Microsoft Offers H.264 Plug-in For Google Chrome 332
Apparently Firefox was just the beginning: Pigskin-Referee writes "Microsoft has released a Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome so as to enable H.264-encoded video on HTML5 by using built-in capabilities available on Windows 7. As you may recall, less than two months ago, Microsoft released the HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in with the same goal in mind. Even though Firefox and Chrome are big competitors to Microsoft's own Internet Explorer, the software giant has decided Windows 7 users should be able to play back H.264 video even if they aren't using IE9. Here's the current state of HTML5 video: Microsoft and Apple are betting on H.264, while Firefox, Chrome, and Opera are rooting for WebM. Google was actually in favor of both H.264 and WebM up until earlier this month, when the search giant decided to drop H.264 support completely, even though the former is widely used and the latter is not. The company also announced that it would release WebM plugins for Internet Explorer 9 and Safari. Although IE9 supports H.264, excluding all other codecs, Microsoft is making an exception for WebM, as long as the user installs the corresponding codec, and is helping Google ensure the plug-in works properly."
Microsoft supporting choice? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Google is pushing an open codec while Microsoft is pushing a closed one. It's to Google's benefit to have an open web, and to Microsoft's to close it off as much as possible. Not much has changed.
Re:Microsoft supporting choice? (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is at least trying (Score:3, Informative)
At this point, WebM is a closed codec because there are not enough specs and no standard for which someone can create a compatible codec of their own.
WebM is Matroska, Vorbis, and VP8. Matroska [matroska.org] and Vorbis [xiph.org] are already well documented, and Google is at least trying with VP8, having submitted a draft RFC to IETF [dig-life.com].
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No, Google sent a bunch of C code in an email. In its current form it is not very useful for somebody who wishes to implement their own version of the codec. It is really not explained at all in the way that an actual specification is expected to be.
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 [multimedia.cx] explains this all, but I am sure you know all this already.
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Your open standard definition is as defined by Microsoft, not most standard bodies.
Like the ISO?
You guys are doing the thing you complain about everyone else doing. Namely, confusing "open" and "free". WebM is more free than H.264 (although H.264 is free in many cases). H.264 is more open than WebM.
Furthermore, no one gives a shit whether the standard is open for input.
About the same amount that give a shit that their hardware and software came with a small licensing fee for H.264. Far more people care about the video quality and the impact on their devices that their video has, and H.264 trounces WebM here.
For one thing, 'open' standards are often worse off because of it.
Wait, did you just say that open standards are worse
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Like W3C, we are talking about the web here, not about the "you don't have a license to use videos taken with your camera"-open of ISO.
For one it's 'open' collaboration in the same way that the cell phone providers compete in a 'free' market. That is your are welcome if you are a big player with deep pockets. For another, there are ways in which it is worse of yes, H.264 is a pig of a standard ins
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Google is pushing an open codec while Microsoft is pushing a closed one. It's to Google's benefit to have an open web, and to Microsoft's to close it off as much as possible. Not much has changed.
Google is pushing a codec that is all but invisible except as a YouTube transcode.
Google is supporting Flash because Flash supports content protection and hardware accleration.
Bullet points which actually matter in a Netflix market for video.
Microsoft is looking at video applications in the corporate market.
In home entertainment.
It is looking at Netflix's 20% share of peak hour Internet traffic in the states.
It is looking at what services like OnLive may mean to the next generation of console gaming.
I
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Google is pushing an open codec while Microsoft is pushing a closed one. It's to Google's benefit to have an open web, and to Microsoft's to close it off as much as possible. Not much has changed.
Not entirely accurate. Microsoft is ALSO pushing Windows Media Player and all the Microsoft support plugins that go along with it on the browser end. I chose Chrome (or Firefox) over IE so I could UNinstall the Microsoft crapware - not so I could install more of it. I do NOT trust their plugins or the security risks they bring along for the ride. Sure, many pieces of software have such issues, but Microsoft is, by and large, the slowest to fix such issues. Heck, as horrendous (in some aspects) as Flash is,
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That's very arguable. H.264 is said to be patent-free and WebM is likely to have royalties issues, but Google backs WebM and is trying to take the choice out of the browser. MS and Apple back H.264 so they put it back in.
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Either that or they're hoping all their shit is going to crash Chrome and give it the same shocking reputation for security, speed and standards compliance that IE has always had.
