5 ms·

Introducing YouTube HTML5 Supported Videos

57 points by blasdel 17y ago

kilian 17y ago
It's a shame they're not offering ogg theora (thus excluding firefox) but a step in the right direction nonetheless!
- zokier 17y ago
  The shame is on Mozilla being so bullheaded and not implementing h264 and other parts MPEG4 standard. (and this has been discussed over and over...)
  - kilian 17y ago
    I wouldn't agree. The choice between a patent-encumbered h264 or an improving open standard? If you read this part: http://www.diveintohtml5.org/video.html#licensing http://www.diveintohtml5.org/video.html#licensing it becomes clear that h264 isn't really a viable option for an open web. You will have to start paying licensing fees by 2011 if you use the h264 codec. Now I'm not against paying for good things, but paying $2500+ per year per video doesn't sound too attractive...
    - zokier 17y ago
      The point is that there is no need to make a choice between h264 and Theora. Firefox could easily support both (and a variety of other formats) if MozCo would allow it. I'm not against endorsing Theora, but it shouldn't break interoperability/compatibility and degrade overall user experience.
      - davidblair 17y ago
        By not supporting h264 it helps prevent that codec from becoming the standard. If Firefox were to support ogg/h264 and everyone else supported only h264 then no one would bother with the ogg support. The format war would be lost at that point.
        AlexMax 17y ago
        What "format war"? Everyone already standardized on h264 years ago, and there is a built in h264 decoder on damn near everything these days. Keeping two copies of every movie would be a waste of CPU cycles, disk space and bandwidth (Theora videos are bigger than their h264 equivalents). Dropping support for h264 in favor of Ogg is also not an option due to h264 being in everything.
    - papaf 17y ago
      Am I right in thinking this license fee is only in the US? As far as I know the rest of the world (Europe at least) doesn't recognise patents on software or algorithms.
furyg3 17y ago
Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations. HTML5 on YouTube doesn't support videos with ads, captions, or annotations [...] I think I speak for everyone when I say: YouTube... do not fix these bugs!!!
- pwmanagerdied 17y ago
  I agreed, until I realized that what they meant is that videos that currently have ads are entirely unavailable with HTML5, not that the ads won't display. That would be a bit of a pain to never have fixed.
- IgorPartola 17y ago
  From http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5: # Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player) # Fullscreen is not supported So, no they should fix these bugs.
jrnkntl 17y ago
ClickToFlash just became obsolete for Youtube for me.
IgorPartola 17y ago
I wonder what Adobe will have to say about this. As a Firefox user, I am out of luck with no h264 support. It's interesting that the only two browsers that don't support Theora are Safari and IE, which makes the choice of h264 as the standard a bit odd to me.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- mrkurt 17y ago
  I would bet that Youtube already has h264 encoded videos, which means no re-encoding to support this.
  - spatulon 17y ago
    They do. The HQ setting on Youtube uses H264 baseline profile (notice how they introduced this around the time of the iPhone launch), and the HD setting uses H264 as well.
- bonaldi 17y ago
  I'm expecting a post from their paid Flash commenter (I'm sorely tempted to say professional troll, given some of his recent posts) jon dowdell saying something mocking about Ogg, then adding that HTML 5 is purely for minority browsers, and Adobe is fully focused on helping businesses and advertisers connect rich internet content with their customers in innovative and engaging ways. (Translation: Flash will always rule, we're betting the company against Apple-Google-Mozilla, and the rest of the internet may hate us, but it won't matter because IE and Windows will dominate forever) Meanwhile, those of us using "minority" browsers and Macs will do to Flash exactly what we did to Real.
  - jdowdell 17y ago
    Not classy, but then, that's what pseudonyms are for.... ;-) (I was sort of relieved to see YouTube take the beta off... brings the conversation down from the clouds and into reality.)
billpg 17y ago
Can captions be supported with HTML5 videos? I could live without annotations, but I wouldn't want to lose captions. Bill, I see deaf people.
- CWIZO 17y ago
  You can implement that with regular HTML/Canvas/SVG on-top of the video. That's the beauty of the whole thing. I do wonder if full-screen will be supported someday.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Yes. There's some working demos available which aim to explore this area so it can be standardised: http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/10/06/new-proposal-for-captions-and-other-timed-text-for-html5/ http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/10/06/new-proposal-for-capti...
AndrewDucker 17y ago
Is there a way to add additional video support into Firefox through an addon?
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Short answer, no. This is an evil plot or noble attempt (delete as appropriate) by Mozilla to promote royalty free audio and video standards on the web over popular standards with patent fees.
  - protomyth 17y ago
    Are we really, really sure that no one is lurking with a patent?
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      Oh the MPEG-LA have definitely got patents, but it's a bit uncharitable to characterize their first-hit-is-free strategy for web video as lurking.
      - evgen 17y ago
        I think protomyth was referring to the fact that while the Theora folks loudly claim to be unencumbered by patents this is a completely untested assertion and if such a patent were to show up they are without their own suite of patents with which to threaten the other party. MPEG-LA is covered by patents and has a licensing board, but the spec is also pretty-well vetted by various teams of lawyers and if someone tries to submarine a patent in they would find themselves facing a rather large, well-funded, and pissed off group with no qualms about burying the troll in counter-claims and long/expensive discovery, etc.
        protomyth 17y ago
        Yep, you nailed what I meant but didn't spend enough time writing. I just get this feeling that, given the number of companies involved, the patent situation is a known quantity for MPEG-LA, whereas the situation around Theora hasn't been as well researched. Unless someone with a massive amount of lawyers starts the ball rolling, I really don't see hardware people building accelerators into chipsets for Theora like they have done for h.264.
noamsml 17y ago
Is it just me, or are the YouTube html5 videos of degraded quality on the Linux Chrome beta?
- tensafefrogs 17y ago
  The player doesn't let you change video size/quality, so you might be seeing the lower res versions.
megaman821 17y ago
Could h264 support be added to Firefox with a plugin? Windows and Mac OS have the ability to natively play h264 videos, perhaps there is a way for FF to hook into that and not have to worry about any h264 licensing fees.
- blasdel 17y ago
  No, they belligerently designed their <video> and <audio> implementations to make that incredibly difficult to do without forking the whole project. They link directly with liboggplay instead of using a library like ffmpeg (Chrome), gstreamer (Opera), Quicktime (Safari), or DirectShow (IE, eventually). They don't even support any other container formats! I hope their heads fall off.

