
Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome - spaetzel
http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html
======
bonaldi
Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already
complicated video workflows

What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash.

Lose all round, then.

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
Well i don't know. What i see :

Adobe is gonna support webm. So having only one format is gonna be possible.

Browsers who supported or were gonna support H264 :

\- Safari (5% market share) \- IE9 (0% market share right now, probably around
15% in 3 years) \- Chrome (around 13 %)

Browsers who supports Webm :

\- Firefox (30% market share) \- Chrome \- IE9 will probably support it via
codecs which is better than nothing

The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264.
But as a long term move i can only approve what google is doing.

Also :

> People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows

Most people video workflow is youtube/vimeo/dailymotion video workflow. All of
which seems ready to support webm.

~~~
dev_jim
_> The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264_

You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and
probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders.

And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0%
market share right now as you said for IE9).

~~~
patrickaljord
> There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders.

The very article states that there are hardware WebM decoders, not only that
but Google is licensing the technology for free as in zero dollars:

[http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-
vp8...](http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8-video-
hardware.html)

~~~
rabidsnail
Licensing isn't the (only) issue for asics. Hardware decoders are only
reasonably priced if they're being produced at scale. If I'm a device
manufacturer and I have a choice between getting h.264 for free because it's
on the SoC I'm using and paying multiple dollars (!) for a WebM decoder, not
to mention wasting valuable board space and paying for it to be soldered on,
which do you think I'll choose?

~~~
vetinari
1) You aren't going to get H.264 decoder for free. There will be always at
least license fees to MPEG-LA. 2) Current hardware video decoders are DSPs.
You are not going to "waste valuable board space". It is a program in ROM, it
is easy to change H.264 to VP8, you will probably even save some space.

~~~
rabidsnail
1) Those license fees approach zero as you produce more units.

2) If I'm not mistaken they're not general purpose computers. If they were
what would be the point? Why not use a math coprocessor?

~~~
kelnos
Most hardware video decoders are special-purpose DSPs that the manufacturers
write firmware/microcode for to decode particular formats. The instruction
sets of the DSPs are well suited to operations normally performed when
decoding (or encoding) video.

------
bphogan
The choice has been made by many places to simply use h264 video via the HTML5
tag to hit the iPhone/iPad and then fallback to a Flash video player which can
easily play the h264 source video. Content producers would rather encode
videos once, which is why they moved to FLV in the first place. There's no
incentive to use anything else here.

This hurts users. I am all for standards, but not for hurting users. And like
it or not, content producers are using H264 because the devices people like to
use can play that video back.

~~~
StavrosK
Why doesn't Apple just include WebM support? It's an open codec...

~~~
redthrowaway
Since when has Apple supported open standards simply because it makes sense to
do so? Apple almost invariably chooses closed over open.

~~~
rradu
Apple is fully behind HTML5 - <http://www.apple.com/html5/>

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Yet the number one reason there isn't a codec specified in HTML5 is because
Apple blocked it.

~~~
ubernostrum
Bullshit.

Multiple companies, including Apple (and Nokia, which ain't exactly a minor
player in the mobile market) objected to HTML5 mandating support for a
particular codec, largely on the grounds that we don't really know the patent
situations of any of the allegedly-unencumbered codecs.

Meanwhile, multiple _people_ objected on the grounds that mandating a current
(or, really, several-years-old now since that's what it is) codec in a spec
that's not expected to go final for at least a few more years, and which has
an expected useful life of around a decade, is just frankly stupid. It'd be
like having a spec used today mandate XBM as the standard image format because
that was the least-proprietary thing available 15 years ago when early
browsers were being written.

~~~
gloob
_Multiple companies, including Apple (and Nokia, which ain't exactly a minor
player in the mobile market) objected to HTML5 mandating support for a
particular codec, largely on the grounds that we don't really know the patent
situations of any of the allegedly-unencumbered codecs._

Now it's my turn to call bullshit. "We don't really know the patent situations
of $x" could be used as an argument against ANY piece of software or standard
$x. Unless there is real evidence for such concerns, it's FUD.

~~~
ubernostrum
There ain't no such thing as a free codec. At least, not as long as software
patents exist.

