Well done, Mozilla!

Interesting development.

However, I've been looking around and haven't found a way to transcode my AVI movies (recorded by my photo camera) into OGG movies.

Would anyone be so kind as to point me towards a good (preferably open source) program that can do this (and more)?

Thanks

HandBrake is an open-source, GPL-licensed, multiplatform, multithreaded video transcoder, available for MacOS X, Linux and Windows.

Supported sources:

* Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted--protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
* Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.

Outputs:

* File format: MP4, MKV, AVI or OGM
* Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
* Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

It would indeed be nice, but I'm not sure it's possible. H.264 has patent issues in countries that acknowledge the idea of software patents, and naturally the US is probably the largest proponent of that stupid idea. Apple being a US company, and not holding all the patents on the various technologies involved, probably would not legally be allowed to do this on their own even if they wanted to. All the patent-holders would have to allow this... and good luck getting those short-sighted fools to understand the logic of such an idea.

This is really quite exciting. When I first read about the "Video for Everybody," I instantly liked it, and I hope it takes off. I'm happy to say that it seems to work well enough in Google Chrome as well as Firefox.

It freezes up Chromium on Linux, though (I'm using Linux Mint 7 currently on my netbook), but since that's not even finished just yet, who can blame them?

Patent holders don't control the source code; Apple could provide the source code, they compile it on behalf of users and then distribution it themselves considering they hold the patent licence. As long as they're the only ones distributing it - the patent holders don't care who developed it. Its the distribution that'll cause the problems. So I guess 'redistribution' wouldn't work - although if Apple compiled Firefox themselves with Quicktime LE (I called it Light Edition due to the fact it is a subset) integrated - it would be a matter of Apple redistributing software rather than an unlicensed organisation. I doubt, however, that Apple will be so willing to aid competitor browsers though.

You have a very poor understanding of patent law. And no, Apple does not hold the patent for any of these. (Except maybe for part of the MP4 container format, which is very close to the MOV container format)

Furthermore, there's no need for source code. It would do very little good. All that is needed is published standards, and those already exist. There are already opensource implementations of everything you listed, but getting the source is not the issue. What is at issues is that if you distribute them you have to pay a big chunk of change for the licensing. Apple has nothing to gain by doing that. (Hell, WE have nothing to gain by Apple doing that)

"You have a very poor understanding of patent law. And no, Apple does not hold the patent for any of these. (Except maybe for part of the MP4 container format, which is very close to the MOV container format)

Furthermore, there's no need for source code. It would do very little good. All that is needed is published standards, and those already exist. There are already opensource implementations of everything you listed, but getting the source is not the issue. What is at issues is that if you distribute them you have to pay a big chunk of change for the licensing. Apple has nothing to gain by doing that. (Hell, WE have nothing to gain by Apple doing that)

QuickTime patents that are shared between Apple and the inventors will not be released. Get over it.