14 ms·

Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

579 points by spaetzel 16y ago

spaetzel 16y ago
So in the near future to use the <video> tag, you'll need an H.264 file for IE and Safari, OGG for Firefox and, WebM for Chrome.
- ciupicri 16y ago
  The next version of Firefox will have support for WebM[1]. [1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/ http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/
  - spaetzel 16y ago
    Good to hear. Now need to get WebM into the average web video production workflow.
- patrickaljord 16y ago
  Doesn't Firefox support WebM already?
  - eli 16y ago
    No, but it's in 4.0
- Kylekramer 16y ago
  Well, both Firefox and Chrome will be able to do both Theora and WebM in the future, but the problem stands. Notably, the lines seem to splitting along who are licensors of H.264 and who aren't.
app 16y ago
A big step backwards for HTML5 video adoption and premature IMO. Other than Android there isn't an existing consumer device out there that plays WebM that I know of. Certainly there is no hardware decoding. Now content creators who host their own video will have to double storage costs or be relegated to Flash and the smallest of the big browsers.
- eli 16y ago
  Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of H.264 support?
  - app 16y ago
    For full compatibility, yes, but realistically there was no reason to use to WebM. With h.264 you cover the following: 1) All browsers with Flash players 2) Any "web connected" set top device/TV 3) About 50% of HTML5 video compatible browsers With this move by Google #3 falls to 25% or less. And they're looking to add WebM support to #2. At some point consumer demands you support both because their shiny new Macbook Air/Chrome OS tablet/TV doesn't play video. Good move by Google to justify their $125M investment in On2, but end users will end up being inconvenienced as the splintering continues. This is just going to feel like a regression to most end users who really don't give a crap about who holds what patents.
    - nkassis 16y ago
      Flash will support vp8, that should level the playing field. IE can be extended to use vp8 also, google chrome frame should be a required install everywhere ;p
    - eli 16y ago
      Still not quite sure I see the big deal. Firefox has something like twice the browser share of Chrome. If you were OK sticking Firefox users with Flash video, I don't see how that's hugely different from sticking Firefox AND Chrome users with Flash video. If you want to support all modern browsers, you used to have to do two encodings. After this announcement, you will still have to do two encodings.
      - __david__ 16y ago
        Given that flash is reportedly going to support WebM, you may not have to do 2 encodings in the near future.
dev_jim 16y ago
What the hell? It's sad that Google's corporate strategy is starting to override what's in the best interests of it's users. Web video is finally, after so many years, actually encoded in H.264. Who besides YouTube uses WebM or Ogg? I'll be going back to Safari if this happens.
- buro9 16y ago
  An open solution isn't the best interest of the users? Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open. Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the companies and the users.
  - dev_jim 16y ago
    > An open solution isn't the best interest of the users? An ubiquitous solution is in the best interests of users. My parents could care less about whether the video is encoded in H.264 or Ogg. They just want it to work on their iPad. > Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open. It's not the same at all. Google, through YouTube and Chrome, helped make H.264 the defacto standard it is. Now they are trying to pull the rug out from under it. Apple never had support for Flash. Not to mention that Flash is a POS and doesn't work well on mobile devices anyways. > Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the companies and the users. Long-term this isn't a game that Google wins. They've inconvenienced their users and the web will go on with H.264.
    - gloob 16y ago
      <rant> "de facto standard" is a meaningless, self-contradictory phrase that really boils down to saying "But this is the way we've always done it!" Standards are not de facto. Standards are things created by standards bodies. The word has an actual meaning. Trying to twist it to mean "the way we do stuff now" (as your argument for h.264 does) or "the way I want to do stuff" (as many arguments for HTML5 (which doesn't have a standard yet) do) is intellectually dishonest. </rant>
mbreese 16y ago
And exactly who does this end up helping? I'm all for open formats, but I'm more for compatibility.
mapgrep 16y ago
I thought Chrome came bundled with Flash Player http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ ...which supports H.264 in an MP4 container... http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html ....so I'm not clear on what's actually happening here. Is Chrome going to just stop handing off MP4/H.264 from video tags to the bundled Flash Player even though it's there and can play it? Or will it stop bundling Flash Player? Or bundle a crippled Flash Player? None of the above?
- app 16y ago
  They aren't supporting h.264 in the <video> element anymore, meaning there won't be anymore HTML5 video players that use h.264. As for Flash, who knows?
- chc 16y ago
  AFAIK they're not going to stop handing off video tags to Flash Player, because they never started doing that in the first place.
- junklight 16y ago
  Yes - I'm really struggling to see why anyone who delivers video would do anything other than: does it support H.264? if not then play with flash. which is easy. Especially compared to - re-encode all my stuff and change complex encoding workflows. The average user isn't even going to be able to tell the difference.
jerhinesmith 16y ago
One of the biggest criticisms against Microsoft over the years is that they suffer from Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Is it just me, or does Google seem to be increasingly heading down this path? Granted, Google tends to go down the open-source route, where Microsoft has tended not to, but I'm not sure that excuse holds up well over the long-term. Either way, I'm genuinely curious if anyone else feels this.
- jrockway 16y ago
  You're deriding Google for only supporting open standards that everyone can use instead of supporting closed formats that require you to pay money to a bunch of patent holders? Yeah, they sure are evil. I hate freedom, especially when it means I will have to add a command-line argument to my video encoding process!
  - alanh 16y ago
    Stop trolling. Your reply is off-topic. Parent was talking about a trend he is noticing, you're shouting about openness.
- lincolnq 16y ago
  Yes, Google has an enormous reputation for NIH. Great technology companies often do.
  - jerhinesmith 16y ago
    Great technology companies often do. If that's true, at what point does that trait change from an advantage to a liability? Is it purely about openness? Or is it more subjective (e.g. I don't like Silverlight, so Microsoft should support standards vs. websockets sound awesome, and I'm glad Google is innovating)?
    - lincolnq 16y ago
      It may be an expression of hubris (and always a liability). I'm not really trying to imply a causal relationship.
willheim 16y ago
This is not an issue. We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other platforms? Pretty open. What's the issue? Just some inefficiency. It means that all videos have to be encoded in a few formats in the backend and a browser detector to tell our server which video to play. As long as the end user isn't harmed I don't see the big deal with Google supporting Google's own format (that they have opened up with a protected royalty-free format). As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you).
- dev_jim 16y ago
  > As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you). There's a big difference between an additional CSS stylesheet and encoding and storing every single video on your site twice. > We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other platforms? Most companies do not encode their videos with multiple codecs. They encode with H.264 and the video will work with an HTML5 player in IE9/Chrome/Safari on the desktop and Safari/Android on mobile. Fallback to Flash is available for older browsers and Firefox. Companies will continue to use this scheme, it just means that Chrome users will now be stuck with a crappy bug-ridden flash player as opposed to a native player.
- antimatter15 16y ago
  You don't need the browser format detection scripts because it's built into HTML5. <video><source codec="video/webm" src="kitten.webm"></source><source codec="video/m4v"></source></video>
bretthopper 16y ago
This makes <video> about as useful as <audio> now.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  On that topic, did they drop mp3 support too? I didn't see any mention of that either way. It would make some sense.
jdub 16y ago
Fantastic. Much as I enjoyed Burn All GIFs back in the day, I don't think Burn All H.264s sounds nearly as catchy or fun. Glad Google is doing the Right Thing on this front -- however convenient or entrenched they might be, hairy patented messes like H.264 have no place on an open web.
- bphogan 16y ago
  I'm just having a hard time understanding why they're ok with bundling the Flash player with Chrome, but not carrying an h264 decoder.
  - mrothe 16y ago
    Because Flash is an established "standard", while the HTML5 <video> tag is not.
    - bphogan 16y ago
      H264 is an established standard. H264 is not the <video> tag.
    - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
      Google are not removing video tag support, they are removing the h264 codec. h264 is pretty damn well established and is actually a standard without the quotation marks, and an open one at that.
      - seabee 16y ago
        The problem is a standard can be 'open' yet restricted, i.e. you have to pay to distribute software using it. Can't pay? Can't give people the program. The tricks that LAME uses to work around MP3 encoding patents aren't going to work for browsers. Of course it will go away once the patents expire, just like with GIF, but calling it 'open' now is just marketing speak which doesn't come close to the actual nature and purpose of open-source software.
  - Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
bphogan 16y ago
The choice has been made by many places to simply use h264 video via the HTML5 tag to hit the iPhone/iPad and then fallback to a Flash video player which can easily play the h264 source video. Content producers would rather encode videos once, which is why they moved to FLV in the first place. There's no incentive to use anything else here. This hurts users. I am all for standards, but not for hurting users. And like it or not, content producers are using H264 because the devices people like to use can play that video back.
- StavrosK 16y ago
  Why doesn't Apple just include WebM support? It's an open codec...
  - redthrowaway 16y ago
