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If Gruber was not a well known defender of whatever Apple wants to happen in the world I would say that his viewpoint was meaningful, but it's not, he simply wa

by zppx 17y ago

If Gruber was not a well known defender of whatever Apple wants to happen in the world I would say that his viewpoint was meaningful, but it's not, he simply want to advance the Apple wishes... if we will need to migrate to other formats after some time, because of patent enforcement, then why adopt a format as a standard? Why not just adopt multiple formats or no format at all? What about the legacy devices that will not support the new format? See, he also does not have any practical concerns, he just lives in a world where Apple idealism is the norm. That said, my demands from a codec is simple: it must be free to encode/decode using the codec, free to be included in the nightly builds/repository of WebKit and Gecko (H.264 is not) or every other project, free for a guy in a university dorm develop a new product using the codec without paying for any royalties, it must be patent free as it is the desirable for every other W3C standard, I think it will be better to not have a standard at all if we do not have these guarantees. EDIT: lanaer and GHFigs comments were eye-openers for me, I recommend you people to read them.

lanaer 17y ago
Since there is no standard video codec for HTML5 playback, it sounds like your last clause, at least, is satisfied. Personally, I'll probably use H.264. Why? Because I find it preferable than flash, and if I want my web video to be viewable without flash to most of my visitors, H.264 seems like the only practical solution (and possibly encoding in Theora as well). It's not a standard, and browser vendors & others can continue to offer alternatives, one of which may supplant H.264, as PNG replaced GIF. Or maybe Theora will turn out to infringe on patents that H.264 legally relies on, and H.264 will stay around for a while. Whatever the case may be, this is only the first generation of video-capable browsers. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see future generations be much more flexible in terms of codec support.
GHFigs 17y ago
Why not just adopt multiple formats or no format at all? HTML5's video tag supports multiple formats (it always has) and the spec does not mandate any specific codec. Nobody is proposing to adopt h.264 as part of the standard.
- lanaer 17y ago
  I think a while back that was under consideration, but the spec-writers gave up since they knew that no matter what codec they picked, they knew they couldn’t get all browser vendors to implement it.
  - GHFigs 17y ago
    You're probably confusing it with Theora, which was actually part of the spec for a while but was removed around last June for the reasons you mention. That's when the public shitstorms started. I was an avid reader of what WHAT-WG list around the time leading up to that and I never recall anybody seriously proposing H.264 be put into the spec.
    - lanaer 17y ago
      Ah ok. I didn't learn of the issue until after Theora was removed, so all I saw were the reasons why neither H.264 nor Theora were in the spec (and the impression that at least one of those had been considered for it).
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Just to be more specific because this seems to be a point of confusion: HTML5 video tag was always supposed to allow any codec to be used. It was also, from the first time it was proposed by Opera, intended to use Theora as a baseline interoperability codec which everyone could implement for free so that if you wanted to guarantee someone could see it on any HTML5 compliant platform you could use that. Just to underline that point. No-one, at any point said "Theora is the best codec in the world lets force everyone to use that", instead they said "What are the best, freely implementable codecs" and the only good answer was Theora (and maybe Dirac at some point in the future). This was all written up in the spec. Apple and Nokia said "we don't care what you write in the spec, we're not going to implement Theora". The spec author didn't want to have anything in the spec that didn't reflect reality, and didn't think having such things in the spec would help change that reality, so he took Theora out and said no baseline default codec would be added until there was a royalty free option that the main players could agree on. Again, just to underline this twice, no-one proposed H.264 (or any other royalty bearing codec) for inclusion in the spec because W3C specs do not allow royalties. Even Apple thinks this is a good thing: "After careful consideration of the draft patent policy, Apple believes that it is essential to continued interoperability and development of the Web that fundamental W3C standards be available on a royalty-free basis. In line with the W3C’s mission to “lead the Web to its full potential,” Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers this statement in support of its position." http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/ http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/ Yet thanks to Apple (and others) we have a W3C standard that specifies no codecs and a de facto web standard codec with royalties as a result. (And before anyone brings up IMG, name 5 royalty free image formats, then name 5 royalty free video codecs)
tjogin 17y ago
Gruber isn't as uncritical of Apple as you claim, you should probably read more of what it is he has to say, and assume less.
- zppx 17y ago
  Thank you for point this out, I promise I'll read more from him, I generally only read the iPhone-related articles from his blog and this is the way I saw it, of course I could be biased, and generally I am, to comment about anything. But thanks anyway.
  - tjogin 17y ago
    Gruber isn't non-critical of Apple's iPhone business either. He has consistently criticized them for how they're managing the AppStore, for instance. However, because he also has deep insight into Apple's business and culture (probably better than any industry analyst), he understands the underlying reasoning and motivations, and so he doesn't just spout out ignorant rants nor pretends to know how to "easily" solve the problem, either. Now, I might come off as a Gruber fanboy here, but just read up and you'll find that this is true. He speaks from humility and insight, and he doesn't serve up advice on how Apple should improve their business — in all respects — with a quick fix, like most other Apple critics do.