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More likely it's a scheme to ensure that H.264 continues to be the codec of choice so as to make it harder for free OSes and browsers to compete with them. H.264 isn't free despite the claims that a lot of people make. It's free if you've got a small number of licenses or to stream, but as soon as your user base grows beyond the threshold you have to pay for all the licenses and streaming isn't typically very useful, they do charge for encoding and decoding the streams.
Which is one of the reasons that Googl
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Google were dead keen on it up until they bought WebM and got their own proprietary codec to push. Pretty much every youtube video is still encoded in it. Mozilla aren't keen on it because they can't distribute it legally which makes it awkward for them. If they had any sense they'd offload stuff like codec rendering to the OS instead of wasting their time rolling their own, and we wouldn't need a plugin to make this work.
Even if everything google says about WebM being only affected by google patents is tru
Chrome and Firefox have a plug-in container (Score:2)
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You remember Word for Mac, right? Even though Apple was pushing the only viable desktop OS/platform alternative to Windows/PC at the time (I'm talking well before Redhat, Ubuntu, and other distros made desktop Linux easy), Microsoft saw value in porting Word, etc., to the Mac. Was it because they supported choice between their own platform and Apple's? Of course not. It was because there was money to be made, and because it promoted MS dominance in office productivity software.
I'm pretty sure the same l
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Well, actually Office was available for the Mac in 1990 and not for Windows until 1992 (version 3.0) was the first Windows version.
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eh? Microsoft deciding that all your old codes are bad and that you shouldn't use them - all those mpeg2, avi, flv, indeo etc.
What doesn't surprise me is that they will allow WebM! But I guess even they recognise that Youtube is the number one reason for video on the web nowadays and that they would have to support whatever Google decides it'll play there. No doubt Microsoft is happy that a monopoly exists :)
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Something strange is going on, Microsoft is trying to force people to use software it owns or has patents on? Eg H.264. If you like it, there are probably jobs going at Nokia.
Phillip.
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No thanks (Score:2, Interesting)
I like freedom from patent-encumbered garbage.
And it's sad that patent-loving idiot companies are all over WebM trying to "prove" it is patent-encumbered as well. Go fuck off. Seriously, this is what we need to tell patent trolls. OH PATENT WE'LL SUE! "Fuck off." BUT-- "FUCK... OFF."
Re:No thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you use that isn't "patent-encumbered"? Your computer is chock full of patents, as is everything else computer-related (except maybe an Arduino). Do you use Linux? Do you use Flash on Linux? Do you have x264 or VLC installed?
What kind of car do you drive? Do you have a TV? Microwave? Electric shaver? Normal disposable razor? What kind of pens and pencils do you use? Do you ever listen to the radio? MP3 player?
Sure, you are a hypocrite, but I really don't have too much of a problem with that. Nor do I have a problem with you trying to lead an ascetically "pure" life. I *do*, however, have a huge problem with you trying to fuck over everyone else, demanding they live their lives by your ideology. If you don't want to take part in modern society, by all means, whatever floats your boat.
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The difference is, of course, that those patents in physical items are not changing the way you use them. Would you enjoy your world where patents are connected to licenses so that your electric razor is not allowed outside the borders of your country? Would you like it if the razor stopped working if you no longer were using it in approved homes? How about if you could not reuse anything inside of it for a different purpose? I could go oon, but I think we get the point that patents are not black and white,
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Its already in most devices, its qualitatively better than VP8, and all the R&D for those decoder chips are way ahead of any VP8 implementation (there is still no VP8 hardware implementation) and even video card manufacturers have spent more than a little money developing accelerated H.264 on their GPU's
This
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I *do*, however, have a huge problem with you trying to fuck over everyone else, demanding they live their lives by your ideology.
The parent didn't say anything in his post that leads me to believe he is pushing his agenda. He simply stated that he's sick of patent trolls wageing war. It does get a bit old.
We keep spending most our lives living in... (Score:2)
[snip Weird Al Yankovic lyrics taken from the closing theme of Gilligan's Island TV series]
No, giving up software patents doesn't necessarily mean you have to move to an Amish paradise [wikipedia.org]. Once you buy a computer, all the hardware patents are presumably licensed and paid for.
Missing the point (Score:2)
Chrome doesn't have H.264 not because they're unable to implement it, but because it has patent issues. Microsoft implementing the codec doesn't remove the patent issues.
Besides, it's a WMP plugin. I don't expect to see Linux support.
