Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#171

Post by zmmmmm » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:01 PM UTC

tzs wrote: post #79

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…

> 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 s…

> WebM is probably patent encumbered. We just don't know who owns the patents yet.

Actually we do, because Google used the very clever strategy of essentially copying the H.264 algorithm and then methodically working around all the patents. This means that if there are outstanding patents on WebM they are probably on H.264 as well. But the great likelihood is that there are not outstanding patents because any such patent holders would have long ago put their hands up to join the H.264 patent pool and reap the benefits.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#172

Post by mikeklaas » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:02 PM UTC

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #148

mikeklaas wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in ten years, the performance might even be acceptable.

Performance of what? I'm not defending Flash's performance, but WebM is fine, completely acceptable. With hardware decoding continuing to advance in Flash, I guess I don't see what your complaint is. If it's native in most browsers, fallback in IE (they aren't going to care anyway) and potentially native even in IE on supported hardware...

Performance of the WebM implementation in Flash. It took them years to take advantage of hardware decoding for H.264

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#173

Post by fleitz » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:04 PM UTC

Phone me when Youtube only supports WebM, this is just a PR stand.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#174

Post by moxiemk1 » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:06 PM UTC

junkbit wrote: post #163

upinsmoke wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's valid when it ships.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#175

Post by knodi » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:07 PM UTC

O great now its back to flash.

Pretty shitty move by google.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#176

Post by tzs » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:08 PM UTC

sid0 wrote: post #131

tzs wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not inconsistent with being "fully behind HTML5". That page is meant to show off how Safari handles various HTML5 features. If you view it in a different browser, it is not showing you how Safari handles those features. Hence, it makes perfect sense for it to try to limit itself to people using Safari.

That page is meant to show off how Safari handles various HTML5 features. Isn't the point of HTML that all browsers handle it similarly? If that link is restricted to one browser, it isn't better than all the "Designed for IE6" sites you used to see in the early '00s, and absolutely no evidence of Apple being "fully behind HTML5".

HTML5 is not a standard. It does not yet behave the same in all browsers that implement it. Different browsers implement different subsets of it.

The site you cite is meant specifically to show how Apple is doing with their HTML5 implementation. There is simply no point in viewing it in another browser. Viewing it in, say, Firefox would tell you nothing at all about how well Apple has implemented HTML5 in Safari.

This is completely different from the "Designed for IE6" sites. Those sites were generally presenting information that was useful to people regardless of which browser they were using.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#177

Post by app » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:08 PM UTC

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #108

sdfdfgsdfgh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all the embedded chips in cellphones,m set top boxes and mp3 players are going to support WebM? Thats going to take a while - the lead time on new DSP families isn't quick. And how long before their are optimized open source libraries like ffmpeg and x264?

ffmpeg does already supports webm, and the encoder is quite good from what i gathered, since it's done by the same crew than x264

The encoder is good, but it doesn't hold a candle to x264. It's is still _very_ slow.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#178

Post by ot » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:09 PM UTC

junkbit wrote: post #58

jerhinesmith wrote: post #12

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.

Google dropped their own O3D plugin to adopt the open standard WebGL. They also sunsetted Google Gears to push HTML5 offline storage (some say prematurely) They also based their browser around Webkit which is promoted by their main rival Apple (although based on the original KHTML) and many Google engineers are bullish about the Apple endorsed LLVM for the Portable Native Client code.

Also Unladen Swallow, which was developed inside Google, is based on LLVM and they have sent a lot of useful patches upstream.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#179

Post by trotsky » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:11 PM UTC

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.

Flash is bundled in chrome so that they can do the security update pushes.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#180

Post by andybak » Tue, Jan 11, 2011, 11:13 PM UTC

pospischil wrote: post #66

StavrosK wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't Apple just include WebM support? It's an open codec...

From the bits and pieces that I have read, there are some very real patent questions still looming. Jason Garett-Glaser put together a great comparison of h.264 vs VP8/WebM. Check it out here: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 His summary: the spec is really terrible, the performance leaves a lot to be desired (though, there is a lot of room for optimization), and it 'copies too much from H.264 for comfort'.

Sorry for the downvote but that was a very early analysis and the story has progressed a bit since. There's room for a more nuanced evaluation of WebM which I'd like to hear.