    Since when has Apple supported open standards simply because it makes sense to do so? Apple almost invariably chooses closed over open.
    - rradu 16y ago
      Apple is fully behind HTML5 - http://www.apple.com/html5/ http://www.apple.com/html5/
      - jarek 16y ago
        Yes, in spirit too: "This demo was designed with the latest web standards supported by Safari. If you’d like to experience this demo, simply download Safari. It’s free for Mac and PC, and it only takes a few minutes." Come see web standards! Using a specific browser.
        joubert 16y ago
        Hum, because they're showing the latest HTML features that Safari supports? Not all browsers support the same range of features for a particular HTML standard.
kellysutton 16y ago
Chiming in as the guy who developed the blip.tv HTML5 player: This sucks, even though we were planning on supporting it in the future anyway.
- aw3c2 16y ago
  Why that? You just have to add one or two lines of code to your player to access the .webm(s).
gaiusparx 16y ago
Sad move, the web take years to more or less standardize on H264. Ain't WebM an inferior alternative at the moment? The reason cited "our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.", so we can expect Flash to be removed as well? I can see next up in the horizon: YouTube to remove H264 support.
bonaldi 16y ago
Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash. Lose all round, then.
- salmonsnide 16y ago
  Once Adobe adds WebM support in Flash, it might happen the other way around.
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    There's a massive volume of h.264 out there that isn't going to get converted just to satisfy some dogmatic commitment to 'openness'.
    - rmc 16y ago
      They won't change it for openness reasons, but they will change it if 80% of their visitors support WebM and not h264. It happened before. How longer were people forced to design web pages for ie6 due to its market share.
  - OpieCunningham 16y ago
    You'll have to add these caveats in as well: Once Apple supports WebM. Once chipset manufacturers produce WebM optimized hardware decoders. Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers purchase and integrate those WebM hardware decoders. Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers develop or license software players that support WebM encoded video and file format. Could happen the other way around. But it ain't likely.
    - blocke 16y ago
      Yeah. There is no way Google of all people could launch a Cell Phone OS based on a Java variant and beat Apple by the end of 2010. Stupidest idea ever. I'm still laughing.
pedanticfreak 16y ago
Interesting. YouTube must be a mess with all of these competing formats it needs to support. I assume it will eventually switch to WebM for both HTML5 and Flash by default and just use h264 for compatibility. Still, it must be horrific.
- Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
  Nope. It was stored as h264 before they released webm (and then flash played it). When they released Webm, they started to convert all that stuff to VP8 (my guess is they should be through by now), so it's only VP8 now (via HTML5 or flash). End of story.
  - msbarnett 16y ago
    This is incorrect. They are still retaining and serving h.264 to mobile devices, since WebM has zero mobile hardware support.
  - cpearce 16y ago
    Adobe has not yet shipped a version of Flash which supports VP8, or WebM for that matter. They've remained silent on that matter since their initial announcement at Google IO last year.
daleharvey 16y ago
I dont think the open web is up for compromise, I was happy to see mozilla take a stand on h264, glad to see google follow suit. Sure this hurts users in the short term, but a single standard format has not been settled on, this could be much more disruptive if google had of left it in
hamedh 16y ago
so is Google going to re-encode all their Youtube content to WebM videos now? and i wonder if Android will continue to play h.264 videos or not.
- brackin 16y ago
  It will still work with a flash container i've been told.
- pornel 16y ago
  Yes. If you opt-in to YouTube HTML5 beta you can watch many videos in WebM already.
natmaster 16y ago
Looks like Mozilla wins this one.
- webXL 16y ago
  I agree now after seeing this: http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/
dmaz 16y ago
The message is that Google is serious about making VP8 competitive. It won't be removing H.264 support from Android and YouTube anytime soon, but this certainly changes the HTML5 video codec battle.
buster 16y ago
People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video codec here. I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats. Can someone just look at the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video and really tell me that this mess isn't the fault of MS and Apple in the first place? Ogg is ready to play a big role and WebM is catching up. The only blocking factor here is Internet Explorer and Safari, not Chrome.
- mikeryan 16y ago
  WebM is a relatively new entrant into the encoding field, Only getting opened up in the last 8 months. Ogg has always been a fairly significantly worse codec then H264. "Even the 1mbps Ogg Theora clips are not on par with the 468 kbps h264 clips."[1] Considering that MS and Apple have been working in video for a long time now they chose the codec with the best available experience for their users (who aren't the ones picking up the licensing fees). [1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-vs-h264-head-to-head-comparisons.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-v...
  - buster 16y ago
    I must say that the ogg video samples i have seen are not as good as the h.264 samples. But good enough for probably 90% of internet video. Anyway, i think WebM comes very close already (i actually don't see differences): http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison Instead of embracing the patent encumbered codec we should be thankful for Google to actually buy a codec (VP8) and release it _for free_. I couldn't imagine this from any other company. Still many people just want their h.264 no matter what. It's bad for a free and open internet, that's my belief.
    - jarek 16y ago
      > Still many people just want their h.264 no matter what. Then they can use a browser whose creators decide to pay for the license.
guywithabike 16y ago
I'm looking forward to Google remaining consistent with their words and removing Flash from Chrome in the near future. You know, for the good of the users.
- samlevine 16y ago
  I'm sure they'll do that after Adobe sends an invoice to the Gnash project.
- mbrubeck 16y ago
  Speaking as someone who works for a browser vendor: There's a big difference between dropping support for entrenched technologies, and choosing which emerging technologies to support. Certain formats and practices are already part of the web, for better or worse, and it's not fully within the browser vendors' power to change that. If any browser dropped Flash support, it would break thousands of popular web sites, and users would simply switch browsers. What is within our power is to decide which emerging standards to support. Dropping H.264 in <video> at this point won't cause users to flee the browser. And it does give us some chance of avoiding another patent-encumbered format becoming a de-facto standard on the web. We don't control existing sites, but we do control our own actions which influence new sites. We can't alter the past, but we can change the future.
  - pohl 16y ago
    While H.264 may not be entrenched, it certainly is established and far, far from being emerging.
    - mbrubeck 16y ago
      That's true, which is why I referred specifically to H.264 in the <video> element (which is the only case affected by this change). There are mature implementations, but as a part of the web platform it is still in very early stages. While H.264 <video> is already deployed widely thanks to iOS, it's generally with a fallback for the majority of users whose browsers don't support it. Removing it from Chrome will not break the web for users, in the way it would if they removed Flash or GIF or JavaScript semicolon insertion, or any other of the many web technologies we'd like to retroactively wish away.
davidedicillo 16y ago
I'm kinda tired of this Google openness, especially when it so congenially damage their competitors. It would have been different if they never implemented it in first place, but this now it just looks like a move to target Apple.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  Well, it's better than Apple's strategy of using closed-ness to damage their competitors. All companies make strategic decisions. But if you're going to use ideology strategically, it might as well be a good ideology. Note: I'm a huge Apple fan and I use lots of their products with alacrity.
drivebyacct2 16y ago
Has everyone so quickly forgotten that Flash will soon support WebM playback? It's a significant point in the discussion. With any flash capable browser having WebM support, along with native support in Firefox, Chrome, Opera... it seems there is some sense in this move. It does seem a bold strategy, I would have probably waited at least a bit longer. Edit: Oh, "These changes will occur in the next couple months"
- mikeklaas 16y ago
  And in ten years, the performance might even be acceptable.
  - drivebyacct2 16y ago
    Performance of what? I'm not defending Flash's performance, but WebM is fine, completely acceptable. With hardware decoding continuing to advance in Flash, I guess I don't see what your complaint is. If it's native in most browsers, fallback in IE (they aren't going to care anyway) and potentially native even in IE on supported hardware...
    - mikeklaas 16y ago
      Performance of the WebM implementation in Flash. It took them years to take advantage of hardware decoding for H.264
      - andybak 16y ago
        But now that architecture is in place it won't be difficult to extend it to other codecs. Most of the time it took to get support for hardware decoding in place was time needed for Adobe to wake up and realise there was a problem. They have moved fairly quickly since then.
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        It took them less time than it took for Mac OS X to support hardware decoding in Macbooks GPUs that already worked if you bootcamped into XP on the same machine. Though it took even longer for Flash on Mac OS X because even after Apple supported it (on limited chipsets) they didn't bother to expose it to third parties.
emehrkay 16y ago
I'm the go-to guy in my office for html5 video(audio) and this just made my job that much harder. Shit, today I just found out that our videos arent playing on android devices now this
mhd 16y ago
So are we going to get third party Chrome distributions that backport the missing H.264 functionality?
- blasdel 16y ago
  To date Chromium has always supported whatever codecs its bundled copy of libavcodec was compiled with. Hopefully they do not purposefully constrain the codec support, like Microsoft did. IE9 uses the system's DirectShow plugins, but whitelists the specific codecs because they don't want to dynamically load shitty DivX binaries into the browser and expose them to the DOM. It sucks but it was the right decision considering the circumstances.
