5 ms·

Follow-up on Microsoft's H.264 choice for IE9

21 points by hackermom 16y ago

pavs 16y ago
After watching the BS IE team spread about Chrome, they have lost whatever respect I had for them for trying to make IE a better browser. http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-tradition-of-misinformation-with-ie8/ http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-trad... Its just a matter of time before their market share drops down to tens. Unfortunately they will never completely go away.
- DenisM 16y ago
  The article you linked is weak. The first retort isn't much of a retort really, over 90% of chrome users don't change their search engine and Google does see everything you type into what normal people used to consider to be address bar. You can call it all kinds of fancy names, but midnight visits to goatfetish.com that used to be private are now google's property.
  - maukdaddy 16y ago
    My midnight visits to goatfetish.com aren't private?!
ZeroGravitas 16y ago
"We are aware that this commitment is set to expire in 2016, but fully expect to commit to supporting the extension of this license and associated terms beyond that date." They're going to ask a profit-maximizing corporation to not raise prices after they've got the entire globe locked-in? Sounds like another great plan from the boys in redmond. Why not ask them to commit to no fees for 10 or 15 years today? What extra leverage do they think they'll have after they commit to H.264 alone for 5 years?
- wmf 16y ago
  Every new codec has had lower fees than the previous generation; by 2015 we should have H.265 which will probably have free streaming as a teaser. Maybe H.264 will be forced to keep its fees lower than the switching cost to H.265.
apphacker 16y ago
> "Third-party applications that simply make calls to the H.264 code in Windows (and which do not incorporate any H.264 code directly) are covered by Microsoft’s license of H.264." Seems like to me one could at least write a Windows only extension for Firefox that would allow Firefox to easily view H.264 without having to worry about royalties if they use of the code in Windows.
- kevingadd 16y ago
  Yes, but then Firefox users on Mac OS X or Linux would be out of luck.
  - protomyth 16y ago
    I believe Apple has the same deal. How much would one have to charge each user to release a library for Linux that covers the H.264 fee?
    - ROFISH 16y ago
      http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsS... 20 cents per user at most.
    - wmf 16y ago
      IIRC H.264 decode + AAC decode is less than $2. Linux users still wouldn't pay it, though. Fluendo charges significantly more, but they also have pretty low volume. Also, every ATI or NVIDIA graphics card should already have a licensed decoder in it.
    - tzs 16y ago
      Flash already covers this, doesn't it?
WilliamLP 16y ago
Here's something the average developer may not realize: Theora just looks starkly bad compared to H.264 at web bitrates. I didn't use to think this, when all I had seen was some comparison articles with objective measures and still images but then I actually tried encoding them myself and playing them simultaneously. For those genuinely curious for discovery (rather than making rhetoric) try this html in Chrome or a browser that supports both H.264 and Theora. It's an example where someone has encoded a video in both formats at the same bitrate. (I'm not going to link or host it because I don't want to kill the site the video is hosted on.) <html><head></head><body> <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/ogg" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD1_1.ogv"></video> <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/mp4" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD.mp4"></video> </body> So try that, and then after watching that try to tell me that the difference in visual quality is slight. After doing this myself (those videos are not mine but my results were similar) I can only conclude that supporters of Theora as a pragmatic choice (as opposed to an idealistic or emotional one) for delivering professional video content have never done such a test.
- silvestrov 16y ago
  What encoding parameters did you use?
- smokinn 16y ago
  I tried very hard to use ogg for encoding a video about 1.5 years ago as well (it was a requirement) and it was so painful. The tools are awful and it took me 5 tries just to get something that wouldn't crash most players if you tried seeking. After I finally got something valid, I ended up settling with a file 1.6x the size of the h264 file I would've created that looked only a little worse. For amateurs like me ogg is hard. h264 is easy.
  - aw3c2 16y ago
    ffmpeg2theora is easy. http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/
    - 16y ago
Buzzzz 16y ago
Why not just make an API and let the community add the codec? //Anders
- wmf 16y ago
  Because then you get sites that say "to view this free porn, just install our custom codec", and of course the codec is malware.
- StrawberryFrog 16y ago
  Silverlight 3 does that: http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/ http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/ "With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs. "
aarongough 16y ago
Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers rely on plug-ins. I'm honestly not sure what they mean by this, either the writer has not expressed his thoughts clearly or there is a severe issue here. Developers who want to use the same markup across different browsers rely on standards. Each browser supports a sub-set of the complete HTML, JS & CSS standards and the technologies that developers use is, for the most part, the lowest common denominator of that subset for the browsers they are targeting. Plugins come into their own when you are trying to do something that falls outside the capabilities of the lowest common denominator (Silverlight & Flash being good examples), but they should not be relied upon for the 'bread & butter' of the web, HTML & CSS.