Does Google want a Free, interoperable web? Then they should take the money
they'd spend re-encoding all of YouTube into VP8 and instead spend it on
lobbying to eliminate software patents. Then they could just use whatever's
the best option from a technical perspective and we could stop having codec
shitstorms every six months.

~~~
mbrubeck
_"There ain't no such thing as a free codec."_

This is what groups like the MPEG-LA want us to think, but I'm not so sure.
The Ogg Vorbis codec used for WebM audio has been in use for a decade, and has
shipped in dozens of software and hardware products, some from large companies
with big pockets. MPEG-LA made the same vague threats about patent pools
against Vorbis, but they never followed through.

Xiph.org conducted a patent search early in the Vorbis process, and believes
Vorbis does not infringe on any patents. Google has done their homework on VP8
as well. If they did it right, then VP8 is no more vulnerable to unknown
patent threats than any random piece of software. (Sadly, any random piece of
software _is_ somewhat vulnerable.)

For that matter, there's no guarantee that H.264 is invulnerable from patent
trolls who aren't members of the licensing pool. MPEG-LA doesn't indemnify
licensees against third-party patents.

~~~
ubernostrum
_Sadly, any random piece of software is somewhat vulnerable._

Any random piece of software _is_ vulnerable.

Look, if Google's serious about the threat software patents pose to openness,
there's an obvious thing they should be doing, and it isn't "switch the video
codec we use in our web browser". Until I see them doing some serious (i.e.,
big-money) lobbying to abolish software patents, I'm going to assume the whole
openness thing is just marketing bullshit designed to play into geeks'
stereotypes of them and Apple.

------
spoondan
I like Gruber, but he's almost insufferable on issues like these. These
questions are "simple" in the least flattering sense. Let's dispatch them:

 _If H.264 support is being removed to “enable open innovation”, will Flash
Player support be dropped as well? If not, why?_

The premise is that openness is all or nothing. But Google can support Flash
and work towards openness, just as Apple can prefer open web standards in lieu
of Flash while supporting proprietary systems. There's no hypocrisy or
conflict.

 _Android currently supports H.264. Will this support be removed from
Android?_

Maybe in the future. WebM support is new in Android, hardware decoders are
really just coming to market, and there are enough existing and in-production
phones that rely on H.264. The constraints placed on Google by the handful of
Chrome users leveraging H.264 HTML5 video is completely unlike the realities
of dealing in the handset market.

 _YouTube uses H.264 to encode video. Presumably, YouTube will be re-encoding
its entire library using WebM. When this happens, will YouTube’s support for
H.264 be dropped, to “enable open innovation”?_

YouTube continues to support other proprietary formats. As with Sorenson,
they're not going to drop H.264 until they don't care about the market share
of H.264-only devices. In the meantime, they will try to drive people towards
WebM in support of "open innovation". This is not inconsistent or even new.

 _Do you expect companies like Netflix, Amazon, Vimeo, Major League Baseball,
and anyone else who currently streams H.264 to dual-encode all of their video
using WebM?_

It should be obvious that Google's hope is anyone using HTML5 video will
eventually move to WebM exclusively.

 _If not, how will Chrome users watch this content other than by resorting to
Flash Player’s support for H.264 playback?_

Content producers won't care if Chrome users end up in Flash, since the
content's still available and very few non-mobile users are getting HTML5
video anyway. Flash is still the norm outside of mobile devices.

