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Google dropping h.264 support from Chrome

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bicostp:
Doesn't Chrome still come with Flash Player?

The problem with using an open-source codec (for example, Ogg Theora) is that they just aren't as efficient as H.264 at compressing video. A 10 megabyte video file vs a 12 meg one means it takes an extra 20% of the original bandwidth use to accomplish the same task. That doesn't make much of a difference in a single instance, but it adds up as traffic increases. Imagine YouTube suddenly needs 1/5 more bandwidth to do its job, that makes the site more expensive to keep running. The video files will take up more disk space, so they have to buy more storage servers (never mind the additional electricity necessary to run them). Meanwhile, users will complain or jump ship because their videos are taking even longer than usual to load or look worse than they did before. Yes, you could compress the open-codec videos more to match the file size of H.264, but you will decrease the video quality noticeably.

As long as the costs of moving to a less efficient open source codec outweigh the cost to license a proprietary one, guess which one companies will go to.

According to this article, 20% is being very generous, so real-world numbers would be much worse.
http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-vs-h264-head-to-head-comparisons.ars

It's all moot anyway, because aside from the open source crowd nobody cares what codec video player sites use, as long as their video of a kitty jumping into a box loads quick enough and looks acceptable.

Catfish_Man:
WebM is somewhat better than Theora, but still definitely well behind say, h.264 high profile. Probably behind main too.

est:

--- Quote from: IrrationalPie on 14 Jan 2011, 06:41 ---The reason Google is 'dropping' h.264 is because it's not an open codec.
The h.264 code is not an 'open' codec because it is not open-sourced code and the code contains patented algorithms.

--- End quote ---

I know that is what they are saying, but I am skeptical.  Either they are the most idiotic idealists, or they are lying about their motives.

In the first case I feel that they are grossly misreading what people will actually do vs what they are hoping will happen. They're hoping that web content providers will offer both WebM and h.264 content, but I doubt they will.  I think they'll just provide h.264 content via native <video> tag plus a Flash wrapper for the same content for those who don't support it natively. Content providers won't want to re-encode all their shit and double their storage costs storing both formats, and I don't think that WebM will replace h.264 as the main codec on the web, as there is already a lot of groundswell support for h.264 and a lot of devices supporting it in hardware.


--- Quote from: Jon Gruber @ http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/practical_vs_idealistic ---... prior to this week’s announcement, I thought Chrome had the best HTML5 video policy of any browser: they supported all the relevant codecs. Supporting WebM and H.264 is better than supporting only one or the other, in my book. But if you’re only going to support one, I say support the one that is in wide use, with extensive wide-ranging support from camera makers, mobile playback devices, and online video services.
--- End quote ---


In the second case, by which I mean if they are misleading us, then it is a pretty targeted move against Apple and Microsoft, especially in the mobile space. Neither of those guys are going to put WebM support into their browsers, and especially not into their mobile devices.  Apple especially doesn't even support Flash on its devices, so I doubt they will throw a WebM plugin onto them.


--- Quote from: Ed Burnette @ http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/chrome-users-are-the-latest-casualty-in-googles-crusade-against-apple/2158 ---Google can use Flash as a foil against Apple because Android supports Flash but iOS does not. Google’s double standard is especially noticeable if you realize that Flash supports H.264 video. So Chrome will still play H.264 video, but only if you use a Flash plug-in instead of the standard <video> tag. Clearly, it’s not about openness or cost savings: this codec announcement is just another political jab at Apple.
--- End quote ---


In addition, their codec is free at the moment, but it is a. based on entirely proprietary technology developed by On2 as opposed to technology designed by a group of people working to ISO and ITU standards


--- Quote from: Peter Bright @ http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/01/googles-dropping-h264-from-chrome-a-step-backward-for-openness.ars ---In the traditional sense, H.264 is an open standard. That is to say, it was a standard designed by a range of domain experts from across the industry, working to the remit of a standards organization. In fact, two standards organizations were involved: ISO and ITU. The specification was devised collaboratively, with its final ratification dependent on the agreement of the individuals, corporations, and national standards bodies that variously make up ISO and ITU. This makes H.264 an open standard in the same way as, for example, JPEG still images, or the C++ programming language, or the ISO 9660 filesystem used on CD-ROMs. H.264 is unambiguously open.

In contrast, neither WebM's VP8 nor Theora were assembled by a standards body such as ISO. VP8 was developed independently and entirely in secret by the company On2, prior to the company's purchase last year by Google. Theora was created by a group of open-source developers based on early work also done by On2. Though Theora's development can be described as an open, community process (albeit different in nature and style to the more formal processes and procedures used by the standards bodies), no such claim can be made of VP8. At the time of its development, VP8 was a commercial product, licensed by On2. Keeping the specifics of its codec secret was a deliberate goal of the company. Though it has since been published and to some extent documented, the major design work and decision-making was done behind closed doors, making it at its heart quite proprietary.
--- End quote ---

and b. because it is based on proprietary code built by one company there are probably some patents it infringes on, because the tech in this field is pretty focused


--- Quote from: Ed Burnette @ http://www.zdnet.com/blog/burnette/chrome-users-are-the-latest-casualty-in-googles-crusade-against-apple/2158 ---WebM is not truly an open technology because it almost certainly uses patents owned by MPEG-LA or its members. Right now, the patent holders are ignoring it because it’s too small to bother with. We’ve seen this tactic many times before (for example, NTP vs. RIM): bide your time until a lot of people are using the infringing software and then hit it with a massive lawsuit for maximum profit. WebM is its own patent trap, and Google refuses to indemnify users against possible claims further down the road. If they were certain it was IP-clean then why hesitate to provide that protection? Clearly they don’t want that unknown, possibly large liability on their balance sheet.
--- End quote ---


Either way, no matter what they are trying to do, the real result is going to be to divide the web over the use of the HTML5 video tag, slowing down wider adoption and prolonging the use of plugins like the Flash player and whatever shitty plugins they come up with for their WebM codec, when the video tag is supposed to be about moving toward an environment where plugins are not required for video playback on the web.  ie: it is completely fucking up the exact thing that it is trying to help.


--- Quote from: Marco Ament @ http://www.marco.org/136785976 ---By not supporting the practical format, Mozilla isn’t making a brave statement or taking a stand: they’re just keeping everyone on Flash and preventing meaningful adoption of HTML 5’s <video> element.
--- End quote ---


--- Quote from: MG Siegler @ http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/14/webm-plugins/ ---First and formost, the point of all of this H.264/WebM stuff is so that the web can shift to an HTML5 video standard going forward. Of course, since neither IE nor Safari will support Google’s, Mozilla’s, and Opera’s preferred codec for that standard, we’re right back to plugin land! Why don’t we just call WebM, Flash 2.0?
--- End quote ---

est:
Also, with this move Google is basically telling Chrome users and I guess the general web at large that their end-user experience is not as important to them than getting one over on Apple in the mobile space.

est:
Also also: Flash already plays h.264, so you don't need another specific plugin in order to play it.  But if you're saying it's not so bad 'cos you can use plugins then you're missing the entire point of having the html5 <video> tag in the first place, ie: to be able to play video natively in the browser, without plugins.

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