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. :-|
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I have an idea, this could be implemented in Flash, too... oh, wait.
Won't someone think of the poor iPad users? :) (Score:2)
Indeed, as been mentioned in this thread, Theora support could be very easily added to any browser supporting NPAPI plugins for Flash, Java or *Light.
Let me know when there's an app for that!
Nah... java applets, trust me, it will WORK (Score:5, Interesting)
Nah... java applets, trust me, it will WORK! This time...
Reminds me of a comment on a dutch tech site, remarked how much smarter a dutch tv station was, for choosing silverlight over flash, because it was more widely supported, except that particular function just happens to only be available for windows.
Silverlight may or may not be good, but after ActiveX and COM and such, why do people keep building their business model on an MS product? You know that sooner or later they will pull a move that screws you.
It would be like putting a bet on Apple announcing a sensible, non-sexy, non-drool inducing, cheap and essential item. Or IBM doing anything interesting in the consumer market. I don't know about leopards, but I do know companies never change their spots.
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Surely you jest! [apple.com]
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.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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We call them Shaders, and this can be done in regular old GLSL. The GPU's are already plenty programmable by design.
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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?
Re:No additional software? (Score:5, Informative)
If you're assuming browsers will directly support video playback without a plugin why would they not support H.264?
Free software that decodes H.264 cannot be distributed in countries that recognize MPEG LA members' patents. Slashdot is operated and hosted in one of those countries.
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Maybe we should start distributing browsers and hosting websites only from countries that don't recognize those patents. Move enough commerce offshore, and maybe we'll get some patent reform.
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?
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You think that will stop people?
I for one, don't mind a little civil disobedience.
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.
Eww... (Score:4, Insightful)
...Silverlight
it's just as bad as flash only from an even scummier company.
It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:2, Informative)
The only video codec that every browser can use at the moment is Ogg Theora. Unlike H.264, there are no costs involved beyond implementing support for it in your browser and there are no licencing issues that prevent distribution. Firefox, Opera, and Chrome currently support Ogg Theora. It's a shame that Safari and IE won't support it by default in the near to medium term.
It will be interesting to see what Google does once they own On2 Technologies. They may choose to open source the VP8 codec so every brow
Re:It will be Ogg Theora or VP8 (Score:5, Informative)
Not at all! H.264 continues (as it has in the past) to require license fees to be paid for _every_ encoder or decoder.
The recent news from MPEG-LA is about fees for distributing CONTENT - which they may charge for in the future, but have announced that that's remaining free for now.
Don't be deluded into thinking that this doesn't require you to pay for H.264 though - it's just that the charge is on the production and consumption ends, rather than in the middle.
Mike
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The recent MPEG-LA announcement was a *great* way of spinning "We have chosen not to increase prices on h264 this year" which somehow has everyone dancing around saying 'It's free! It's free!"
All the encoder and decoder royalties are unchanged (still high). And they are still allowed to increase them next year if they wish. Read the whole thing!
They chose not to add a new royalty on the streams themselves for now, a royalty that has never existed before but may yet exist in 2016. In short, they decided
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The real problem with H.264 is that it's *really* good. It makes it a really hard sell for those who can't afford to use it for various reasons to those who can.
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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%).
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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.
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PNG only became popular well after the GIF patents were over. It needed proper support (i.e. alpha support) from the most popular browser (Internet Explorer) before people could use it.
The fact that Adobe programs add bloat to the file size of PNG files didn't help matters, not to mention the whole gamma correction problems between what Adobe added to the files and what the browsers supported.
If you use Mac OS X, ImageOptim [pornel.net] is a great PNG tool for both reducing file size and removing gamma correction metada
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Let me put it this way: Would you want the Web to be a place with BMPs and GIFs for image formats?
Of course not. But it's not specified. <img> supports pretty much anything, and it's up to the browsers and site authors to agree what to use. It's settled mostly on PNG, GIF, and JPEG, but you can still find BMPs out there, and they still work.
I'd rather have a Web which embraces the robustness principle of, "be conservative in what you send, liberal in what you accept" -- I don't want the Web to be domi
Video for Everyone code hack is the solution (Score:4, Informative)
For now, the Video for Everyone code hack [roysdon.net] is the solution. Works on Firefox, Opera, and Chrome natively with Ogg Theora, and Safari natively with H.264, and Internet Explorer with Flash (loading the H.264 content).
