Oh, What a Lovely Standards War 400
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "You know something big must be afoot when people start to get worked up over video compression standards. Basically, the issue is whether the current de facto standard, H.264, will continue to dominate this field, and if not, what might take over."
Related, reader eihab writes "Nuanti, a company that develops Web browsing technologies, has produced a high-performance Ogg Theora decoder for Microsoft's Silverlight browser plugin. Nuanti's Highgate Media Suite will enable support for standards-based HTML5 video streaming with Theora in browsers that have Silverlight. It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
No additional software? (Score:5, Insightful)
It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
Except, of course, a browser that has Silverlight. :-|
Eww... (Score:4, Insightful)
...Silverlight
it's just as bad as flash only from an even scummier company.
Re:No additional software? (Score:2, Insightful)
Far more difficult to change to what, exactly? If you're assuming browsers will directly support video playback without a plugin why would they not support H.264?
Doublespeak (Score:1, Insightful)
Installs in Silverlight but doesn't require additional software?
Huh? That's full-on doublespeak.
I'm not sure that the words "standards" and "just works" mean the same thing to some folks. Developing an open source project that uses Silverlight as a platform, while admirable, is pretty suspect on the philosophical front unless there's an angle here.
Just like Adobe, MS wants Silverlight as THE web platform of the future too. And while some folks might deride Apple for lacking plug-in support of any kind on the iPhone/iPad, it's achieved more in the uptick of standards-compliant sites in the last few years than all the other guys combined.
Silverlight's as bad as Flash, long-term, for the web. Worse in-fact because it supports DRM out of the box and can't be cached locally. Yay for big media control and zero benefit for the consumer other than streaming Netflix sucking less than the competition currently. Now if they'd only do something about having decent stuff available to stream.
H264's patent encumbered, but is a supported, documented standard. Ogg will never take off. MKV files don't work on bloody anything reliably except VLC, even though they're theoretically an h264 variant. Then you have various other mpeg4 flavors, and that's pretty much it in terms of getting HD content out there at reasonable bandwidth.
We've been using wrapper plug-ins as a dirty, hacky path to web video since the launch of the web proper. Enough's enough.
So TLDR: no, no, no, no no
Oh dear... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish there was a way to mod the original press release as +5, Epic Troll, because that's what it is with respect to Slashdot - it's going to be way more entertaining than the usual (and already somewhat tiresome) Google vs "do no evil" stories. But Microsoft's Silverlight used to enable support for Theora in pretty much all Windows browsers (and specifically IE of all things), while both Google and Apple stand by H.264 - oh my!
Hold on a second, I've got to fetch the popcorn...
Other than, you know, Silverlight. (Score:3, Insightful)
"It works entirely without requiring the users to install any additional software."
Other than Silverlight. Gee, that solves the problem.
Hardware Codec (Score:4, Insightful)
Ogg Theora won't become relevant until there are hardware decode chips available. Why would I install Silverlight to play Ogg when I can use HTML5 and H.264 instead? Because someone might charge to develop with the codec after 2015?
I don't care because the H.264 standard is open even though it's not free.
Re:Video for Everyone code hack is the solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Great, now just go tell YouTube, Vimeo, etc. to convert all their terabytes (probably exabytes) of H.264 content into Theora... I'm sure they wouldn't mind double the work and storage requirements.
Why doesn't Adobe just open-source Flash? (Score:4, Insightful)
They probably wouldn't lose much revenue, if at all... I mean, they've always been giving away the Flash plugin for free. They make all their money from selling content-creating software (Flash CS3) right? That wouldn't change if they open-sourced Flash player. Similar to how Photoshop completely dominates the industry even though anyone is free to make
H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto standard (Score:2, Insightful)
HTML5 is a markup standard. Where it pertains to video is in the standardization of video-related markup, i.e. the "video" tag, not video formats. W3C has nothing to teach MPEG about video formats. W3C also has nothing to teach MPEG or ISO about standardization, because the Web is a mess of proprietary IE and Flash while MPEG has enabled 20 years of consumer digital video, including the DVD and Blu-Ray. Right now, both QuickTime Player and FlashPlayer play H.264, both iTunes and YouTube are H.264, both Flip and iPod camcorders are H.264, but I can't make one Web app for both IE and Firefox.