 _Who is happy about this?_

Were people ecstatic that Chrome supported H.264? Most people simply don't
care about this kind of stuff and for good reason.

~~~
ubernostrum
_But Google can support Flash and work towards openness_

Here's the thing, though. Mozilla and Google, over the past year, have
basically used the video-codecs thing as a publicity stunt. LOOK AT ME I'M SO
PURE AND OPEN AND NOT LIKE THOSE VICIOUS CLOSED EVIL APPLE NAZIS (except
please please please don't ask us about all that proprietary stuff we still
do, _please_ ). It's hard not to see this as hypocritical.

So it's perfectly reasonable to, for example, call Google out on that. If
they're really serious about openness, but need to make some compromises to
deal with legacy proprietary stuff, why was _this_ the specific compromise?
Why not, say, keep H264 support in the <video> element while encouraging
people to re-encode, and cut Flash? That at least gets you progress toward an
open standard -- HTML5 -- if not a completely ideologically pure platform.

And especially given the fact that H264 has already literally won -- in the
mobile market, in the broadcast market, in the home-entertainment market --
while Flash players which spool out H264-encoded video are essentially
interchangeable with HTML5 <video> elements which spool out H264-encoded
video, it's hard to see this as a genuine move in support of "openness".

 _It should be obvious that Google's hope is anyone using HTML5 video will
eventually move to WebM exclusively._

This is the real point, I think. Google, I'm pretty sure, doesn't actually
give a shit about openness; they care about getting people to use platforms
they can control. See the requirements you have to meet to get the _actual_
Android platform (you know, the one with the useful Google apps). See their
ongoing spats with sites like Facebook, which are rooted more in Google not
getting access to/control over data than any noble attempt to serve privacy.
And see WebM, the codec Google owns, and which they're going to ram down
everyone's throat via every channel they can use.

~~~
stanleydrew
Pretty sure Google open-sourced vp8 (the video codec in webm), which means
they don't own it or exclusively control it. I don't know how much more open
you can get.

~~~
sbierwagen
VP8 is open source, but Google isn't accepting patches, and it resembles H.264
in a _lot_ of ways... and H.264 is patented. Google hasn't been sued over it
yet, but if they are, it probably wouldn't end well for them.

<http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377>

~~~
stanleydrew
It looks to me like Google plan to accept patches:
[http://www.webmproject.org/code/contribute/submitting-
patche...](http://www.webmproject.org/code/contribute/submitting-patches/).
But maybe I'm mistaken. Are you saying they aren't accepting patches or just
that they haven't yet?

------
cdeutsch
As a person who encodes video for the web for a living I can tell you we won't
be switching to WebM because of iOS and other hardware devices that have
hardware based decoding.

H.264 is the closest thing to a ubiquitous codec there is and assuming Chrome
correctly updates the "canPlayType" javascript function I won't even have to
update our players to provide Chrome users with the crappy Flash player.

As a Chrome user, I'll be switching to Safari so I can continue to get the
working HTML5 player.

We'll consider switching once Apple adds support for WebM and the millions of
old iOS devices are obsolete. In other words it's H.264 for us for the next 3
years.

~~~
yuhong
Why can't you do two formats?

~~~
cdeutsch
Cost/benefit. We outsource encoding to Zencoder which costs $.02 to $.05 per
minute. Then there is also the price of disk space and the amount of time it
takes for the video(s) to be available. Maybe one day the cost/benefit will
change.

------
app
A big step backwards for HTML5 video adoption and premature IMO. Other than
Android there isn't an existing consumer device out there that plays WebM that
I know of. Certainly there is no hardware decoding. Now content creators who
host their own video will have to double storage costs or be relegated to
Flash and the smallest of the big browsers.

~~~
eli
Wouldn't you already need to encode everything twice due to Firefox's lack of
H.264 support?

~~~
app
For full compatibility, yes, but realistically there was no reason to use to
WebM. With h.264 you cover the following:

1) All browsers with Flash players 2) Any "web connected" set top device/TV 3)
About 50% of HTML5 video compatible browsers

With this move by Google #3 falls to 25% or less. And they're looking to add
WebM support to #2. At some point consumer demands you support both because
their shiny new Macbook Air/Chrome OS tablet/TV doesn't play video. Good move
by Google to justify their $125M investment in On2, but end users will end up
being inconvenienced as the splintering continues.

This is just going to feel like a regression to most end users who really
don't give a crap about who holds what patents.

~~~
eli
Still not quite sure I see the big deal.

Firefox has something like twice the browser share of Chrome. If you were OK
sticking Firefox users with Flash video, I don't see how that's hugely
different from sticking Firefox AND Chrome users with Flash video.

If you want to support all modern browsers, you used to have to do two
encodings. After this announcement, you will still have to do two encodings.

~~~
__david__
Given that flash is reportedly going to support WebM, you may not have to do 2
encodings in the near future.

~~~
app
Don't forget hardware.

------
kellysutton
Chiming in as the guy who developed the blip.tv HTML5 player: This sucks, even
though we were planning on supporting it in the future anyway.