Naturally the best solution would be that everyone implements Ogg Theora as a standard fall-back solution, and use their "better/proprietary" solution when available.
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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.
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Mozilla CAN'T support h264, at least not in countries with broken patent law (US, Germany, UK, Japan).
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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]
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US, Germany and Japan I've heard about. I didn't realise patents had been enabled in the UK more than other EU countries. AFAIK in EU software patents are unenforceable but still granted in the hope that they will one day be enforceable
1. Germany is another EU country.
2. Software patentability in the EU is a murky area, full of contradictory case law. The latest cases suggest that some software patents are considered acceptable. The legislation states that "programs for computers" aren't patentable, but c
Re:Video for Everyone code hack is the solution (Score:4, Informative)
For now, the Video for Everyone code hack is the solution.
Your solution only solves the problem for users, not for those who wish to host video content, and can still potentially end up in a situation where they have to re-encode all their video in 2016. Any "solution" for today which can cause problems in six years is not a good solution.
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Excellent point. Of course, you'd have it all in Ogg Theora format (Video for Everyone has hosts encoding in both Ogg Theora and H.264), and in 2016 you could always just tell all your users to install the Ogg Theora plugin, install Firefox/Chrome/Opera, or take a hike. That's what users get now with all the Flash requirements anyway.
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If I understand one of the main arguments of Theora supporters correctly, the problem is that H.264 requires website owners to pay up for a license, eventually. So you can use Flash/Silverlight/Java/... to provide "kinda seamless" H.264 support for the end users, including those with otherwise FOSS browsers, but content publishers are still SOL.
In contrast, doing the same trick for Theora means that those who care about pure FOSS can have it that way (FOSS server, FOSS client, and no patent fees), while peo
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In contrast, doing the same trick for Theora means that those who care about pure FOSS can have it that way (FOSS server, FOSS client, and no patent fees), while people at large who don't know the world outside IE can still have access to all that content.
However, the technical inferiority of Theora is a serious counter-argument to that.
Not only that, this is not a solution that works out of the box. If it doesn't work out of the box, then it won't find itself added to all boxes, especially for company desk
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Not only that, this is not a solution that works out of the box. If it doesn't work out of the box, then it won't find itself added to all boxes, especially for company desktops.
No solution at present works out of the box, and this won't change anytime soon, as IE doesn't support the HTML5 video element in the first place.
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Since all solutions require a browser, there is no such thing as a an "out of the box" solution anyway. Certainly the ability to have a solution that works on all major platforms is important, but it has nothing to do with packaging.
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So, they have to serve h.264 inside of flash to support Internet Explorer, once that concession has been made, what's the point of the rest of it?
On Windows, Flash is almost as ubiquitous as IE.
On Mac and Linux, Flash sucks.
On other platforms, it is pretty much non-existent.
So I see value in a solution that only requires Flash on Windows users who are still running IE. I'll certainly consider using it on my page, which currently requires Quicktime.
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.
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Likely most people don't install Silverlight any more than they install Windows.
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.
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Ogg Theora won't become relevant until there are hardware decode chips available.
Much like it happened with MP3 and DivX, right? oh, wait, the hardware decoders appeared *after* they became popular. Funny, that.
Why would I install Silverlight to play Ogg when I can use HTML5 and H.264 instead?
Because the owner of the website you're visiting decided he didn't have the money to pay to MPEG-LA for the license, and therefore encoded his videos in Theora only. Remember, the standard doesn't specify both, it specifies *neither*. Some will support both, some will be h.264-only (read: Apple's iTMS), but many others will be Theora-only, and they'll still be HTML5-compliant so
hope it works with Moonlight (Score:2)
Cool. If it works with Moonlight and has decent performance, I'll be more impressed.
Has a de facto standard ever lost? (Score:3, Interesting)
By virtue of the de facto status, it seems like anything that the majority of people use will never be superceded by anything that barely matches or only slightly improves on the de facto standard. From what I've read [reddit.com] Theora is quite bare-bones compared to H.264 and hasn't been designed with hardware decoding in mind.
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By virtue of the de facto status, it seems like anything that the majority of people use will never be superceded by anything that barely matches or only slightly improves on the de facto standard. From what I've read [reddit.com] Theora is quite bare-bones compared to H.264 and hasn't been designed with hardware decoding in mind.