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My money is on Google using its own patent portfolio to bash them back into the last century. I'd be very surprised if between offensive patents and patents covering the technology that they aren't quite well covered.
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After that they can work around any of the patents that they were found to violate and release a new standard.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
While, personally, I would prefer to avoid patent encumbrances as much as possible, there is actually a very good 'realpolitik' (and even arguably architectural) argument to be made in favor of this approach. While the ideal would be a single, patent-unencumbered, codec, this seems less than likely at present. Since the FOSS browsers cannot ship the encumbered codecs, and some of the commercial ones don't want to, they could simply ship a mechanism for handing the problem off to the platform's native codec system, possibly along with a matching implementation of their open codec of choice, and let the OS deal with it. Windows, OSX, and Linux all have viable candidates with which to interface, and doing so makes any patent issues Not Their Problem.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)
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That is my
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Youtube is the main one that would need to be dislodged, the other providers will likely go that route if Youtube is doing it. Given that Youtube is now owned and controlled by Google, it's a pretty good bet that H.264 is going to be yanked before long. Which is legitimate, Google has to pay a royalty to be able to reencode files in H.264 and as such would almost certainly be free of any antitrust claims that might result.
Re:Missing the point (Score:5, Interesting)
You bought a license when you bought the OS that bought the license.
The following operating systems do not include an AVC license: Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, and Windows 7 Starter.
Re:Missing the point (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, they could do that, but that would guarantee continuation of the current situation, where Linux users privately infringe patents, and everybody else running a business that needs to use H.264 has to pay royalties
There are no royalties on internal use of H.264 video.
There are no royalties on H.264 Internet video free to the viewer. No royalties on sales of video shorts less than twelve minutes.
The lesser of 2% of sales or 2 cents a title on feature length videos sold by title. Think about that the next time you go shopping for Pixar on Blu-Ray at Walmart.
Subscription services with less than 100,000 subscribers pay nothing.
Broadcasters and cable services serving more than 100,000 households and less than 500,000 have the option of a one-time charge per encoder of $2,500 or $2,500/yr.
MPEG LA is major league ball.
They do not want to hear from you until you are raking in the green.
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There are no royalties on internal use of H.264 video.
There are costs to everyone. It's just hidden in the cost of device and media purchase and the lack of free/open competition, that's all.
---
It's wrong that an intellectual property creator should not be rewarded for their work.
It's equally wrong that an IP creator should be rewarded too many times for the one piece of work, for exactly the same reasons.
Reform IP law and stop the M$/RIAA abuse.
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where Linux users privately infringe patents, and everybody else running a business that needs to use H.264 has to pay royalties.
It is shocking I know, but at some point in your career you will have to BUY software, and the people you bought it from in turn will have paid for licenses to use technology they didn't develop themselves.
I know all this exchanging of money for goods and services thing is alien to the free software world, but you can't bury your head in the sand and pretend everything is free of cost.
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Besides, it's a WMP plugin. I don't expect to see Linux support.
For Microsoft, lack of Linux support is a bonus. If they can look like they're improving interoperability while actually harming it, that's great for them. I suspect that any web developers that adopt the video element this early are aware of all of these issues, and are either offering multiple formats or a flash-based fallback.
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H.264 has no "patent issues". You want to use it, under certain circumstance, you pay to use it, just like countless other things you pay for. There's no "issues" here for 99+% of the people out there.
The effects of the H.264 patents are minimal, and easily addressed. It's disingenuous to act like this is some major problem.
Choice is good (Score:2)
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You're confusing choice on the part of comely producers with choice on the part of consumers. It would be amazing if all content were available I'n every conceivable format, but it's not. Providing a patent-encumbered codec that works on only one platform will lead to the situation we had with the ActiveX debacle.
Which licensed AVC decoder? (Score:2)
(oh, and you can play it on Linux if you install the right codec)
Who sells a lawfully made copy of this codec, apart from the version tied to Adobe Flash Player?
Re:Choice is good (Score:4, Insightful)
I see lots of people saying this, but it's not true. This is designed to indirectly combat choice. Not the choice of what codec to use on the client side, but the choice of accessing the web from completely unencumbered operating systems, with no flash and no patented codecs, or from mobile devices that don't have flash support, or whose manufacturers haven't paid to include the H.264 codec on the device. This is the kind of choice that matters: people on the client side don't care about choosing what codec is used, they care about choosing the devices or operating systems they want to use. A codec that is free from patent royalties is easier to support in free operating systems, browsers, and in mobile devices, where the OS is included out of the box, and the device maker would otherwise need to pay royalties.