~~~
aw3c2
Why that? You just have to add one or two lines of code to your player to
access the .webm(s).

------
buster
People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video
codec here. I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and
others to support open and patent unencumbered video formats.

Can someone just look at the table at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video> and really tell me that this mess
isn't the fault of MS and Apple in the first place? Ogg is ready to play a big
role and WebM is catching up. The only blocking factor here is Internet
Explorer and Safari, not Chrome.

~~~
tzs
> People should really blame MS and Apple for only supporting their own video
> codec here.

H.264 is not Apple's codec, nor is it Microsoft's. Both of them have to
license it, just like any random company off the street would. Apple does own
one or two of the several hundred patents involved, so might get a very slight
discount on their license.

> I am fully behind the decision of Mozilla, Opera, Google and others to
> support open and patent unencumbered video formats.

WebM is probably patent encumbered. We just don't know who owns the patents
yet.

~~~
minalecs
edit [removed no citation available]

~~~
webXL
Got a source for that?

Nada @
[http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/bo...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/board.asp?privcapId=4458054)

~~~
webXL
So, buster, using your logic, if Pepsi uses an ad agency that Coke doesn't
use, then Pepsi on that ad agency's board?

~~~
buster
According to my logic i can tell if a company is giving the right to license
its product to others, that this company will most likely get money for it.

Do you really think Mircrosoft is like "oh, well. MPEG-LA, we hand over the
rights for our patens to you. Do as you wish with those patents and also
please give the license fees to the other companies. But please don't give us
money!"? ;)

You do know that the MPEG-LAs purpose is to collect the rights to those
patents from those companies (the licensors) and collects money from the
licensees, redistributing it to the licensors. Now Apple and MS are on the
list of licensors. And they don't get money, you say? And never will? sure...
:)

------
jdub
Fantastic. Much as I enjoyed Burn All GIFs back in the day, I don't think Burn
All H.264s sounds nearly as catchy or fun. Glad Google is doing the Right
Thing on this front -- however convenient or entrenched they might be, hairy
patented messes like H.264 have no place on an open web.

~~~
bphogan
I'm just having a hard time understanding why they're ok with bundling the
Flash player with Chrome, but not carrying an h264 decoder.

~~~
bradleyland
Intentional fragmentation?

How's this for a play:

Initially, Google drops H.264 in favor of WebM in Chrome. YouTube begins
serving WebM in an HTML5 wrapper to Chrome clients. Mozilla, in search of open
codecs with wide support implements WebM in Firefox. Other video services
begrudgingly make the leap and start encoding their video in WebM format to
support a growing number of users.

Google extends an olive branch to Adobe in order to get WebM support in Flash,
ensuring that desktop computer users on all platforms will be able to play
back WebM content, hardware support or not.

This gives Google the coverage they need to start turning the screws. While
the events outlined above are unfolding, handset manufacturers see the writing
on the wall and start including WebM hardware support in Android handsets.

Apple, being fully involved with H.264, fights all of the above every step of
the way. The stubborn company that they are, they will not adopt hardware WebM
support in their devices in favor of uniform H.264 support across their
product line. This will hurt battery life during video playback for non-Apple
sourced video on iOS devices and will erode the Apple user base because of
competitive disadvantage.

======

None of the above may be true, but it sure would make for a great "Pirates of
Silicon Valley 2".

~~~
simonsquiff
>Other video services begrudgingly make the leap and start encoding their
video in WebM format to support a growing number of users.

Or they just support those users instead by serving them Flash - which they
have to do anyhow to support IE6/7/8 and Firefox 1/2/3, avoiding the hastle
and cost of more video encoding and storage. And none of the rest then
happens.

~~~
bradleyland
That doesn't preclude the rest of the scenario from playing out. To the
contrary, Flash and WebM support is a critical component. Google needs two
things to apply pressure to Apple with WebM:

* Widespread WebM support in web browsers (Flash is a good vehicle for this)

* WebM exclusivity (or at least preference) on Android handsets

I'm not sure how they'd execute the latter. The handset manufacturers pick the
chipsets and build the drivers, so it's not clear to me how that part plays
out.

Like I said, it's a stretch, but given that Google seems to _want_ to go head-
to-head with Apple, it's plausible, IMO.

------
guywithabike
I'm looking forward to Google remaining consistent with their words and
removing Flash from Chrome in the near future.

You know, for the good of the users.