simonsquiff 16y ago
It's all well and good to focus future effort on alternative technologies that you have a preference for. But to remove a feature you currently support that works well...that's a poor decision that doesn't help your users or the web in general.
OpieCunningham 16y ago
So H.264 isn't "open web" ... but Flash is? Google has such an arbitrary definition of open.
- linuxhansl 16y ago
  There is a very clear distinction between an closed standard and a closed implementation. H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only temporarily does not charge for its use. It will never be open. And btw. Apple is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be charged for H.264. Flash is an open standard with only one implementation (unless you count gnash and swfdec, etc). I can't wait for Flash to go away too, but this is certainly the lesser evil.
  - OpieCunningham 16y ago
    H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only temporarily does not charge for its use. What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically: nothing. So though it's true that it is, it has essentially caused no loss. What has been the result of SWF being open? Practically: nothing. Adobe's closed implementation remains the standard implementation. So though it's true that SWF is open, it is essentially closed. H.264 ... will never be open. Patents expire. Apple is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be charged for H.264. Not relevant, though I'd point out that Apple has very few patents that comprise H.264 in comparison to the entirety of the pool. The probability that they make or will make any significant money is extraordinarily low. Fundamentally however, my original post that you replied to is specific to Google's patently arbitrary definition of "open". Google doesn't build an open implementation of SWF into their browser, they build in Adobe's Flash player. Even if they did, it goes to my above point re: SWF is effectively Adobe Flash. Google is not anywhere close to open, no matter how often they repeat the mantra.
    - jarek 16y ago
      > What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically: nothing. Shipping a browser with H.264 support is difficult for newcomers or niche players. In other industries, this is called anti-competitiveness.
Charuru 16y ago
Next move, suddenly youtube stops encoding in h.264 and youtube won't be able to be played on the iPad. And Android tablets look a LOT better.
- upinsmoke 16y ago
  You do know that the reason h.264 is better on iOS is because the hardware decoder, right? Android doesn't even do hardware-accelerated graphics, let alone video decoding.
  - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
    Some parts of Android graphics are GPU accelerated, and the vast majority of Android devices accelerate video decoding (though codec support does vary, and up till now doesn't generally include VP8, though the TI OMAP hardware at least can be updated to support it).
  - junkbit 16y ago
    FUD. All the Tegra 2 stuff at CES was hardware accelerated and the Motorola Atrix even played video @1080p over the hdmi port
    - moxiemk1 16y ago
      It's valid when it ships.
      - junkbit 16y ago
        The Atrix runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) which shipped last May. I was just talking about CES because we've been bombarded the past week
- kenjackson 16y ago
  If YouTube goes exclusively to WebM/Flash, who wins that game of chicken? Apple or Google? I actually think Apple wins it as someone creates iTube. People will switch browsers. They won't give up their iPad (at least not until there are some better Android browsers on the market).
jbk 16y ago
This is a great move... Mpeg-LA has been bullying everyone for too long...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
upinsmoke 16y ago
Long live Flash video?
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
makeramen 16y ago
The biggest H264 supporter is Apple, and it kind of worked because Apple has leverage in the iPhone arena. I don't think Google has quite the same leverage in the browser arena. If this happened at the WebKit level, then maybe. But not at the Chrome level.
jawee 16y ago
It can´t be all about freedom if they´re dropping Theora too. (related: how can Theora be so bad is Vorbis is so good?)
- melpo 16y ago
  I think you may have misread something there. The link clearly says: "Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. "
  - jawee 16y ago
    I certainly did misread; thanks for that!
timc3 16y ago
Must be part of the long game by Google. Stop supporting h.264 and push their own format in their browser, which also means ChromeOS and GoogleTV. The format will need hardware because it is so difficult to decode with software. Google gets hardware support on their laptops and mobile devices, changes YouTube to be WebM only, forcing Apple/Windows/Nokia/SonyEricsson to need hardware to decode. Consumer loses out (the video quality of this, and the image quality of their image format is not exactly what should be expected to be released in a new format for 2011).
- TechNewb 16y ago
  Or people just stop using Youtube, and use Blip, Dailymotion, and any other 'modern' forward thinking video services instead.
scrod 16y ago
Bye bye, Google Chrome. This is me deleting you from my Mac.
cdeutsch 16y ago
As a person who encodes video for the web for a living I can tell you we won't be switching to WebM because of iOS and other hardware devices that have hardware based decoding. H.264 is the closest thing to a ubiquitous codec there is and assuming Chrome correctly updates the "canPlayType" javascript function I won't even have to update our players to provide Chrome users with the crappy Flash player. As a Chrome user, I'll be switching to Safari so I can continue to get the working HTML5 player. We'll consider switching once Apple adds support for WebM and the millions of old iOS devices are obsolete. In other words it's H.264 for us for the next 3 years.
- yuhong 16y ago
  Why can't you do two formats?
  - cdeutsch 16y ago
    Cost/benefit. We outsource encoding to Zencoder which costs $.02 to $.05 per minute. Then there is also the price of disk space and the amount of time it takes for the video(s) to be available. Maybe one day the cost/benefit will change.
fleitz 16y ago
Phone me when Youtube only supports WebM, this is just a PR stand.
- aridiculous 16y ago
  Agreed. Why is everyone assuming Google will convert all YouTube to WebM? That would be the main attack on Apple, not removing support for HTML5 h264 in Chrome (flash is the easy backup here). There's a motive for Google to convert YouTube to WebM to screw Apple, but it doesn't seem likely.
knodi 16y ago
O great now its back to flash. Pretty shitty move by google.
ot 16y ago
Reminds me of "embrace, extend, extinguish". BTW, will it be possible to enable it back with an extension? I don't really want to stop using Chrome because of this.
- ubernostrum 16y ago
  Well, when Mozilla drew their ideological line in the sand and said they'd refuse to allow Firefox to use OS codecs, Microsoft responded by releasing a Firefox extension that delegates H264 playback from HTML5 video elements to Windows Media Player. Perhaps they'll end up doing the same for Chrome?
  - ot 16y ago
    That would fix Windows, but for my personal use I care more about Mac and Linux
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      How about this: I think vp8 is technically a piece of shit but I really like chrome, so if HTML5 video becomes common enough that I need it I will do it myself for OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.
upinsmoke 16y ago
ATTENTION GOOGLE! Flash is not open! Not only does Chrome support Flash, it ships with embedded Flash plugin! What a hypocrite!
zppx 16y ago
I think this is bad for HTML 5 video in the short run, but I do not care about it anymore, I wished that everyone supported Theora, and then switched to Dirac in the future, but Apple and Google made me give up of my hopes. However in the long run I think this will be an example of 'worse is better' happening, I think WebM will win over H.264. If that is bad or no that's depend on how do you see Apple and Google, if you believe this post contain a good message or if you believe Gruber but not both, for me both are just false in their pretense of openness, which is why I supported Theora in the first place. Theora vs. H.264 was the first big fight that I remember in HN were the majority of comments were just bullshit for me (just like this thread), although there were really good ones from both sides, I also commented in the matter, back then I said that codecs would grow in irrelevance, I belive that H.264, as a patent covered standard, will lose in the future because its licensing terms are not clear and a license for its use can be pretty expensive to people trying to win some money from web video, specially those that have no money initially to spend in royalties (like startups, open source and non commercial projects), my example back them was a cloudy video editor, maybe something that is impractical today, but that I do expect becoming at least practical for simple uses in 2 to 3 years from now. For this type of user paying for royalties in the beginning just does not make any sense and is stressful for their financial situation, this if they want to win money with their project, it's even more complicated for open source projects, for the case that people want to win some money from their company or project a good comparison would be the college student that take loans, trying to make some potential money in the future while spending money that he does not have in the present. I think that WebM will have the preference of this public if they are not aiming Apple products. For me this will happen just because MPEG LA was incompetent enough and did not knew how to deal with the situation, opening the standard to small business, not charging users and business that only stream the using codec, things like that that the consortium never clarified (they never defined the "broadcast market" from which they plan to charge royalties from). More could be said about why I think H.264 will be a thing of the past in the following years, but them my comment would be too big.
dstein 16y ago
Google is starting to remind me more of Microsoft every day. But at least Microsoft doesn't make their anti-competitive strategic decisions under the guise of being "open" and "not evil".
teye 16y ago
Don't like it? Branch Chromium and retain H.264 support. First customer here.
TechNewb 16y ago
As a content producer, this upsets me. I would only consider WebM if it is superior to h.264. But either way I'm having second thoughts about using Chrome and Youtube if they really nix h.264. Google thinks they are bigger than they really are.
necro 16y ago