Microsoft can still claim to be supporting choice, because they're helping web developers have the choice to use a patent encumbered codec. The use of this codec helps reduce consumer choice in what devices and operating systems they can use.
What is each company's interest in supporting either side? Microsoft recognizes that anything that is good for alternative operating systems and devices is bad for their Windows monopoly, which is why they are pro-H.264. I'm not sure what Apple's motivation is, but maybe it's similarly because all of their devices and software support H.264, and they want to retain a competitive advantage, however small. Google wants the web to be an open standard, because it's what their applications use, and Mozilla can't properly support H.264 without compromising their attempt to offer a free web browser that works just as well on every platform they support.
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What is each company's interest in supporting either side? Microsoft recognizes that anything that is good for alternative operating systems and devices is bad for their Windows monopoly, which is why they are pro-H.264. I'm not sure what Apple's motivation is, but maybe it's similarly because all of their devices and software support H.264, and they want to retain a competitive advantage, however small.
No, Microsoft is pro-H.264 because H.264 is the standard for video compression. It's an ISO standard. It is the dominant codec for DVD and Blu-Ray discs, for satellite TV, for broadcast TV, for cable TV, and for commercial streaming services. It is supported by pretty much all professional and prosumer video hardware and software, and a very large number of consumer devices that deal with video (portable players and gaming consoles).
Note that Microsoft is also supporting WebM in IE9. Microsoft doesn't care
Use VLC instead (Score:3)
I want a plugin that intercepts HTML5 or Flash video and opens it in VLC instead of the browser window.
For Flash video, this means it'll get played in by a player that performs decently (instead of the crappy Flash video we get in OSX browsers). And it means I get a decent UI to control playback, with real controls that listen to keyboard input and whose preferences can be modified, instead of the pathetic mouse-only 'controls' offered by Flash video code.
Analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
It looks like it's just a NSAPI plugin, with a content script that converts video tags to object tags for all mp4, wmv, mp4v, and m4v files, and uses Windows Media Player to handle them. It's a bit of a misnomer to say it's HTML5; basically it converts the HTML5 back to HTML4.
The best part is that it looks like the plugin can be invoked manually through an object tag, no video tag required. Now all three browsers (IE, Firefox w/a Microsoft addon, Chrome) can have WMP invoked at will, unsandboxed (Plugins aren't sandboxed by Chrome since most wouldn't work correctly, the one exception being a modified Flash). Great.
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Gotta love it. (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a good thing. Choice is good. This doesn't render html5 as useless, as it just gives their users more choice.
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I love how with some people, everything MS does has to be bad, no matter what. Give users more choice? Booo!!!!
Users don't care whether the video is H.264, they just want to play it. Web sites put up video in a format that users want to play.
If Windows users can play H.264 in their web browser and Linux users can't because it's patented to hell, then this clearly has the intentional or unintentional side-effect of encouraging web sites to use a format which Linux users can't view.
I mean, seriously: why do you think that Microsoft would be releasing 'improvements' to other browsers out of kindness?
Re:Gotta love it. (Score:5, Interesting)
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If you can't watch h.264 on your Linux box, you're doing it wrong
I can play H.264. I can't play H.264 in Firefox with HTML5 tags, because Firefox doesn't support it due to patent concerns.
Which part of 'play H.264 in your web browser' is proving so hard for you to understand?
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Does Firefox plan on having support for 'patent encumbered' JPEG as well?
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I can play H.264. I can't play H.264 in Firefox with HTML5 tags, because Firefox doesn't support it due to patent concerns.
Again, that's a limitation imposed by Mozilla (and the Chromium people). There is no reason they couldn't provide a fallback HTML5 video handler which piggy-backs off of system libraries that virtually all users of "desktop Linux" have already installed (i.e. ffmpeg). Such a mechanism is smart software engineering, and it would give the users the ability to decide which codecs they might want to use.
In other words, if you can't play h.264 in your browser on desktop Linux, your platform (including your
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It's not Microsoft's fault that your browser is intentionally not supporting H.264, for whatever reason it chooses to do so.
Perhaps they should drop jpeg support too, since that is also "patent encumbered".