21 points by hackermom 16y ago

pavs 16y ago

After watching the BS IE team spread about Chrome, they have lost whatever respect I had for them for trying to make IE a better browser. http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-tradition-of-misinformation-with-ie8/ http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-trad... Its just a matter of time before their market share drops down to tens. Unfortunately they will never completely go away.

DenisM 16y ago
The article you linked is weak. The first retort isn't much of a retort really, over 90% of chrome users don't change their search engine and Google does see everything you type into what normal people used to consider to be address bar. You can call it all kinds of fancy names, but midnight visits to goatfetish.com that used to be private are now google's property.
- maukdaddy 16y ago
  My midnight visits to goatfetish.com aren't private?!

ZeroGravitas 16y ago

"We are aware that this commitment is set to expire in 2016, but fully expect to commit to supporting the extension of this license and associated terms beyond that date." They're going to ask a profit-maximizing corporation to not raise prices after they've got the entire globe locked-in? Sounds like another great plan from the boys in redmond. Why not ask them to commit to no fees for 10 or 15 years today? What extra leverage do they think they'll have after they commit to H.264 alone for 5 years?

wmf 16y ago
Every new codec has had lower fees than the previous generation; by 2015 we should have H.265 which will probably have free streaming as a teaser. Maybe H.264 will be forced to keep its fees lower than the switching cost to H.265.

apphacker 16y ago

> "Third-party applications that simply make calls to the H.264 code in Windows (and which do not incorporate any H.264 code directly) are covered by Microsoft’s license of H.264." Seems like to me one could at least write a Windows only extension for Firefox that would allow Firefox to easily view H.264 without having to worry about royalties if they use of the code in Windows.

kevingadd 16y ago
Yes, but then Firefox users on Mac OS X or Linux would be out of luck.
- protomyth 16y ago
  I believe Apple has the same deal. How much would one have to charge each user to release a library for Linux that covers the H.264 fee?
  - ROFISH 16y ago
    http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsSummary.pdf http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/AVC_TermsS... 20 cents per user at most.
  - wmf 16y ago
    IIRC H.264 decode + AAC decode is less than $2. Linux users still wouldn't pay it, though. Fluendo charges significantly more, but they also have pretty low volume. Also, every ATI or NVIDIA graphics card should already have a licensed decoder in it.
  - tzs 16y ago
    Flash already covers this, doesn't it?

WilliamLP 16y ago

Here's something the average developer may not realize: Theora just looks starkly bad compared to H.264 at web bitrates. I didn't use to think this, when all I had seen was some comparison articles with objective measures and still images but then I actually tried encoding them myself and playing them simultaneously. For those genuinely curious for discovery (rather than making rhetoric) try this html in Chrome or a browser that supports both H.264 and Theora. It's an example where someone has encoded a video in both formats at the same bitrate. (I'm not going to link or host it because I don't want to kill the site the video is hosted on.) <html><head></head><body> <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/ogg" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD1_1.ogv"></video> <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/mp4" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD.mp4"></video> </body> So try that, and then after watching that try to tell me that the difference in visual quality is slight. After doing this myself (those videos are not mine but my results were similar) I can only conclude that supporters of Theora as a pragmatic choice (as opposed to an idealistic or emotional one) for delivering professional video content have never done such a test.

silvestrov 16y ago
What encoding parameters did you use?
smokinn 16y ago
I tried very hard to use ogg for encoding a video about 1.5 years ago as well (it was a requirement) and it was so painful. The tools are awful and it took me 5 tries just to get something that wouldn't crash most players if you tried seeking. After I finally got something valid, I ended up settling with a file 1.6x the size of the h264 file I would've created that looked only a little worse. For amateurs like me ogg is hard. h264 is easy.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  ffmpeg2theora is easy. http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/
  - 16y ago

Buzzzz 16y ago

Why not just make an API and let the community add the codec? //Anders

wmf 16y ago
Because then you get sites that say "to view this free porn, just install our custom codec", and of course the codec is malware.
StrawberryFrog 16y ago
Silverlight 3 does that: http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/ http://www.silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight3/ "With the new Raw AV pipeline, Silverlight can easily support a wide variety of third-party codecs. Audio and video can be decoded outside the runtime and rendered in Silverlight, extending format support beyond the native codecs. "

aarongough 16y ago

Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers rely on plug-ins. I'm honestly not sure what they mean by this, either the writer has not expressed his thoughts clearly or there is a severe issue here. Developers who want to use the same markup across different browsers rely on standards. Each browser supports a sub-set of the complete HTML, JS & CSS standards and the technologies that developers use is, for the most part, the lowest common denominator of that subset for the browsers they are targeting. Plugins come into their own when you are trying to do something that falls outside the capabilities of the lowest common denominator (Silverlight & Flash being good examples), but they should not be relied upon for the 'bread & butter' of the web, HTML & CSS.