And if you actually read what you linked [reddit.com] you'll see it immediately debunked. Theora is up to scratch and has been designed with hardware decoding in mind. It's slightly behind H.
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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 lo
Can Flash be used to pull the same trick? (Score:3, Interesting)
On a more technical side, I found this bit in TFA interesting:
We'll be releasing a high-performance decoder for Theora video/Ogg Vorbis audio streams that plugs into the Silverlight 3 streaming media abstraction ...
I know little about Silverlight, only the most general look and feel, and capabilities. Does this mean that it actually has extensible codec framework, that can be extended from managed code (since any SL code has to be managed, so that it can be properly sandboxed - same as Java applets which cannot e.g. use JNI)?
If so, the next logical question is - can the same thing be done with Flash, architecturally?
As a side note, this also means that Silverlight CLR JIT produces code that's fast (not just "fast enough", but actually "high-performance", at least if the claims are true) for a video codec, which is quite impressive. I'm not sure you could reach the same levels with ActionScript, due to its inherently dynamic nature, even with Adobe's JIT. But perhaps I'm underestimating the ability of modern JS JIT compilers to do static type inference, and consequent optimization based on that type information?
Either way, pragmatically, this means that any browser running on Windows will be able to play Theora after installing Silverlight - which, by the way, pops up in "recommended updates" list in Windows Update as soon as you install Windows. While Silverlight plugin is only officially supported on Windows in IE and Firefox, IIRC, I haven't had any problems using it in Opera regularly, and I've seen it work in Chrome, so it does seem to be mostly browser-agnostic.
It would be very ironic if Chrome running under proprietary Windows and OS X could play Theora, while Chrome on Linux would only support H.264.
But somehow, I don't think that will matter. Ultimately, Google is the 800-pound gorilla here because of YouTube, and most likely whichever they will go with (and they have already said they want H.264) will become the de facto standard. Apple could probably steal the day, but they stand by H.264 as well...
Re:Can Flash be used to pull the same trick? (Score:5, Informative)
> It would be very ironic if Chrome running under proprietary Windows and OS X could play
> Theora, while Chrome on Linux would only support H.264.
Chrome supports Theora out of the box natively, so I'm not sure what you're talking about...
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Thanks for clarification, I didn't know that. Do they use ffmpeg directly, or plug into GStreamer, as latest Opera alphas do?
Also, what do they do on Windows and OS X? Plug into DirectShow and QuickTime?
It's a shame that Firefox refuses to just pick up whatever codecs the OS offers (specifically because they do not want to provide H.264 support, even indirectly)...
Re:Can Flash be used to pull the same trick? (Score:4, Informative)
As for Mozilla, the stated reason for not using gstreamer/quicktime/directplay is the potential for security exploits in those frameworks
Not really. They made that argument specifically for DirectShow, but it remains a very weak one. Meanwhile, they've added GStreamer support to Fennec [mozilla.org], but still refuse to add it to the desktop version, and the reason explicitly given [arstechnica.com] for this is purely political in nature:
A solution that seems logical on the surface is to simply expose each platform's underlying media playback engine through the HTML 5 video element—DirectShow on Windows, GStreamer on Linux, and QTKit on Mac OS X. This would make it possible for the browser to play any video formats that are supported natively on the user's computer.
From a purely technical perspective, this is not an impossible problem to solve as there are already existing libraries that do this and provide a cohesive abstraction layer on top. One prominent option is Nokia's Phonon library. It could also possibly be done by using the Quicktime and DirectShow plugins for GStreamer.
Mozilla strongly opposes this approach because it would heighten the risk of fragmentation. Allowing content providers to use any codec that is available on the user's computer might undermine the advantages of the HTML 5 media element because there would be no consistency guarantee and content would not be able to work everywhere. That is, however, arguably the situation that already exists as a result of the impasse in the codec debate.
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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
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Well, open-sourcing Flash wouldn't help the H.264 situation.
What about doing a workaround on the patent? Create an H.264 decoder that doesn't use any of the techniques that are patented? Then again, lawyers aren't exactly known for efficient coding, and you'd basically have to use lawyers as your programmers.
Why not? (Score:2)
Well, open-sourcing Flash wouldn't help the H.264 situation.
