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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

#311

Post by KeithMajhor »

simonsquiff wrote: post #117
soofaloofa wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can equally argue that Apple's stance on video and on Flash is hurting users.

Apple didn't previously have Flash support in iOS and then remove it... taking something working out for ideological reasons is much worse than never adding something in for ideological reasons in my book.

http://venturebeat.com/2010/04/08/apple-bans-flash-to-iphone...

Apple could support flash for nothing... Adobe has tried to do it for them, with both direct flash support and this conversion tool. Apple is making a purely idealogical decision.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#312

Post by andrewf »

lovskogen wrote: post #296
DannoHung wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a proprietary video codec is significantly less open-threatening than a proprietary runtime. For one thing, the codec will eventually lose its patent protections. The runtime will continue to evolve at the platform owner's discretion. Regardless of how you feel about h.264 in general though, the decision to not support h.264 video in the browser through the video tag means that Flash is going to be sticking a…

But the runtime will fade away. This is Google making a fresh start for the years to come. Shouldn't that start be with a open codec instead of a closed one? The de facto standard for serving today is making a h.246, WebM, a OGG and a FLV (for fallback). Look at videoJS. So it doesn't mean Flash for video is sticking around.

Surely the defacto standard is h.264 with FLV for fallback.

Can anyone name a single site with significant traffic cother than Google/Youtube who are doing WebM or Ogg?

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#313

Post by jwr »

A very bad decision.

First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content.

Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264 (which I hope won't happen), we'll get stuck for years with mobile devices that get poor battery life. Instead, we'll get promises of Great Things "just around the corner, in a couple of months". That's similar to the perpetual cycle of great, smoothly working Android devices which always exist in the future tense.

Third, no one knows if VP8/WebM is immune from patents. It most likely isn't, it's just that nobody has laid claims yet. Most modern video processing techniques are patented in some way and sticking fingers in your ears won't make those patents magically go away.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#314

Post by pornel »

bane wrote: post #279
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

1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) Why? Aren't the iOS devices powerful enough to software decode WebM streams?

They might be, but battery life is an issue.

Hopefully SIMD and GPU in high-end phones can at least partially alleviate the problem (iOS has Accelerate framework and programmable shaders).

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#316

Post by chopsueyar »

andrewf wrote: post #312
lovskogen wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the runtime will fade away. This is Google making a fresh start for the years to come. Shouldn't that start be with a open codec instead of a closed one? The de facto standard for serving today is making a h.246, WebM, a OGG and a FLV (for fallback). Look at videoJS. So it doesn't mean Flash for video is sticking around.

Surely the defacto standard is h.264 with FLV for fallback. Can anyone name a single site with significant traffic cother than Google/Youtube who are doing WebM or Ogg?

FLV is a container format, not a codec.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#317

Post by lovskogen »

andrewf wrote: post #312
lovskogen wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the runtime will fade away. This is Google making a fresh start for the years to come. Shouldn't that start be with a open codec instead of a closed one? The de facto standard for serving today is making a h.246, WebM, a OGG and a FLV (for fallback). Look at videoJS. So it doesn't mean Flash for video is sticking around.

Surely the defacto standard is h.264 with FLV for fallback. Can anyone name a single site with significant traffic cother than Google/Youtube who are doing WebM or Ogg?

It's a great method for start using HTML5 , cross platform - http://videojs.com/

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#318

Post by pornel »

jwr wrote: post #313

A very bad decision. First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content. Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264 (which I hope won't happen), w…

Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either:

> Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?

> A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent.

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx

However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target.

The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one.

If you look at list of supporters:

http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/

That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.

Re: Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

#320

Post by pornel »

app wrote: post #19
eli wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of H.264 support?

For full compatibility, yes, but realistically there was no reason to use to WebM. With h.264 you cover the following: 1) All browsers with Flash players 2) Any "web connected" set top device/TV 3) About 50% of HTML5 video compatible browsers With this move by Google #3 falls to 25% or less. And they're looking to add WebM support to #2. At some point consumer demands you support both because their shiny new Macbook…

Adobe announced that Flash is going to support WebM. When that happens, landscape will look like this:

1) All desktop browsers play WebM natively or via Flash/OS codec. 2) (perhaps no change, as I don't expect GoogleTV to go anywhere) 3) Majority of HTML5 implementations, and also market-share wise, support only VP8/Theora (with Google flipping the switch it's already the case)

In that landscape it might make sense to encode WebM for desktop and low-res H.264 for mobiles.

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