What we are talking about with Web video today is "will our H.264 video playback move from plug-ins (QuickTime Player and FlashPlayer) to native browser playback?" That is all. The format is not in question. The HTML4 Web has already been using the ISO standard format in iTunes, YouTube, and many others. There is no competing format. FLV is still used too much, but it has been deprecated since 2008, it has no HD sizes, it is proprietary to Adobe, the encoder costs $599, and it takes much more bandwidth than H.264. There are no Ogg camcorders, iPods, video editors. These tools and devices were all built for MPEG-4, which is a standardization of the QuickTime file format that was used previously. Google has already said that even if they had the compute time to transcode YouTube to Ogg, the Internet does not have the bandwidth for an Ogg YouTube, and almost nobody has a player.
Ten years ago, Linux users complained that they could not view the video on the Web because it was in QuickTime containers with Sorenson video and Qdesign audio and that was all proprietary, not standardized. Now, the video is all in ISO MPEG-4 containers, with ISO H.264 video and ISO AAC audio and is playable on Linux in FlashPlayer and WebKit browsers and other players, and the complaining continues. It is disheartening.
Yes, in this case, +1 for MS. (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes.
For one thing, I dispute your assertion that Google is doing evil. It's a company, it's doing what's in its best interest. Still, I know of few companies who have contributed so much to open standards and yes, even open source software, to the technological community. But I digress...
For another, it boils down to one simple question. Do we want a de facto web standard to depend on a patent-encumbered standard? We've been there before. Remember the GIF kerfuffle? Remember the JPG morass? Remember how long it took Microsoft to get a browser out there that supported PNG, which is a better image rendering codec, and a standard that all browsers (or any other software developer, open source or otherwise) can implement? Wouldn't it be nice if, just for once, we could bypass all of the stupidity and just settle on something up front that's easy and that everyone can support?
Also, what the hell good does it do to write a web standard designed to get people out of the Flash embedding hell that we're in right now, only to put us into yet another hell of a patent consortium that may or may not charge exorbitant fees to develop software with its standard built in?
Let's not fool ourselves. Anyone who wants H.264 to become a web standard, whether it be codified or de facto, is basically saying, "I hope that Firefox dies a miserable death." Why? Because Firefox is open source, and as such, it can't build in a patent-encumbered codec like H.264. On the other hand, most other browser makers (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.) have a choice. There is nothing stopping them from implementing either or both. "Evil" Google has taken the middle road, and Chrome handles both. We have yet to hear from Microsoft. Apple has chosen to deliberately not support Ogg Theora, even though it would be trivially easy for them to do so. It has taken this position, I believe, because it knows that Firefox can't implement H.264. I honestly think they want to kill off Firefox so that there's more marketshare for Safari.
So yeah, I will gladly cast my lot with those who support Ogg Theora as THE video standard of the web, and I don't care who they are. If Microsoft wants to come on board, then hell yeah, +1 for finally doing something right and that will ultimately benefit all video producers and consumers. Google and Firefox already have Ogg Theora built in, so they've already earned their +1, even though Google was one of the objectors to Ogg Theora being codified in the HTML 5 standard. I've given up on Apple getting anything but -1 Troll for this issue.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:4, Insightful)
Wow, got a flamebait in record time for that one.
No offense to the OGG crew and developers, but what you're not getting is that the battle is already lost. The future of web video isn't really in the browser. It's on low-powered appliances like XBoxes, iPhones, iPads, Playstations and the like. And that's now. People are already building libraries in h264 and divx because of this. It's an insurance policy against your media not becoming obsolete like VHS and DVD.
Divx just slides in because most devices will play it hardware assisted even though you need to install the codecs on a desktop.
Without hardware decoding on those low-powered devices, and the ability to play your media anywhere you damn well please with no software installs necessary and no transcoding required, you may as well not exist.
