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Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

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Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#211

Post by gshulegaard »

mikk14 wrote: post #146
Spivak wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it hasn't. It's just been a demand from media execs that distribution networks are forced to implement. Netflix is competing with free and winning -- they've created something that's actually more convenient than piracy. I can already download everything on Netflix from my friendly local piracy site, but I don't because the eight bucks a month is worth less than the time I would waste pirating it. Hell, Netflix co…

Meh. Netflix would not affect piracy because their offer is very small. Netflix is good if you're an American and not very into movies. As soon as you are looking for something outside the "very mainstream" you're out of luck. Your "I can already download everything on Netflix from my friendly local piracy site" works, but the other way around doesn't. I've been a Netflix user for years, but I'm on the verge of unsub…

> Netflix would not affect piracy because their offer is very small.

I question this assertion as Netflix used to use torrent trends as a decision input for deciding what content to purchase: https://torrentfreak.com/netflix-uses-pirate-sites-to-determ...

I can also offer anecdotal evidence that the piracy rates of my college social network dramatically decreased as the affordability and content quality of Netflix increased.

Netflix is being squeezed by media publishers which is why they started publishing their own content. I still hope that streaming services like Netflix will win and reshape the market...but it is a difficult fight.

On the note of you only having watched "House of Cards", there are a bunch of Netflix shows I could recommend for you if you're interested. "Peaky Blinders" comes to mind immediately since we are due for another season at the end of this month.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#212

Post by _puk »

shmerl wrote: post #163
Veratyr wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm naïve or not seeing something here but DASH looks like something you can do by storing a couple of files somewhere and setting a MIME type [0]? What's special about DASH that CDNs need to specially support it? Or are you talking about services that handle transcoding video and such as well? [0]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/DASH_Adapt...

From what I understood, CDN is needed to lift the heavy load from the source servers. Without them you'd be hammered by heavy traffic, and not only that, the route to the end user will be most likely longer. DASH is adaptive streaming, and as such, when you select some stream from the client, CDN should support that in their infrastructure (including codecs and etc.). I don't know the details exactly, but it's far fr…

> DASH is adaptive streaming, and as such, when you select some stream from the client, CDN should support that in their infrastructure

Adaptive streaming is essentially a client side technology, all the CDN needs to do is ensure that it serves up files with the right mime type (not actually a hard requirement, but many players choke if you don't).

Which segment to play next is decided by the player based on current playback conditions and a manifest of available segments and bitrates; it then requests the relevant segment from the CDN, which delivers it as it would a normal file. (A segment is just a very short video file).

The CDN is not expected to keep state for each connected client, which it would need to in order to be able to make the relevant decisions on which file to serve.

For live, you also have the complication that you need to keep adding files, and updating the manifest to indicate where these new files are (The payer checks back every couple of seconds to see if the manifest has changed). Any latency at all in this means that a client may get back a stale manifest, and then not know where the next video segment is supposed to come from, causing stalling. (Numerous ways to work around this, but it is the real hurdle to easy adaptive live streaming).

This is all a gross simplification, but at its most base level, that is how it works.

You can (theoretically) do MPEG-DASH from a normal MP4 file, but that does require CDN support (and possibly a single pass to add more info at segment boundaries).

> Currently CDNs support HLS and Adobe's adaptive streaming, both of which aren't open standards and aren't part of HTML5 video.

HLS is an open standard[0], though not defined by a standards body; more Apple have documented how they do it and others have adopted it as a defacto standard.

And that is the biggest hurdle for DASH adoption - Apple devices.

As a content provider, I have* to support HLS if I want to support adaptive streaming in iOS. Transcoding to another standard (one which is still in its infancy) is just asking for non essential costs and headaches.

*Yes, it is possible to use MPEG-DASH, but not natively supported by Apple, so you are on your own.

Until Apple support MPEG-DASH you still need to provide a HLS stream.

DASH is a sprawling standard, and in theory you can use DASH with existing HLS segments (MPEG-2 .ts files), but no-one supports it (or likely ever will). DASH264 [1] is an attempt to keep it simple, and tie it down to a smaller subset of codecs (x264/5 and the like), and seems to be making headway.

It's early days for MPEG-DASH, and it is gaining traction, helped by the fact it has been learnt a lot of lessons from the likes of Flash and HLS.

0: https://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming... 1: http://dashif.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/DASH-IF-IOP-v3....

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#213

Post by ajharrison »

fixermark wrote: post #127
ajharrison wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't decide what a company can or can't do if you're not paying for the privilege of using their products.

Functionally, Chrome is "paid for" by userbase. Google has plenty of signal to figure out if this change is going to turn people off from using it. Looks like they also have signal to suggest it's a gamble worth taking.

Are you going to stop using Chrome?

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#214

Post by shmerl »

_puk wrote: post #212
shmerl wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understood, CDN is needed to lift the heavy load from the source servers. Without them you'd be hammered by heavy traffic, and not only that, the route to the end user will be most likely longer. DASH is adaptive streaming, and as such, when you select some stream from the client, CDN should support that in their infrastructure (including codecs and etc.). I don't know the details exactly, but it's far fr…

> DASH is adaptive streaming, and as such, when you select some stream from the client, CDN should support that in their infrastructure Adaptive streaming is essentially a client side technology, all the CDN needs to do is ensure that it serves up files with the right mime type (not actually a hard requirement, but many players choke if you don't). Which segment to play next is decided by the player based on current…

> As a content provider, I have to support HLS if I want to support adaptive streaming in iOS.

