Star Browser Vendors Force W3C To Scrap HTML 5 Codecs
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 2nd Jul 2009 18:51 UTC, submitted by snydeq
Internet & Networking We here at OSNews have taken somewhat of an interest in the new HTML5 video and audio tags, which should - some day - make embedding audio and video material into web pages as easy and straightforward as embedding images, allowing the web to finally remove the shackles of dreadful Flash video. Sadly, the problem with these new tags are the codecs; as it turns out, browser makers have not reached an agreement about what codecs to choose for video, with mostly Apple throwing a spanner in the works, and Microsoft shining in absence.
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ZephyrXero
Member since:
2006-03-22

The #1 hurdle looking to hold back adoption of Ogg Vorbis/Theora is Google/YouTube's current preference towards H.264/AAC. Their current HTML5 test page only works in Chrome as it does not use Ogg [ http://youtube.com/html5 ].

I assume the primary reason behind this isn't really that there's that noticeable a quality/size difference, but rather almost all the video on YouTube are already encoded with Mpeg4 as Flash and their iPhone app support it. To support Ogg will require a major re-encoding of all their videos meaning quite a great deal of time & money they aren't prepared to spend right now. If YouTube sticks with MP4 only, then Ogg probably won't ever get a real shot at taking off :/

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kragil Member since:
2006-01-04

Hmm, Google cares for money. And youtube already costs them like 0.5 billion a year. Mostly bandwith I guess.
Ogg Theora is 15% bigger than mp4.

That is a lot of cash.

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Kroc Member since:
2005-11-10

YouTube did not get where it is based on quality. Google are being a snooty Vimeo wannabe. If they switched everything to OGG over night, the punters would never notice.

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jemmjemm Member since:
2007-08-06

The quality of most source material is terrible enough - so Theora and mp4 at the same bitrate would look totally similar.

Resource-wise probably the biggest hurdle for Google/Youtube is the need to re-encode all archive to Theora.

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Beta Member since:
2005-07-06

Hmm, Google cares for money. And youtube already costs them like 0.5 billion a year.

How much does h264 licensing cost for serving that content? Are Google big enough to not have to pay?

What about an upstart video hoster, can they afford MPEG-LA fees?

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lemur2 Member since:
2007-02-17

Hmm, Google cares for money. And youtube already costs them like 0.5 billion a year. Mostly bandwith I guess. Ogg Theora is 15% bigger than mp4. That is a lot of cash.


From 2011 onwards, the owners of the H264 patent have stated that they will charge a fee for transmissions of h264-encoded video streams.

For digital TV stations and websites that have the odd video file here and there, that won't amount to much, but for a video website like YouTube this will cost a lot more than bandwidth.

Besides, your data is out of date. The Theora encoder is improving apace, and has almost caught up with H264. Besides, most of the existing video files on a site like YouTube are actually encoded in h263, and Theora uses currently LESS bandwidth that h263 for the same quality.

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Lennie Member since:
2007-09-22

Those bandwidth costs have calculated the wrong way, have a look at this:

http://www.ramprate.com/pdf/RRMarketCommentary-GoogleandYouTube.pdf

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deathshadow Member since:
2005-07-12

Uhm... No. Youtube and most flash videos are not in fact Mpeg4, it's On2 Technologies VP6, H.263 or H.264 has been since 2004.

As reported by Media player classic
FLV1 == VP6
FLVC == H.263

The newest iteration supports H.264, and while technically flv supports MP4 (FL4) nobody I'm aware of is actually using it that way.

The H.264 support is what really blew people's skirts up lately, since that's HOW YT has implemented that little 'HD' button.

Edited 2009-07-03 00:44 UTC

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J. M. Member since:
2005-07-24

Uhm... No. Youtube and most flash videos are not in fact Mpeg4, it's On2 Technologies VP6, H.263 or H.264 has been since 2004.

As reported by Media player classic
FLV1 == VP6
FLVC == H.263

The newest iteration supports H.264, and while technically flv supports MP4 (FL4) nobody I'm aware of is actually using it that way.


Wrong. FLV1 = H.263 (Sorenson Spark). YouTube has always been using H.263 and now it's using H.264. Old videos on YouTube are encoded in FLV/H.263, new videos on YouTube are encoded in H.264, and the container is sometimes FLV (H.264 in FLV is perfectly normal), sometimes MP4.

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memson Member since:
2006-01-01

Uhm... No. Youtube and most flash videos are not in fact Mpeg4, it's On2 Technologies VP6, H.263 or H.264 has been since 2004.

As reported by Media player classic
FLV1 == VP6
FLVC == H.263


And what people seem to ignore completely is that FLV is a CONTAINER, much like MP4 or AVI. The codec is simply the format of the content of the file. You can implement a video player plugin that handles FLV without going near to Flash... indeed Quicktime, as an example, will happily play FLV files, much like it'll also play 3GP files from my Sony Ericsson mobile phone - so long as it has the codec. VLC is much the same too.

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