So are we going to get third party Chrome distributions that backport the missing H.264 functionality?
Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
71–80 of 358 posts
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
> An open solution isn't the best interest of the users? An ubiquitous solution is in the best interests of users. My parents could care less about whether the video is encoded in H.264 or Ogg. They just want it to work on their iPad. > Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open. It's not the same at all. Google, through YouTube and Chrome, helped m…
"de facto standard" is a meaningless, self-contradictory phrase that really boils down to saying "But this is the way we've always done it!" Standards are not de facto. Standards are things created by standards bodies. The word has an actual meaning. Trying to twist it to mean "the way we do stuff now" (as your argument for h.264 does) or "the way I want to do stuff" (as many arguments for HTML5 (which doesn't have a…
"Standard" has more than one meaning. In the phrase "de facto standard" I think the meaning is more in the direction of "something considered by an authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison."
Or to put it another way, standards bodies do not, as you seem to be implying, have a monopoly on the word "standard".
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#73People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video codec here. I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats. Can someone just look at the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video and really tell me that this mess isn't the fault of MS and Apple in the first place? Ogg is ready to play a big role and WebM is…
WebM is a relatively new entrant into the encoding field, Only getting opened up in the last 8 months. Ogg has always been a fairly significantly worse codec then H264. "Even the 1mbps Ogg Theora clips are not on par with the 468 kbps h264 clips."[1]
Considering that MS and Apple have been working in video for a long time now they chose the codec with the best available experience for their users (who aren't the ones picking up the licensing fees).
[1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-v...
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple is fully behind HTML5 - http://www.apple.com/html5/
Yet the number one reason there isn't a codec specified in HTML5 is because Apple blocked it.
Also, Apple used to be fully behind royalty-free standards for the web:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-patentpolicy-comment...
Apple believes that it is essential to continued interoperability and development of the Web that fundamental W3C standards be available on a royalty-free basis. In line with the W3C's mission to "lead the Web to its full potential," Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers this statement in support of its position.
It's powerful and persuasive stuff, worth reading in full. They only removed this statement from their website about 6 months ago.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#75Interesting. YouTube must be a mess with all of these competing formats it needs to support. I assume it will eventually switch to WebM for both HTML5 and Flash by default and just use h264 for compatibility. Still, it must be horrific.
Nope. It was stored as h264 before they released webm (and then flash played it). When they released Webm, they started to convert all that stuff to VP8 (my guess is they should be through by now), so it's only VP8 now (via HTML5 or flash). End of story.
This is incorrect. They are still retaining and serving h.264 to mobile devices, since WebM has zero mobile hardware support.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#76It's all well and good to focus future effort on alternative technologies that you have a preference for.
But to remove a feature you currently support that works well...that's a poor decision that doesn't help your users or the web in general.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
I suspect they think forcing open standards is in the best long term interests of users, much the same way Apple has chosen to support HTML5 by shunning Flash. Also, keep in mind that use of the HTML5 tag is quite limited at the moment. The impact is quite minimal. If Google didn't make a move like this, WebM might not take off the way it needs to to challenge the closed alternatives.
Yet they don't remove flash. Wouldn't that also be in the best long term interest for users?
One they can get away with because nobody cares. The other would kill the browser immediately.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#78Interesting. YouTube must be a mess with all of these competing formats it needs to support. I assume it will eventually switch to WebM for both HTML5 and Flash by default and just use h264 for compatibility. Still, it must be horrific.
Nope. It was stored as h264 before they released webm (and then flash played it). When they released Webm, they started to convert all that stuff to VP8 (my guess is they should be through by now), so it's only VP8 now (via HTML5 or flash). End of story.
Adobe has not yet shipped a version of Flash which supports VP8, or WebM for that matter. They've remained silent on that matter since their initial announcement at Google IO last year.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#79People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video codec here. I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats. Can someone just look at the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video and really tell me that this mess isn't the fault of MS and Apple in the first place? Ogg is ready to play a big role and WebM is…
> People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video codec here.
H.264 is not Apple's codec, nor is it Microsoft's. Both of them have to license it, just like any random company off the street would. Apple does own one or two of the several hundred patents involved, so might get a very slight discount on their license.
> I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats.
WebM is probably patent encumbered. We just don't know who owns the patents yet.
Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome
#80Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash. Lose all round, then.
Once Adobe adds WebM support in Flash, it might happen the other way around.