So doesn't Theora just win? Most Mac users seem to use Firefox, so Safari has a marketshare just a touch above Chrome. Still essentially a rounding error.
I do not believe most Mac users use Firefox. Also, don't forget mobile.
Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#22In my eyes there are two actual conclusions from all this:
1. flash will remain the dominant video platform for the near future.
2. This stalemate between theora and h.264 is a huge win for chrome, the only browser that will support both.
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#23So doesn't Theora just win? Most Mac users seem to use Firefox, so Safari has a marketshare just a touch above Chrome. Still essentially a rounding error.
Even if everybody used Firefox, YouTube still wouldn't adopt Theora due to perceived bandwidth/quality issues.
Isn't it possible those perceptions will change? Or even the realities underneath, if those perceptions are correct?
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#24So doesn't Theora just win? Most Mac users seem to use Firefox, so Safari has a marketshare just a touch above Chrome. Still essentially a rounding error.
Even if everybody used Firefox, YouTube still wouldn't adopt Theora due to perceived bandwidth/quality issues.
could you elaborate here? what are the perceived band/quality issues you mean?
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#25An Apple representative has reached out to Xiph and their lawyers (SFLC) to make another attempt to address the (overblown, imho) submarine patent issue to the satisfaction of Apple's lawyers and so add support for Theora and Vorbis. So the story isn't over for Theora as the HTML5 video standard yet.
http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/theora/2009-July/002415.html
It's worth pointing out that no-one has suggested H.264 as a recommended codec, not even Apple or Google who are both shipping H.264 support. Since it is patent encumbered it simply doesn't pass the first test for getting into a W3C standard. You'd be as well to suggest Flash or Silverlight be added to the spec, it would get shot down just as quick.
Apple apparently tried to get one of the less advanced H.264 profiles made royalty free, so it could go into the standard, but was getting pushback from some of the other patent holders in the MPEG-LA. That would have been interesting as it would have been a "first hit is free" kind of deal, where Safari/Quicktime would be able to support the higher levels of H.264 but Mozilla/Chromium/Linux wouldn't and Opera presumably would refuse to do so on principle.
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if everybody used Firefox, YouTube still wouldn't adopt Theora due to perceived bandwidth/quality issues.
could you elaborate here? what are the perceived band/quality issues you mean?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs as a jumping-off point; http://etill.net/projects/dirac_theora_evaluation/ for a flawed but quick analysis.
In brief, Theora is more open-ended (supporting up to terapixel resolutions!) but at the price of being far less optimized or well-supported for acquisition and delivery needs today. h.264, while processor-intensive and subject to long-term limitations delivers outstanding performance right now and is widely supported.
Also, Theora brands itself as ideal for web delivery with limited bandwidth leading to graceful rather than abrupt degradation, which is great, but of declining utility as bandwidth and reliability increase. It isn't pushed as a great choice for high-quality delivery, leading to a lack of awareness among content-providers who would rather use use h264 for everything from blu-ray to Youtube.
Now, that doesn't mean Theora has no future - as it matures it will become more desirable as a supported option, and the long-term architecture will help with that. Right now, however, it doesn't offer any significant technical benefit, like massively smaller compression or massively better image representation, compared to competitors. Making film and video is expensive and the patent licensing costs are such a tiny fraction of that cost that content providers and distributors really don't care. To them, Theora is a solution in search of a problem (indeed, many have never even heard of it). There is no economic incentive to deliver in this format, so they won't.
tl;dr programmers care about Theora, video people don't.
Re: Decoding the HTML 5 video codec debate
#27Using "whatever codecs the user has installed" is the very non-solution that has already been in place for over a decade by means of the / tags. The result of that was eleventy hojillion attempts to make the ultimate codec, every single one a failure.
Even when based video worked, the plugin architecture made it slow, unstable, unpredictable and generally a horrible user experience. The only reason we have video at all today is because Flash provides it internally.
Any web video standard that fails to standardize the codec has made zero direct progress. However, it looks like the HTML5 attempt may have resulted in an acceptable defacto standard: a browser must support one or both of H.264 and/or Theora. Since the tag makes it easy to provide both formats, I think this is a compromise that web developers will be able to live with.