4 ms·

Out of curiosity what does the industry best practice dictates between webm and mp4 for this kind of stuff? - Which one is more accessible? - Which one is mor

Out of curiosity what does the industry best practice dictates between webm and mp4 for this kind of stuff? - Which one is more accessible? - Which one is more "compressed" and mobile ready?

chrisan 8y ago
You need both formats, mp4 for ios and webm for android Not sure this is "standard" but imgur has their gifv "format" which will serve up the correct underlying format to the device https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/208606616-What-is-GIFV- https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/208606616-What-is-G...
- orliesaurus 8y ago
  why both? Android can do mp4, no?
  - Ajedi32 8y ago
    WebM (or rather, VP8) uses less bandwidth and has better quality.
    - epicalex 8y ago
      I believe technically it requires lower bitrates to maintain the same quality (as mp4 etc), as opposed to just having de facto better quality. The lower bitrate is what results in less bandwidth usage.
      - Ajedi32 8y ago
        Well yeah, you can get lower bitrate with the same perceived quality, or better quality with the same bitrate, or a mixture of both. It all depends on what options you set when encoding.
kodablah 8y ago
Chromium browsers compiled without proprietary codecs require webm. It's a small subset of people (I am one), but I just don't play and/or leave sites with mp4 only.
- orliesaurus 8y ago
  Why is that? Are you "afraid" that mp4 have some embedded code that will run...idk I just made that up!
  - mr_toad 8y ago
    .mp4 videos usually use h264 compression (and now h265 for 4K/HDR), which is not free or open source. .webm uses VP8 or VP9.
    - andrewl-hn 8y ago
      It is kinda-sorta free and open source, though (at least the decoding part). Cisco pays for their codec, and as long as you use their implementation you are covered by their license. Specifically, to be covered you have to download a binary release from https://github.com/cisco/openh264/releases https://github.com/cisco/openh264/releases during the installation to be covered by Cisco's MPEG LA patent license, but they provide builds for most major platforms.

Out of curiosity what does the industry best practice dictates between webm and mp4 for this kind of stuff? - Which one is more accessible? - Which one is more "compressed" and mobile ready?

chrisan 8y ago

You need both formats, mp4 for ios and webm for android Not sure this is "standard" but imgur has their gifv "format" which will serve up the correct underlying format to the device https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/208606616-What-is-GIFV- https://help.imgur.com/hc/en-us/articles/208606616-What-is-G...

orliesaurus 8y ago
why both? Android can do mp4, no?
- Ajedi32 8y ago
  WebM (or rather, VP8) uses less bandwidth and has better quality.
  - epicalex 8y ago
    I believe technically it requires lower bitrates to maintain the same quality (as mp4 etc), as opposed to just having de facto better quality. The lower bitrate is what results in less bandwidth usage.
    - Ajedi32 8y ago
      Well yeah, you can get lower bitrate with the same perceived quality, or better quality with the same bitrate, or a mixture of both. It all depends on what options you set when encoding.

kodablah 8y ago

Chromium browsers compiled without proprietary codecs require webm. It's a small subset of people (I am one), but I just don't play and/or leave sites with mp4 only.

orliesaurus 8y ago
Why is that? Are you "afraid" that mp4 have some embedded code that will run...idk I just made that up!
- mr_toad 8y ago
  .mp4 videos usually use h264 compression (and now h265 for 4K/HDR), which is not free or open source. .webm uses VP8 or VP9.
  - andrewl-hn 8y ago
    It is kinda-sorta free and open source, though (at least the decoding part). Cisco pays for their codec, and as long as you use their implementation you are covered by their license. Specifically, to be covered you have to download a binary release from https://github.com/cisco/openh264/releases https://github.com/cisco/openh264/releases during the installation to be covered by Cisco's MPEG LA patent license, but they provide builds for most major platforms.