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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

#161

Post by buster »

mikeryan wrote: post #73
buster wrote: post #38

People 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 one…

I must say that the ogg video samples i have seen are not as good as the h.264 samples. But good enough for probably 90% of internet video.

Anyway, i think WebM comes very close already (i actually don't see differences): http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison

Instead of embracing the patent encumbered codec we should be thankful for Google to actually buy a codec (VP8) and release it _for free_. I couldn't imagine this from any other company.

Still many people just want their h.264 no matter what. It's bad for a free and open internet, that's my belief.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#162

Post by ZeroGravitas »

sid0 wrote: post #126
jamesaguilar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One they can get away with because nobody cares. The other would kill the browser immediately.

The other would kill the browser immediately. Firefox doesn't bundle Flash either, and that hasn't killed it.

Firefox has got some kind of auto-installer for Flash (and notifies you if it needs updated, for security reasons).

They got accused of the same hypocrisy when they announced a royalty-free codec only strategy. They had some good responses, that I can't find right now but boiled down to "WebM is a fight we can win, removing or banning Flash is suicide".

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#163

Post by junkbit »

upinsmoke wrote: post #110
Charuru wrote: post #95

Next move, suddenly youtube stops encoding in h.264 and youtube won't be able to be played on the iPad. And Android tablets look a LOT better.

You do know that the reason h.264 is better on iOS is because the hardware decoder, right? Android doesn't even do hardware-accelerated graphics, let alone video decoding.

FUD. All the Tegra 2 stuff at CES was hardware accelerated and the Motorola Atrix even played video @1080p over the hdmi port

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#164

Post by melpo »

jawee wrote: post #121

It can´t be all about freedom if they´re dropping Theora too. (related: how can Theora be so bad is Vorbis is so good?)

I think you may have misread something there. The link clearly says:

"Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. "

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#165

Post by kenjackson »

Charuru wrote: post #95

Next move, suddenly youtube stops encoding in h.264 and youtube won't be able to be played on the iPad. And Android tablets look a LOT better.

If YouTube goes exclusively to WebM/Flash, who wins that game of chicken? Apple or Google?

I actually think Apple wins it as someone creates iTube. People will switch browsers. They won't give up their iPad (at least not until there are some better Android browsers on the market).

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#166

Post by pak »

danh wrote: post #82
marbletiles wrote: post #25

Google'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.

Maybe that is somehow what Google wants? It has cozied up to Adobe to the point of including flash in Chrome itself. And YouTube apparently can't be bothered to make html5 video work reliably. I can't think of why anyone would want to promote flash, though.

Because it locks people out of Apple mobile devices.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#168

Post by ot »

patrickaljord wrote: post #99
dev_jim wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264 You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9).

> There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. The very article states that there are hardware WebM decoders, not only that but Google is licensing the technology for free as in zero dollars: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...

But it is not sure whether Apple will adopt them. Could the competition with iPhones have influenced this decision?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#169

Post by junkbit »

kenjackson wrote: post #160
Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well i don't know. What i see : Adobe is gonna support webm. So having only one format is gonna be possible. Browsers who supported or were gonna support H264 : - Safari (5% market share) - IE9 (0% market share right now, probably around 15% in 3 years) - Chrome (around 13 %) Browsers who supports Webm : - Firefox (30% market share) - Chrome - IE9 will probably support it via codecs which is better than nothing The b…

IE8 is at 33% share now. IE7 is about 7%. I expect most on IE6 are still on XP. So I'd expect that we'll see similar uptake rates for IE9, if not more given the HTML5 benefit (IE8 doesn't have much clear benefit over IE7 from what I can tell). So I'd say expect IE9 to be closer to 27% in 3 years. Of course this ignores two big questions: 1) Is IE still hemorraging market share? 2) Does IE9 actually reverse the trend…

Firefox overtook IE in Europe recently (38%), and it wasn't at the expense of Chrome which is higher in the EU than in the US (15% v 12.5%)

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#170

Post by hristov »

marbletiles wrote: post #25

Google'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.

And why will that happen? Because people like to pay license fees so much they will be all too eager to pay the fees for both h.264 encoding and flash?

Yes, businesses that already use h.264 and flash will probably continue using them. But the bootstrapped websites and startups will opt for the free stuff at least initially, and of all those bootstrapped startups some will be successful enough to make some noise. And then some of the established companies will have cost cutting rounds and will look at those license fees and think about whether they really need to pay them when some of their brand new competitors aren't paying them. At this point the iPhone will start looking bad for not supporting the newest and coolest video startups that are supported on android and Jobs will eventually cave too and add WebM support to the iPhone.

Everything in the web thus far has gone towards the lowest cost and easiest alternative that is still effective, and this will not be different.

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