9 ms·

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

• 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.
      • redler 16y ago
        You can only beat an opponent if you're playing the same game.
        • blocke 16y ago
          Really? "Disruptive Technology" don't happen? Google drove the cost of smartphone OSes down to as near to zero as patent law will allow. I'd say that is a game changer. How much does WebM cost?
          • redler 16y ago
            The issue is not whether it's a game changer. Apple's game is to build devices, software, and a highly consistent and polished user experience, irresistable to buyers and app developers, all in an effort to capture maximum profit share. Google's game is to build a similar OS that is irresistible to device makers, all in an effort to maximize market share and the advertising revenues boiling off the free app ecosystem. With Apple, the product is the device and you are the buyer. With Google, the product is you and the advertiser is the buyer. They are each winning their respective games. Superficially they are competitors, but if there is a winner, then there's a loser. How can you look at either company and consider it the loser?
            • bane 16y ago
              Agreed, Both companies seem to be doing wildly well with their respective mobile strategies.
            • blocke 16y ago
              They can both be winners and losers depending on what game they choose to play. Being disruptive is about pissing on the rules for the original game. Actually the more I think about it the more non-sensical your original statement and this conversation becomes. ;)
              • redler 16y ago
• danh 16y ago
  Maybe that is somehow what Google wants? It has cozied up to Adobe to the point of including flash in Chrome itself. And YouTube apparently can't be bothered to make html5 video work reliably. I can't think of why anyone would want to promote flash, though.
  • cookiecaper 16y ago
    YouTube depends on Flash for its most profitable enterprises, which are advertisements before the video you're trying to watch, rental, and so forth. I don't know why they can't implement pre-show ads in HTML5, but rentals, etc., can't be done in HTML5 because they require DRM. There was a big post a while back about all the things YouTube needs to do in Flash instead of HTML5. The fact of the matter is that HTML5 video puts several of YouTube's main money-makers out of order, at least temporarily while the logic is re-implemented. Edit: The post from YouTube about why they still need Flash is at http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html .
  • pak 16y ago
    Because it locks people out of Apple mobile devices.
  • bl4k 16y ago
    I have been without flash for almost a year now and I can't remember the last time I had a problem playing a video on YouTube. It has happen possibly twice.
    • danh 16y ago
      Really? You must be much, much luckier than I. I just headed over to YouTube, disabled the (excellent) YouTube5 Safari extension, and tried 20 random videos. Only two worked (but fullscreen is still broken).
• Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
  Well i don't know. What i see : Adobe is gonna support webm. So having only one format is gonna be possible. Browsers who supported or were gonna support H264 : - Safari (5% market share) - IE9 (0% market share right now, probably around 15% in 3 years) - Chrome (around 13 %) Browsers who supports Webm : - Firefox (30% market share) - Chrome - IE9 will probably support it via codecs which is better than nothing The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264. But as a long term move i can only approve what google is doing. Also : > People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows Most people video workflow is youtube/vimeo/dailymotion video workflow. All of which seems ready to support webm.
  • dev_jim 16y ago
    > The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264 You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9).
    • Raphael_Amiard 16y ago
      > You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. Well i mentionned it. I'm at least partially intellectually honest :) > Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9) That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are. > There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders. I don't think that's true
      • dev_jim 16y ago
        > That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are Very true. Our site has had for a while only a couple percent of non 3.5+ Firefox traffic.
      • 16y ago
• Heff 16y ago
  Which sucks for HTML5 video. Without Chrome, only about 5% of web users actually support HTML5 playback using h.264. Chart: http://videojs.com/2011/01/google-is-dropping-h-264-from-chrome/ http://videojs.com/2011/01/google-is-dropping-h-264-from-chr... Two things could end the format war. 1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) 2. MPEG LA removes all royalties from h.264
  • bane 16y ago
    1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) Why? Aren't the iOS devices powerful enough to software decode WebM streams?
    • sigzero 16y ago
      That would be incredibly slow.
    • pornel 16y ago
      They might be, but battery life is an issue. Hopefully SIMD and GPU in high-end phones can at least partially alleviate the problem (iOS has Accelerate framework and programmable shaders).
  • rmc 16y ago
    Or another way to view it is that 30% support html5 video with WebM
    • WiseWeasel 16y ago
      Firefox 3.x doesn't play WebM content. So it's just Chrome's ~13% share at the moment.
