5 ms·

Who's using them? Adobe isn't. Firefox, WebKit? Nope.

• jrockway 17y ago
  Chromium on Linux uses ffmpeg's (open-source) h.264 implementation. Firefox doesn't use it because they are making a policy stand, "Theora or nothing." Technically, h.264 would work fine, it would just be illegal to distribute in countries with software patents. mplayer also uses ffmpeg's h.264 code, and I am sure VLC does too. In other words, every open-source video application that can play h.264 uses an open-source h.264 implementation. Remember, there are no technical problems with h.264. It is a good algorithm with plenty of good (and Free) implementations. The problem is that the group that patented h.264 wants money every time you encode a video with h.264, upload a video encoded with h.264, and play a video with h.264. Because the Internet will suck when this happens, people are trying to ensure it doesn't. (Killing Adobe will help, because they make money from giving away h.264 licenses that they already paid for, and hence are demanding that Theora not be in the HTML5 spec they are writing.)
  • tomlin 17y ago
    Thank you for your thorough insight. I appreciate a good explanation with facts :)