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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

#201

Post by trotsky »

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?

Someone else's SOC?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#202

Post by ot »

ubernostrum wrote: post #198
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?

That would fix Windows, but for my personal use I care more about Mac and Linux

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#204

Post by lukeschlather »

WiseWeasel wrote: post #193
hristov wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Android is already marginalizing old iPhones (and to some extent Apple's business model is built around marginalizing old iPhones.)

Also, Google controls YouTube. So H.264 YouTube could see a sunset at some point, which would be a BFD.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#205

Post by lukeschlather »

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…

Ogg is not a codec. (Seriously, I was unsure if the OP was talking about Ogg the container or Vorbis or Theora.)

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#206

Post by blasdel »

jamesaguilar wrote: post #197
blasdel wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dou…

It's what linux distributions have been doing by default — just replacing it with a symlink to the system's installation of ffmpeg. The sane ones take the added step of not crippling their default ffmpeg :)

Unlike Firefox, Chrome extensions are sandboxed, so they can't automatically replace the file for you. Someone can just make a simple native installer to do so though.

Still, the tide appears to have turned, so the usefulness of restoring h.264 support may decline within a year. People outside the Mac world will probably just standardize on a Flash video player instead of trying to support multiple playback frontends.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#207

Post by mikeryan »

zmmmmm wrote: post #171
tzs wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pa…

Can you support this statement? Because Google didn't even create VP8 - they bought it with ON2. I can't find anything that supports your statement.

H264 isn't "an algorithm" its a pretty massive collection of different algorithms. I actually find it a bit difficult its not infringing in some way and this analysis seems to confirm this.

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#208

Post by mikeryan »

lukeschlather wrote: post #205
mikeryan wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Ogg is not a codec. (Seriously, I was unsure if the OP was talking about Ogg the container or Vorbis or Theora.)

yeah I know - neither is WebM, I'm just sticking with the idioms currently being used.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#209

Post by occidental83 »

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…

Don't worry about Apple. AirPlay is their ace in the hole, seeing as it is compatible only with h.264/MPEG4 video streams.
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