~~~
mbrubeck
Speaking as someone who works for a browser vendor: There's a big difference
between dropping support for entrenched technologies, and choosing which
emerging technologies to support.

Certain formats and practices are already part of the web, for better or
worse, and it's not fully within the browser vendors' power to change that. If
any browser dropped Flash support, it would break thousands of popular web
sites, and users would simply switch browsers.

What _is_ within our power is to decide which emerging standards to support.
Dropping H.264 in <video> at this point won't cause users to flee the browser.
And it does give us some chance of avoiding _another_ patent-encumbered format
becoming a de-facto standard on the web.

We don't control existing sites, but we _do_ control our own actions which
influence new sites. We can't alter the past, but we _can_ change the future.

~~~
pohl
While H.264 may not be entrenched, it certainly is established and far, far
from being emerging.

~~~
mbrubeck
That's true, which is why I referred specifically to H.264 in the <video>
element (which is the only case affected by this change). There are mature
implementations, but as a part of the web platform it is still in very early
stages.

While H.264 <video> is already deployed widely thanks to iOS, it's generally
with a fallback for the majority of users whose browsers don't support it.
Removing it from Chrome will not break the web for users, in the way it would
if they removed Flash or GIF or JavaScript semicolon insertion, or any other
of the many web technologies we'd like to retroactively wish away.

------
daleharvey
I dont think the open web is up for compromise, I was happy to see mozilla
take a stand on h264, glad to see google follow suit.

Sure this hurts users in the short term, but a single standard format has not
been settled on, this could be much more disruptive if google had of left it
in

------
davidedicillo
I'm kinda tired of this Google openness, especially when it so congenially
damage their competitors. It would have been different if they never
implemented it in first place, but this now it just looks like a move to
target Apple.

~~~
roadnottaken
Well, it's better than Apple's strategy of using closed-ness to damage their
competitors. All companies make strategic decisions. But if you're going to
use ideology strategically, it might as well be a good ideology.

Note: I'm a _huge_ Apple fan and I use lots of their products with alacrity.

------
jerhinesmith
One of the biggest criticisms against Microsoft over the years is that they
suffer from Not-Invented-Here syndrome.

Is it just me, or does Google seem to be increasingly heading down this path?
Granted, Google tends to go down the open-source route, where Microsoft has
tended not to, but I'm not sure that excuse holds up well over the long-term.

Either way, I'm genuinely curious if anyone else feels this.

~~~
junkbit
Google dropped their own O3D plugin to adopt the open standard WebGL. They
also sunsetted Google Gears to push HTML5 offline storage (some say
prematurely)

They also based their browser around Webkit which is promoted by their main
rival Apple (although based on the original KHTML) and many Google engineers
are bullish about the Apple endorsed LLVM for the Portable Native Client code.

~~~
ot
Also Unladen Swallow, which was developed inside Google, is based on LLVM and
they have sent a lot of useful patches upstream.

------
sbollepalli
Go easy on me, this is my first comment on HN.

I see couple of other things, apart from free and royalty side of arguments.
My story goes like this:

when Apple released iOS device in 2007, H264 was the better choice for mobiles
with hardware decoders. Google converted Youtube videos to H264 to support iOS
devices. Rest of the world followed. Both Apple and Google wins and they are
happy to promote H264 for the wider adoption.

Then after three years, a different competitive landscape, with Android
popularity even without H264 hardware decoders advantage, at the same time
Apple support to H264 but not to flash, gives big strategic advantage to
Goolge to move world away from H264 to its own alternative (openness helps the
cause). Win to Google, Lose to Apple.

Its not important anymore which desktop browser support what. We can work with
multiple browsers on our desktops/laptops. Its all about to whose advantage it
plays out in mobile devices space.

That is why we will see lot of FUD in future in this space while Google and
Apple fight for their interests in name of openness.

------
dev_jim
What the hell? It's sad that Google's corporate strategy is starting to
override what's in the best interests of it's users. Web video is finally,
after so many years, actually encoded in H.264. Who besides YouTube uses WebM
or Ogg? I'll be going back to Safari if this happens.

