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No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

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Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#121

Post by ashearer »

rimantas wrote: post #109
ashearer wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope I can be forgiven for interpreting what you said as a statement, instead of as a true how-to question. My statement in reply was that this will take a few years to play out. Chrome's support doesn't make an immediate difference to you or to content publishers. Firefox doesn't support H.264 either and has larger market share. So rest assured that no soldering gun is suddenly needed, and you can continue to use…

> Chrome's support doesn't make an immediate difference to > you or to content publishers. True. But FSF calls to abandon support or h.264 altogether. I don't see how that helps me.

The FSF is calling for a strategic direction that helps their ultimate goals, which you may respect and share. But if you slavishly followed their edicts, you wouldn't have an iPhone in the first place.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#122

Post by [deleted] »

commandar wrote: post #100
neild wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hate…

>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between or Flash: It's or nothing. So is this debate about what's best f…

[deleted]

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#123

Post by Locke1689 »

patrickaljord wrote: post #17
spiffworks wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H.264 is probably superior to webm. I don't understand video codecs, but it's the consensus opinion among people who know this stuff. However, I fail to see how its relevant in any way. The tegra2 can already decode 1080p vp8 in hardware, and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't notice the difference between a 720p video in webm and another in H.264 in terms of performance on your x86 cpu. The inefficiency, if any, would be…

H.264 baseline codec is similar to vp8, not superior. And baseline is what is used on mobile and all hardware encoders, so the highest versions of H.264 don't even matter.

What? Who told you that? H.264 baseline is definitely superior to VP8. The 8x8 transform block basically ensures that.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#124

Post by podperson »

commandar wrote: post #18

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. The fact of the matter is that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard and isn'…

HTML5 may be in its infancy, but H264 is a huge established technology, and tossing it out will be painful for a lot of people.

The best possible outcome of this exercise (and to its credit perhaps this is Google's intention) is for MPEG-LA to make H264 royalty free in perpetuity, which would eliminate the need to switch to WebM. Otherwise we're forced to make a whole bunch of currently useful devices a whole lot less useful in the interest of one day making a (by then) obsolete codec into a universal standard.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#125

Post by archangel_one »

kenjackson wrote: post #74
spiffworks wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're quite right, but I think its ridiculous to ask Google to give you a free license to their patents even as you are suing them for infringing yours.

They're the ones pushing that this be the defactor standard for web video. If that's the case then they shouldn't attempt to block a party from exercising their patent rights by effectively threatening that if they do so they won't have any access to video on the web. Could you imagine MS saying in their Windows license agreement saying that they can revoke your licenses if you sue them over a patent?

Yes, I can imagine that quite clearly. It wouldn't be the most repressive clause in that license agreement.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#126

Post by neild »

commandar wrote: post #100
neild wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was discussing this with some people yesterday. I find it incredibly frustrating that the Grubers of the world have spent months attacking Google for supporting the evil, closed Flash, but then manage to spin Google dropping a closed format in favor of an open one as evil and using it as a roundabout way of continuing to hate on Flash. Your argument turns on Gruber hating Flash for being closed. He doesn't: He hate…

>You're right that Flash is an entrenched, defacto standard. It is, however, much less of one than it was three years ago, and that's pretty much entirely due to one factor: iOS doesn't support it. The HTML element has traction entirely due to the fact that it's the only way to play video from a web page on an iOS device. You don't have a choice between or Flash: It's or nothing. So is this debate about what's best f…

So is this debate about what's best for the future of open standards on the web, or is it about what's best for iOS?

Neither.

The debate is about what's best for the web, period. Some people consider open standards to be a priori superior. Others (like Gruber) do not. (I'm taking your usage of "open standard" to include freedom from patent encumbrance.)

Your last statement is a critical point in this debate: You assert that Chrome dropping H.264 support "could help HTML5 see better adoption." This is not an uncontroversial statement, to put it mildly.

I frankly don't see how this move will aid adoption of the element. Yesterday, sites could encode to H.264 and provide a element to some browsers and a Flash container to others. Today, the same is true. Yesterday, sites could encode to both H.264 and WebM. Today, the same is true. The only thing that has changed is that the number of browsers that require a Flash wrapper to play H.264 content has increased.

Sites will potentially use the element over a Flash container for several reasons:

* If they cannot use Flash. This is the case on iOS devices. iOS has done more to drive adoption of than any other factor to date.

