Vimeo Also Introduces HTML5 Video Player 369
bonch writes "Following in YouTube's footsteps, Vimeo has now introduced its own beta HTML5 video player, and like YouTube, it uses H.264 and requires Safari, Chrome, or ChromeFrame. The new player doesn't suffer the rebuffering problems of the Flash version when clicking around in the video's timeline, and it also loads faster. HTML5 could finally be gaining some real momentum."
Adobe... (Score:4, Interesting)
I shed not a tear for you.
This may not be an apt analogy, but (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Here that wooshing sound, Firefox? (Score:3, Interesting)
It has every thing to do with licensing. It is unreasonable to expect a nonprofit group to fork out millions of dollars to give you a free product. If you want to start paying for FireFox maybe they can do some thing for you.
Audio and video are the only arrows left in the quiver of the proprietary companies. I think once companies start to realize that it is safe to do HTML5 you will see companies that say screw it we don't feel like paying these fat fees any more when we can use some thing free instead. Up until now they really didn't have much of a choice they were stuck with Flash. Now they have options It is simple business that if some one does some thing that lowers their costs you have to do some thing to lower yours. So as companies start moving towards lower cost and free codecs the others are going to have to follow them.
I do have to say that things are going to get interesting for Google going forward. They have been at war with Microsoft, they have already started a war with Apple and they are ramping up the war with the open standards and open source communities. Soon they aren't going to have any friends left.
Re:Here that wooshing sound, Firefox? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is why I suggest they either:
1) Make it a non-USA release, similar to PGP/PGPi in the past. This would be if they wanted to take a stand, and make lots of activist-style press releases on the subject. It would also probably be more effective than trying to talk everybody into using Theora.
2) Externalize the issue, by using an external program instead. That way they aren't decoding any video, and are totally safe from patent issues.
Option #2 is recommended, as a pragmatic decision.
Re:Excellent. (Score:4, Interesting)
Google (or any similar company) has no business reason to use Theora.
If they do nothing, they still support Firefox, though flash. So why spend even a small amount of time/money to re-encode video?
Re:Excellent. (Score:3, Interesting)
> Why should they license it when an embeddable player is available on every OS with
> noticeable marketshare?
Because those players tend to be security hellholes. Passing unsanitized data to them is a good way to get exploited...
Re:Here that wooshing sound, Firefox? (Score:3, Interesting)
Google acquired On2, makers of video codecs (Score:5, Interesting)
Google recently acquired On2, makers of the Ogg Theora (aka VP-3) codec which was released into the public domain and then taken over by xiph.org.
On2 have codecs VP-7 and VP-8 which have equivalent (if not better) quality than h.264.
It would not be surprising if Google made those codecs available, since they aren't patent-encumbered, and Google is heavily invested in HTML5 --and likes open standards.
This would be the ideal outcome. h.264 is a really bad option.
Inter Net? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not being a US citizen I'd like to see it happen, but it won't.
I think more people will realize soon, that a thought that software and Internet are independent from governments and borders is an illusion. Currently, the dominant software provider and consumer is US. So the major part of software abides by US law. I still remember, that IE 6 for Russia did not contain 128-bit encryption because of US export laws.
Add classic US ignorance to it - "we run the world". Hell, even google.ru censors search results with DMCA notice, while DMCA is not valid in Russia. It respects laws of Australia, but laws in China are 'bad' (I personally consider them bad too, but dura lex sed lex). So US laws "must be abided", but laws of other countries "could be abided, if it's not harmful to US".
Re:Excellent. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lots of problems. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course there isn't, but that doesn't mean the issue is impossible to solve. In fact if you look at the way Firefox works right now, it has abstractions of various operating services - messaging, drag & drop, windows, graphics, file locations, plugins etc. Each of these abstractions is done precisely so the bulk of the code is platform netural.
There would be no difference if you were to write an abstract video / audio playback object. The object would appear to the bulk of the code as a common interface or abstract class even though it would be implemented differently on each platform. On Windows, the playback object might work over DirectShow, on OS X it might use Quicktime, on Linux it might use GStreamer or Xine. To the caller however it doesn't make any difference so long as it works as expected.
The second problem, is that you *hope* that the system's codecs will be adequate :
Hardly a biggy either. On operating systems that supply one or more codecs implementations, you test and ensure the codecs / filters meet requirements. For operating systems that don't, you revert to a stub implementation that does nothing, and direct users to a help page. e.g. The browser could state that a codec must support high profile @ 4.1.
In short Firefox can wash their hands of worrying about licencing altogether just by using what the system provides and designing the video apis appropriately such that others can extend / augment the built-in behaviour.
Re:Excellent. (Score:3, Interesting)
> where code that is written in any other codeshop is considered inferior
Not at all. I've written my share of code with security bugs in it and have no illusions about code I write.
But the key thing here is attack surface. Taking a shot at securing the decoder for the one codec that Firefox ships (by fixing the bugs fuzzers found in it, for example) took several man-months of work. This is work that has in fact not been done on most of the platform-default decoders, especially because new ones can be dropped in at any time. Firefox could whitelist codecs, but that's not what the proponents of using the system codec set are pushing for.
And since those system codecs would not be something Firefox can control the updating of, if there _is_ a security vulnerability in one... then what? Ship a Firefox update that disables that codec (blacklisting, effectively)? There don't seem to be any other options.
This isn't a theoretical issue, by the way; please count up the number of codec vulnerabilities patched in just Quicktime on Mac over the last year.
Re:H.264 (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be legal for Mozilla to distribute Firefox if it did that. It would not be legal for anyone else to do so.
For example, if you put a copy of Firefox on your USB keychain and went over to your friend's house and installed it there (from that keychain) without paying the H.264 licensing fees required, you could be sued for damages. Not much in the way of damages, clearly, but you would in fact be liable for them.
Of course if you happened to be, say, Ubuntu, you would have to pay a pretty hefty fee (or be liable for significant damages) if you shipped Firefox as part of your distribution.
Re:Excellent. (Score:3, Interesting)
Google just purchased on2, who own the IP rights to a number of rather good codecs, including a few that they claim to be as good as, if not better than H.264.
Theora, on the other hand, isn't a particularly good codec.
IMO, the best thing for google to do would be to release on2's codecs under a permissive license, and make them the exclusive means by which HD content is delivered via YouTube. This should ensure a rather speedy adoption among all of the major browsers.
Not HTML5 (Score:2, Interesting)