57 points by blasdel 17y ago

kilian 17y ago

It's a shame they're not offering ogg theora (thus excluding firefox) but a step in the right direction nonetheless!

zokier 17y ago
The shame is on Mozilla being so bullheaded and not implementing h264 and other parts MPEG4 standard. (and this has been discussed over and over...)
- kilian 17y ago
  I wouldn't agree. The choice between a patent-encumbered h264 or an improving open standard? If you read this part: http://www.diveintohtml5.org/video.html#licensing http://www.diveintohtml5.org/video.html#licensing it becomes clear that h264 isn't really a viable option for an open web. You will have to start paying licensing fees by 2011 if you use the h264 codec. Now I'm not against paying for good things, but paying $2500+ per year per video doesn't sound too attractive...
  - zokier 17y ago
    The point is that there is no need to make a choice between h264 and Theora. Firefox could easily support both (and a variety of other formats) if MozCo would allow it. I'm not against endorsing Theora, but it shouldn't break interoperability/compatibility and degrade overall user experience.
    - davidblair 17y ago
      By not supporting h264 it helps prevent that codec from becoming the standard. If Firefox were to support ogg/h264 and everyone else supported only h264 then no one would bother with the ogg support. The format war would be lost at that point.
      - AlexMax 17y ago
        What "format war"? Everyone already standardized on h264 years ago, and there is a built in h264 decoder on damn near everything these days. Keeping two copies of every movie would be a waste of CPU cycles, disk space and bandwidth (Theora videos are bigger than their h264 equivalents). Dropping support for h264 in favor of Ogg is also not an option due to h264 being in everything.
  - papaf 17y ago
    Am I right in thinking this license fee is only in the US? As far as I know the rest of the world (Europe at least) doesn't recognise patents on software or algorithms.

furyg3 17y ago

Our support for HTML5 is an early experiment, and there are some limitations. HTML5 on YouTube doesn't support videos with ads, captions, or annotations [...] I think I speak for everyone when I say: YouTube... do not fix these bugs!!!

pwmanagerdied 17y ago
I agreed, until I realized that what they meant is that videos that currently have ads are entirely unavailable with HTML5, not that the ads won't display. That would be a bit of a pain to never have fixed.
IgorPartola 17y ago
From http://www.youtube.com/html5 http://www.youtube.com/html5: # Videos with ads are not supported (they will play in the Flash player) # Fullscreen is not supported So, no they should fix these bugs.

jrnkntl 17y ago

ClickToFlash just became obsolete for Youtube for me.

