Html5

[hosant]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

 

[grasshoppir]

free beer!!

 

[rv6502]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

Apple has a reason to push for h.264, its likely that most of its iPod hardware support some form of hardware acceleration for h.264 where OGG isn't hardware accelerated, they're just protecting their investments.

don't worry, you can be sure that someone will add h.264 support soon to firefox if its not already there, and mplayer plays it.

and you can already rip and play youtube .flv videos anyway, it takes a few more steps (type in video URL, save to disk, start mplayer) but it works.

 

[renwils]

I thought that firefox wasn't going to implement h.264 because of licensing issues.

 

[WizardStan]

Apple has a reason to push for h.264, its likely that most of its iPod hardware support some form of hardware acceleration for h.264 where OGG isn't hardware accelerated, they're just protecting their investments.

don't worry, you can be sure that someone will add h.264 support soon to firefox if its not already there, and mplayer plays it.

and you can already rip and play youtube .flv videos anyway, it takes a few more steps (type in video URL, save to disk, start mplayer) but it works.

youtube isn't the only video source, it's just the one that all the others seem to follow. If youtube goes with an html5 solution, other video sites (such as hulu) are likely to follow eventually. If youtube goes with h.264, regardless of what the standard says, every other video site is probably going to follow, and that could spell trouble.

 

[hosant]

Yeah. Im personally hoping for Justin.tv streaming for my Pandora.

 

[emil10001]

I'm not terribly worried, there are plugins for firefox to use external media players for embedded video. We could probably use mplayer or vlc to play those streams.

 

[Chip]

This is an ongoing issue, which will not be resolved. Literally will not, as the HTML5 committee has basically given up trying to resolve it. Here's a brief rundown of the argument.

In practice, it won't really affect anybody running a full-featured browser like Firefox. Even if Mozilla sticks to its guns and leaves h.264 out of their browser, it's easy enough to add as an extension. Whatever phantom rights issues hang over h.264, the real fact is that x.264 is free and widely available. Even if MPEG wanted to throw a licensing hissy-fit over it (and there's no reason to think they will), it's beyond their control anyway.

As to why Youtube wants h.264 instead of Theora, that is obvious. They've already got a couple billion videos encoded in h.264, and farms upon farms of servers set up to encode and serve them. It would be massively expensive to switch now. Can't blame them for not wanting to spend millions just because some FOSS purists are worried about a potential licensing issue that will probably never arise.

 

[lulzfish]

Not only would it cost loads of money to re-encode all their H264 videos to Theora, it would look like shit.
Encoding between different lossy video formats is like copying a song by recording it with a tape player out of your MP3 player's earbuds.

So I understand why they're using H264, but I'm not pleased by it. Arora doesn't support it either..

 

[laurencevde]

Google most probably also stores the originally uploaded video. They'll be stupid if they don't. IF they're going to re-encode, they'll use that file of course...
AFAIK, ogg is nowadays pretty much on par with h.264 in quality, or quality/MB. The source-material may have some effect though.(most of it is probably mpeg2 or h.264)
Google could provide ogg-versions of the videos alongside the h.264-ones, but that'll mean having to store two versions of every video on their servers. Firefox'll be using the ogg-version, while practically everything else will keep using the h.264-version. That'll put serious additional strain on their I/O (most importantly, memory and disk usage), requiring google to significantly expand their server-farms...

 

[Klaus]

Google aquired On2 last year. I would guess that Google will release their codecs to the public under a liberal FLOSS-license (probably Apache) and most modern Browsers integrate them. Google needs an open web, they don't want to exclude Firefox from YouTube. My guess is, they chose h.264 because it's already on their servers and they will be switching to an On2-codec eventually.

 

[lulzfish]

Google most probably also stores the originally uploaded video. They'll be stupid if they don't. IF they're going to re-encode, they'll use that file of course...
AFAIK, ogg is nowadays pretty much on par with h.264 in quality, or quality/MB. The source-material may have some effect though.(most of it is probably mpeg2 or h.264)

Yeah, a lot of people upload H264 so they won't have to lose quality in video conversion.
Also, one would think they kept the source, but considering that I can't download my own source videos (There's a MP4 download option) they might not.
I wouldn't really have a problem with H264 if the licensing / patent / whatever issues evaporated and Firefox and Arora implemented it.

 

[conso]

Google has indeed several reasons to use h.264 for now.

1. As said before, no need to reencode.
2. Good compression
3. Possible drm (they are going for money with full-movies).
4. hardware-acceleration in several embedded devices.

Maybe they can turn one of their new codecs into an alternative, but they won't make it available until it is close to the features of h.264 for them.
Firefox is probably a minor issue for them. If the community doesn't jump in (and they probably will), google might create their own video-plugin for firefox.

If we get those neon-optimized h264-codecs, we would probably be better of with a plugin, anyway.

 

[Kramy]

Google most probably also stores the originally uploaded video. They'll be stupid if they don't. IF they're going to re-encode, they'll use that file of course...

Lol, no. Lots of people upload MJPEG and crap. That's 25x bigger than H.264. It'd be stupid for them to save the originals, because it'd cost them hundreds of millions of dollars in extra HDDs.

AFAIK, ogg is nowadays pretty much on par with h.264 in quality, or quality/MB. The source-material may have some effect though.(most of it is probably mpeg2 or h.264)

You're getting container messed up with codec.

.ogg is just a container, like .mkv, .avi, and .mp4.

Ogg usually stores Theora (video) and Vorbis (audio)

Vorbis rivals the best AAC encoders. It's far superior to encoders like FAAC, but does fall behind the 3GPP+ encoder. A 48kbit AAC audio file (3GPP+) will roughly match a 56kbit ogg file (Vorbis), which roughly matches an 80kbit AAC audio file (FAAC), which roughly matches a 120kbit MP3 file. (lame)

Video is where things get mucky. The H.264 4.0 profile (which is what Apple's hardware can accelerate) is slightly better than Theora. However, the 5.1 profile is a lot better - and the 5.1 profile can be tweaked to be insanely better. I'm talking DVD quality in just 768kbit or less. Or with material that suits it, DVD quality with as little as 256kbit. (I've seen it done with DVD lectures)

 

[bzar]

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

 

[aesir911]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

dude, you're just not buying the right products...

 

[hosant]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

dude, you're just not buying the right products...

Huh? What is that supposed to mean?

 

[aesir911]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

dude, you're just not buying the right products...

Huh? What is that supposed to mean?

buy apple!!!

 

[Vlynndar]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

dude, you're just not buying the right products...

Huh? What is that supposed to mean?

buy apple!!!

He's saying that it's much less likely that he will buy apple if they do that.
Like: "I want a vehicle without wheels," Hosant said. "Well then, buy a car!" Aesir answered.

Hosant is just looking for a boat

No harm meant in this post.

 

[lulzfish]

So, Youtube html5 Beta just released. This is pretty good for the us, pandora (future <_< ) users, since now we are less defendant on Adobe Flash. However, following Apple's lead, Youtube requires the h.264 video codec, while Firefox (and opera) uses ogg. F*** you Apple! We are trying to get away from proprietary stuff here .

dude, you're just not buying the right products...

Huh? What is that supposed to mean?

buy apple!!!

Is this sarcasm, or are you seriously telling us that the solution to patented video codecs is to sponsor the people who use those codecs, and in doing so ensure their continuation?