Why not? Mozilla is willing to ship with Flash today, that includes an h.264 encoder. Perhaps they could simply embed a Flash player whenever an HTML 5 video player was encountered...
Re:Why doesn't Adobe just open-source Flash? (Score:5, Informative)
Replying to myself, but holy crap.
FORTY SEVEN PAGES JUST TO LIST THE PATENTS. [mpegla.com]
Yeah, you're gonna need an army of lawyers for the "work around the H.264 patents" technique.
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Would open-sourcing 'Flash' solve the problem? It sounds to be that the codecs are the crucial point.
Most likely you'd get an open-source plugin but the patent-encumbered codecs themselves would be delivered as binary blobs. This is a dilemma similar to that AMD and Nvidia face in graphics drivers and Sun had with areas of OpenJDK.
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Stick that up your Flash, Adobe! (Score:2)
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."
Makes Steve Job's opposition to Flash look prescient...
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
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:H.264 is ISO/IEC 14496-10, not a de facto stand (Score:4, Informative)
Do we have to play words? We both know that, at the very least, a considerable proportion (I dare say, a majority) of Linux users prefer FOSS over non-FOSS, and at the very least, open standards unencumbered by patents (and associated fees) to closed ones. The fact that many of them still use proprietary software (and hardware with such) - NVidia drivers, Android etc - does not change that. It just means that sometimes, pragmatism outweighs purism. It's not black & white, after all.
It doesn't mean that they like that state of affairs, however. Back when GIF was patented, I haven't heard of anyone disabling that code in their browsers - but there was, nonetheless, a big campaign in support of a switch to PNG.
Cluestick for the H264 crew (Score:2)
Lower their prices. Opera moaned about how extortionate they are. It's reasonable that they should charge something, but make it small. They'll get a lot more cash in the long in the run, and everybody will be happy.
One reason to avoid h264 (Score:2)
http://www.osnews.com/story/22828/MPEG-LA_Will_Not_Change_h264_Licensing [osnews.com]
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.
Theora support will have problems from those who really don't want open solutions (Microsoft,Apple).
So we have an impasse.
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.
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Except for those of course who can claim to hold patents on AVC and aren't in the MPEG-LA.
Paying off MPEG-LA only protects you from MPEG-LA. Submarine patents can still surface from anyone not in that organization.
A day late and a dollar short (Score:4, Informative)
Nuanti has produced a high-performance Ogg Theora decoder for Microsoft's Silverlight
Hardware accelerated H.264 is in the 10.1 Flash Beta. Silverlight 4 will support Chrome. The "high performance" H.264 player will be everywhere and in everything in the next few weeks or months.
Two Words (Score:2)
Hardware Offload.
Without you are just another video codec.
Chromium + ffmpeg-nonfree = OSS H.264 HTML5 video (Score:2)
I guess the title pretty much sums it up, there's now an open source solution for watching videos online and I will most certainly use it. Silverlight or Firefox with flash? Who wants to use closed source software, and Microsoft's EEE plugin or that horrible plugin from Adobe of all things? Not me. At least we're replacing the closed nonfree video with open nonfree video.
Just line any crime, follow the money (Score:5, Informative)
The price of admission is sending people to the four times a year MPEG meetings. The chips are the patentable intellectually property. The game is to get your IP into the standard by any means possible. When you are in the standard then you get profit participation in the MPEG-LA revenue stream.
When I was involved, the Japanese had a notorious reputation for sending lots of people and stacking the meetings. They would use procedural methods to extend the meetings into late night and then after others left they would use their numbers to force through their proposals.
Of course other players had other ways of stacking the deck. Remember that big corporations can afford to employ people full time to chair committees and that gives the extra clout (MicroSoft, apple, Sun, Philips,...).
This all means that smaller independent groups, like the one I worked for, had a very difficult time making any headway. No matter how good the technology, political considerations had a lot more impact.
The trick is that while MPEG is an open international body that supports "open standards", MPEG-LA is a foul black pit full of zombies, orcs and lawyers. In fact, the orcs and zombies are at the bottom of the heap, because the lawyer are the bad asses who run the show.
How are licenses fees set? Nobody knows. How are revenues divided? Nobody knows. How much is spent on MPEG-LA costs? Nobody knows. How do they decided to engage in legal action and who do target? Nobody knows.
