Contact emailsdalecur...@chromium.org

ExplainerNone

Specificationhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora

Summary

Chrome will deprecate and remove support for the Theora video codec in
desktop Chrome due to emerging security risks. Theora's low (and now often
incorrect) usage no longer justifies support for most users. Notes: - Zero
day attacks against media codecs have spiked. - Usage has fallen below
measurable levels in UKM. - The sites we manually inspected before levels
dropped off were incorrectly preferring Theora over more modern codecs like
VP9. - It's never been supported by Safari or Chrome on Android. - An
ogv.js polyfill exists for the sites that still need Theora support. - We
are not removing support for ogg containers. Our plan is to begin
escalating experiments turning down Theora support in M120. During this
time users can reactivate Theora support via
chrome://flags/#theora-video-codec if needed. The tentative timeline for
this is (assuming everything goes smoothly): - ~Oct 23, 2023: begin 50/50
canary dev experiments. - ~Nov 1-6, 2023: begin 50/50 beta experiments. -
~Dec 6, 2023: begin 1% stable experiments. - ~Jan 8, 2024: begin 50% stable
experiments. - ~Jan 16th, 2024: launch at 100%. - ~Feb 2024: remove code
and chrome://flag in M123. - ~Mar 2024: Chrome 123 will roll to stable.


Blink componentInternals>Media>Codecs
<https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component:Internals%3EMedia%3ECodecs>

Search tagstheora <https://chromestatus.com/features#tags:theora>, vp3
<https://chromestatus.com/features#tags:vp3>, video
<https://chromestatus.com/features#tags:video>

TAG reviewNone

TAG review statusNot applicable

Risks


Interoperability and Compatibility

Sites which only provide a Theora video source will no longer have video
playback. These sites would already be broken in Chrome for Android or
Safari.


*Gecko*: Under consideration Private discussions. I asked if they'd like an
RFP for this, but haven't yet heard back.

*WebKit*: Shipped/Shipping (https://caniuse.com/ogv) Safari never shipped
support for Theora.

*Web developers*: Mixed signals Most developers are not likely to have an
opinion, some may lament the loss of one of the first open codecs on the
web.

*Other signals*:

Security

Security positive change -- removes support for a complicated binary
parsing and decoding mechanism.


WebView application risks

Does this intent deprecate or change behavior of existing APIs, such that
it has potentially high risk for Android WebView-based applications?

None, never supported on Android or WebView.


Debuggability

Can be debugged through media dev tools or chrome://media-internals.


Will this feature be supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac,
Linux, Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)?Yes

Not currently supported on Chrome for Android.


Is this feature fully tested by web-platform-tests
<https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/main/docs/testing/web_platform_tests.md>
?Yes

As part of pre-work, I've switched all tests using Theora (of which there
were hundreds) over to using VP8/VP9 where appropriate.


Flag name on chrome://flagsTheoraVideoCodec

Finch feature nameTheoraVideoCodec

Requires code in //chrome?False

Tracking bughttps://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=1489034

Estimated milestones
DevTrial on desktop 120

Anticipated spec changes

Open questions about a feature may be a source of future web compat or
interop issues. Please list open issues (e.g. links to known github issues
in the project for the feature specification) whose resolution may
introduce web compat/interop risk (e.g., changing to naming or structure of
the API in a non-backward-compatible way).
None

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status
https://chromestatus.com/feature/5158654475239424

This intent message was generated by Chrome Platform Status
<https://chromestatus.com/>.

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"blink-dev" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to blink-dev+unsubscr...@chromium.org.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/msgid/blink-dev/CAPUDrwdSRdjOa1tS%3Dptmvcbs5zn9Mh0y%3DCx6ynaNtKLz0UOtcg%40mail.gmail.com.

Reply via email to