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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
by91degrees ( 207121 ) writes:
Do we use an inferior standard or a closed standard?
Maybe "implementation dependent" is the term we're after.
byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
Inferior standard. Judging from HTML4, by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today so alleged superiority buys us very little, there'll still be a time where people interested in performance ignore the standard altogether. On the other hand, H.264's patent concerns will be with us for the next ~20 years, so Theora's advantage in ease of implementation will likely hold up for a much longer time.
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bypoetmatt ( 793785 ) writes:
I wish I knew enough about this stuff to make a good guess. From a time perspective though I can see where you are going in that there will be replacements to H264 and possibly Ogg will still be around by then, at a later time of implementation.
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
bymaxume ( 22995 ) writes:
It matters very little. If Microsoft and Apple fail to implement Theora, the fact that the standard calls for it will not matter (because it will not be practical as a universal fallback).
Mozilla can't license H.264 in a way that lets downstream packagers use it, so they don't want to put it in the standard either.
The previous /. story discussing the email Hickson sent out covered this stuff pretty well.
It isn't particularly hard to do things like put a flash fallback inside of a video tag, so people that want to use the standard but still have wide reach have lots of options (flash is the de facto way to play 'web' video today, so I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this may continue).
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bydiscord5 ( 798235 ) writes:
It isn't particularly hard to do things like put a flash fallback inside of a video tag, so people that want to use the standard but still have wide reach have lots of options (flash is the de facto way to play 'web' video today, so I don't think it is unreasonable to assume that this may continue).
Then why even bother at all and let's keep on using flash. Currently as a host you only need to host a flash app and either encode your content to flv or h.264. Most of your target audience already has flash installed, and those who want to view your content will probably install flash. Since now it's undefined in the standard, that would mean that you'd have to host an h.264 for the ogg-impaired browsers, an ogg for the h.264 impaired, and then fall back to ye olde tried and tested method of the abominable
bymaxume ( 22995 ) writes:
Hence the 'people who want to use the standard'. I don't think it will improve things much tomorrow, but 5 years from now, it will probably be easier to serve video.
bydrewness ( 85694 ) writes:
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
The biggest problem it causes is that you can't just stick one video inside a <video> tag and know it will work with all browsers. You can specify several videos of different formats and browsers will play the first one that they can (and right now you also have to put a flash based player or something in for IE, but that's a separate problem), but you still have to at least generate an h264 and a Theora video.
byZachPruckowski ( 918562 ) writes:
Really, by not forcing a codec on HTML5, what does that do/what impact? I don't really understand. Can someone clarify?
What it does is requires you to have a Ogg file to show to Firefox/Opera and a H.264 file for Safari. Chrome will support both (but downstream repackagers of Chromium are stuck with Ogg-only). Who knows what Internet Explorer will do. This isn't technically hard (as the video tag allows for multiple sources already), just annoying (as you need two copies of each video) for websites.
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
by the time we could safely drop HTML5 support from our web browsers there'll be at least a dozen codecs that perform far, *far* better than H.264 does today
What codecs are you thinking of? None of the research codecs have come close to matching H.264 so far. The most promising efforts are those of MPEG, working on what's likely to become H.265.
I can't think of even a dozen new delivery codecs being worked on. Theora, Snow, Dirac... What else?
The plus of the ISO process is that everyone with a great codec idea they'd like to get paid for brings it to the table, so you get that alchemy of all the best current ideas being implemented together, with lots of tuning
byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
I don't see why video will be any different once there is actually an accepted standard for it.
XviD isn't even a candidate in this, even though it has far wider support in both hardware and software than h.264. Why? "ohh, h.264 is much better". What makes you think the same won't happen with h.264 itself?
I've got no concerns over h.264 patents. The only people are those who have an agenda to push.
Wrong. Either you live outside the US, or you *should* worry about h.264 because MPEG certainly cares about you or anyone else who uses their patent without the requisite license.
Other than 'I can't just use their code without paying for it', I've yet to see any other reason not to use h264, please enlighten me, without resorting to FUD (i.e. copyright/patent bullshit).
Per-user licensing schemes are incompatible with most Free Software licenses. If you want to know more, ask a lawyer, I'm
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
XviD isn't even a candidate in this, even though it has far wider support in both hardware and software than h.264. Why? "ohh, h.264 is much better". What makes you think the same won't happen with h.264 itself?
No, I bet H.264 has more decoders out there than MPEG-4 ASP. There're certainly much more content, and more authoring tools.
ASP really only caught on in the piracy scene.
Plus MPEG-4 Part 2 is also licensed by MPEG-LA, so it doesn't address licensing issues, but it'd a lot weaker codec than H.264.
byDraek ( 916851 ) writes:
No, I bet H.264 has more decoders out there than MPEG-4 ASP. There're certainly much more content, and more authoring tools.
Wrong. Pretty much all DVD players by LG, Samsung and Sony support DivX, not to mention every video-capable portable media player from the PSP to chinese-made "MP4 players", none of which support h.264. And to say it "only" caught on the piracy scene is like saying IE is "only" dominant among Windows users, the piracy scene is what made MP3 what it is today.
I know about the licensing schemes, but when comparing it to h.264 its meaningless: everyone who demands the better codec over the more widely supported
bybenwaggoner ( 513209 ) writes:
Wrong. Pretty much all DVD players by LG, Samsung and Sony support DivX, not to mention every video-capable portable media player from the PSP to chinese-made "MP4 players", none of which support h.264.
But none of the cable/sat set top boxes do Part 2, and there are tons of those. And they account for many, many more eye-ball hours than Part 2 on DVD players; most users have probably never watched a "divx" file off disc.
Flash and Silverlight don't have Part 2 support. QuickTime does SP, but not ASP.
I'm confident the number of H.264 players in use today is substantailly bigger than for MPEG-4 part 2.
bygbarules2999 ( 1440265 ) writes:
But browsers are FREE. Licensing isn't an issue for software that isn't given away. This stuff doesn't come free (or cheap), you know.
Remember how the MPEG "patent police" came and confiscated a whole bunch of MP3 playing devices at a convention? Sandisk still has a grudge about that; that's partially why they added OGG and FLAC capabilities to their latest players, I'd guess.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/05/0316250
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