    • danudey 16y ago
      Or another way to view it is that if you factor in Flash support for H.264, the only clients that can't view H.264 content are Firefox, Opera, and IE 8-or-earlier installs without Flash installed. I'm not sure what percentage of the market that is, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty small. In comparison, all mobile devices, game consoles, and Blu-Ray players support H.264, as do all Flash installations (including the one bundled with Chrome that users can't remove), and all installations of Safari and IE9 (when it arrives).
• chrischen 16y ago
  Yea, if WebM is free people will. If both are available then WebM is probably superior from a content producer's perspective.
• yanw 16y ago
  Not necessarily, and not in the long run. These changes will occur in the next couple months By then flash will gain WebM playback support. This move is a good one and it does make sense, I don't think there is room for compromise in regards to the open internet and non-proprietary standards.
  • recoiledsnake 16y ago
    And I thought people were happy for HTML5 video because it eliminated the need for Flash. We've turned a full circle.
  • redrobot5050 16y ago
    Considering how long it took Flash to gain hardware acceleration on platforms aside from Windows, I wouldn't hold my breathe. MobileFlash on Android still ranges from "Sucks" to "it's fine". I haven't tried Flash video on my android tablet (it has a YouTube app) yet, but I've also rooted it and flashed the firmware to remove a software underclock so my experience may not be representative of any stock devices.
• rsanders 16y ago
  Content providers already have to support browsers that don't include h.264, and Chrome users are now in the same boat as Firefox users -- which content providers certainly won't ignore. For sites which only produce h.264, Chrome includes Flash which can play h.264. And every video site is going to support a Flash playback path for older browsers. The real impact here is pretty small, other than legitimizing a free and open codec. Chrome has just moved from one must-support category to another one. Most people will never notice the difference. How is that a loss?
  • jcarbaugh 16y ago
    It's a loss because Chrome is moving from the HTML5 video must-support category to the Flash fallback category.
• hristov 16y ago
  And why will that happen? Because people like to pay license fees so much they will be all too eager to pay the fees for both h.264 encoding and flash? Yes, businesses that already use h.264 and flash will probably continue using them. But the bootstrapped websites and startups will opt for the free stuff at least initially, and of all those bootstrapped startups some will be successful enough to make some noise. And then some of the established companies will have cost cutting rounds and will look at those license fees and think about whether they really need to pay them when some of their brand new competitors aren't paying them. At this point the iPhone will start looking bad for not supporting the newest and coolest video startups that are supported on android and Jobs will eventually cave too and add WebM support to the iPhone. Everything in the web thus far has gone towards the lowest cost and easiest alternative that is still effective, and this will not be different.
  • WiseWeasel 16y ago
    You're dreaming if you think Apple is going to add WebM hardware decoding support to iPhones. That would basically mean that all previously sold iPhones would be marginalized, it would increase the hardware costs and space/power requirements, and there is no market advantage to supporting the WebM format as there's no WebM-exclusive content.
    • lukeschlather 16y ago
      Android is already marginalizing old iPhones (and to some extent Apple's business model is built around marginalizing old iPhones.) Also, Google controls YouTube. So H.264 <video> YouTube could see a sunset at some point, which would be a BFD.
      • KeithMajhor 16y ago
        That's a really interesting point. All at once you helped me understand the giant chess game we're watching.
    • hristov 16y ago
      I believe lukeschlather provided a good response, but I would like to add something more about the hardware side. It is a mistake to believe that one needs an entirely newly designed hardware chip to handle the WebM standard. Those hardware accelerators are not pure hardware. They are like little computers, with their own processors, and their own instruction memories, and their own software (or firmware). The processors are designed to efficiently compute the most commonly used math operations of the standard (which are usually Fourier transforms, matrix operations, etc.). The firmware causes the processor to apply the mathematical operations properly to the data to decode the video. The thing is that all of those video standards use more or less the same basic math operations, just in a different way. This means that a WebM hardware accelerator would look very similar hardware wise to a h.264 one but would have different firmware. In practice, I am sure that the hardware companies will make one hardware accelerator that can handle both h.264 and webm through different firmware programs. So you wont need much additional silicon or power to handle WebM. It might cost more, if the hardware companies decide to charge extra for WebM support, but that surcharge will not be much, because (i) they do not need to pay license fees, and (ii) there is a lot of competition in that field.
• apedley 16y ago
  Completely agree bonaldi. What a stupid move by Google. In order to promote their own technology they are setting back HTML5 video another year or 2 so they can fluff around and whine about which video codec is better. I could understand other companies not implementing WebM because it was a new codec developed by Google with no existing community or anything around it. But such a widely used codec (all my videos are H.264), I don't understand. Can't they just all support each others codec's, get this stupid war over with and start a large scale push of HTML5.