~~~
buro9
An open solution isn't the best interest of the users?

Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people go
create HTML5 stuff which is open.

Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily
inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the
companies and the users.

~~~
dev_jim
> _An open solution isn't the best interest of the users?_

An ubiquitous solution is in the best interests of users. My parents could
care less about whether the video is encoded in H.264 or Ogg. They just want
it to work on their iPad.

> _Surely this is just like Apple not supporting Flash in the hope that people
> go create HTML5 stuff which is open._

It's not the same at all. Google, through YouTube and Chrome, helped make
H.264 the defacto standard it is. Now they are trying to pull the rug out from
under it. Apple never had support for Flash. Not to mention that Flash is a
POS and doesn't work well on mobile devices anyways.

> Both companies have taken strategic and gutsy moves that will temporarily
> inconvenience users in the hope that long-term it pays of to both the
> companies and the users.

Long-term this isn't a game that Google wins. They've inconvenienced their
users and the web will go on with H.264.

~~~
gloob
<rant> "de facto standard" is a meaningless, self-contradictory phrase that
really boils down to saying "But this is the way we've always done it!"

Standards are not de facto. Standards are things created by standards bodies.
The word has an actual meaning. Trying to twist it to mean "the way we do
stuff now" (as your argument for h.264 does) or "the way I want to do stuff"
(as many arguments for HTML5 (which doesn't have a standard yet) do) is
intellectually dishonest. </rant>

~~~
jamesaguilar
"Standard" has more than one meaning. In the phrase "de facto standard" I
think the meaning is more in the direction of "something considered by an
authority or by general consent as a basis of comparison."

Or to put it another way, standards bodies do not, as you seem to be implying,
have a monopoly on the word "standard".

~~~
gloob
Fair enough. If we take the "popular acclamation" theory of standardization,
here's how it breaks down:

h.264: IE, Safari

WebM: Chrome, Firefox 4

Streaming video with Flash: all of the above

In which case the most standardy standard is "h.264 over Flash", with native
h.264 and native WebM tied for second place.

~~~
jamesaguilar
If you look at it from the perspective of the provider, the standard is h.264
files on the server, and various avenues through which you can deliver it.
Saying WebM is tied for second place is vastly overstating its proximity in
popularity space to h.264.

------
mapgrep
I thought Chrome came bundled with Flash Player
<http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/25/google-chrome-flash/>

...which supports H.264 in an MP4 container...

<http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html>

....so I'm not clear on what's actually happening here. Is Chrome going to
just stop handing off MP4/H.264 from video tags to the bundled Flash Player
even though it's there and can play it? Or will it stop bundling Flash Player?
Or bundle a crippled Flash Player? None of the above?

~~~
app
They aren't supporting h.264 in the <video> element anymore, meaning there
won't be anymore HTML5 video players that use h.264. As for Flash, who knows?

------
bretthopper
This makes <video> about as useful as <audio> now.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
On that topic, did they drop mp3 support too? I didn't see any mention of that
either way. It would make some sense.

------
spaetzel
So in the near future to use the <video> tag, you'll need an H.264 file for IE
and Safari, OGG for Firefox and, WebM for Chrome.

~~~
ciupicri
The next version of Firefox will have support for WebM[1].

[1] <http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/features/>

~~~
spaetzel
Good to hear. Now need to get WebM into the average web video production
workflow.

------
dmaz
The message is that Google is serious about making VP8 competitive. It won't
be removing H.264 support from Android and YouTube anytime soon, but this
certainly changes the HTML5 video codec battle.

------
makeramen
The biggest H264 supporter is Apple, and it kind of worked because Apple has
leverage in the iPhone arena. I don't think Google has quite the same leverage
in the browser arena. If this happened at the WebKit level, then maybe. But
not at the Chrome level.

------
OpieCunningham
So H.264 isn't "open web" ... but Flash is?

Google has such an arbitrary definition of open.

~~~
linuxhansl
There is a very clear distinction between an closed standard and a closed
implementation.

H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only
temporarily does not charge for its use. It will never be open. And btw. Apple
is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be charged
for H.264.

Flash is an open standard with only one implementation (unless you count gnash
and swfdec, etc).

I can't wait for Flash to go away too, but this is certainly the lesser evil.