It is a completely independent body with no oversight by any of the international standards bodies, or any government for that matter. It is only constrained by the software copyright rules in an individual jurisdiction.
It is a closed black box that can charge as much as it wants, and because it is an "international standard", it is almost impossible to compete with it based on cost or quality, and and you can't go after it using the legal system. (This one reason is why Ogg Theodora is not looked at as a meaningful option by the big players; it is not a standard, so it gives big companies headaches. Who is responsible if there is any trouble? What happens if a key person is hit by a bus? Having access to the source does not fully address all these legal issues.)
The reason that this such a bit deal is that large amounts of money are involved. I Googled around and I couldn't get a clue about total amounts, which is suspicious in itself. Remember, from the corporate viewpoint this is "free money", because the initial investment is small; a lab with some computers, some PHDs, a travel buget and some lawyers and the cost of their shark tanks. Very high rate of return over a long period of time.
And a shout out to all you libertarian morons out there: THIS IS A TAX!!! It is a tax collected by corrupt self serving insiders who have subverted the legal system. It restrains trade and stifles innovation. It is not subject to competition. Those who are taxed have no say in the matter. It is arbitrary, and you cannot escape it by taking your business elsewhere. It is all the things you claim to hate about government. How come you this behavior is good when done by business for greed and bad when done by governments, which are more accountable to the people?
Oh you mean how Vorbis has taken over MP3? (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously... Vorbis has not even taken over MP3, despite it being far superior.
And you expect Theora to beat H.246??
The fact is, that apart from us few experts, nobody cares what format it is, as long as it works, and has the best quality for its size.
Look at what movies are used on BitTorrent nowadays. It’s mostly H.264, since the quality is simply superior. And XviD, since that’s what most pre-bluray standalone players can play.
Even though I’m a supporter of open formats, I support H.246 right now. Because there are two groups of sources I have:
1. Commercial video streams (YouTube, Daily Show, South Park, etc), who can handle the legal rights, and usually have a license anyway to distribute physical media etc.
2. P2P-shared movies, that don’t care for laws anyway.
(Bonus question: Guess how I would release my work? ^^)
But: Offer me something that has all features of H.246, plus only one single tiny superior property, and I’ll be the strongest supporter of that format, that you will be able to find.
Until then, it’s no war. Because one side has no teeth at all. (Sadly.)
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I'm looking at you, Mozilla: I paid for a license to decode h.264 - why won't you let me use it to decode HTML5 videos in the video tag?
They don't want to enable you to use H.264 [arstechnica.com] in any way, directly or indirectly, for political reasons.
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It's html, they have to make it work in the browser, the flash plugin is something that adobe makes.
Executive summary (Score:3, Informative)
1) The main point really is that you can now relatively easily deploy Web video in Theora without sacrificing much potential user base. (Cortado can fill in some gaps in native browser support already, but Java applet support is dwindling.)
1a) It might not yet be default(?), but MS is actively pushing Silverlight for Windows users, so the installed base is already fairly large and growing.
1b) Apple I hear has some at least semi-official Moonlight-based support, but this I know less of. Comments?
1c) Though not the best in quality per bit, you can make the quality of any codec better with more bits. Bits are only going to get cheaper. H.264 can potentially get much more expensive.
2) No, H.264 won't die a gruesome death now.
2a) Yes yes, we all know it's better technically, it doesn't matter, it still can't be a baseline Web codec.
2b) Yes, some players, especially those with vested interest in the MPEG-LA racket and excluding smaller competitors, will almost certainly use H.264 on the web for a long time to come.
2c) Isn't it nice though that a widely deployable option exists that probably has already played a hand in how much money the MPEG-LA can squeeze from you if you _do_ decide to go with H.264 anyway?
3) Using H.264 for everything won't be as unified as you think.
3a) Much of the material on the web incidentally doesn't use the very advanced features of H.264, because many decoders are limited in what profile or subset of H.264 they support (thus also reducing the quality advantage to Theora, but I make no claim of its elimination)
3b) Some material (like pirated stuff that doesn't care for copyrights or patents alike) will use all the bells and whistles, but then you may well still be stuck with having to transcode for different devices even if everything does "H.264".
3c) Such conversions can be relatively well automated when needed while keeping the original not to incur generation loss; I don't really see some need for transcoding persisting as a huge deal, except of course to the extent that anything you do with a patented format might be illegal depending on jurisdiction and circumstance.
