5 ms·

Can't we just all settle for .webm? The cancerous patented MP4/H264 combination must die.

by sauere 12y ago

untog 12y ago
Unfortunately .webm doesn't work in IE, OSX Safari or iOS. Though I'd far prefer these services work with both WebM and H264, and use whichever works best.
- davb 12y ago
  I wonder how many (huge) sites like imgur it would take saying "we're doing webm, if your browser doesn't support it you get a huge, slow GIF instead" for everyone just to settle on a single format? The whole debate is only hurting users and developers, while lining the pockets of MPEGLA (or whoever is responsible for h264 licensing).
  - mitchty 12y ago
    How many? A lot. And in the mean time, if imgur started to do that, then it will soon start to have a "pdf link warning" in short order as masses of ios/safari/ie users basically segment themselves out of the loop. In the meantime then the alternative sites will pick up in use because they aren't being dicks about a video format. Additionally, what about devices that only have mpeg decoding? Basically you're saying screw you non webm supporting people and your battery life. We don't like your kind around here. Its a great way to kill your site in short. Unless everyone does it at once and upgrades happen to support things, its at best a slow burn like firefox. But at this point webm doesn't have half the use cases as firefox did.
  - Daiz 12y ago
    >I wonder how many (huge) sites like imgur it would take saying "we're doing webm, if your browser doesn't support it you get a huge, slow GIF instead" for everyone just to settle on a single format? It's very unlikely to see that happen, since using H.264 doesn't cost a dime in royalties for sites like imgur that serve the content for free (ads don't count as per the H.264 licensing terms). The only trouble is really on Firefox and any other browser that wants to implement a built-in H.264 decoder, but nothing stops them from working around that via things like OpenH264 or by using system decoders and so on. The same will likely happen with H.265/HEVC, as the recently published licensing terms made it completely royalty-free to use the format itself (including for commercial purposes, you have to pay royalties for that with H.264), and you only have to pay to distribute decoders & encoders. Personally I wish browser vendors would just use whatever's installed on the user system for playing web videos, but for some reason that's not okay because "we need at least one unified always playing format for the web!" and then we don't get that anyway, as the whole WebM mess has clearly shown... Anyway, since imgur is doing the conversion to video by themselves, there's not really any reason why they couldn't do both H.264 MP4s and VP8 WebMs... supporting only one format makes more sense if you allow direct user-encoded video uploads like 4chan does with its WebM support for example. Gotta say I don't like this whole "hey we took HTML5 video with 'autoplay loop muted' properties and branded it GIFV!" shtick, though.
  - sorahn 12y ago
    How well did that work for flash when apple decided it wasn't going to put it on mobile.
    - theon144 12y ago
      Quite well, I'd say. Most of the big sites have a flash-free version now, if only when you're visiting from an iOS device.
  - baddox 12y ago
    It might be a fun exercise to guess how many big sites it would take, but it's more relevant to realize that there is very little reason for any big site to deliberately not support a huge number of potential visitors.
bluthru 12y ago
Is .webm hardware-accelerated?
- cookiecaper 12y ago
  It is on my phone. http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/devices http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/devices
personZ 12y ago
Can't we just all settle for .webm? This debate is partly why the web is overrun with enormous animated GIFs. It seems pretty clear that webm isn't going to be widely supported. Time to move on.
- GhotiFish 12y ago
  Move on to what? The annihilation of firefox through a cheap licensing move?
  - personZ 12y ago
    Firefox supports MP4, and they changed their position two years ago when Google and Adobe weren't as all in as they claimed to be. Further through an appropriate media plugins that browser should support anything the platform supports, and it was pure dogma that had it refuse early on. Apple is never going to support WebM. This kills the format. There are hundreds of millions of devices that can hardware decode MPEG4 than can't for WebM. Nay, billions of devices. Of course WebM is always just around the corner, but this has just led to a stagnation where the scourge of animated GIFs reigned supreme.
    - GhotiFish 12y ago
      well mp5 is right around the corner as well. Out of curiosity, what do you think the world is going to do when it's confronted with the choice between pushing out open source competitors or letting them in?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - chanux 12y ago
      Firefox/OS X uses codecs from Apple NO
  - andoriyu 12y ago
    How dare you.
dragontamer 12y ago
Can't we settle for .png? The cancerous patented gif/lzw combination must die.
astrodust 12y ago
WebM is a format nobody asked for and nobody wants. It's claimed that WebM is patent free, but this is impossible. There's just too many patents in the video space, any one of which could surface and tank this format. Remember GIF itself was, for a while, subject to patent problems. At least with H264 companies like Cisco are releasing implementations with indemnity from that (http://www.openh264.org/ http://www.openh264.org/) which I think is better than coming up with some wonky new format.
- thristian 12y ago
  As far as I understand it, although there are many patents in the video space, they are not evenly distributed across all possible approaches and algorithms. Instead, when the next MPEG/ITC standard begins to crystalize, a bazillion companies rush to file patents on some specific, small part of the format so they can join MPEG-LA and get a passive revenue stream. In particular, if you design a video compression format that deliberately avoids doing what MPEG4 or H.264 does, your odds of patent infringement go down drastically.
waxjar 12y ago
WebMs are truly impressive. Too bad the adoption rate is quite low.
rsynnott 12y ago
Pretty much everything has hardware to decode h264; webm hardware decoding is still thin on the ground. Bulk encoding h264 is also typically cheaper than webm; the software encoders are faster, and hardware assists are available.
cbhl 12y ago
Why on earth would you use WebM? WebP is actually an image format and is based on the VP8 codec.
- silverwind 12y ago
  Because WebP is aimed to replace PNG, WebM can replace both MP4 and animated GIF.

