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Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

blog.chromium.org

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Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#11

Post by app »

mapgrep wrote: post #10

I thought Chrome came bundled with Flash Player http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ ...which supports H.264 in an MP4 container... http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html ....so I'm not clear on what's actually happening here. Is Chrome going to just stop handing off MP4/H.264 from video tags to the bundled Flash Player even though it's there and can play it? Or will it stop bundling Flash Player? Or bu…

They aren't supporting h.264 in the element anymore, meaning there won't be anymore HTML5 video players that use h.264. As for Flash, who knows?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#12

Post by jerhinesmith »

One of the biggest criticisms against Microsoft over the years is that they suffer from Not-Invented-Here syndrome.

Is it just me, or does Google seem to be increasingly heading down this path? Granted, Google tends to go down the open-source route, where Microsoft has tended not to, but I'm not sure that excuse holds up well over the long-term.

Either way, I'm genuinely curious if anyone else feels this.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#13

Post by willheim »

This is not an issue. We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other platforms? Pretty open. What's the issue? Just some inefficiency. It means that all videos have to be encoded in a few formats in the backend and a browser detector to tell our server which video to play. As long as the end user isn't harmed I don't see the big deal with Google supporting Google's own format (that they have opened up with a protected royalty-free format).

As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you).

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#14

Post by eli »

app wrote: post #3

A big step backwards for HTML5 video adoption and premature IMO. Other than Android there isn't an existing consumer device out there that plays WebM that I know of. Certainly there is no hardware decoding. Now content creators who host their own video will have to double storage costs or be relegated to Flash and the smallest of the big browsers.

Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of H.264 support?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#16

Post by jdub »

Fantastic. Much as I enjoyed Burn All GIFs back in the day, I don't think Burn All H.264s sounds nearly as catchy or fun. Glad Google is doing the Right Thing on this front -- however convenient or entrenched they might be, hairy patented messes like H.264 have no place on an open web.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#17

Post by bphogan »

The choice has been made by many places to simply use h264 video via the HTML5 tag to hit the iPhone/iPad and then fallback to a Flash video player which can easily play the h264 source video. Content producers would rather encode videos once, which is why they moved to FLV in the first place. There's no incentive to use anything else here.

This hurts users. I am all for standards, but not for hurting users. And like it or not, content producers are using H264 because the devices people like to use can play that video back.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#18

Post by buro9 »

dev_jim wrote: post #8

What the hell? It's sad that Google's corporate strategy is starting to override what's in the best interests of it's users. Web video is finally, after so many years, actually encoded in H.264. Who besides YouTube uses WebM or Ogg? I'll be going back to Safari if this happens.

An open solution isn't the best interest of the users?

Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open.

Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the companies and the users.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#19

Post by app »

eli wrote: post #14
app wrote: post #3

A big step backwards for HTML5 video adoption and premature IMO. Other than Android there isn't an existing consumer device out there that plays WebM that I know of. Certainly there is no hardware decoding. Now content creators who host their own video will have to double storage costs or be relegated to Flash and the smallest of the big browsers.

Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of H.264 support?

For full compatibility, yes, but realistically there was no reason to use to WebM. With h.264 you cover the following:

1) All browsers with Flash players 2) Any "web connected" set top device/TV 3) About 50% of HTML5 video compatible browsers

With this move by Google #3 falls to 25% or less. And they're looking to add WebM support to #2. At some point consumer demands you support both because their shiny new Macbook Air/Chrome OS tablet/TV doesn't play video. Good move by Google to justify their $125M investment in On2, but end users will end up being inconvenienced as the splintering continues.

This is just going to feel like a regression to most end users who really don't give a crap about who holds what patents.

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