> > > "Web video has never really been open, unencumbered > and free. We've had Real Networks RM format, Apple's > QuickTime, Microsoft's Windows Media Video (now standardised > as VC-1), the DivX and XviD codecs, and Adobe Flash among > others. There might never be one open standard, simply > because some content owners will want to include DRM > (Digital Rights Management) copy restrictions.
DRM isn't the issue for proprietary formats in my opinion since that's generally a container-level issue as opposed to a codec level issue. (MKV had support for DRM and there are various incarnations for .mp4. You could also say Flash RTMP is an (albeit large) extension of .flv) Because of the way video codec standardisation works and flaws in the software patent system all video codecs have features which are patented. In spite of what Xiph/Mozilla might say Theora almost certainly has patented features; nobody has done an exhaustive search because of the cost in time and money. > > However, the web would benefit from having an open, > unencumbered and free video format that enabled HTML > programmers to include a video as easily as they now include > a headline or a photo, wouldn't it? How do we get to that?" Reform of the patent system. "open, unencumbered, free etc." is just Xiph/Mozilla propaganda. > Not the way Mozilla is going about it, that's for sure - > they're > trying to solve all of the problems at once, but without > any support > from the people who _need_ to support this stuff in order > for it to be > effective. Without the likes of Microsoft and Apple getting > behind > Theora and giving it a clean bill of health, patent-wise > (and in > Apple's case, making use of silicon which decodes it), it's > going to > go nowhere fast and people will abandon Firefox for Chrome > if they > want video. A "clean bill of health" is near-impossible because *trivial things* are patented in video compression. The silicon is already out there for H.264 in millions of devices so reinventing the wheel is silly. Perhaps Xiph/Mozilla stood a chance in 2003 but this is far too late. > The way I suspect this will, eventually, play out is that > under > pressure from "stakeholders", software *decoders* for H.264 > will > become exempted from the patent regime by the MPEG-LA. This > still > leaves the thorny issue of encoders and the sites streaming > the > content, but that's far less of an issue for the end-user, > and another > battle for another day. Open source H.264 isn't pursued by MPEG-LA anyway. The issue of encoders is fine, you just use x264 (which is the project I work on), which is the best H.264 encoder in the world in the majority of use-cases. > Dirac, as lovely as it is, doesn't have the traction, and > doesn't (in > its current form) seem to be too well-suited to the vast > range of > applications that H.264 is used for. Wavelet video compression still isn't ready for prime-time so to speak. > In the meantime, though, Firefox is going to get left > behind. Some > sites will go to the trouble of transcoding to Theora, but > mostly > they'll just run with H.264 + Flash or QuickTime fallback > (which works > pretty well in my testing, if done carefully). > Now that Flash 10.1 has hardware acceleration anyone requiring content security will still use Flash. Quicktime is the only decoder which manages to be worse than Flash in terms of features and performance. - Sent via the backstage.bbc.co.uk discussion group. To unsubscribe, please visit http://backstage.bbc.co.uk/archives/2005/01/mailing_list.html. Unofficial list archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/backstage@lists.bbc.co.uk/