by zppx 17y ago

lanaer 17y ago

Since there is no standard video codec for HTML5 playback, it sounds like your last clause, at least, is satisfied. Personally, I'll probably use H.264. Why? Because I find it preferable than flash, and if I want my web video to be viewable without flash to most of my visitors, H.264 seems like the only practical solution (and possibly encoding in Theora as well). It's not a standard, and browser vendors & others can continue to offer alternatives, one of which may supplant H.264, as PNG replaced GIF. Or maybe Theora will turn out to infringe on patents that H.264 legally relies on, and H.264 will stay around for a while. Whatever the case may be, this is only the first generation of video-capable browsers. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see future generations be much more flexible in terms of codec support.

GHFigs 17y ago

Why not just adopt multiple formats or no format at all? HTML5's video tag supports multiple formats (it always has) and the spec does not mandate any specific codec. Nobody is proposing to adopt h.264 as part of the standard.

lanaer 17y ago
I think a while back that was under consideration, but the spec-writers gave up since they knew that no matter what codec they picked, they knew they couldn’t get all browser vendors to implement it.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  You're probably confusing it with Theora, which was actually part of the spec for a while but was removed around last June for the reasons you mention. That's when the public shitstorms started. I was an avid reader of what WHAT-WG list around the time leading up to that and I never recall anybody seriously proposing H.264 be put into the spec.
  - lanaer 17y ago
    Ah ok. I didn't learn of the issue until after Theora was removed, so all I saw were the reasons why neither H.264 nor Theora were in the spec (and the impression that at least one of those had been considered for it).
ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Just to be more specific because this seems to be a point of confusion: HTML5 video tag was always supposed to allow any codec to be used. It was also, from the first time it was proposed by Opera, intended to use Theora as a baseline interoperability codec which everyone could implement for free so that if you wanted to guarantee someone could see it on any HTML5 compliant platform you could use that. Just to underline that point. No-one, at any point said "Theora is the best codec in the world lets force everyone to use that", instead they said "What are the best, freely implementable codecs" and the only good answer was Theora (and maybe Dirac at some point in the future). This was all written up in the spec. Apple and Nokia said "we don't care what you write in the spec, we're not going to implement Theora". The spec author didn't want to have anything in the spec that didn't reflect reality, and didn't think having such things in the spec would help change that reality, so he took Theora out and said no baseline default codec would be added until there was a royalty free option that the main players could agree on. Again, just to underline this twice, no-one proposed H.264 (or any other royalty bearing codec) for inclusion in the spec because W3C specs do not allow royalties. Even Apple thinks this is a good thing: "After careful consideration of the draft patent policy, Apple believes that it is essential to continued interoperability and development of the Web that fundamental W3C standards be available on a royalty-free basis. In line with the W3C’s mission to “lead the Web to its full potential,” Apple supports a W3C patent policy with an immutable commitment to royalty-free licensing for fundamental Web standards. Apple offers this statement in support of its position." http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/ http://www.apple.com/about/w3c/ Yet thanks to Apple (and others) we have a W3C standard that specifies no codecs and a de facto web standard codec with royalties as a result. (And before anyone brings up IMG, name 5 royalty free image formats, then name 5 royalty free video codecs)

tjogin 17y ago

Gruber isn't as uncritical of Apple as you claim, you should probably read more of what it is he has to say, and assume less.

zppx 17y ago
Thank you for point this out, I promise I'll read more from him, I generally only read the iPhone-related articles from his blog and this is the way I saw it, of course I could be biased, and generally I am, to comment about anything. But thanks anyway.
- tjogin 17y ago
  Gruber isn't non-critical of Apple's iPhone business either. He has consistently criticized them for how they're managing the AppStore, for instance. However, because he also has deep insight into Apple's business and culture (probably better than any industry analyst), he understands the underlying reasoning and motivations, and so he doesn't just spout out ignorant rants nor pretends to know how to "easily" solve the problem, either. Now, I might come off as a Gruber fanboy here, but just read up and you'll find that this is true. He speaks from humility and insight, and he doesn't serve up advice on how Apple should improve their business — in all respects — with a quick fix, like most other Apple critics do.