with decoding ability that they've simply not used.

This has now changed with Snow Leopard, but even then it's only one video card:

""While Apple has previously included graphics cards that have contained hardware support for H.264 decoding, the company has only recently taken advantage of this hardware acceleration. Mac OS X Snow Leopard's specs officially acknowledge this support but it appears to be limted to the NVIDIA 9400M graphics processors found in recent Apple laptops and desktops," Kim reports.

"Unfortunately, it does not appear that this support will extend to older video cards," Kim reports. "Hardware decoding of H.264 video improves the performance of video playback while leaving your computer's CPU free for other tasks."

http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/21409/

tensafefrogs• 17 years ago

It is clear: They are worried about "Submarine patents" popping up in the theora codec and being sued once they implement it.

vetinari5• 17 years ago

It is not clear at all: submarine patents popping up apply to H.264 too. Both codecs are on equal standing on this issue.

However, remember that Apple is a MPEG LA member, so every time someone pays for H.264 license, a cut from the money goes to Apple.

ubernostrum8• 17 years ago

"It's not clear why Apple would refuse to support Ogg"

So, I don't necessarily agree with this reasoning, but I'd suspect it goes like this:

The hardware point is quite valid; Apple doesn't manufacture all the hardware in, say, an iPhone (they buy lots of stuff off the shelf and assemble overseas), and would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder but also integrating it into a space- and power-constrained device. And they've invested too much in H.264 to just drop it, so they'd have to make both work, which is even tougher.

The patent concerns, meanwhile, are probably less about minimizing exposure to possible patent claims and more about ensuring that Apple doesn't have significantly more exposure than any other major player. They have that situation right now with H.264: everybody's on a level playing field with respect to the known licensing, and if submarine claims pop up, Apple's not the only company vulnerable, so they wouldn't suddenly be at a huge disadvantage.

With Theora that situation doesn't exist yet; nobody's yet taken the big plunge into wide-scale deployment of Theora in the market, and Apple (and others, including Nokia) are skittish about being the first to do so, since first to market may end up being first to get sued, and then nobody else will want to use Theora, leaving them all alone exposed to patent claims. I suspect that if somebody else steps up and does Theora in a big way first, Apple will feel more comfortable following, since then they'll once again be maintaining rough parity of exposure.

trezor• 17 years ago

would probably like to avoid the expense involved in not only finding and/or designing a Theora decoder

Not to mention H.264 was designed with hardware decoding in mind, while Ogg Theora was not.

From reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8yhi6/decoding_...

Theora is derived from VP3 and neither were designed with hardware implementations in mind. VP3 uses funky high precision unsigned multiplication because it was fast on a Pentium II MMX back in the day. Theora carries this over and it makes hardware implementation a pain in the arse and virtually unimplementable in some cases ... H.264 was specifically designed with hardware implementation in mind and is thus pure 16-bit mathematics, at least through to Main Profile.

It would seem that for the embedded market, Theora is not going to happen anytime soon.

w1ntermute2• 17 years ago

If both Mozilla and Google (alongside H.264, but still) are willing to support Ogg, why didn't they just go with Ogg? Since Firefox has the largest market share of the <video>-supporting browsers and Google is running YouTube, there should be enough Ogg support for it to win. Why is Apple's opinion even relevant? Safari's market share certainly isn't large enough to make a big difference.

Moreover, the efficiency concerns regarding Ogg will be solved in the future, so that shouldn't be a concern in the long run (which is what this standard is for).

ubernostrum8• 17 years ago

"Safari's market share certainly isn't large enough to make a big difference."

Sigh.

Please read this:

http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2006/05/13/cluster...

If you're too busy to read it, a good summary applied to this situation would be that small-market browsers do indeed matter if they're being used by the sorts of critical early-adopter/well-connected people who make or break your service through their social connections. And remember that Safari is on every single iPhone out there, and so is the mobile browser used by lots and lots of those people.

w1ntermute2• 17 years ago

"small-market browsers do indeed matter if they're being used by the sorts of critical early-adopter/well-connected people who make or break your service through their social connections. And remember that Safari is on every single iPhone out there, and so is the mobile browser used by lots and lots of those people."

I still don't feel that this even comes close to matching the massive impact that Firefox has. It is also popular among early adopters, and were Ogg to be made the standard and implemented on YouTube as the sole <video> codec, I think it would be possible to force Apple's hand on the issue.

rimantas• 17 years ago

And remember, that Apple can use chips for decoding h.264 on iPhone and iPod Touch. That matters a lot.

Create• 17 years ago

Why is Apple's opinion even relevant?

Eric E. Schmidt. Going MPEG LA, doing evil?

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

onreact-com• 17 years ago

All those greedy bastards just want to push their own codecs, especially Apple the king of proprietary media solutions. That's their business model.

sbt• 17 years ago

Yes, this is like a soap opera where everyone has their own obvious interests in mind but are still willing to put on a charade.

I'm a Linux user and I'm getting pretty tired of not having an open source codec standard for the browser. Mozilla (and Opera) has my full support in this.

TweedHeads• 17 years ago

Ian Hickson should continue supporting Ogg Theora as the only free solution. It leaves a lot to be desired from his decision to drop the ball right now when firefox 3.5 just released, knowing that more than 100 million users support Theora.

Ian, you're on my watch list, I don't want to ever know you were bribed by greedy bastards or criminal monopolists.

It just takes a million dollars to buy a soul.

HTML 5 drops open source video codec

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