Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 2nd Jul 2009 18:51 UTC, submitted by snydeq
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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RE[6]: Once Youtube works without flash I am purging it
by lemur2 on Fri 3rd Jul 2009 06:15
in reply to "RE[5]: Once Youtube works without flash I am purging it"
Member since:2007-02-17
Everything I have downloaded from YouTube in the last couple of months is encoded in H.264. Including the low-res videos. All old videos were encoded in H.263. I have never seen a single video on YouTube encoded in VP6. That's just an old myth, an old mistake spread by someone and repeated by others. BTW, VP6 is much better than H.263, and probably still better than Theora (which is based on VP3 - sure, the encoder may be improving dramatically, but still, they have to cope with the limitations of a 1990's generation format, so there's only so much they can do). But I don't see what the H.264 replacement could be. Theora? Will it ever be efficient enough? It may be free to use, but bandwidth isn't free either.
Even if the current state of play remains static, and no further improvements to Theora encoding (beyond what has already been achieved by Thusnelda) can be made, then it comes down to a trade-off.
The cost of using H264, after 2010, will be a small fee for each transmission of any h264 video file (in addition to a larger license fee for encoding which AFAIK already applies). For a website which features a large collection of videos, the total fee from serving this collection to a large audience this could easily reach prohibitive proportions.
The cost of using Theora to get the same quality as H264 will be a larger filesize. At this time, it is about 20% or so larger. This would cost more in bandwidth (if it cannot be improved upon).
Even at this time the longer-term ongoing cost of the second option would appear to be considerably less.
Edited 2009-07-03 06:18 UTC
Member since:
2005-07-24
Everything I have downloaded from YouTube in the last couple of months is encoded in H.264. Including the low-res videos. All old videos were encoded in H.263. I have never seen a single video on YouTube encoded in VP6. That's just an old myth, an old mistake spread by someone and repeated by others. BTW, VP6 is much better than H.263, and probably still better than Theora (which is based on VP3 - sure, the encoder may be improving dramatically, but still, they have to cope with the limitations of a 1990's generation format, so there's only so much they can do).
But I don't see what the H.264 replacement could be. Theora? Will it ever be efficient enough? It may be free to use, but bandwidth isn't free either.