Hello Jerason,
From a technical point-of-view, you make a very good argument.
However, I think it is inappropriate for the HTML spec to (directly or indirectly) mandate people pay to implement it. As you point out, H.263 is encumbered by patents and has licensing costs associates with it. Costs that me, you, tool creators, and users will have to pay, either directly or in-directly This just makes things more expensive for everyone since we are essentially being "taxed". And it's ridiculous to just accept this tax when there's no reason we have to. See ya -- Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc. <http://ChangeLog.ca/> All the Vlogging News on One Page http://vlograzor.com/ On 6/26/07, Jerason Banes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I believe an aim of whatwg is a viable implementable standard that > reflects the realities of the web while encouraging innovation. MPEG4 > is part of the web (a growing part too). > If I may, I'd like to echo Timeless's point here. I've been watching this thread with great interest and believe I understand both sides of the issue. Theora is appealing because it provides a Free as in no-cost to implement and Free as in no-encumbrances solution. However, it also provides a solution that nobody uses today. Perhaps even worse, there doesn't seem to be a lot of interest in adopting Theora in the future. And can you blame web users? Theora provides a solution that's high bandwidth and low quality. A very unappealing prospect for the bandwidth-constrained environment of the web.Thus more competitive solutions like MPEG4, WMV, RealPlayer, and Quicktime have been dominating the web. The most popular form of video streaming at the moment is actually the H.263 codec through Flash; a non-free codec which is running on a platform that can only roughly be considered a "standard". If and when the Dirac codec is completed, there will be a viable alternative to the non-free video codec problem that might justify the risk/reward equation for support. Until then, however, we're going to need to look at supporting the existing infrastructure. That infrastructure is based on the following options: VP6 Windows Media Video MPEG4 RealVideo 30/40 H.263 Quicktime SorensonOut of those solutions, VP6, WMV, Sorenson, and RealVideo can immediately be discarded for their lack of standardization. That leaves H.263 and MPEG4 as the only viable options. H.263 is not a bad choice, IMHO. It's well supported by nearly every major video player, has a variety of library implementations available, is in widespread usage, and has a good tradeoff between bandwidth and quality. It is also a standard under the ITU-T. But what about MPEG4? Specifying MPEG4 has a lot of appeal for both its excellent encoding performance and its single point to obtain licensing and indemnity from. Furthermore, MPEG4 has its own container format and low-bandwidth audio encoding scheme. (AAC is a sight better than having to dictate ADPMC sound.) MPEG4 is also widely supported by media players, though not quite as well as H.263. The MPEG Group also offers low-cost (i.e. "free") licensing to anyone shipping less than 50,000 units a year, which means that it would be feasible for upstart browsers to support the standard. That being said, I think I prefer the H.263 standard as a video baseline for a few reasons: It presents several licensing options. The implementer can chose to get indemnity via an available license like MPEG4-Simple (which will play H.263), choose to try and deal with individual patent holders, or simply attempt to ignore the issue. (The last case is particularly appealing in countries that don't recognize the patents related to streaming video technologies.) It's amazingly well supported both in hardware and software. Future mobile devices should have no trouble adding support for H.263. It's already the most popular codec on the web today. While Real has "retired" their H.263-based codecs, it still lives on in Adobe FLV files. Java decoders are available for creating "shunts" for browsers that don't currently support the "<video>" tag. That leaves me with two (point 5) questions: Would this place too much of a burden on browsers like Mozilla and Opera? Could plugins to local OS codecs or media players slide around the licensing issues? Is there a good choice for container format that wouldn't additionally burden the implementors? Thanks, Jerason
