

Follow-up on Microsoft's H.264 choice for IE9 - hackermom
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2010/05/03/follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

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WilliamLP
Here's something the average developer may not realize: Theora just looks
starkly bad compared to H.264 at web bitrates. I didn't use to think this,
when all I had seen was some comparison articles with objective measures and
still images but then I actually tried encoding them myself and playing them
simultaneously.

For those genuinely curious for discovery (rather than making rhetoric) try
this html in Chrome or a browser that supports both H.264 and Theora. It's an
example where someone has encoded a video in both formats at the same bitrate.
(I'm not going to link or host it because I don't want to kill the site the
video is hosted on.)

    
    
        <html><head></head><body>
            <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/ogg" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD1_1.ogv"></video>
            <video controls="" autoplay="" type="video/mp4" src="http://www.doceo.com/SD.mp4"></video>
        </body>
    

So try that, and then after watching that try to tell me that the difference
in visual quality is slight. After doing this myself (those videos are not
mine but my results were similar) I can only conclude that supporters of
Theora as a _pragmatic_ choice (as opposed to an idealistic or emotional one)
for delivering professional video content have never done such a test.

~~~
aw3c2
What version of Theora did you use? What encoder? What did you use for the
H264 one. Can you please provide the source video file?

There are <http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/youtube/> and
<http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html> , did you see
them?

edit: Above is evil. Very evil. Or stupid. I encoded the audio from the MP4 to
Vorbis to a size of ~800 Kilobytes and it sounds good. Also the Theora video
is so bad and damaged, it does not remotely look like a normal encode. I would
like to know what went wrong there. Anyways, disgard parent post and the links
inside. It's nothing but FUD in my eyes (and ears).

edit2: I also get far better visuals than in the linked Theora by even
transcoding linked H264 with "-K 170 -V 465" in ffmpeg2theora...

~~~
hackermom
The tests performed on Xiph.org (and all other locations bringing up the same
topic) are, in plain words, downright shitty. They are not using any advanced
or even intermediate features for the H.264 encoder in question, and I believe
they are not even using x264 (which happens to be the best H.264 encoder
available), but instead one of the other "underperformers" available, and
indirectly (or perhaps even deliberately) spreading the misnomer that video
always looks the same at N kbps bitrate, while the truth is that the result
can be higly, _highly_ different depending on the feature set used in the
video stream, as well as the feature set used to analyze frame by frame.

In a test like this, it's anything but fair to use the first, simplest h.264
encoder at hand, with the weakest settings possible, and then claim that "this
is what h.264 looks like", when the most substantial component in video
quality is not the data format itself, but the frame analyzer software and the
stream programmer (read: the encoder itself). I've dealt in video ripping and
encoding since the late 90s, having experience in pretty much every mpeg-1,
mpeg-2, mpeg-4 asp and mpeg-4/avc encoder available, and Theora JUST DOES NOT
COME CLOSE to what x264 can create for the h.264 format. In fact, it _barely_
beats what Xvid can produce for the older mpeg-4 asp format.

So far I have not come across a single, proper, _honorable_ comparison of
h.264's capabilites compared to Theora. One of these damned days I hope I
myself will be bothered enough to get my thumbs out of my ass and put the
definite facts out there for people to see.

add.: if anyone wonders, i have ripped and encoded video (and audio) for
illegal distribution in the so-called "audio/video scene" for almost 13 years
now

~~~
aw3c2
The Xiph comparisons were made with x264 when possible. It would have been
silly to use something different than Baseline profile as Theora cannot
compete with H264 on an advanced "HQ" level and no-one ever seriously said so.
We are talking about web videos, something where Baseline is the main target.

~~~
hackermom
Just for the reference: you actually don't need to use _any_ "high profile"
features of h.264 to have x264 outperform Theora. In fact, you don't even have
to max out the baseline profile features.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Just for further reference: you don't need to use any "high profile" features
of H.264 for x264 to outperform most other H.264 implementations (Adobe's,
Apple's etc.) when they are using all the high profile features available to
them.

I find it weird to use a GPL encoder that's had a lot of optimisation work
done on it, to undermine an open format where the encoder hasn't had a lot of
work done on it. If the _format_ is the key rather than the implementation,
then why are so many of them mediocre?

------
ZeroGravitas
" _We are aware that this commitment is set to expire in 2016, but fully
expect to commit to supporting the extension of this license and associated
terms beyond that date."_

They're going to ask a profit-maximizing corporation to not raise prices after
they've got the entire globe locked-in? Sounds like another great plan from
the boys in redmond.

Why not ask them to commit to no fees for 10 or 15 years today? What extra
leverage do they think they'll have after they commit to H.264 alone for 5
years?

~~~
wmf
Every new codec has had lower fees than the previous generation; by 2015 we
should have H.265 which will probably have free streaming as a teaser. Maybe
H.264 will be forced to keep its fees lower than the switching cost to H.265.

------
aarongough
_Developers who want to use the same markup today across different browsers
rely on plug-ins._

I'm honestly not sure what they mean by this, either the writer has not
expressed his thoughts clearly or there is a severe issue here.

Developers who want to use the same markup across different browsers rely on
_standards_. Each browser supports a sub-set of the complete HTML, JS & CSS
standards and the technologies that developers use is, for the most part, the
lowest common denominator of that subset for the browsers they are targeting.

Plugins come into their own when you are trying to do something that falls
outside the capabilities of the lowest common denominator (Silverlight & Flash
being good examples), but they should not be relied upon for the 'bread &
butter' of the web, HTML & CSS.

------
Buzzzz
Why not just make an API and let the community add the codec?

//Anders

~~~
wmf
Because then you get sites that say "to view this free porn, just install our
custom codec", and of course the codec is malware.

------
apphacker
> "Third-party applications that simply make calls to the H.264 code in
> Windows (and which do not incorporate any H.264 code directly) are covered
> by Microsoft’s license of H.264."

Seems like to me one could at least write a Windows only extension for Firefox
that would allow Firefox to easily view H.264 without having to worry about
royalties if they use of the code in Windows.

~~~
kevingadd
Yes, but then Firefox users on Mac OS X or Linux would be out of luck.

~~~
protomyth
I believe Apple has the same deal.

How much would one have to charge each user to release a library for Linux
that covers the H.264 fee?

~~~
wmf
IIRC H.264 decode + AAC decode is less than $2. Linux users still wouldn't pay
it, though. Fluendo charges significantly more, but they also have pretty low
volume.

Also, every ATI or NVIDIA graphics card should already have a licensed decoder
in it.

------
pavs
After watching the BS IE team spread about Chrome, they have lost whatever
respect I had for them for trying to make IE a better browser.

[http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-
trad...](http://geektechnica.com/2010/04/microsoft-continues-its-tradition-of-
misinformation-with-ie8/)

Its just a matter of time before their market share drops down to tens.
Unfortunately they will never completely go away.

~~~
DenisM
The article you linked is weak. The first retort isn't much of a retort
really, over 90% of chrome users don't change their search engine and Google
does see everything you type into what _normal people_ used to consider to be
address bar. You can call it all kinds of fancy names, but midnight visits to
goatfetish.com that used to be private are now google's property.

~~~
maukdaddy
My midnight visits to goatfetish.com aren't private?!