I see. Safari on iOS is still missing MSE? Is Apple doing it to slow down DASH adoption?

The other expected problem is codecs. Apple are being sleazy and refuse to support free codecs like VP9 and Opus. So making DASH serving those won't work with Apple too (unless you'll use pure JavaScript decoder which is very not optimal).

May be Daala / Thor will eventually break their nasty behavior, especially if it will be adopted as mandatory for WebRTC.

> DASH264 is an attempt to keep it simple, and tie it down to a smaller subset of codecs (x264/5 and the like), and seems to be making headway.

Tying DASH to a set of proprietary codecs to propose a standard sounds like a very bad idea. I don't see it going anywhere.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#215

Post by fixermark »

samsonradu wrote: post #199
fixermark wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those sites will likely adapt or go obsolete. There are game engines now that can compile to a pure HTML / css/ Javascript runtime.

That's like banning petrol cars and forcing everyone to go electric (because it's possible) or walk! Why can't kids enjoy some games after all? Maybe the companies behind don't have the funds to rebuild their free-to-play games just because Google doesn't like Flash hence something valuable is lost

It's not as simple as "Google doesn't like Flash."

Flash is a known attack vector. I'd be more comfortable with the argument "Kids should be free to play games" if I didn't have to keep purging virii off my aunt's computer because she won't stop visiting Flash game sites.

Besides, there are alternative browsers. If kids need to drop into Edge to play Flash games, that seems like an acceptable solution? If it isn't possible (because they're on a school network that whitelists browsers, for example), that's indicative of the cost / benefit tradeoff of that use case.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#216

Post by fixermark »

ajharrison wrote: post #213
fixermark wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Functionally, Chrome is "paid for" by userbase. Google has plenty of signal to figure out if this change is going to turn people off from using it. Looks like they also have signal to suggest it's a gamble worth taking.

Are you going to stop using Chrome?

Personally? No. I don't find Flash apps to be useful these days; they're more often a problem than a solution when I encounter them.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#217

Post by fixermark »

oolongCat wrote: post #197
fixermark wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The existence of alternative browsers. If your company is relying on Flash, Chrome just put itself out of the running for being your enterprise's solution. By all means, use the browsers you need to get your work done. The fact this is a price Chrome is willing to pay indicates just how dead Flash is, and how much browser vendors are willing to kill it.

You seem to live in the bubble where everything in the world is written using the latest technology at your disposal. The sad reality is, there are are many companies that depend on flash for their corporate software. We all hear horror stories where IE6 has to be supported. While I whole heartedly agree flash is something I would avoid like the plague it is not the reality for many companies. Think about it, at one…

I do hear horror stories where IE6 has to be supported.

The solution to those in the aggregate is not "Maintain IE6 backwards-compatibility forever." The challenge associated with that is why they're horror stories. But that's the opposite of what you're describing here; IE6 being supported ad-nauseum was necessary because MS had a bunch of non-compatible proprietary features in IE6 that didn't match to web standards. Google is trying to move out of supporting a non-web-standards architecture.

I'm confused about what aspect of minimizing the attack vector on a standard user's computer fails to meet "Don't be evil" as a motto. Is it the part where minimizing the attack vector for people who don't have a need for Flash collides badly with the needs of people who do have a need for Flash? People who still have a need for Flash have alternate user agents available to them; they don't need Chrome.

I'm sorry this change means you're going to have to account for your enterprise's reliance on Flash. I have friends who had to maintain code backwards-compatibility to pre-generics versions of Java. Enterprises gonna enterprise; we should neither hang the cutting edge nor the common person use-case on the relative lethargy of large companies.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#218

Post by macspoofing »

hsivonen wrote: post #79
macspoofing wrote: post #65

What bugs me is that Google gave itself a pass by white-listing YouTube - because it turns out some people still need Flash on YouTube. Google should dog-food their own policies.

Are there parts of YouTube that require Flash in Chrome other than legacy embeds on non-YouTube sites that enable the embedding page to script the Flash embed via a JS API?

>other than legacy embeds on non-YouTube sites that enable the embedding page to script the Flash embed via a JS API

That's probably it. Then again, it's not just Google that has to deal with legacy applications. So yeah, if you're going to shove this policy in the name of open standards, dog-food it and deal with the same pain countless of companies will have to.

Re: Google moves to replace Flash with HTML5

#219

Post by samsonradu »

fixermark wrote: post #215
samsonradu wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like banning petrol cars and forcing everyone to go electric (because it's possible) or walk! Why can't kids enjoy some games after all? Maybe the companies behind don't have the funds to rebuild their free-to-play games just because Google doesn't like Flash hence something valuable is lost

It's not as simple as "Google doesn't like Flash." Flash is a known attack vector. I'd be more comfortable with the argument "Kids should be free to play games" if I didn't have to keep purging virii off my aunt's computer because she won't stop visiting Flash game sites. Besides, there are alternative browsers. If kids need to drop into Edge to play Flash games, that seems like an acceptable solution? If it isn't po…

There are alternative browsers indeed and probably some will migrate but many won't and the Flash platform will suffer. Chrome, being dominant on the market, has the power to kill anything that doesn t align with the company s interests, which means we don t have an open web.
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