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Chrome ships with Flash. Flash plays H.264. Thus, Chrome still supports H.264, now it just has to go through Flash. There are Android phones with H.264 hardw
by svlla 16y ago
Chrome ships with Flash. Flash plays H.264. Thus, Chrome still supports H.264, now it just has to go through Flash.
There are Android phones with H.264 hardware support. There are no Android phones with WebM hardware support (software support, yes).
So... there is no point to converting YouTube videos to WebM: it doesn't benefit Android, it doesn't benefit Chrome. It would be a pointless waste of space.
- pedanticfreak 16y agoFlash will support WebM in a future version. Additionally, Google could update the iOS YouTube app to support WebM in a future iOS version. Once both reach sufficient market saturation YouTube will be able to completely switch from h264 to WebM.
- svlla 16y agoNo point in updating the iOS app unless there's going to be hardware support.
- pedanticfreak 16y agoTwo possibilities. First, Google could go software only for older hardware. It will suck for them. But by the time YouTube phases out h264 there will be few of these and the latest hardware will accelerate both WebM and h264. Second, there could be a way to utilize the h264 hardware decoder to work with WebM through a wrapper. The ffmpeg decoder for WebM is basically a wrapper around the existing ffmpeg h264 decoder already. I've never worked with decoders myself, but this at least seems plausible. Regardless, I think bundling WebM software decoding along side h264 decoding in the YouTube iOS app is a no-brainer even if YouTube doesn't take advantage of it right away.
- lurch_mojoff 16y agoGoogle are not making the iPhone YouTube app, Apple are.