I don't see much benefit to support HTML5 in webm or theora. One of the benefits of html5 over flash was the prospect of better resource handling and smooth play, but now as systems get faster, and flash better, there is less and less reason to go down this path. h264 is smooth enough in flash now, and it's about to get even better in the new flash release. There are no real hardware/product reasons for websites to support webm right now. h264 on the other hand gets the benefit of working with all the iphone and more recently apple tv. Promised new update this year will even allow HTML5 video to be streamed to apple TV directly from the browser of iphones, ipads, and i imagine safari. This is one of these technologies that will really increase the use of h264. I run the larges cycling site and we handle 100s of niche video uploads per day so I follow this closely, and as much as I'd like to jump on webm, I'm going to definitely hold of. Currently we convert videos to 3 formats to try handle all cases, and having to now multiply that by 2 with another codec is a lot of extra resources. 2.5 mbit h264 web HD/appletv h264 1 mbit h264 for web SD/iphone 300 kbit mobile - webm makes no sense in the short term. - you need apple support to make webm happen faster Think about all the extra resources, time, effort that you are asking from companies in the world to support the 2 formats. If you want to be efficient with society, keep the support of h264 while webm development happens, transition once all the big players support the new format. Alternatively take all the money/time/efforts and get apple to transition. If apple does not jump on the wagon, it's going to be years and years of wasted resources in society.
spoondan 16y ago
I like Gruber, but he's almost insufferable on issues like these. These questions are "simple" in the least flattering sense. Let's dispatch them: If H.264 support is being removed to “enable open innovation”, will Flash Player support be dropped as well? If not, why? The premise is that openness is all or nothing. But Google can support Flash and work towards openness, just as Apple can prefer open web standards in lieu of Flash while supporting proprietary systems. There's no hypocrisy or conflict. Android currently supports H.264. Will this support be removed from Android? Maybe in the future. WebM support is new in Android, hardware decoders are really just coming to market, and there are enough existing and in-production phones that rely on H.264. The constraints placed on Google by the handful of Chrome users leveraging H.264 HTML5 video is completely unlike the realities of dealing in the handset market. YouTube uses H.264 to encode video. Presumably, YouTube will be re-encoding its entire library using WebM. When this happens, will YouTube’s support for H.264 be dropped, to “enable open innovation”? YouTube continues to support other proprietary formats. As with Sorenson, they're not going to drop H.264 until they don't care about the market share of H.264-only devices. In the meantime, they will try to drive people towards WebM in support of "open innovation". This is not inconsistent or even new. Do you expect companies like Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball, and anyone else who currently streams H.264 to dual-encode all of their video using WebM? It should be obvious that Google's hope is anyone using HTML5 video will eventually move to WebM exclusively. If not, how will Chrome users watch this content other than by resorting to Flash Player’s support for H.264 playback? Content producers won't care if Chrome users end up in Flash, since the content's still available and very few non-mobile users are getting HTML5 video anyway. Flash is still the norm outside of mobile devices. Who is happy about this? Were people ecstatic that Chrome supported H.264? Most people simply don't care about this kind of stuff and for good reason.
- suraj 16y ago
  Meta: You should start "John Gruber and Methods of Rationality" blog.
- danudey 16y ago
  What I don't understand is how Chrome can remove h.264 (which is widely used) because they want 'openness', while at the same time shipping a browser (Chrome) where you cannot remove Flash (which continues to support H.264). It seems here that keeping H.264 support and dropping Flash would be more in the name of openness. (Edit: bane points out that you can disable Flash in Chrome. My original point still stands, but my wording was misleading.) As with most things Google does, I don't see this as being in the interest of 'openness' at all. I feel more like what they really want is a format that they can control and add features to (such as, for example, embedded advertising). In the end, Google is a business, and its business is ads. Everything Google does is about either delivering ads to people (Google Mail), making sure it's their ads that are delivered (YouTube), or about making sure they don't get locked out of a market (Android). So here's my question: where's the money here? It's obviously far more expensive at this point to use WebM than H.264, so what financial motivation is there for them to push the WebM codec this hard this fast?
sbollepalli 16y ago
Go easy on me, this is my first comment on HN. I see couple of other things, apart from free and royalty side of arguments. My story goes like this: when Apple released iOS device in 2007, H264 was the better choice for mobiles with hardware decoders. Google converted Youtube videos to H264 to support iOS devices. Rest of the world followed. Both Apple and Google wins and they are happy to promote H264 for the wider adoption. Then after three years, a different competitive landscape, with Android popularity even without H264 hardware decoders advantage, at the same time Apple support to H264 but not to flash, gives big strategic advantage to Goolge to move world away from H264 to its own alternative (openness helps the cause). Win to Google, Lose to Apple. Its not important anymore which desktop browser support what. We can work with multiple browsers on our desktops/laptops. Its all about to whose advantage it plays out in mobile devices space. That is why we will see lot of FUD in future in this space while Google and Apple fight for their interests in name of openness.
ck2 16y ago
Shouldn't video codecs be done as plugins in browsers anyway? Give us the tags to support it but leave it up to a plugin. I know that multiple developers can focus on different parts of a browser's codebase at once, but it still doesn't make sense to me that a browser codebase should maintain a video codec as advanced as H.264 which constantly has room for performance/quality improvement.
jcarreiro 16y ago
Just switched back to Safari. Sorry google, but I own an iPad. :(
- taken11 16y ago
  you can switch browsers on an iPad? Last time I checked that was to dangerous for Apple to allow there users to do.
CountSessine 16y ago
I'm sort of happy that Google is doing this. I'm not always happy with google and what they do - not being evil sure as hell doesn't make you a good guy - but if there's another bunch of guys who aren't on the 'good' side, it's MPEG. I really would like to see the HTML <video> tag evolve in a way that doesn't require an MPEG technology. HOWEVER, I'd like to raise a couple of points. One is that the x264 devs, easily some of the most codec-knowledgeable people in the world, have raised questions about VP8's patent exposure. It's fair to say that On2 didn't have to worry about getting sued over implementation details of VP8 as long as its design was hidden and proprietary, but I'm quite confident that google is going to get shaken down over webm, a lot like Microsoft did with VC1. Unlike Microsoft and VC1, Google will settle and license the patents in question, with indemnification for webm users, because webm is more important to them than VC1 was to MS. But it's going to cost them. Second, anyone serving video now has a nice low-resistance path that means encoding exclusively in h264 - served up via the html5 <video> tag for iPhone and newer browsers, and served up inside flv with a flash plugin for older browsers. H264 isn't going to go away anytime soon, so google wants everyone to start encoding 2x now - with h264 and VP8. Or I guess you can just start using YouTube...?
mryall 16y ago
I actually see lack of H.264 support as more of a blow for those desktop browsers than anything else. With both Firefox and Chrome on the desktop refusing to support the video codec preferred by most (non-PC) device vendors, and both mobile browsing and video usage on the web dramatically increasing, I can't see this having any long-term effect other than marginalizing these browsers for the majority of users. Users who just want to visit a video site and have it work equally well on any device they happen to be using. H.264 is royalty-free for at least the next 5 years, has widespread hardware encoding and decoding support and its patents will eventually expire. Removal of this codec from Chrome just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sure all those people who have recently switched to Chrome won't find it too hard to switch away if the "more open" video support starting burning through their laptop battery three times as fast.
joelhousman 16y ago
1. I've now switched back from Chrome to Safari. 2. I'm glad that I made the decision to switch my organizations web videos from Akamai to Vimeo & not Youtube. 3. Google is the new Microsoft.
brackin 16y ago
This is very annoying their player is already terrible.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
jwr 16y ago
A very bad decision. First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content. Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264 (which I hope won't happen), we'll get stuck for years with mobile devices that get poor battery life. Instead, we'll get promises of Great Things "just around the corner, in a couple of months". That's similar to the perpetual cycle of great, smoothly working Android devices which always exist in the future tense. Third, no one knows if VP8/WebM is immune from patents. It most likely isn't, it's just that nobody has laid claims yet. Most modern video processing techniques are patented in some way and sticking fingers in your ears won't make those patents magically go away.
- pornel 16y ago
  Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either: > Q: Are all AVC essential patents included? > A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target. The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one. If you look at list of supporters: http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.
davej 16y ago
Descriptivists and Prescriptivists http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivists/ http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivis...
joakin 16y ago
What I get from here: They have a codec that performs like this other one, but open for everybody to use without paying royalties. They have an agreement with most browsers to support this codec. None of the other browsers want to pay royalties for these codecs. Well... the plan is clear
pohl 16y ago
Does anybody know if it is possible to disable Chrome's automatic updates so that one can pin their version of chrome to the last release that supported H.264? Edit: found it... defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

