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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

#191

Post by blasdel »

mhd wrote: post #71

So are we going to get third party Chrome distributions that backport the missing H.264 functionality?

To date Chromium has always supported whatever codecs its bundled copy of libavcodec was compiled with.

Hopefully they do not purposefully constrain the codec support, like Microsoft did. IE9 uses the system's DirectShow plugins, but whitelists the specific codecs because they don't want to dynamically load shitty DivX binaries into the browser and expose them to the DOM. It sucks but it was the right decision considering the circumstances.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#192

Post by ubernostrum »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #63
rradu wrote: post #50

Earlier 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.

Bullshit.

Multiple companies, including Apple (and Nokia, which ain't exactly a minor player in the mobile market) objected to HTML5 mandating support for a particular codec, largely on the grounds that we don't really know the patent situations of any of the allegedly-unencumbered codecs.

Meanwhile, multiple people objected on the grounds that mandating a current (or, really, several-years-old now since that's what it is) codec in a spec that's not expected to go final for at least a few more years, and which has an expected useful life of around a decade, is just frankly stupid. It'd be like having a spec used today mandate XBM as the standard image format because that was the least-proprietary thing available 15 years ago when early browsers were being written.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#193

Post by WiseWeasel »

hristov wrote: post #170
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…

You're dreaming if you think Apple is going to add WebM hardware decoding support to iPhones. That would basically mean that all previously sold iPhones would be marginalized, it would increase the hardware costs and space/power requirements, and there is no market advantage to supporting the WebM format as there's no WebM-exclusive content.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#194

Post by simonsquiff »

bradleyland wrote: post #130
bphogan wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just having a hard time understanding why they're ok with bundling the Flash player with Chrome, but not carrying an h264 decoder.

Intentional fragmentation? How's this for a play: Initially, Google drops H.264 in favor of WebM in Chrome. YouTube begins serving WebM in an HTML5 wrapper to Chrome clients. Mozilla, in search of open codecs with wide support implements WebM in Firefox. Other video services begrudgingly make the leap and start encoding their video in WebM format to support a growing number of users. Google extends an olive branch to…

>Other video services begrudgingly make the leap and start encoding their video in WebM format to support a growing number of users.

Or they just support those users instead by serving them Flash - which they have to do anyhow to support IE6/7/8 and Firefox 1/2/3, avoiding the hastle and cost of more video encoding and storage. And none of the rest then happens.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#195

Post by ubernostrum »

guywithabike wrote: post #43

I'm looking forward to Google remaining consistent with their words and removing Flash from Chrome in the near future. You know, for the good of the users.

Well, Mozilla's already gone down the road of hypocrisy ("H264 bad! Plugins insecure! Keep shipping Flash!"), so why not Google, too?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#196

Post by antimatter15 »

willheim wrote: post #13

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…

You don't need the browser format detection scripts because it's built into HTML5.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#197

Post by jamesaguilar »

blasdel wrote: post #185
jamesaguilar wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I was assuming that the request was to remove flash entirely and prohibit its addition through plugins. If the question is bundle versus don't bundle, my answer is confusion at the difference in end result. It's not an apples to apples comparison because not bundling H.264 is essentially the same as making it entirely unavailable.

With Chrome(ium) you can just replace the copy of the libavcodec dll/so, and it magically supports whatever codecs the new one is built with. For Firefox, you'd have to fork it along with Gecko and XULRunner.

> With Chrome(ium) you can just replace the copy of the libavcodec dll/so, and it magically supports whatever codecs the new one is built with.

Yes, that is exactly what every non-technical user is going to do to get HTML5 video working properly in Chrome. If there was a button that popped up saying "Get the h.264 codec for Chrome" whenever there was the possibility of using it, then we'd have a comparison, but I doubt replacing shared libraries underneath Chrome is ever going to be a supported mode of extension.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#198

Post by ubernostrum »

ot wrote: post #182

Reminds me of "embrace, extend, extinguish". BTW, will it be possible to enable it back with an extension? I don't really want to stop using Chrome because of this.

Well, when Mozilla drew their ideological line in the sand and said they'd refuse to allow Firefox to use OS codecs, Microsoft responded by releasing a Firefox extension that delegates H264 playback from HTML5 video elements to Windows Media Player.

Perhaps they'll end up doing the same for Chrome?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#199

Post by lukeschlather »

rabidsnail wrote: post #187
patrickaljord wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

Licensing isn't the (only) issue for asics. Hardware decoders are only reasonably priced if they're being produced at scale. If I'm a device manufacturer and I have a choice between getting h.264 for free because it's on the SoC I'm using and paying multiple dollars (!) for a WebM decoder, not to mention wasting valuable board space and paying for it to be soldered on, which do you think I'll choose?

Presumably the next Android Dev phone will have a SoC that supports WebM... otherwise yes this move is toothless.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#200

Post by WiseWeasel »

rmc wrote: post #144
Heff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which sucks for HTML5 video. Without Chrome, only about 5% of web users actually support HTML5 playback using h.264. Chart: http://videojs.com/2011/01/google-is-dropping-h-264-from-chr... Two things could end the format war. 1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) 2. MPEG LA removes all royalties from h.264

Or another way to view it is that 30% support html5 video with WebM

Firefox 3.x doesn't play WebM content. So it's just Chrome's ~13% share at the moment.
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