7 ms·

VP8, WebM, and HTML5 video

86 points by Heff 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago
I wonder if a side effect of WebM will be to push Ogg Vorbis into wider adoption? Platforms that want to play WebM will also decode Ogg, so why not support the audio-only format?
- jon_dahl 16y ago
  Definitely. Vorbis is a good codec, too, so this is a win for everyone.
- naner 16y ago
  Will this also open up Vorbis for patent suits? If MP3 is covered by over 100 patents then Vorbis is probably a ripe target.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    Vorbis has been around for over a decade now, and incorporated into numerous products with no successful patent threats yet. Xiph.org conducted a patent search and believes Vorbis does not infringe on any patents. And since US patents expire in 17 to 20 years, there is a shrinking body of patents that could be used against Vorbis.
    - jrockway 16y ago
      Incidentally, the last MP3 patent expires in 2017.
      - vetinari 16y ago
        That hard to believe, as MP3 was standardized in 1989. Didn't you mean AAC?
        mbrubeck 16y ago
        No, apparently he does mean MP3, but don't ask me how a patent filed in 1997 covers a standard that was finalized in 1991. (Was there a delay between date of invention and date of application, maybe involving provisional patents? I do not know the details of these things.) http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/ http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
        pbiggar 16y ago
        There is generally a delay between patents being filed and issues. I've heard of a number of very long waits before. (I'm not an expert at all.)
- jmillikin 16y ago
  I hope it does, but believe it won't. Much like Theora, the primary reason to oppose Vorbis is political. It's not covered by patents and doesn't support DRM, so to content providers it's a significantly worse codec than MP3 or AAC. If Apple or Microsoft were going to support Vorbis, they'd have done so years ago.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Not to detract from your general point, but Ogg and Vorbis support DRM to the same degree that any other container and codec do, it's generally an orthogonal concern. It's main problem is network effects, in cases where network effects don't apply, e.g. game audio and web streaming audio, it has longe been used by big names such as Microsoft and Spotify. There is now no reason for it not to be the standard for web audio, since you can even fall back to Vorbis in Flash 8 via a non-native decoder. It's also likely to get a boost in the pirate video market, even when paired with H.264 as a result of WebM introduction. It really could become mainstream for a variety of uses. The biggest drawback in the last few years has been the lack of support in iPods. It will be interesting to see if Apple chooses to prevent you playing Vorbis audio on your iPod Touch even if it caves and allows it for web audio.
zaatar 16y ago
The link says: "Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Adobe currently support VP8, and Safari and IE may at some point." Microsoft has already confirmed that IE9 will support VP8. See: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive...
- glhaynes 16y ago
  "when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows"...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- hapless 16y ago
  The windows blog post only mentions the vp8 codec. No mention of container formats, webM, etc. We don't know anything about WebM and IE9 <video> tag support.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    I trust Microsoft about as far as I could throw them but it would be beyond perverse for them to support VP8 and not support the full package.
    - hapless 16y ago
      This is Microsoft: "Beyond mere perversity" should really be their motto.
- blasdel 16y ago
  Safari supports everything that Quicktime does. You can add the support yourself, just like you could with Theora: http://xiph.org/quicktime/ http://xiph.org/quicktime/ http://perian.org http://perian.org is a Quicktime Component that wraps around libavcodec (ffmpeg) that has a pretty wide install base on OS X and checks for automatic updates by default every time it's loaded in an application. Google has a set of patches for ffmpeg on their site that will surely get picked up and automatically distributed before too long. If Apple ever ships support, it'll be with Quicktime, not the braindead approach of linking it directly into the browser. IE9 has this approach too, just with a codec whitelist. Google Chrome bundles a pared-down libavcodec that you can swap out with your own. Opera does the same but with GStreamer. In reality, the new version of Flash with VP8 support will get %95 penetration in a couple months after it's released, and fallback to Flash will continue to be how the <video> game is played. I wonder if Google's stopped charging Adobe for VP6 as a quid-pro-quo? It seems like that (and VP7 for Skype) were On2's sole sources of revenue.
CoryMathews 16y ago
Dear Steve Jobs, Why do you not support an "open web"? O yeah I know why..
laut 16y ago
Do any of the browsers current support streaming with the HTML5 video tag? So that you don't have to download the entire video before playback can start. And so that you can skip ahead and start playing something towards the end of the video without downloading the whole video.
- wmf 16y ago
  So that you don't have to download the entire video before playback can start. That's called progressive downloading, and it would be totally stupid not to do it. And so that you can skip ahead and start playing something towards the end of the video without downloading the whole video. That's called seeking, which is harder. Firefox can do seeking if your Web server supports byte ranges. It looks like Chrome does the same thing but I'm not entirely sure.