579 points by spaetzel 16y ago

So in the near future to use the <video> tag, you'll need an H.264 file for IE and Safari, OGG for Firefox and, WebM for Chrome.

ciupicri 16y ago
The next version of Firefox will have support for WebM[1]. [1] http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/ http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/
- spaetzel 16y ago
  Good to hear. Now need to get WebM into the average web video production workflow.
patrickaljord 16y ago
Doesn't Firefox support WebM already?
- eli 16y ago
  No, but it's in 4.0
Kylekramer 16y ago
Well, both Firefox and Chrome will be able to do both Theora and WebM in the future, but the problem stands. Notably, the lines seem to splitting along who are licensors of H.264 and who aren't.

app 16y ago

A big step backwards for HTML5 video adoption and premature IMO. Other than Android there isn't an existing consumer device out there that plays WebM that I know of. Certainly there is no hardware decoding. Now content creators who host their own video will have to double storage costs or be relegated to Flash and the smallest of the big browsers.

eli 16y ago
Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of H.264 support?
- app 16y ago
  For full compatibility, yes, but realistically there was no reason to use to WebM. With h.264 you cover the following: 1) All browsers with Flash players 2) Any "web connected" set top device/TV 3) About 50% of HTML5 video compatible browsers With this move by Google #3 falls to 25% or less. And they're looking to add WebM support to #2. At some point consumer demands you support both because their shiny new Macbook Air/Chrome OS tablet/TV doesn't play video. Good move by Google to justify their $125M investment in On2, but end users will end up being inconvenienced as the splintering continues. This is just going to feel like a regression to most end users who really don't give a crap about who holds what patents.
  - nkassis 16y ago
    Flash will support vp8, that should level the playing field. IE can be extended to use vp8 also, google chrome frame should be a required install everywhere ;p
  - eli 16y ago
    Still not quite sure I see the big deal. Firefox has something like twice the browser share of Chrome. If you were OK sticking Firefox users with Flash video, I don't see how that's hugely different from sticking Firefox AND Chrome users with Flash video. If you want to support all modern browsers, you used to have to do two encodings. After this announcement, you will still have to do two encodings.
    - __david__ 16y ago
      Given that flash is reportedly going to support WebM, you may not have to do 2 encodings in the near future.

dev_jim 16y ago

What the hell? It's sad that Google's corporate strategy is starting to override what's in the best interests of it's users. Web video is finally, after so many years, actually encoded in H.264. Who besides YouTube uses WebM or Ogg? I'll be going back to Safari if this happens.

buro9 16y ago
An open solution isn't the best interest of the users? Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open. Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the companies and the users.
- dev_jim 16y ago
  > An open solution isn't the best interest of the users? An ubiquitous solution is in the best interests of users. My parents could care less about whether the video is encoded in H.264 or Ogg. They just want it to work on their iPad. > Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go create HTML5 stuff which is open. It's not the same at all. Google, through YouTube and Chrome, helped make H.264 the defacto standard it is. Now they are trying to pull the rug out from under it. Apple never had support for Flash. Not to mention that Flash is a POS and doesn't work well on mobile devices anyways. > Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the companies and the users. Long-term this isn't a game that Google wins. They've inconvenienced their users and the web will go on with H.264.
  - gloob 16y ago
    <rant> "de facto standard" is a meaningless, self-contradictory phrase that really boils down to saying "But this is the way we've always done it!" Standards are not de facto. Standards are things created by standards bodies. The word has an actual meaning. Trying to twist it to mean "the way we do stuff now" (as your argument for h.264 does) or "the way I want to do stuff" (as many arguments for HTML5 (which doesn't have a standard yet) do) is intellectually dishonest. </rant>

mbreese 16y ago

And exactly who does this end up helping? I'm all for open formats, but I'm more for compatibility.

mapgrep 16y ago

I thought Chrome came bundled with Flash Player http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/ ...which supports H.264 in an MP4 container... http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html ....so I'm not clear on what's actually happening here. Is Chrome going to just stop handing off MP4/H.264 from video tags to the bundled Flash Player even though it's there and can play it? Or will it stop bundling Flash Player? Or bundle a crippled Flash Player? None of the above?

app 16y ago
They aren't supporting h.264 in the <video> element anymore, meaning there won't be anymore HTML5 video players that use h.264. As for Flash, who knows?
chc 16y ago
AFAIK they're not going to stop handing off video tags to Flash Player, because they never started doing that in the first place.
junklight 16y ago
Yes - I'm really struggling to see why anyone who delivers video would do anything other than: does it support H.264? if not then play with flash. which is easy. Especially compared to - re-encode all my stuff and change complex encoding workflows. The average user isn't even going to be able to tell the difference.

jerhinesmith 16y ago

One of the biggest criticisms against Microsoft over the years is that they suffer from Not-Invented-Here syndrome. Is it just me, or does Google seem to be increasingly heading down this path? Granted, Google tends to go down the open-source route, where Microsoft has tended not to, but I'm not sure that excuse holds up well over the long-term. Either way, I'm genuinely curious if anyone else feels this.

jrockway 16y ago
You're deriding Google for only supporting open standards that everyone can use instead of supporting closed formats that require you to pay money to a bunch of patent holders? Yeah, they sure are evil. I hate freedom, especially when it means I will have to add a command-line argument to my video encoding process!
- alanh 16y ago
  Stop trolling. Your reply is off-topic. Parent was talking about a trend he is noticing, you're shouting about openness.
lincolnq 16y ago
Yes, Google has an enormous reputation for NIH. Great technology companies often do.
- jerhinesmith 16y ago
  Great technology companies often do. If that's true, at what point does that trait change from an advantage to a liability? Is it purely about openness? Or is it more subjective (e.g. I don't like Silverlight, so Microsoft should support standards vs. websockets sound awesome, and I'm glad Google is innovating)?
  - lincolnq 16y ago
    It may be an expression of hubris (and always a liability). I'm not really trying to imply a causal relationship.

willheim 16y ago

This is not an issue. We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other platforms? Pretty open. What's the issue? Just some inefficiency. It means that all videos have to be encoded in a few formats in the backend and a browser detector to tell our server which video to play. As long as the end user isn't harmed I don't see the big deal with Google supporting Google's own format (that they have opened up with a protected royalty-free format). As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you).

dev_jim 16y ago
> As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you). There's a big difference between an additional CSS stylesheet and encoding and storing every single video on your site twice. > We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other platforms? Most companies do not encode their videos with multiple codecs. They encode with H.264 and the video will work with an HTML5 player in IE9/Chrome/Safari on the desktop and Safari/Android on mobile. Fallback to Flash is available for older browsers and Firefox. Companies will continue to use this scheme, it just means that Chrome users will now be stuck with a crappy bug-ridden flash player as opposed to a native player.
antimatter15 16y ago
You don't need the browser format detection scripts because it's built into HTML5. <video><source codec="video/webm" src="kitten.webm"></source><source codec="video/m4v"></source></video>

bretthopper 16y ago

This makes <video> about as useful as <audio> now.

ZeroGravitas 16y ago
On that topic, did they drop mp3 support too? I didn't see any mention of that either way. It would make some sense.

jdub 16y ago

Fantastic. Much as I enjoyed Burn All GIFs back in the day, I don't think Burn All H.264s sounds nearly as catchy or fun. Glad Google is doing the Right Thing on this front -- however convenient or entrenched they might be, hairy patented messes like H.264 have no place on an open web.

bphogan 16y ago
I'm just having a hard time understanding why they're ok with bundling the Flash player with Chrome, but not carrying an h264 decoder.
- mrothe 16y ago
  Because Flash is an established "standard", while the HTML5 <video> tag is not.
  - bphogan 16y ago
    H264 is an established standard. H264 is not the <video> tag.
  - lurch_mojoff 16y ago
    Google are not removing video tag support, they are removing the h264 codec. h264 is pretty damn well established and is actually a standard without the quotation marks, and an open one at that.
    - seabee 16y ago
      The problem is a standard can be 'open' yet restricted, i.e. you have to pay to distribute software using it. Can't pay? Can't give people the program. The tricks that LAME uses to work around MP3 encoding patents aren't going to work for browsers. Of course it will go away once the patents expire, just like with GIF, but calling it 'open' now is just marketing speak which doesn't come close to the actual nature and purpose of open-source software.
- Raphael_Amiard 16y ago

bphogan 16y ago

The choice has been made by many places to simply use h264 video via the HTML5 tag to hit the iPhone/iPad and then fallback to a Flash video player which can easily play the h264 source video. Content producers would rather encode videos once, which is why they moved to FLV in the first place. There's no incentive to use anything else here. This hurts users. I am all for standards, but not for hurting users. And like it or not, content producers are using H264 because the devices people like to use can play that video back.