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As far as Jpeg and PDF go - I did *not* claim they weren't royalty free, I claimed they had patents attached to them. And while Firefox itself doesn't have much to do with PDF, it does have the ability to create PDF files (but for some reason can't read them - I suspect for security reasons). You're misreading what I said, either deliberately or otherwise, and I'm leaning toward the former since the post with the claim in it os only a couple of lines.
Anyway, so, having been called on deliberately conflating
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If you can't watch h.264 on your Linux box, you're doing it wrong
I can play H.264. I can't play H.264 in Firefox with HTML5 tags, because Firefox doesn't support it due to patent concerns.
Which part of 'play H.264 in your web browser' is proving so hard for you to understand?
H.264 video works fine on Linux in Firefox, via Flash. You didn't say anything in the post Beelzebud was responding to about HTML5 tags.
Firefox could use Flash to implement the HTML5 video tag, thus gaining H.264 support without patent worries. Or they could use gstreamer or something similar, and play whatever video formats the user has installed codecs for, again without patent worries. Or they could include an H.264 codec themselves but as an optional download, available only in countries where H.264 is
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That's why they don't build a plugin, the reason they won't let you use your OS plugin is because they're stupid.
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I prefer not to break the law to watch videos online, nor support a codec that requires those websites to pay to encode it.
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I agree living in the US is already doing it wrong, for the most part, but some people have families there and may not want to abandon them just to move to a country with saner patent laws.
Or what, did you forget that h.264 is patented to hell and back and that just because an implementation is open source it isn't free of that?
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You claim that those who can't watch h.264 video under linux "are doing it wrong" but yet you failed to say exactly how linux users can watch h.264 video on linux and how they can do it in a free way, both in beer and in speech. Claiming that Microsoft enabling some other program to be dependent on a piece of Microsoft technology which is only distributed in Microsoft's latest product is somehow good for everyone is disingenuous or terribly naive.
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If you /can/ watch h264 on your Linux box, chances are you're doing it "wrong", at least from the perspective of the software patent holders that want to charge you for the privilege to do so. This is what the h264/vp8 fight is about.
This move from Microsoft is super-clever - it looks like they're bringing more choice to the table. But the reality is they're just further entrenching h264, because it's in their interests to do so - they can happily afford any patent licensing costs (oh, and they're one of th
Re:Gotta love it. (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, seriously: do you think that Google has released 'WebM' out of kindness?
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Your argument gives the conclusion "no" - Google wants to control the infrastructure because the infrastructure is a basis for their profit-making activity - but your assertion is the opposite: "yes".
You remind me of any other cultist.
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WebM is not open, nor standard, at least not present, it may, at least at the moment be "free" for a certain value of free, but it's neither standard nor open, Google can change it anyway they like.
Re:Gotta love it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Returning to a dumb terminal era where everything's controlled by the big server owner across the country is Google's aim, and that's the worst thing possible for the consumer. Well, no, it could be worse: Google could mine the data it collects as server operator and use it to deliver adverts. Oh.
Microsoft has done great things for computing, helping (with various other firms from the '80s) to change the global technology landscape and realising the PC-on-every-desk vision. It does not always offer the best implementation, but it sure as hell spent a lot of the past three decades delivering. Over the past 5 years, Apple has occupied traditional Microsoft ground in popularising new platforms.
Google, meanwhile, has produced... a slightly better search engine. It's like the modern RIAA - it's only powerful because everyone else's content goes through it.
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Listen kid, Google did not write VP8 "in html." They wrote it in C. The only reason they did this is because they don't want to pay millions of dollars per year to the MPEG-LA, whose codec Google uses to make tens of billions of dollars per year just from Youtube. There may be a motivation to stop paying the dollar or whatever it is per Android phone too.
However, Google has never actually legally indemnified Everybody Forever who wishes to implement a VP8 codec for their device. They have never promised
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Linux users can't because it's patented to hell
Linux can do it's open source, free software, "so free you can give it away for free" crap all you want buddy, no one is stopping it. However, I'm not hearing the reasoning for making everything else in the world revolve around THAT mentality. At what point in time did free software community shift from "nobody else will do this, so I'll make a free replacement" to "stuff I have to pay for is evil"?
The whole viral $free aspect of Free Software is really, really starting to piss people off. You cannot den
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What justification is there for limiting web standards to things which are FOSS/GPL-compatible? Thats basically exactly what many are demanding we do.. limit the web standards because of GPL concerns. As if GPL was so god damned important that everyone must limit themselves to it... what the fuck...