Can't we just all settle for .webm? The cancerous patented MP4/H264 combination must die.

by sauere 12y ago

Can't we just all settle for .webm? The cancerous patented MP4/H264 combination must die.

untog 12y ago

Unfortunately .webm doesn't work in IE, OSX Safari or iOS. Though I'd far prefer these services work with both WebM and H264, and use whichever works best.

davb 12y ago
I wonder how many (huge) sites like imgur it would take saying "we're doing webm, if your browser doesn't support it you get a huge, slow GIF instead" for everyone just to settle on a single format? The whole debate is only hurting users and developers, while lining the pockets of MPEGLA (or whoever is responsible for h264 licensing).
- mitchty 12y ago
  How many? A lot. And in the mean time, if imgur started to do that, then it will soon start to have a "pdf link warning" in short order as masses of ios/safari/ie users basically segment themselves out of the loop. In the meantime then the alternative sites will pick up in use because they aren't being dicks about a video format. Additionally, what about devices that only have mpeg decoding? Basically you're saying screw you non webm supporting people and your battery life. We don't like your kind around here. Its a great way to kill your site in short. Unless everyone does it at once and upgrades happen to support things, its at best a slow burn like firefox. But at this point webm doesn't have half the use cases as firefox did.
- Daiz 12y ago
  >I wonder how many (huge) sites like imgur it would take saying "we're doing webm, if your browser doesn't support it you get a huge, slow GIF instead" for everyone just to settle on a single format? It's very unlikely to see that happen, since using H.264 doesn't cost a dime in royalties for sites like imgur that serve the content for free (ads don't count as per the H.264 licensing terms). The only trouble is really on Firefox and any other browser that wants to implement a built-in H.264 decoder, but nothing stops them from working around that via things like OpenH264 or by using system decoders and so on. The same will likely happen with H.265/HEVC, as the recently published licensing terms made it completely royalty-free to use the format itself (including for commercial purposes, you have to pay royalties for that with H.264), and you only have to pay to distribute decoders & encoders. Personally I wish browser vendors would just use whatever's installed on the user system for playing web videos, but for some reason that's not okay because "we need at least one unified always playing format for the web!" and then we don't get that anyway, as the whole WebM mess has clearly shown... Anyway, since imgur is doing the conversion to video by themselves, there's not really any reason why they couldn't do both H.264 MP4s and VP8 WebMs... supporting only one format makes more sense if you allow direct user-encoded video uploads like 4chan does with its WebM support for example. Gotta say I don't like this whole "hey we took HTML5 video with 'autoplay loop muted' properties and branded it GIFV!" shtick, though.
- sorahn 12y ago
  How well did that work for flash when apple decided it wasn't going to put it on mobile.
  - theon144 12y ago
    Quite well, I'd say. Most of the big sites have a flash-free version now, if only when you're visiting from an iOS device.
- baddox 12y ago
  It might be a fun exercise to guess how many big sites it would take, but it's more relevant to realize that there is very little reason for any big site to deliberately not support a huge number of potential visitors.

bluthru 12y ago

Is .webm hardware-accelerated?

cookiecaper 12y ago
It is on my phone. http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/devices http://wiki.webmproject.org/hardware/devices

personZ 12y ago

Can't we just all settle for .webm? This debate is partly why the web is overrun with enormous animated GIFs. It seems pretty clear that webm isn't going to be widely supported. Time to move on.

GhotiFish 12y ago
Move on to what? The annihilation of firefox through a cheap licensing move?
- personZ 12y ago
  Firefox supports MP4, and they changed their position two years ago when Google and Adobe weren't as all in as they claimed to be. Further through an appropriate media plugins that browser should support anything the platform supports, and it was pure dogma that had it refuse early on. Apple is never going to support WebM. This kills the format. There are hundreds of millions of devices that can hardware decode MPEG4 than can't for WebM. Nay, billions of devices. Of course WebM is always just around the corner, but this has just led to a stagnation where the scourge of animated GIFs reigned supreme.
  - GhotiFish 12y ago
    well mp5 is right around the corner as well. Out of curiosity, what do you think the world is going to do when it's confronted with the choice between pushing out open source competitors or letting them in?
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - chanux 12y ago
    Firefox/OS X uses codecs from Apple NO
- andoriyu 12y ago
  How dare you.

dragontamer 12y ago

Can't we settle for .png? The cancerous patented gif/lzw combination must die.

astrodust 12y ago

WebM is a format nobody asked for and nobody wants. It's claimed that WebM is patent free, but this is impossible. There's just too many patents in the video space, any one of which could surface and tank this format. Remember GIF itself was, for a while, subject to patent problems. At least with H264 companies like Cisco are releasing implementations with indemnity from that (http://www.openh264.org/ http://www.openh264.org/) which I think is better than coming up with some wonky new format.

thristian 12y ago
As far as I understand it, although there are many patents in the video space, they are not evenly distributed across all possible approaches and algorithms. Instead, when the next MPEG/ITC standard begins to crystalize, a bazillion companies rush to file patents on some specific, small part of the format so they can join MPEG-LA and get a passive revenue stream. In particular, if you design a video compression format that deliberately avoids doing what MPEG4 or H.264 does, your odds of patent infringement go down drastically.

waxjar 12y ago

WebMs are truly impressive. Too bad the adoption rate is quite low.

rsynnott 12y ago

Pretty much everything has hardware to decode h264; webm hardware decoding is still thin on the ground. Bulk encoding h264 is also typically cheaper than webm; the software encoders are faster, and hardware assists are available.

cbhl 12y ago

Why on earth would you use WebM? WebP is actually an image format and is based on the VP8 codec.

silverwind 12y ago
Because WebP is aimed to replace PNG, WebM can replace both MP4 and animated GIF.