StavrosK 16y ago
Why doesn't Apple just include WebM support? It's an open codec...
- redthrowaway 16y ago
  Since when has Apple supported open standards simply because it makes sense to do so? Apple almost invariably chooses closed over open.
  - rradu 16y ago
    Apple is fully behind HTML5 - http://www.apple.com/html5/ http://www.apple.com/html5/
    - jarek 16y ago
      Yes, in spirit too: "This demo was designed with the latest web standards supported by Safari. If you’d like to experience this demo, simply download Safari. It’s free for Mac and PC, and it only takes a few minutes." Come see web standards! Using a specific browser.
      - joubert 16y ago
        Hum, because they're showing the latest HTML features that Safari supports? Not all browsers support the same range of features for a particular HTML standard.

kellysutton 16y ago

Chiming in as the guy who developed the blip.tv HTML5 player: This sucks, even though we were planning on supporting it in the future anyway.

aw3c2 16y ago
Why that? You just have to add one or two lines of code to your player to access the .webm(s).

gaiusparx 16y ago

Sad move, the web take years to more or less standardize on H264. Ain't WebM an inferior alternative at the moment? The reason cited "our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.", so we can expect Flash to be removed as well? I can see next up in the horizon: YouTube to remove H264 support.

bonaldi 16y ago

Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash. Lose all round, then.

salmonsnide 16y ago
Once Adobe adds WebM support in Flash, it might happen the other way around.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  There's a massive volume of h.264 out there that isn't going to get converted just to satisfy some dogmatic commitment to 'openness'.
  - rmc 16y ago
    They won't change it for openness reasons, but they will change it if 80% of their visitors support WebM and not h264. It happened before. How longer were people forced to design web pages for ie6 due to its market share.
- OpieCunningham 16y ago
  You'll have to add these caveats in as well: Once Apple supports WebM. Once chipset manufacturers produce WebM optimized hardware decoders. Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers purchase and integrate those WebM hardware decoders. Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers develop or license software players that support WebM encoded video and file format. Could happen the other way around. But it ain't likely.
  - blocke 16y ago
    Yeah. There is no way Google of all people could launch a Cell Phone OS based on a Java variant and beat Apple by the end of 2010. Stupidest idea ever. I'm still laughing.

pedanticfreak 16y ago

Interesting. YouTube must be a mess with all of these competing formats it needs to support. I assume it will eventually switch to WebM for both HTML5 and Flash by default and just use h264 for compatibility. Still, it must be horrific.

Seth_Kriticos 16y ago
Nope. It was stored as h264 before they released webm (and then flash played it). When they released Webm, they started to convert all that stuff to VP8 (my guess is they should be through by now), so it's only VP8 now (via HTML5 or flash). End of story.
- msbarnett 16y ago
  This is incorrect. They are still retaining and serving h.264 to mobile devices, since WebM has zero mobile hardware support.
- cpearce 16y ago
  Adobe has not yet shipped a version of Flash which supports VP8, or WebM for that matter. They've remained silent on that matter since their initial announcement at Google IO last year.

daleharvey 16y ago

I dont think the open web is up for compromise, I was happy to see mozilla take a stand on h264, glad to see google follow suit. Sure this hurts users in the short term, but a single standard format has not been settled on, this could be much more disruptive if google had of left it in

hamedh 16y ago

so is Google going to re-encode all their Youtube content to WebM videos now? and i wonder if Android will continue to play h.264 videos or not.

brackin 16y ago
It will still work with a flash container i've been told.
pornel 16y ago
Yes. If you opt-in to YouTube HTML5 beta you can watch many videos in WebM already.

natmaster 16y ago

Looks like Mozilla wins this one.

webXL 16y ago
I agree now after seeing this: http://arewefastyet.com/ http://arewefastyet.com/

dmaz 16y ago

The message is that Google is serious about making VP8 competitive. It won't be removing H.264 support from Android and YouTube anytime soon, but this certainly changes the HTML5 video codec battle.

buster 16y ago

People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video codec here. I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats. Can someone just look at the table at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video and really tell me that this mess isn't the fault of MS and Apple in the first place? Ogg is ready to play a big role and WebM is catching up. The only blocking factor here is Internet Explorer and Safari, not Chrome.

mikeryan 16y ago
WebM is a relatively new entrant into the encoding field, Only getting opened up in the last 8 months. Ogg has always been a fairly significantly worse codec then H264. "Even the 1mbps Ogg Theora clips are not on par with the 468 kbps h264 clips."[1] Considering that MS and Apple have been working in video for a long time now they chose the codec with the best available experience for their users (who aren't the ones picking up the licensing fees). [1] http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-vs-h264-head-to-head-comparisons.ars http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/02/ogg-theora-v...
- buster 16y ago
  I must say that the ogg video samples i have seen are not as good as the h.264 samples. But good enough for probably 90% of internet video. Anyway, i think WebM comes very close already (i actually don't see differences): http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison Instead of embracing the patent encumbered codec we should be thankful for Google to actually buy a codec (VP8) and release it _for free_. I couldn't imagine this from any other company. Still many people just want their h.264 no matter what. It's bad for a free and open internet, that's my belief.
  - jarek 16y ago
    > Still many people just want their h.264 no matter what. Then they can use a browser whose creators decide to pay for the license.

guywithabike 16y ago

I'm looking forward to Google remaining consistent with their words and removing Flash from Chrome in the near future. You know, for the good of the users.

samlevine 16y ago
I'm sure they'll do that after Adobe sends an invoice to the Gnash project.
mbrubeck 16y ago
Speaking as someone who works for a browser vendor: There's a big difference between dropping support for entrenched technologies, and choosing which emerging technologies to support. Certain formats and practices are already part of the web, for better or worse, and it's not fully within the browser vendors' power to change that. If any browser dropped Flash support, it would break thousands of popular web sites, and users would simply switch browsers. What is within our power is to decide which emerging standards to support. Dropping H.264 in <video> at this point won't cause users to flee the browser. And it does give us some chance of avoiding another patent-encumbered format becoming a de-facto standard on the web. We don't control existing sites, but we do control our own actions which influence new sites. We can't alter the past, but we can change the future.
- pohl 16y ago
  While H.264 may not be entrenched, it certainly is established and far, far from being emerging.
  - mbrubeck 16y ago
    That's true, which is why I referred specifically to H.264 in the <video> element (which is the only case affected by this change). There are mature implementations, but as a part of the web platform it is still in very early stages. While H.264 <video> is already deployed widely thanks to iOS, it's generally with a fallback for the majority of users whose browsers don't support it. Removing it from Chrome will not break the web for users, in the way it would if they removed Flash or GIF or JavaScript semicolon insertion, or any other of the many web technologies we'd like to retroactively wish away.

davidedicillo 16y ago

I'm kinda tired of this Google openness, especially when it so congenially damage their competitors. It would have been different if they never implemented it in first place, but this now it just looks like a move to target Apple.

roadnottaken 16y ago
Well, it's better than Apple's strategy of using closed-ness to damage their competitors. All companies make strategic decisions. But if you're going to use ideology strategically, it might as well be a good ideology. Note: I'm a huge Apple fan and I use lots of their products with alacrity.

drivebyacct2 16y ago

Has everyone so quickly forgotten that Flash will soon support WebM playback? It's a significant point in the discussion. With any flash capable browser having WebM support, along with native support in Firefox, Chrome, Opera... it seems there is some sense in this move. It does seem a bold strategy, I would have probably waited at least a bit longer. Edit: Oh, "These changes will occur in the next couple months"

mikeklaas 16y ago
And in ten years, the performance might even be acceptable.
- drivebyacct2 16y ago
  Performance of what? I'm not defending Flash's performance, but WebM is fine, completely acceptable. With hardware decoding continuing to advance in Flash, I guess I don't see what your complaint is. If it's native in most browsers, fallback in IE (they aren't going to care anyway) and potentially native even in IE on supported hardware...
  - mikeklaas 16y ago
    Performance of the WebM implementation in Flash. It took them years to take advantage of hardware decoding for H.264
    - andybak 16y ago
      But now that architecture is in place it won't be difficult to extend it to other codecs. Most of the time it took to get support for hardware decoding in place was time needed for Adobe to wake up and realise there was a problem. They have moved fairly quickly since then.
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      It took them less time than it took for Mac OS X to support hardware decoding in Macbooks GPUs that already worked if you bootcamped into XP on the same machine. Though it took even longer for Flash on Mac OS X because even after Apple supported it (on limited chipsets) they didn't bother to expose it to third parties.

emehrkay 16y ago

I'm the go-to guy in my office for html5 video(audio) and this just made my job that much harder. Shit, today I just found out that our videos arent playing on android devices now this

mhd 16y ago

So are we going to get third party Chrome distributions that backport the missing H.264 functionality?

blasdel 16y ago
To date Chromium has always supported whatever codecs its bundled copy of libavcodec was compiled with. Hopefully they do not purposefully constrain the codec support, like Microsoft did. IE9 uses the system's DirectShow plugins, but whitelists the specific codecs because they don't want to dynamically load shitty DivX binaries into the browser and expose them to the DOM. It sucks but it was the right decision considering the circumstances.

simonsquiff 16y ago

It's all well and good to focus future effort on alternative technologies that you have a preference for. But to remove a feature you currently support that works well...that's a poor decision that doesn't help your users or the web in general.

