A lot was said lately about the Vorbis/Theora vs h.264/AAC situation on the draft of the HTML5. As some of you know, video is my main hobby these days (I care not about operating systems anymore), so I have gain some experience on the field lately, and at the same time this has made me more demanding about video quality. Read on for a head to head test: OGG Theora/Vorbis vs MP4 h.264/AAC. Yup, with videos. And pictures.
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Member since:2007-06-12
to clear it up, the flash players can/are using h264, the current wmv was microsoft's attempt at mp4, but h264 beat it, of course microsoft didnt embrace it and are doing a good job and messing up the media distribution online.
also theora as i understand was another competing codec that lost to h264 and only opened up after.
anyways, i don't even really understand why there is debate for an official codec or object wrapper for HTML5, but i'd prefer it would be something standard instead of some obsolete and technically inferior codec that lost the mp4 race.
Member since:2005-07-30
Although MPEG 4 ASP is by the far the most popular format for 'downloading'. I dare say this is going to change soon and MPEG 4 ASP as whole has past is past its peak. If you look at any of the HD content on the web today it will all be in H264. Even SD DVD rips are starting to use H264.
P.S. Doesn't .mov also use H264?
Member since:2005-06-28
Depends how you export. You can put a lot of different formats on .mov, but h.264 is one of them, yes. Apple is pushing h.264.
MPEG4-SP/ASP has indeed passed its peak. Even the XDiV team is currently working on MPEG4-Part10 (which is nothing but another name for h.264), and the DivX Corp *purchased* MainConcept who have an h.264 implementation. As you understand, the main MPEG4-SP/ASP providers are moving to an h.264-like implementation too.
Microsoft's WMV and VC-1 are h.264-like in many ways too.
Even on the mobile space, Nokia now has h.264 support on their Symbian S60 3.1 phones, while in the past they would only use h.263 or MPEG4-SP.
Edited 2007-12-12 07:16
Member since:2005-07-23
Member since:
2005-10-01
I can understand why they would want an open standard for video on the web. However things change way too much.
Today the most common formats are wmv and flash for streaming and divx for downloading.
A few years ago it was .wmv and .mov for streaming and divx for download
Ten years ago it was .mov and .rm for streaming and .mpg for download
Setting a standard no one uses is just going to end up a joke in a few years when people are wondering why Firefox 5.0 is installing Theora codecs just to have full HTML 5.0 support when only a hand full of websites used the codec