86 points by Heff 16y ago

I wonder if a side effect of WebM will be to push Ogg Vorbis into wider adoption? Platforms that want to play WebM will also decode Ogg, so why not support the audio-only format?

jon_dahl 16y ago
Definitely. Vorbis is a good codec, too, so this is a win for everyone.
naner 16y ago
Will this also open up Vorbis for patent suits? If MP3 is covered by over 100 patents then Vorbis is probably a ripe target.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Vorbis has been around for over a decade now, and incorporated into numerous products with no successful patent threats yet. Xiph.org conducted a patent search and believes Vorbis does not infringe on any patents. And since US patents expire in 17 to 20 years, there is a shrinking body of patents that could be used against Vorbis.
  - jrockway 16y ago
    Incidentally, the last MP3 patent expires in 2017.
    - vetinari 16y ago
      That hard to believe, as MP3 was standardized in 1989. Didn't you mean AAC?
      - mbrubeck 16y ago
        No, apparently he does mean MP3, but don't ask me how a patent filed in 1997 covers a standard that was finalized in 1991. (Was there a delay between date of invention and date of application, maybe involving provisional patents? I do not know the details of these things.) http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/ http://www.tunequest.org/a-big-list-of-mp3-patents/20070226/
        pbiggar 16y ago
        There is generally a delay between patents being filed and issues. I've heard of a number of very long waits before. (I'm not an expert at all.)
jmillikin 16y ago
I hope it does, but believe it won't. Much like Theora, the primary reason to oppose Vorbis is political. It's not covered by patents and doesn't support DRM, so to content providers it's a significantly worse codec than MP3 or AAC. If Apple or Microsoft were going to support Vorbis, they'd have done so years ago.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Not to detract from your general point, but Ogg and Vorbis support DRM to the same degree that any other container and codec do, it's generally an orthogonal concern. It's main problem is network effects, in cases where network effects don't apply, e.g. game audio and web streaming audio, it has longe been used by big names such as Microsoft and Spotify. There is now no reason for it not to be the standard for web audio, since you can even fall back to Vorbis in Flash 8 via a non-native decoder. It's also likely to get a boost in the pirate video market, even when paired with H.264 as a result of WebM introduction. It really could become mainstream for a variety of uses. The biggest drawback in the last few years has been the lack of support in iPods. It will be interesting to see if Apple chooses to prevent you playing Vorbis audio on your iPod Touch even if it caves and allows it for web audio.

zaatar 16y ago

The link says: "Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Adobe currently support VP8, and Safari and IE may at some point." Microsoft has already confirmed that IE9 will support VP8. See: http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive...

glhaynes 16y ago
"when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows"...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
hapless 16y ago
The windows blog post only mentions the vp8 codec. No mention of container formats, webM, etc. We don't know anything about WebM and IE9 <video> tag support.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  I trust Microsoft about as far as I could throw them but it would be beyond perverse for them to support VP8 and not support the full package.
  - hapless 16y ago
    This is Microsoft: "Beyond mere perversity" should really be their motto.
blasdel 16y ago
Safari supports everything that Quicktime does. You can add the support yourself, just like you could with Theora: http://xiph.org/quicktime/ http://xiph.org/quicktime/ http://perian.org http://perian.org is a Quicktime Component that wraps around libavcodec (ffmpeg) that has a pretty wide install base on OS X and checks for automatic updates by default every time it's loaded in an application. Google has a set of patches for ffmpeg on their site that will surely get picked up and automatically distributed before too long. If Apple ever ships support, it'll be with Quicktime, not the braindead approach of linking it directly into the browser. IE9 has this approach too, just with a codec whitelist. Google Chrome bundles a pared-down libavcodec that you can swap out with your own. Opera does the same but with GStreamer. In reality, the new version of Flash with VP8 support will get %95 penetration in a couple months after it's released, and fallback to Flash will continue to be how the <video> game is played. I wonder if Google's stopped charging Adobe for VP6 as a quid-pro-quo? It seems like that (and VP7 for Skype) were On2's sole sources of revenue.

CoryMathews 16y ago

Dear Steve Jobs, Why do you not support an "open web"? O yeah I know why..

laut 16y ago

Do any of the browsers current support streaming with the HTML5 video tag? So that you don't have to download the entire video before playback can start. And so that you can skip ahead and start playing something towards the end of the video without downloading the whole video.

wmf 16y ago
So that you don't have to download the entire video before playback can start. That's called progressive downloading, and it would be totally stupid not to do it. And so that you can skip ahead and start playing something towards the end of the video without downloading the whole video. That's called seeking, which is harder. Firefox can do seeking if your Web server supports byte ranges. It looks like Chrome does the same thing but I'm not entirely sure.