OpieCunningham 16y ago

So H.264 isn't "open web" ... but Flash is? Google has such an arbitrary definition of open.

linuxhansl 16y ago
There is a very clear distinction between an closed standard and a closed implementation. H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only temporarily does not charge for its use. It will never be open. And btw. Apple is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be charged for H.264. Flash is an open standard with only one implementation (unless you count gnash and swfdec, etc). I can't wait for Flash to go away too, but this is certainly the lesser evil.
- OpieCunningham 16y ago
  H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only temporarily does not charge for its use. What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically: nothing. So though it's true that it is, it has essentially caused no loss. What has been the result of SWF being open? Practically: nothing. Adobe's closed implementation remains the standard implementation. So though it's true that SWF is open, it is essentially closed. H.264 ... will never be open. Patents expire. Apple is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be charged for H.264. Not relevant, though I'd point out that Apple has very few patents that comprise H.264 in comparison to the entirety of the pool. The probability that they make or will make any significant money is extraordinarily low. Fundamentally however, my original post that you replied to is specific to Google's patently arbitrary definition of "open". Google doesn't build an open implementation of SWF into their browser, they build in Adobe's Flash player. Even if they did, it goes to my above point re: SWF is effectively Adobe Flash. Google is not anywhere close to open, no matter how often they repeat the mantra.
  - jarek 16y ago
    > What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically: nothing. Shipping a browser with H.264 support is difficult for newcomers or niche players. In other industries, this is called anti-competitiveness.

Charuru 16y ago

Next move, suddenly youtube stops encoding in h.264 and youtube won't be able to be played on the iPad. And Android tablets look a LOT better.

upinsmoke 16y ago
You do know that the reason h.264 is better on iOS is because the hardware decoder, right? Android doesn't even do hardware-accelerated graphics, let alone video decoding.
- ZeroGravitas 16y ago
  Some parts of Android graphics are GPU accelerated, and the vast majority of Android devices accelerate video decoding (though codec support does vary, and up till now doesn't generally include VP8, though the TI OMAP hardware at least can be updated to support it).
- junkbit 16y ago
  FUD. All the Tegra 2 stuff at CES was hardware accelerated and the Motorola Atrix even played video @1080p over the hdmi port
  - moxiemk1 16y ago
    It's valid when it ships.
    - junkbit 16y ago
      The Atrix runs Android 2.2 (Froyo) which shipped last May. I was just talking about CES because we've been bombarded the past week
kenjackson 16y ago
If YouTube goes exclusively to WebM/Flash, who wins that game of chicken? Apple or Google? I actually think Apple wins it as someone creates iTube. People will switch browsers. They won't give up their iPad (at least not until there are some better Android browsers on the market).

jbk 16y ago

This is a great move... Mpeg-LA has been bullying everyone for too long...

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

upinsmoke 16y ago

Long live Flash video?

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

makeramen 16y ago

The biggest H264 supporter is Apple, and it kind of worked because Apple has leverage in the iPhone arena. I don't think Google has quite the same leverage in the browser arena. If this happened at the WebKit level, then maybe. But not at the Chrome level.

jawee 16y ago

It can´t be all about freedom if they´re dropping Theora too. (related: how can Theora be so bad is Vorbis is so good?)

melpo 16y ago
I think you may have misread something there. The link clearly says: "Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. "
- jawee 16y ago
  I certainly did misread; thanks for that!

timc3 16y ago

Must be part of the long game by Google. Stop supporting h.264 and push their own format in their browser, which also means ChromeOS and GoogleTV. The format will need hardware because it is so difficult to decode with software. Google gets hardware support on their laptops and mobile devices, changes YouTube to be WebM only, forcing Apple/Windows/Nokia/SonyEricsson to need hardware to decode. Consumer loses out (the video quality of this, and the image quality of their image format is not exactly what should be expected to be released in a new format for 2011).

TechNewb 16y ago
Or people just stop using Youtube, and use Blip, Dailymotion, and any other 'modern' forward thinking video services instead.

scrod 16y ago

Bye bye, Google Chrome. This is me deleting you from my Mac.

cdeutsch 16y ago

As a person who encodes video for the web for a living I can tell you we won't be switching to WebM because of iOS and other hardware devices that have hardware based decoding. H.264 is the closest thing to a ubiquitous codec there is and assuming Chrome correctly updates the "canPlayType" javascript function I won't even have to update our players to provide Chrome users with the crappy Flash player. As a Chrome user, I'll be switching to Safari so I can continue to get the working HTML5 player. We'll consider switching once Apple adds support for WebM and the millions of old iOS devices are obsolete. In other words it's H.264 for us for the next 3 years.

yuhong 16y ago
Why can't you do two formats?
- cdeutsch 16y ago
  Cost/benefit. We outsource encoding to Zencoder which costs $.02 to $.05 per minute. Then there is also the price of disk space and the amount of time it takes for the video(s) to be available. Maybe one day the cost/benefit will change.

fleitz 16y ago

Phone me when Youtube only supports WebM, this is just a PR stand.

aridiculous 16y ago
Agreed. Why is everyone assuming Google will convert all YouTube to WebM? That would be the main attack on Apple, not removing support for HTML5 h264 in Chrome (flash is the easy backup here). There's a motive for Google to convert YouTube to WebM to screw Apple, but it doesn't seem likely.

knodi 16y ago

O great now its back to flash. Pretty shitty move by google.

ot 16y ago

Reminds me of "embrace, extend, extinguish". BTW, will it be possible to enable it back with an extension? I don't really want to stop using Chrome because of this.

ubernostrum 16y ago
Well, when Mozilla drew their ideological line in the sand and said they'd refuse to allow Firefox to use OS codecs, Microsoft responded by releasing a Firefox extension that delegates H264 playback from HTML5 video elements to Windows Media Player. Perhaps they'll end up doing the same for Chrome?
- ot 16y ago
  That would fix Windows, but for my personal use I care more about Mac and Linux
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    How about this: I think vp8 is technically a piece of shit but I really like chrome, so if HTML5 video becomes common enough that I need it I will do it myself for OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.

upinsmoke 16y ago

ATTENTION GOOGLE! Flash is not open! Not only does Chrome support Flash, it ships with embedded Flash plugin! What a hypocrite!

zppx 16y ago

I think this is bad for HTML 5 video in the short run, but I do not care about it anymore, I wished that everyone supported Theora, and then switched to Dirac in the future, but Apple and Google made me give up of my hopes. However in the long run I think this will be an example of 'worse is better' happening, I think WebM will win over H.264. If that is bad or no that's depend on how do you see Apple and Google, if you believe this post contain a good message or if you believe Gruber but not both, for me both are just false in their pretense of openness, which is why I supported Theora in the first place. Theora vs. H.264 was the first big fight that I remember in HN were the majority of comments were just bullshit for me (just like this thread), although there were really good ones from both sides, I also commented in the matter, back then I said that codecs would grow in irrelevance, I belive that H.264, as a patent covered standard, will lose in the future because its licensing terms are not clear and a license for its use can be pretty expensive to people trying to win some money from web video, specially those that have no money initially to spend in royalties (like startups, open source and non commercial projects), my example back them was a cloudy video editor, maybe something that is impractical today, but that I do expect becoming at least practical for simple uses in 2 to 3 years from now. For this type of user paying for royalties in the beginning just does not make any sense and is stressful for their financial situation, this if they want to win money with their project, it's even more complicated for open source projects, for the case that people want to win some money from their company or project a good comparison would be the college student that take loans, trying to make some potential money in the future while spending money that he does not have in the present. I think that WebM will have the preference of this public if they are not aiming Apple products. For me this will happen just because MPEG LA was incompetent enough and did not knew how to deal with the situation, opening the standard to small business, not charging users and business that only stream the using codec, things like that that the consortium never clarified (they never defined the "broadcast market" from which they plan to charge royalties from). More could be said about why I think H.264 will be a thing of the past in the following years, but them my comment would be too big.

dstein 16y ago

Google is starting to remind me more of Microsoft every day. But at least Microsoft doesn't make their anti-competitive strategic decisions under the guise of being "open" and "not evil".

teye 16y ago

Don't like it? Branch Chromium and retain H.264 support. First customer here.

