5 ms·

All the outcry over this I've read is basically a complaint that you can't ship one codec for HTML5 video, which you've never been able to do. That's what the w

All the outcry over this I've read is basically a complaint that you can't ship one codec for HTML5 video, which you've never been able to do. That's what the whole argument over the video tag has always been about. The only difference this makes is that this cements the split instead of everybody expecting Firefox and Opera to give up and adopt H.264. If you were willing to ship just H.264 and flash fallback for Firefox/Opera, why wouldn't you be willing to ship H.264 and flash fallback for Chrome?

MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy. On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings. Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.
- eordano 16y ago
  There is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular). (edited: typo)
  - MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
    You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
    - DrHankPym 16y ago
      Because Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?
      - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
        They'll almost certainly have an H.264 chip but the standard Android browser (and Firefox and Opera Mobile) might not take advantage of it when faced with an HTML5 video tag. Maybe we'll see Apple and Microsoft release browsers for Android!
    - beej71 16y ago
      That's a fine argument, but it's just not the one in the article.
Osiris 16y ago
From what I understand, the main reason for Mozilla and Opera not wanting to include H.264 is that there would be licensing fees for including a decoder with the browser. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it could potentially cost both Mozilla and Opera a significant amount in licensing fees to include H.264 support. Apple doesn't care because it's already a licensee, the same for Microsoft (including in Win7) and Google (encoding for YouTube).
- bzbarsky 16y ago
  The fee would be about $5 million a year. Arguably, both could afford it (it would be about 5-10% of revenue, but doable). The reason Mozilla is not wanting to include H.264 is that: 1) It can't do that in the open source version, and doesn't want to have separate open-source and closed-source releases. 2) It feels H.264 would be bad for the web, since it requires paying to create content in H.264. Reason #2 is somewhat more important than reason #1, since #1 could be worked around by using system media frameworks, etc.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Both of those things are misleading or wrong. There's no reason why they would have to make it closed source, especially if they use x264. H264 patents don't require everyone to pay to create content, you should read the MPEG licensing agreement.
    - bzbarsky 16y ago
      > There's no reason why they would have to make it closed > source, especially if they use x264. That's not what the lawyers said. In the US, at least; things may be different in your jurisdiction. Note that this is the route Chrome used to take: Chromium did not support H.264, while the Chrome binaries, built from some source that was not public, did. > H264 patents don't require everyone to pay to create > content They do require you to pay to produce an encoder. Of course someone can then distribute said encoder for free if they want, so the end user doesn't technically _have_ to pay. But in practice they do. And if you use an unlicensed encoder, then you're infringing on the patents. So is anyone who views any videos that were produced with the unlicensed encoder, even if their decoder is licenced. And some other restrictions to do with the fact that encoders are typically not licensed for arbitrary use (e.g. the encoder in a typical digital camera doesn't give you the right to put the resulting video on a website that you make money from, via Google Adwords, say). You should in fact read the licensing agreements involved, or at least the excerpts in http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-with-h264/ http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-w...

MiguelHudnandez 16y ago

On desktops, falling back to flash for H.264 decoding is a pretty good strategy. On mobiles, though, Google's change has a bigger effect. Flash is abysmal (if existent) on Android devices--and now there is no clear solution that doesn't involve serving multiple encodings. Before this change, you could be comfortable that your H.264 HTML5 video would play on the majority of smartphones; the flash fallback was only necessary for desktop browsers.

eordano 16y ago
There is no Chrome for smartphones, and so far no one has said anything about dropping H.264 on Android (although you can see it happening as soon as WebM extensions for ARM start being more popular). (edited: typo)
- MiguelHudnandez 16y ago
  You are correct, but why would you imagine Google would treat Android differently? Even though they haven't announced any changes specific to Android, I expect Google's left and right hands to work together... eventually.
  - DrHankPym 16y ago
    Because Android is open and developed with the cellular carriers and manufacturers. If they want to add a H.264 chip, why would Google stop them?
    - ZeroGravitas 16y ago
      They'll almost certainly have an H.264 chip but the standard Android browser (and Firefox and Opera Mobile) might not take advantage of it when faced with an HTML5 video tag. Maybe we'll see Apple and Microsoft release browsers for Android!
  - beej71 16y ago
    That's a fine argument, but it's just not the one in the article.

Osiris 16y ago

From what I understand, the main reason for Mozilla and Opera not wanting to include H.264 is that there would be licensing fees for including a decoder with the browser. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it could potentially cost both Mozilla and Opera a significant amount in licensing fees to include H.264 support. Apple doesn't care because it's already a licensee, the same for Microsoft (including in Win7) and Google (encoding for YouTube).

bzbarsky 16y ago
The fee would be about $5 million a year. Arguably, both could afford it (it would be about 5-10% of revenue, but doable). The reason Mozilla is not wanting to include H.264 is that: 1) It can't do that in the open source version, and doesn't want to have separate open-source and closed-source releases. 2) It feels H.264 would be bad for the web, since it requires paying to create content in H.264. Reason #2 is somewhat more important than reason #1, since #1 could be worked around by using system media frameworks, etc.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Both of those things are misleading or wrong. There's no reason why they would have to make it closed source, especially if they use x264. H264 patents don't require everyone to pay to create content, you should read the MPEG licensing agreement.
  - bzbarsky 16y ago
    > There's no reason why they would have to make it closed > source, especially if they use x264. That's not what the lawyers said. In the US, at least; things may be different in your jurisdiction. Note that this is the route Chrome used to take: Chromium did not support H.264, while the Chrome binaries, built from some source that was not public, did. > H264 patents don't require everyone to pay to create > content They do require you to pay to produce an encoder. Of course someone can then distribute said encoder for free if they want, so the end user doesn't technically _have_ to pay. But in practice they do. And if you use an unlicensed encoder, then you're infringing on the patents. So is anyone who views any videos that were produced with the unlicensed encoder, even if their decoder is licenced. And some other restrictions to do with the fact that encoders are typically not licensed for arbitrary use (e.g. the encoder in a typical digital camera doesn't give you the right to put the resulting video on a website that you make money from, via Google Adwords, say). You should in fact read the licensing agreements involved, or at least the excerpts in http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-with-h264/ http://bemasc.net/wordpress/2010/02/02/no-you-cant-do-that-w...