OGG's a fine set of codecs, but if I have to transcode out of it to play on anything but a desktop, basically, I have no use for it and neither does the consumer other than the idea behind it is a quite appealing one.
Re:H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto stand (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, the video is all in ISO MPEG-4 containers, with ISO H.264 video and ISO AAC audio and is playable on Linux in FlashPlayer and WebKit browsers and other players, and the complaining continues. It is disheartening.
The complaining continues because Linux users still cannot play video using FOSS solutions, due to licensing fees associated with implementation of H.264. Given the overall Linux philosophy, it's a perfectly valid complaint.
Re:No additional software? (Score:4, Insightful)
Firstly, they shouldn't have to click yes to download anything
also
The MPEG LA could very easily charge massive licensing fees in the future
(or even just big enough to prevent free software from using it) or place
additional restrictions on it's use such as requiring DRM to be implemented
or some 'phone home to check you have permision' feature.
Re:No additional software? (Score:5, Insightful)
Free software that decodes H.264 cannot be distributed in countries that recognize MPEG LA members' patents
It wouldn't surprise me if ACTA eventually requires countries to abide by patents held in other countries?
Re:No additional software? (Score:4, Insightful)
So other platforms will have native, hardware-accelerated, high-quality h.264, and the open-source community will be stuck with emulated, software-only, lower-quality Theora. That doesn't sound like a good outcome, despite the solution to compatibility concerns.
Re:Video for Everyone code hack is the solution (Score:2, Insightful)
They sure can. They can buy the license(s).
They choose not to for various reasons.
There's a huge difference.
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/roc/archives/2010/01/video_freedom_a.html [mozillazine.org]
At least you can see the dangling sword (Score:4, Insightful)
mpeg-LA seems to be letting broadcasts go free for the next couple of years. Note that is only for the actual broadcast. They can open a can of whoop ass on various licensing fees whenever they feel it gets entrenched.
They can, but you know they will not until 2017 (expires in December of 2016). You can plan around and to a date.
Meanwhile Theora is an unknown patent quantity that may or may not be challenged at any time. It's the schrodinger cat of codecs, so no-one even wants to hold the box much less look inside.
Re:Has a de facto standard ever lost? (Score:3, Insightful)
When you say "designed with hardware decoding in mind" do you mean that "it would be fairly simple to burn an FPGA to do it" or do you mean that "it can use the features of 'modern' video hardware to decode on the graphics chip" where 'modern' is some value that includes at least one chip that is either available for sale right now, or definitely in production for sale in the near future.
Because my laptop has a chip that can do h.264, but I'm not buying another laptop just to get theora (although I would look for it as a feature on my next laptop if it was in use). I could "brute force" it with the CPU, but comparing my power usage in hardware decoding of h.264, I'd really rather not. Also, the fan is kind of noisy.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:3, Insightful)
It's on low-powered appliances like XBoxes, iPhones, iPads, Playstations and the like.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are enormously powerful. The original Xbox does not do a good job of playing H.264. The PS2 does not do a good job of playing anything. What were you saying, again?
Re:Doublespeak (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, except with MPEG-LA charging website owners a per-video fee (ensuring most webmasters avoid it) and with both Firefox and Opera refusing to implement it, h.264 already lost the battle as well. It's not about user's devices, it's about websites and no website will pay MPEG-LA's extortion fees and exclude over a fourth of desktop users and a significant part of mobile ones in the process.
It's been Theora or nothing from the very beginning. You argue that it's nothing, then, and I'd be inclined to agree with you, but the idea of h.264 becoming a web standard was dead on arrival. Which is, I suspect, exactly what Microsoft and Adobe wanted from the beginning as the status quo is what benefits them the most.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:1, Insightful)
And the like, which to some people includes a low-powered Linux box with mplayer or mythtv installed. And that's now.
Get the right appliance, and you don't have to transcode.
Also, the whole idea of "no software installs" doesn't make sense. When you're building any one of the boxes that you mention, whether it's a mythtv appliance or a playstation, someone's loading software onto it. It sounds like you just don't want to be that person. So buy your mplayerbox from someone, and you've got Ogg support. You also have divx and h.264 support if the builder decided he could probably get away with breaking the law or licensed.