4) Yep, no "hardware" (DSP) decoders for Theora abound.
4a) Mobile devices have enough oomph to decode it anyway in relevant resolutions (Theora is lighter than H.264, too)
4b) Yes, battery life will probably suffer somewhat, doesn't make it useless.
4c) Some DSP work has already been done on Theora decoding as already previously commented, though even when ready, deploying it would probably require user intervention and sufficient access unless shipped by the OS itself. ("Install this to improve your battery life with this site.")
Hope this summary will clarify things somewhat.
Re:Doublespeak (Score:5, Informative)
MKV files don't work on bloody anything reliably except VLC, even though they're theoretically an h264 variant.
Matroska (.mkv) is not a "H.264 variant". It's not a codec at all! It's a container format, which usually contains [wikipedia.org] an H.264 video stream these days, but this has varied historically, and is not in any way standardized.
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"the street makes is own uses of things", or something like that...
What benefit does MKV have? (Score:2)
Forgetting the codecs for two seconds, what does the MKV container have going for it over the MPEG4 container? Why would I want to use it over MPEG4, assuming the codec I want to use is available for both containers?
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It seems to do mostly with the ability to use more audio codecs in MKV, and more subtitle formats. In theory MP4 is just as extensible there, but in practice few players understand IDs for anything but the "official" codecs - which do not include e.g. AC3.
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Well, I've never really seen any good reason to use Matroska containers for anything so personally I use MPEG4 containers with h.264 for video and AAC for audio when ripping movies but it seems that for some reason Matroska has become the "scene standard" which means you can expect it to stay around until it's painfully obsolete (kind of like ASF which was sort of a "scene standard" for those stuck on modem connections for way too long, I'm sure I'm not the only european who remembers americans on modems ar
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.
Funny device list... (Score:4, Interesting)
Theora can be decoded on the cpus of all the devices you listed, at the applicable screen resolutions, in real time. Heck, the arm optimized version of theora can decode HD at a significant multiple of real time on a CPU slower than the one in the 3gs.
All of this craze and expectation of hardware acceleration comes from H.264 being an utter pig. They overestimated how much faster cpus and memory would become by now, and we're only coping by using lesser profiles or adding hardware acceleration.
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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 insa
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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:4, Interesting)
h.264 video outnumbers Theora video on the web by many orders of magnitude. Perhaps you missed the memo, but YouTube, Apple and Hulu all use h.264 extensively. Asserting that h.264 has somehow lost is delusional.
As it stands, h.264 is the dominant web format for new video, only possibly outnumbered by legacy videos (which are very much *not* encoded with Theora).
Claiming that 1/4 of the desktops on the web can't view h.264 is rather amusing given that the vast majority of Firefox installs play h.264 just fine, as they almost universally have the Flash plug-in.
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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 squin
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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.
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.
Source for that? because I've yet to see a website that formerly used flash before the iPhone but now is 100% HTML. As opposed to Firefox, which *did* drive a significant switch from IE-only websites to W3C-compliant HTML code.
H264's patent encumbered, but is a supported, documented standard.
When the organization owning most of the patent
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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.
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Re:Doublespeak (Score:5, Informative)
MKV is a container. OGG is container. H.264 is a codec.
Basket vs Fruit.
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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
MKV files work just fine in anything that uses mplayer as it's base, pretty much. Which describes a rather large portion of the available media players out there. I've not had any problems playing it back in the last year or so. Prior to that, I would have agreed with you, but the last year or so has seen it become pretty standard and a robust container format.
As a point of fact, .MKV has nothing to do with H.264. You can have just about any type of file in the MKV container, not just H.264.
Rather large portion (Score:2)
MKV files work just fine in anything that uses mplayer as it's base, pretty much. Which describes a rather large portion of the available media players out there.
Including set-top and handheld?
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 ques
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Sorry, I was paraphrasing Steve Jobs! My point was, in the context of the article, if patented codecs are "evil" then to an extent Google is not exactly doing "good", whatever their contributions to open source.
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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 tha
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Re:Open source? (Score:5, Informative)
Chrome is not open source. Chromium doesn't have H.264. It's you, who is "not even remotely accurate".
Re:Open source? (Score:5, Insightful)
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By that time H.666 will be ready.