Meanwhile a year or two from now a codec better than either H.264 or VP8 will be availab
Quit treating Google with kid gloves (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is behaving like any other company. Do you really think they've dropped h.264 because they love open formats? No, it's a strategic move with the ultimate goal of making more money - either through search, through monetizing your personal data, or both.
If they were being altruistic, they'd have dropped Flash support and mp3 support at the same time. Heck, to really be pure they'd need to drop gif and jpeg as well. No, they dropped h.264 because right now their browser is trending upward, and they see a way to grab an edge versus both Apple and Microsoft.
You're ignoring a simple fact (Score:2)
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The patents on GIF ran out a long time ago, and JPEG isn't patented as far as I know. The HTML5 video is a move towards dropping Flash, and none of the browsers support MP3 internally afaik.
They dropped h.264 much as every single other browser has, except IE who is a h.264 patent holder. The web may be relatively open but putting a toll on all video would put the brakes on that side of things. This is where the interests of Google and the consumer align, so if we get a better deal and they make more money
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Plus as Google has acquired VP8 and WebM, the concept of them being 'open' is a bit misleading. Sure the code may be released, but any changes to the code will be irrelevant, as Google will decide and define all aspects of what is their 'standard'.
Thus any innovation and future compatibilty will be all what Google wants.
Sadly, if people do move to VP8 and WebM, Google will have a lot of power, and when they put in tracking and monitoring of video and data collection that goes directly back to them, there i
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Chrome was the only browser with H.264 support,
Wrong. Safari had h.264 support before Chrome existed. Microsoft announced some time ago that its first browser to support the <video> tag will support h.264.
Also, if Google was really acting out of anything but a perceived economic self-interest - why does Android still support h.264? Google specifically exempted Android [webmonkey.com] from this move that supposedly is about "supporting open technologies".
Support Reusable Comments! (Score:2)
In an effort to support reuse, my comments are an instantiation of the same discussion we had about this topic two weeks ago. You can download them at the following link: http://slashdot.org/story/11/02/02/175227/Microsoft-Makes-Chrome-Play-H264-Video [slashdot.org]
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Then that is a moronic point.
It is not the place of HTML to enforce stifling rules regarding data formats.
It's simply not necessary. Despite all of the moaning and groaning, system decoders have always been able to handle diverse media types including video.
The real issue is DRM and hiding content from the end user.
HTML5 video does NOTHING AT ALL to address that issue.
The platform vendor is in the best position to create decoders that exploit all of the features of the OS and underlying hardware. Being stuc
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It is not the place of HTML to enforce stifling rules regarding data formats.
It is.
The real issue is DRM and hiding content from the end user.
HTML5 video does NOTHING AT ALL to address that issue.
Sure it does, by promoting a standard that's able to be freely implemented by anyone willing, they make it less desireable to use plugins that support DRM instead. Which is all they can do, honestly.
We shouldn't be stuck with the built-in video decoder. That's just as bad as being stuck with Flash.
We shouldn't be stuck with the system decoder, either, which is why we need the aforementioned free format.
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Except browsers like Chrome and Firefox aren't actually using the system decoders.
Well, it's not like they cannot use the system codecs. Which means that this is just a stupid choice, the same way that I would insist on buying a PC power supply that is designed for 110V then using it with a transformer that converts the 230V in the outlet to 110V and complaining that the power supply was quite expensive because I needed to buy it from the US and then needed to buy the transformer.
"But it works on my computer" (Score:3)
Well, it's not like they cannot use the system codecs.
There are two problems here. First, Mozilla wants a page to work on the end user if it works on . For example, the end user might be missing a codec, which is likely if the end user is on Windows XP Home Edition, Windows XP Professional, Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, Windows 7 Starter, or any freely redistributable GNU/Linux distribution. Mozilla doesn't want web developers to give the excuse "But it works on all of our computers; try buying Windows 7 Home Premium and using that to view
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So, instead they only provide the less popular codec, the copy of which I still would have to have in my system (so I could watch the downloaded videos) and now if a vulnerability is found inside the codec, I would have to update Firefox and the system one.