And that brings us to this:
Ogg is the insurance policy that you're looking for. h.264 will probably go obsolete in 6 years, when the submarine surfaces and the patent holders decide to start suing everyone who uses it. When that happens, and then when your player breaks, you don't know whether or not you're going to be able to replace your player.
You see, freedom-to-implement isn't just a good idea and it's not all about lofty ideals. It's practical. It's the one way to know that your software, appliances, and the data that interacts with them, stays usable. h.264 is a codec du jour that people are using right now because MPEGLA's lawyers have been letting them get nice and comfortable. The rug can be pulled out at any time.
Open source? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto stand (Score:1, Insightful)
Lets just clarify the statement you made to clear it up for you:
Ten years ago, Linux users complained that they could not view the video on the Web because it was in QuickTime containers with [patented] video and [patented] audio and that was all proprietary, not standardized. Now, the video is all in ISO [patented] containers, with ISO [patented] video and ISO [patented] audio and is playable on Linux in FlashPlayer and WebKit browsers and other players, and the complaining continues. It is disheartening.
Patents do not work well in the open source world. What surprises you about that?
Re:Doublespeak (Score:3, Insightful)
The thing about submarine patents is you don't know which technology is actually in the crosshairs until they pop to the surface. Anybody who has been sued by patent trolls will tell you that independent invention is not a defense. Neither is the excuse that you couldn't see the patent, or that the patent only tenuously describes what has been implemented if you squint just right.
Re:Yes, in this case, +1 for MS. (Score:3, Insightful)
It has taken this position, I believe, because it knows that Firefox can't implement H.264. I honestly think they want to kill off Firefox so that there's more marketshare for Safari.
No, absolutely not. They just want to make sure that all of their iPods, iPads, and iPhones are supported. These devices include H.264 decoder chips - not Ogg Theora decoders.
If the web were limited to "traditional" computers then this would be a non-issue. Support for Ogg Theora video would be added. But the web is not limited to such devices. A new class of device is on the horizon and they will work great with the web - but not Ogg Theora. In fact, I do not know of a single low power chipset that decodes Ogg Theora video. They probably exist somewhere, but they also probably use twice the power of a H.264 decoder.
If Ogg Theora was better then H.264 (wrt quality) for any segment of the market then it would make sense to support it. But as it stands, H.264 is at least equal to Ogg Theora for all segments of the market. So why support it? It just makes life more complicated. Personally, I think that the group responsible for H.264 should simply adopt a license that is compatible with open source software. It would get it adopted as the standard and put an end to this debate.
But regardless of what happens, the presence of Ogg Theora is good for everyone. Competition is good... But it does not have to become a standard to make a difference.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto stand (Score:2, Insightful)
If it isn't Free, it isn't a standard, it's just a racket.
Re:It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:2, Insightful)
So because you can use it via Silverlight, you say that you can use Theora in Safari and IE? Well, by that standard, you'd have to say that h.264 is just as well supported, because you can use it in Firefox via Flash or Quicktime.
No, you've missed the point. I say that Safari and IE could implement native support for Theora should they choose to do so. In contrast, Firefox can never implement native support for H.264 because of the licencing issues involved. The lack of barriers to implementing support for Theora is the greatest appeal of Theora. This freedom isn't only relevant to software that the decodes the video. It's just a relevant to software for production and encoding of the video.
The fact that you can use the Cortado Java applet [theora.org] or a Silverlight applet to display the video in browsers that either don't support the codec out of the box (like Safari) or browsers that don't even support the video tag (like IE) is, one would hope, only a short term workaround.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:3, Insightful)
Installs in Silverlight but doesn't require additional software?
Huh? That's full-on doublespeak.
No, that's merely assuming Microsoft will start bundling Silverlight with all new versions of Windows/IE sometime in the future. And given their history, particularly that of the .NET framework itself, that's a very reasonable assumption.
MSFT will never bundle Silverlight with IE or Windows. They've spent the last decade being sued in every anti-trust court in the world because they bundled IE with Windows. They won't make that mistake again.
