By the time h.264 patents are an issue again, there will be another codec that trounces everything we're talking about, and it may or may not be open source. Five years is a very very very long time in this field. We may not even be using web browsers as we know them today, or HTML at all by then, and video may be something very different as well. Apple might not be in business, or they might be the new Evil Empire after a merger with Google and Fox for all we know. Sarah Palin might get elected and help usher in some misguided "porn tax" on ALL internet video that funds what's left of infrastructure after all she murders all other sources of public funding. NO. ONE. KNOWS.
For me, I'm sticking with h.264 as my main codec when the image will hold up (for my stuff, sometimes it doesn't, and I have to serve a zipped photo jpeg or just not put it online), and I will provide a theora version for work that doesn't have much motion detail in it. But at this point, for what I do, I'm not impressed with the performance of full res video at 24p/30p in either HTML5 OR Flash contexts. The players for both are universally ugly, distracting from the image, and unintuitive, though youtube's redesigned players are at least a step in the right direction (the HTML5 one looks almost inoffensive. now if only it would play without crashing safari. but I know, beta, blah blah blah). Let's make our art (or entertainment or whatever) and use what's available at the time in the best way we can. There isn't, and there never will be, a permanent, universal, trouble-free solution. And given how far we have to go, there shouldn't be at this point. I'm going to make art and try to keep a nice 95/5 balance favoring that over obsessing about technology that is at best ephemeral and doomed to be replaced/reframed/etc. before anyone can really do much about it. Not saying the 5% doesn't matter: it does. But without the 95, it doesn't. Two crabby cents, Brook On Sun, May 2, 2010 at 12:23 PM, elbowsofdeath <st...@dvmachine.com> wrote: > > > --- In videoblogging@yahoogroups.com <videoblogging%40yahoogroups.com>, > Rupert Howe <rup...@...> wrote: > > > > Fair enough, I guess, though it seems a pretty open secret. And > > they've bought it, right? So it's not irrelevant, and the possibility > > should deserve some recognition in a full honest discussion? > > Yeah but I certainly wouldnt look to Jobs to provide a fully rounded & > totally honest discussion about all these things, and as the head of a major > corp I dont think he has the luxury of speculating as to what Google will do > as much as we do. > > > > > As for Quicktime,if we care about open standards then thank god > > > Quicktime multimedia development hasnt gone anywhere, > > > > > Really? Ignore the possibilities it presented? Just for the sake of > > open standards? > > > > > or we'd still be trapped in the 2004 battle between Apple & > > > Microsoft for codec/plugin dominance. > > > > > Are we not still trapped in a newer version of the old battles? Only > > with Apple and MS aligned for h.264 use only and Mozilla for theora > > only - with Google, Chrome & YT somewhere in between? > > Its not quite as bad as the old battle. For a start the present battle has > practical workarounds which will do, at least until such a time as the H.264 > patent pool people decide to try to extract money from people who can > currently use h.264 for free. > > Flash was a practical workaround for the old battle, it wasnt perfect but > it overcame the absolute nightmare where we used to have to tell viewers to > install quicktime or whatever. So too flash provides a partial fix for > browsers that arent going to be supporting h.264 natively, albeit at the > expense of full HTML5 takeup. > > > > I really look forward to HTML5 being widely usable, when browser > > compatibility and codec tolerance allows us to make video pages that > > more than 50% of web users can see, but it would still be nice to be > > able to easily make portable interactive networked video files that > > aren't dependent on the HTML page they're sitting in. > > > > Sure, I would love to have such a thing, cant see it happening though. For > such a multimedia file to be fully portable it needs to work with a very > wide range of devices, and be authored with a wide range of tools. Modern > web-based standards stuff is the only thing on my radar that fits that bill, > and Im just very happy that we even have one option. > > > > > So clearly I disagree that Apple are the biggest offender when it > > > comes to 'dumb video blackbox' stuff. > > > > > Why "so"? Glad Adobe are building tools for the inevitable HTML5 > > transition, but surely Apple are the ones who had QT technology which > > made video not dumb, and then ignored, starved & killed it? I wonder > > whether that makes them worse than people who never had that view of > > video in the first place? > > The quicktime stuff wasnt very good, there were very few tools that made > use of it, and there were numerous commercial hurdles that would likely have > prevented it from appearing on mobile devices from the likes of Microsoft. > > I will sing Apples praises because they didnt doggedly stick to .mov as the > container format of choice, they were sensible with webkit and with numerous > other advances in HTML & CSS which they gave to the web standards people > instead of just throwing in their proprietary cooking pot. They arent > perfect, and some of the HTML5 useage scenarios they are trying to promote > right now, such as iADs or album extras do not seem of much use to us, but I > still believe that we will gain from the by-products of this down the road. > > Flash was in many ways more capable of interesting multimedia stuff than > Quicktime, but there were obviously some severe barriers to getting people > to use this stuff, such as the cost of the tools. Adobe are actually opening > up various parts of flash more than ever before, its open in some ways but > in others its still far too much under the control of one corp, and > obviously Apples 'no flash' stance on their trendy devices isnt helping, but > then again neither are Microsoft with silverlight. > > I would be much happier if we had seen more experimentation and innovation > on the multimedia front, along with more discussions about it on this list > than all the tedious dumb-video format discussions Ive been obsessed with in > the last 6 years, but its not only technology & commercial barriers that > have prevented this, Frankly, most of us havent actually got very far at > even imagining what this amazing multimedia and non-dumb video could > actually mean. Its all a bit abstract with very few real examples of what we > actually mean or what else video could be. The web in general is the closest > thing we have to widespread multimedia, and even then we dont have all that > many ideas of what to do with it. > > > > > > As for FUD, lets be honest, there is plenty of FUD about H.264 too. > > > There are legit issues for the future but its pretty telling that > > > people who are against H.264 took little comfort when the H.264 > > > patent-pool managers pushed back any woe for years. > > > > > I agree - I think the discussion has revolved a lot around Jobs's > > fudging of h.264 as 'open', and the difference he makes between that > > and Theora in his short response to Hugo? > > Dont get me wrong, I would be a lot happier if there was a practical video > format that was totally free and open in every sense of the word. I would be > happier if humanity had a much saner approach to intellectual property. Jobs > has his own motivations for his stance that probably go beyond his stated > motivations, but unfortunately his points about patents and theora cannot be > dismissed as a result. H.264 is open in some ways and whilst there is some > uncertainty regarding future charging, we generally know what the downsides > of H.264 are, unlike Theora and possibly even VP8 because whilst those are > open in some broader senses, they may fall foul of future patent battles. > There is enough at stake now, and enough money sloshing around the world of > online video that all sorts of interests may come out of the woodwork, and > crush some of our hopes in the process. > > Cheers > > Steve > > > Rupert > > http://twittervlog.tv > > > > > -- _______________________________________________________ Brook Hinton film/video/audio art www.brookhinton.com studio vlog/blog: www.brookhinton.com/temporalab [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! 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