TechNewb 16y ago

As a content producer, this upsets me. I would only consider WebM if it is superior to h.264. But either way I'm having second thoughts about using Chrome and Youtube if they really nix h.264. Google thinks they are bigger than they really are.

necro 16y ago

I don't see much benefit to support HTML5 in webm or theora. One of the benefits of html5 over flash was the prospect of better resource handling and smooth play, but now as systems get faster, and flash better, there is less and less reason to go down this path. h264 is smooth enough in flash now, and it's about to get even better in the new flash release. There are no real hardware/product reasons for websites to support webm right now. h264 on the other hand gets the benefit of working with all the iphone and more recently apple tv. Promised new update this year will even allow HTML5 video to be streamed to apple TV directly from the browser of iphones, ipads, and i imagine safari. This is one of these technologies that will really increase the use of h264. I run the larges cycling site and we handle 100s of niche video uploads per day so I follow this closely, and as much as I'd like to jump on webm, I'm going to definitely hold of. Currently we convert videos to 3 formats to try handle all cases, and having to now multiply that by 2 with another codec is a lot of extra resources. 2.5 mbit h264 web HD/appletv h264 1 mbit h264 for web SD/iphone 300 kbit mobile - webm makes no sense in the short term. - you need apple support to make webm happen faster Think about all the extra resources, time, effort that you are asking from companies in the world to support the 2 formats. If you want to be efficient with society, keep the support of h264 while webm development happens, transition once all the big players support the new format. Alternatively take all the money/time/efforts and get apple to transition. If apple does not jump on the wagon, it's going to be years and years of wasted resources in society.

spoondan 16y ago

I like Gruber, but he's almost insufferable on issues like these. These questions are "simple" in the least flattering sense. Let's dispatch them: If H.264 support is being removed to “enable open innovation”, will Flash Player support be dropped as well? If not, why? The premise is that openness is all or nothing. But Google can support Flash and work towards openness, just as Apple can prefer open web standards in lieu of Flash while supporting proprietary systems. There's no hypocrisy or conflict. Android currently supports H.264. Will this support be removed from Android? Maybe in the future. WebM support is new in Android, hardware decoders are really just coming to market, and there are enough existing and in-production phones that rely on H.264. The constraints placed on Google by the handful of Chrome users leveraging H.264 HTML5 video is completely unlike the realities of dealing in the handset market. YouTube uses H.264 to encode video. Presumably, YouTube will be re-encoding its entire library using WebM. When this happens, will YouTube’s support for H.264 be dropped, to “enable open innovation”? YouTube continues to support other proprietary formats. As with Sorenson, they're not going to drop H.264 until they don't care about the market share of H.264-only devices. In the meantime, they will try to drive people towards WebM in support of "open innovation". This is not inconsistent or even new. Do you expect companies like Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball, and anyone else who currently streams H.264 to dual-encode all of their video using WebM? It should be obvious that Google's hope is anyone using HTML5 video will eventually move to WebM exclusively. If not, how will Chrome users watch this content other than by resorting to Flash Player’s support for H.264 playback? Content producers won't care if Chrome users end up in Flash, since the content's still available and very few non-mobile users are getting HTML5 video anyway. Flash is still the norm outside of mobile devices. Who is happy about this? Were people ecstatic that Chrome supported H.264? Most people simply don't care about this kind of stuff and for good reason.

suraj 16y ago
Meta: You should start "John Gruber and Methods of Rationality" blog.
danudey 16y ago
What I don't understand is how Chrome can remove h.264 (which is widely used) because they want 'openness', while at the same time shipping a browser (Chrome) where you cannot remove Flash (which continues to support H.264). It seems here that keeping H.264 support and dropping Flash would be more in the name of openness. (Edit: bane points out that you can disable Flash in Chrome. My original point still stands, but my wording was misleading.) As with most things Google does, I don't see this as being in the interest of 'openness' at all. I feel more like what they really want is a format that they can control and add features to (such as, for example, embedded advertising). In the end, Google is a business, and its business is ads. Everything Google does is about either delivering ads to people (Google Mail), making sure it's their ads that are delivered (YouTube), or about making sure they don't get locked out of a market (Android). So here's my question: where's the money here? It's obviously far more expensive at this point to use WebM than H.264, so what financial motivation is there for them to push the WebM codec this hard this fast?

sbollepalli 16y ago

Go easy on me, this is my first comment on HN. I see couple of other things, apart from free and royalty side of arguments. My story goes like this: when Apple released iOS device in 2007, H264 was the better choice for mobiles with hardware decoders. Google converted Youtube videos to H264 to support iOS devices. Rest of the world followed. Both Apple and Google wins and they are happy to promote H264 for the wider adoption. Then after three years, a different competitive landscape, with Android popularity even without H264 hardware decoders advantage, at the same time Apple support to H264 but not to flash, gives big strategic advantage to Goolge to move world away from H264 to its own alternative (openness helps the cause). Win to Google, Lose to Apple. Its not important anymore which desktop browser support what. We can work with multiple browsers on our desktops/laptops. Its all about to whose advantage it plays out in mobile devices space. That is why we will see lot of FUD in future in this space while Google and Apple fight for their interests in name of openness.

ck2 16y ago

Shouldn't video codecs be done as plugins in browsers anyway? Give us the tags to support it but leave it up to a plugin. I know that multiple developers can focus on different parts of a browser's codebase at once, but it still doesn't make sense to me that a browser codebase should maintain a video codec as advanced as H.264 which constantly has room for performance/quality improvement.

jcarreiro 16y ago

Just switched back to Safari. Sorry google, but I own an iPad. :(

taken11 16y ago
you can switch browsers on an iPad? Last time I checked that was to dangerous for Apple to allow there users to do.

CountSessine 16y ago

I'm sort of happy that Google is doing this. I'm not always happy with google and what they do - not being evil sure as hell doesn't make you a good guy - but if there's another bunch of guys who aren't on the 'good' side, it's MPEG. I really would like to see the HTML <video> tag evolve in a way that doesn't require an MPEG technology. HOWEVER, I'd like to raise a couple of points. One is that the x264 devs, easily some of the most codec-knowledgeable people in the world, have raised questions about VP8's patent exposure. It's fair to say that On2 didn't have to worry about getting sued over implementation details of VP8 as long as its design was hidden and proprietary, but I'm quite confident that google is going to get shaken down over webm, a lot like Microsoft did with VC1. Unlike Microsoft and VC1, Google will settle and license the patents in question, with indemnification for webm users, because webm is more important to them than VC1 was to MS. But it's going to cost them. Second, anyone serving video now has a nice low-resistance path that means encoding exclusively in h264 - served up via the html5 <video> tag for iPhone and newer browsers, and served up inside flv with a flash plugin for older browsers. H264 isn't going to go away anytime soon, so google wants everyone to start encoding 2x now - with h264 and VP8. Or I guess you can just start using YouTube...?

mryall 16y ago

I actually see lack of H.264 support as more of a blow for those desktop browsers than anything else. With both Firefox and Chrome on the desktop refusing to support the video codec preferred by most (non-PC) device vendors, and both mobile browsing and video usage on the web dramatically increasing, I can't see this having any long-term effect other than marginalizing these browsers for the majority of users. Users who just want to visit a video site and have it work equally well on any device they happen to be using. H.264 is royalty-free for at least the next 5 years, has widespread hardware encoding and decoding support and its patents will eventually expire. Removal of this codec from Chrome just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sure all those people who have recently switched to Chrome won't find it too hard to switch away if the "more open" video support starting burning through their laptop battery three times as fast.

joelhousman 16y ago

1. I've now switched back from Chrome to Safari. 2. I'm glad that I made the decision to switch my organizations web videos from Akamai to Vimeo & not Youtube. 3. Google is the new Microsoft.

brackin 16y ago

This is very annoying their player is already terrible.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jwr 16y ago

A very bad decision. First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content. Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264 (which I hope won't happen), we'll get stuck for years with mobile devices that get poor battery life. Instead, we'll get promises of Great Things "just around the corner, in a couple of months". That's similar to the perpetual cycle of great, smoothly working Android devices which always exist in the future tense. Third, no one knows if VP8/WebM is immune from patents. It most likely isn't, it's just that nobody has laid claims yet. Most modern video processing techniques are patented in some way and sticking fingers in your ears won't make those patents magically go away.

pornel 16y ago
Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either: > Q: Are all AVC essential patents included? > A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target. The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange omissions" (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377) that make it non-infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known one. If you look at list of supporters: http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.

davej 16y ago

Descriptivists and Prescriptivists http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivists/ http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-prescriptivis...

joakin 16y ago

What I get from here: They have a codec that performs like this other one, but open for everybody to use without paying royalties. They have an agreement with most browsers to support this codec. None of the other browsers want to pay royalties for these codecs. Well... the plan is clear

pohl 16y ago

Does anybody know if it is possible to disable Chrome's automatic updates so that one can pin their version of chrome to the last release that supported H.264? Edit: found it... defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0