* For political reasons. Dropping H.264 support from Chrome will not change this; a site that avoids Flash because it is not free was presumably already encoding to WebM.

* Because the element provides a better end-user experience.

For sites where this third case applies, dropping H.264 support may result in increased usage of WebM. However, note that this is not the same as increasing adoption of the element--dropping H.264 may influence the codec choices of sites that have already chosen over Flash, but it has no influence on sites that are willing to use Flash.

I would be interested to hear your arguments on how dropping H.264 could increase usage of the element in the long term. I just don't see a case for it.

I do see a case that dropping H.264 might increase adoption of WebM. I am, however, dubious. So long as H.264 in a Flash wrapper is a viable fallback, I don't see any site choosing to encode to WebM as a result of this change. (Sites may choose to encode to WebM for other reasons--preference for freer standards or freedom from licensing fees--but in these cases, they would encode to WebM even if H.264 was available in Chrome.)

So, to summarize: You are trying to frame the debate in terms of freedom alone. It is entirely valid to prefer freer technologies and to make decisions based on freedom. This is not, however, the only possible debate, and it is not the debate John Gruber is engaging in. To accuse him of hypocrisy in supporting H.264 but not Flash is to misunderstand his argument.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#127

Post by kenjackson »

archangel_one wrote: post #125
kenjackson wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the ones pushing that this be the defactor standard for web video. If that's the case then they shouldn't attempt to block a party from exercising their patent rights by effectively threatening that if they do so they won't have any access to video on the web. Could you imagine MS saying in their Windows license agreement saying that they can revoke your licenses if you sue them over a patent?

Yes, I can imagine that quite clearly. It wouldn't be the most repressive clause in that license agreement.

AFACT there is no clause in the Windows license that MS could invoke that would prevent you from entering a complete industry.

Google's position is literally... screw with us, and if WebM catches on, you can't do video on the internet.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#128

Post by vetinari »

GHFigs wrote: post #103
vetinari wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The browsers that do support it run on the platform by the same vendor. IE9 runs only on Vista/7, where MS provides H.264 decoder. Safari runs only with Quicktime, where Apple provides H.264 decoder. So although the browsers do not come with decoders, they use their vendor's decoder and nothing else. On the other hand, if Mozilla/Opera/Chrome used third party decoder, that would be support nightmare ("It works on my…

The browsers that do support it run on the platform by the same vendor. I don't understand the significance. The same APIs are accessible to any other browser. If someone has evidence that Mozilla, et al. have been technically locked out of using the media APIs on Windows or Mac OS X, I'd be interested in the details, and if someone has evidence that they've been locked out of using the media APIs on Linux, I'll eat…

It is not only about APIs, but also about control.

Microsoft can always rely, that IE9 will supports whatever formats they want it to support. They know, that it will play H.264, because they ship H.264 with Vista and 7 and IE9 supports only Vista and 7.

Apple can also always rely, that Safari will display formats they want it to display. They know, that Safari will play H.264, because Quicktime ships with H.264 and Quicktime is bundled with OSX, or with Safari for Windows.

If Mozilla/Google/Opera outsource this to OS, they lose control. They will not know, what the browser will display (imagine handing off control about HTML/CSS/JS to Microsoft, when IE6 was going down and Firefox up. It would be like Firefox using IE HTML control to display HTML).

Another problem from the control perspective is inconsistent support among platforms. Platform A, it will play formats X and Y. On platform B, formats Y and Z. On C, X a Z. Do you see problem here?

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#129

Post by vetinari »

Locke1689 wrote: post #123
patrickaljord wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

H.264 baseline codec is similar to vp8, not superior. And baseline is what is used on mobile and all hardware encoders, so the highest versions of H.264 don't even matter.

What? Who told you that? H.264 baseline is definitely superior to VP8. The 8x8 transform block basically ensures that.

The x264 developer often cited by H.264 proponents. He wrote, that VP8 is slightly better than H.264 baseline.

Re: No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

#130

Post by vetinari »

kenjackson wrote: post #127
archangel_one wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I can imagine that quite clearly. It wouldn't be the most repressive clause in that license agreement.

AFACT there is no clause in the Windows license that MS could invoke that would prevent you from entering a complete industry. Google's position is literally... screw with us, and if WebM catches on, you can't do video on the internet.

And that's why nobody sane will try to screw with them. Nobody wants to lose the ability to do video on the internet during next 20 (plus/minus) years.
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