IgorPartola 17y ago

I wonder what Adobe will have to say about this. As a Firefox user, I am out of luck with no h264 support. It's interesting that the only two browsers that don't support Theora are Safari and IE, which makes the choice of h264 as the standard a bit odd to me.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
mrkurt 17y ago
I would bet that Youtube already has h264 encoded videos, which means no re-encoding to support this.
- spatulon 17y ago
  They do. The HQ setting on Youtube uses H264 baseline profile (notice how they introduced this around the time of the iPhone launch), and the HD setting uses H264 as well.
bonaldi 17y ago
I'm expecting a post from their paid Flash commenter (I'm sorely tempted to say professional troll, given some of his recent posts) jon dowdell saying something mocking about Ogg, then adding that HTML 5 is purely for minority browsers, and Adobe is fully focused on helping businesses and advertisers connect rich internet content with their customers in innovative and engaging ways. (Translation: Flash will always rule, we're betting the company against Apple-Google-Mozilla, and the rest of the internet may hate us, but it won't matter because IE and Windows will dominate forever) Meanwhile, those of us using "minority" browsers and Macs will do to Flash exactly what we did to Real.
- jdowdell 17y ago
  Not classy, but then, that's what pseudonyms are for.... ;-) (I was sort of relieved to see YouTube take the beta off... brings the conversation down from the clouds and into reality.)

billpg 17y ago

Can captions be supported with HTML5 videos? I could live without annotations, but I wouldn't want to lose captions. Bill, I see deaf people.

CWIZO 17y ago
You can implement that with regular HTML/Canvas/SVG on-top of the video. That's the beauty of the whole thing. I do wonder if full-screen will be supported someday.
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Yes. There's some working demos available which aim to explore this area so it can be standardised: http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/10/06/new-proposal-for-captions-and-other-timed-text-for-html5/ http://blog.gingertech.net/2009/10/06/new-proposal-for-capti...

AndrewDucker 17y ago

Is there a way to add additional video support into Firefox through an addon?

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Short answer, no. This is an evil plot or noble attempt (delete as appropriate) by Mozilla to promote royalty free audio and video standards on the web over popular standards with patent fees.
- protomyth 17y ago
  Are we really, really sure that no one is lurking with a patent?
  - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
    Oh the MPEG-LA have definitely got patents, but it's a bit uncharitable to characterize their first-hit-is-free strategy for web video as lurking.
    - evgen 17y ago
      I think protomyth was referring to the fact that while the Theora folks loudly claim to be unencumbered by patents this is a completely untested assertion and if such a patent were to show up they are without their own suite of patents with which to threaten the other party. MPEG-LA is covered by patents and has a licensing board, but the spec is also pretty-well vetted by various teams of lawyers and if someone tries to submarine a patent in they would find themselves facing a rather large, well-funded, and pissed off group with no qualms about burying the troll in counter-claims and long/expensive discovery, etc.
      - protomyth 17y ago
        Yep, you nailed what I meant but didn't spend enough time writing. I just get this feeling that, given the number of companies involved, the patent situation is a known quantity for MPEG-LA, whereas the situation around Theora hasn't been as well researched. Unless someone with a massive amount of lawyers starts the ball rolling, I really don't see hardware people building accelerators into chipsets for Theora like they have done for h.264.

noamsml 17y ago

Is it just me, or are the YouTube html5 videos of degraded quality on the Linux Chrome beta?

tensafefrogs 17y ago
The player doesn't let you change video size/quality, so you might be seeing the lower res versions.

megaman821 17y ago

Could h264 support be added to Firefox with a plugin? Windows and Mac OS have the ability to natively play h264 videos, perhaps there is a way for FF to hook into that and not have to worry about any h264 licensing fees.

blasdel 17y ago
No, they belligerently designed their <video> and <audio> implementations to make that incredibly difficult to do without forking the whole project. They link directly with liboggplay instead of using a library like ffmpeg (Chrome), gstreamer (Opera), Quicktime (Safari), or DirectShow (IE, eventually). They don't even support any other container formats! I hope their heads fall off.