Re:nonfree = OSS (Score:2, Insightful)
the Free Software Guidelines used by Debian (and hence Ubuntu)
Seeing how Ubuntu now apparently chose, to replace OpenOffice by a not only proprietary and closed-source, but also remotely-controlled office software [slashdot.org], I say that argument is extremely moot.
Re:Has a de facto standard ever lost? (Score:1, Insightful)
Did you read that reddit discussion at all? The OP and the xiph guy are having a fruitful discussion, and they actually agree on many points. No "debunking" there. All that noise is just the fanbois who don't have a clue about the technical details but think they must support their team.
Re:Open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:3, Insightful)
Firefox doesn't need to implement native support for H.264. It just needs to implement native support for OS codecs. Then Firefox on Windows 7 and OS X will have transparent H.264 support out of the box, and for other platforms you'll have an option of either buying the codec if you want it all nice and legal (0%), or, just like everyone does today with MP3, click on all the "Yes, I know this is patented to hell, I don't care, install anyway" prompts and have it all work just as well (100%).
Re:It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:1, Insightful)
Firefox doesn't need to implement native support for H.264. It just needs to implement native support for OS codecs.
So Firefox and all other web browsers will have significant, non-portable dependencies on third party software, viewing of web content will still balkanized, and we'll be in exactly the same position we're in with plugins like Flash. Are you certain that's the web you want? I'm certain that's not the web I want.
Re:It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you certain that's the web you want? I'm certain that's not the web I want.
I apologize for being blunt, but you're not going to get what you want. It's perfectly clear by now.
And if it's a choice between Firefox being unusable for large parts of the Web for everyone, and only being unusable for those who are not willing to compromise their FLOSS principles - well, I'd take the latter any day.
woah, H.264 has the same surprise risks as Theora (Score:2, Insightful)
MP3 and MPEG-2 users have both been nailed by surprise ligation for unknown patents which were not covered in the MPEG-LA licenses. The MPEG-LA license pack explicitly disclaims all warranties and rejects all representations that the license contains all the patents necessary to implement the formats, much less ones which might not be strictly necessary but that your implement ion might practice for good performance.
So, if you use H.264 you have to pay the license fees, plus take the risk that someone will sue you for practice some patent not in your coverage. With Theora you only have the latter risk.
Whatever argument you can make about increased confidence in H.264 due to wider deployment can be countered by the fact that its a much newer format during the design of which NO effort was taken to avoid patented technology (the MPEG and ITU processes both forbid IPR discussions during the main standardization process for anti-trust reasons). Whereas Theora is a more conservative design built from the ground up (by On2) to be free of third party IPR.
Re:Funny device list... (Score:3, Insightful)
Could but never will be the way things are going. H264 is the industry standard and that's that.
I think there is a strong case to be made to say Ogg Theora should have been the minimum HTML 5 video standard but saying it should be the only one is just insane. I think Opera & Mozilla shot themselves in the foot by going down that path.
Re:Just line any crime, follow the money (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah, if only you had posted this yesterday, I would have had a shiny +1 Informative/Interesting for you. Sadly, the points expired. What gets me is this;
I'm amazed filibusters work for something like this. Firstly, as you said, the stakes are high. I wouldn't have thought interested parties would allow themselves or their representatives to be bored into leaving. Secondly, this is a rather nerdy area. Nerds are notoriously obsessive - in fact, it is widely regarded as our greatest fault. Not only that, but we're less likely have any other commitments (like family or friends). How hard could it be to get an iron-arsed nerd (also rather common, what with marathon gaming/movie/coding sessions) with strong feelings about video compression to sit in on this? Just trawl university computer science departments!
I'm not a libertarian, but I've "spoken" with enough of them to know what they'd say - and that is "It's the governments' fault we're in this situation (patents are government protected), blah blah blah, video compression is avoidable by not consuming it, blah blah blah". I fully agree with what you're saying, and I realise that patents aren't going away, nor is compressed video, but you can be assured that libertarians have a stock argument lined up for anything you may say ;)