Also, for h264 I use CoreAVC, because it uses less resources and (mainly) manages to use all 4 cores of my CPUs (my main PC has two dual-core CPUs) about evenly, so I can watch 1080p video without problems, even at 60fps. Now let's say that for whatever r
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Also, for h264 I use CoreAVC
I don't think Mozilla can afford to distribute a copy of CoreAVC to everybody who doesn't already own a copy of CoreAVC.
Someone who watches videos on Youtube most likely also watches downloaded videos
A lot of such downloaded videos will use MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/Xvid) or Windows Media Video, not necessarily AVC.
So, instead it wants the users to blame Firefox for not showing some videos? Or if flash causes a crash?
Flash Player doesn't crash Firefox anymore; it crashes the plug-in container. What kind of finger-pointing will happen with a message like "The plug-in Flash Player published by Adobe Systems Inc. stopped unexpectedly"?
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I don't think Mozilla can afford to distribute a copy of CoreAVC to everybody who doesn't already own a copy of CoreAVC.
They do not need to distribute it, I already have it, just use it. A lot of other people have ffdshow or similar codecs, just use them.
Mozilla does not distribute Flash (or Silverlight, or Java) with the browser too, but it can use the plugin if it is available on the system (it even shows where I can downlaod it if I do not have it). Why should the codec be any different?
A lot of such downloaded videos will use MPEG-4 Part 2 (DivX/Xvid) or Windows Media Video, not necessarily AVC.
Most of the videos I see on the pirate bay are either divx/xvid (SD) or h264 (HD). If you want HD you most likely have AVC. Some newer ph
Then X or the kernel is defective (Score:3)
Flash Player doesn't crash Firefox anymore; it crashes the plug-in container.
It might crash the system.
If Flash brings down X or the kernel, then X or the kernel is defective. It's the job of X and the kernel to make sure a userspace application can't crash the system.
Also, the codecs can also be invoked by a separate process so they do not crash FF.
That's what I meant by "plug-in container".
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So there's no good way at all unfortunately to utilize CoreAVC inside the browser.
So, just download the file and watch it locally, that will be safer? Probably not. And I would have to download the file to watch it locally if it was too high resolution to be decoded by the less efficient codec.
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It has never been quite explained to me why "works on some machines" is a worse choice than "works on no machines".
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It has never been quite explained to me why "works on some machines" is a worse choice than "works on no machines".
Because VP8 that works on all machines is better than AVC that works on some machines.
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Don't be so boring; it's battles like these that make life interesting. Will the mighty Google be able to gain enough traction for WebM to actually make a fight of this in the first place? Or is the de-facto-standard status of h.264 unassailable? Does the works-everywhere combo of Flash and h.264 now become even more the option of choice for web developers trying to keep their jobs simple, or will they persevere with HTML5 and cope with supporting multiple codecs? Tune in to future episodes to find out. It'
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Yes battles are interesting.
But my worry is the "winner" will be an inferior standard, like how VHS beat Laserdisc, so we were stuck with blurry ~320x480 movies for the next 30 years. (LD did manage to hang-on but a lot of the movies I wanted were only available on vhs.)
If there's going to be a war, let's pick the one that can produce the best quality even if limited to a rural America stream of 1 Mbit/s. That would be MPEG4 video with HE-AAC audio.
Put money where mouth is (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's going to be a war, let's pick the one that can produce the best quality
Are you willing to buy everyone in the developed world a licensed encoder and a licensed decoder?
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Or I could just give them WinAmp with MPEG4 decoding built-in. Or hook them up with the Cole Codec Package.
Do they run in Wine? Or would one have to buy a copy of Windows 7, which includes built-in AVC support anyway, to use them?
Or VLC media player.
I haven't seen any evidence that VideoLAN has licensed the AVC patents for use in VLC. It'd be incompatible with the program's copyright license anyway.
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The whole point of HTML5 was to standardize web video..
How do you propose to do that?
HEVC/H.265 will be final in about two to three years.
HEVC is targeted at next-generation HDTV displays and content capture systems which feature progressive scanned frame rates and display resolutions from QVGA (320x240) up to 1080p and Ultra HDTV (7680x4320), as well as improved picture quality in terms of noise level, color gamut and dynamic range.
Not to mention:
Half the bit rate of H.264 or WebM for the same subjective video quality.
Good news for Netflix.
The problem with "open standards" are many:
The global standards commitee moves slowly. It is riddled with national, ideological, commercial and technical rivalries.
MP3 began as a digital audio codec for motion pictures.
There are many tracks along which such defacto standards may evolve and gain traction - an