~~~
OpieCunningham
_H.264 is patent encumbered and controlled by an organization that only
temporarily does not charge for its use._

What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically:
nothing. So though it's true that it is, it has essentially caused no loss.

What has been the result of SWF being open? Practically: nothing. Adobe's
closed implementation remains the standard implementation. So though it's true
that SWF is open, it is essentially closed.

 _H.264 ... will never be open._

Patents expire.

 _Apple is on the H.264 consortium and will profit handily once prices will be
charged for H.264._

Not relevant, though I'd point out that Apple has very few patents that
comprise H.264 in comparison to the entirety of the pool. The probability that
they make or will make any significant money is extraordinarily low.

Fundamentally however, my original post that you replied to is specific to
Google's patently arbitrary definition of "open". Google doesn't build an open
implementation of SWF into their browser, they build in Adobe's Flash player.
Even if they did, it goes to my above point re: SWF is effectively Adobe
Flash. Google is not anywhere close to open, no matter how often they repeat
the mantra.

~~~
jarek
> What has been the result of H.264 being patent encumbered? Practically:
> nothing.

Shipping a browser with H.264 support is difficult for newcomers or niche
players. In other industries, this is called anti-competitiveness.

------
necro
I don't see much benefit to support HTML5 in webm or theora. One of the
benefits of html5 over flash was the prospect of better resource handling and
smooth play, but now as systems get faster, and flash better, there is less
and less reason to go down this path. h264 is smooth enough in flash now, and
it's about to get even better in the new flash release.

There are no real hardware/product reasons for websites to support webm right
now.

h264 on the other hand gets the benefit of working with all the iphone and
more recently apple tv. Promised new update this year will even allow HTML5
video to be streamed to apple TV directly from the browser of iphones, ipads,
and i imagine safari. This is one of these technologies that will really
increase the use of h264.

I run the larges cycling site and we handle 100s of niche video uploads per
day so I follow this closely, and as much as I'd like to jump on webm, I'm
going to definitely hold of. Currently we convert videos to 3 formats to try
handle all cases, and having to now multiply that by 2 with another codec is a
lot of extra resources.

2.5 mbit h264 web HD/appletv h264 1 mbit h264 for web SD/iphone 300 kbit
mobile

\- webm makes no sense in the short term. \- you need apple support to make
webm happen faster

Think about all the extra resources, time, effort that you are asking from
companies in the world to support the 2 formats. If you want to be efficient
with society, keep the support of h264 while webm development happens,
transition once all the big players support the new format. Alternatively take
all the money/time/efforts and get apple to transition. If apple does not jump
on the wagon, it's going to be years and years of wasted resources in society.

------
simonsquiff
It's all well and good to focus future effort on alternative technologies that
you have a preference for.

But to remove a feature you currently support that works well...that's a poor
decision that doesn't help your users or the web in general.

------
zppx
I think this is bad for HTML 5 video in the short run, but I do not care about
it anymore, I wished that everyone supported Theora, and then switched to
Dirac in the future, but Apple and Google made me give up of my hopes.

However in the long run I think this will be an example of 'worse is better'
happening, I think WebM will win over H.264. If that is bad or no that's
depend on how do you see Apple and Google, if you believe this post contain a
good message or if you believe Gruber but not both, for me both are just false
in their pretense of openness, which is why I supported Theora in the first
place.

Theora vs. H.264 was the first big fight that I remember in HN were the
majority of comments were just bullshit for me (just like this thread),
although there were really good ones from both sides, I also commented in the
matter, back then I said that codecs would grow in irrelevance, I belive that
H.264, as a patent covered standard, will lose in the future because its
licensing terms are not clear and a license for its use can be pretty
expensive to people trying to win some money from web video, specially those
that have no money initially to spend in royalties (like startups, open source
and non commercial projects), my example back them was a cloudy video editor,
maybe something that is impractical today, but that I do expect becoming at
least practical for simple uses in 2 to 3 years from now.

For this type of user paying for royalties in the beginning just does not make
any sense and is stressful for their financial situation, this if they want to
win money with their project, it's even more complicated for open source
projects, for the case that people want to win some money from their company
or project a good comparison would be the college student that take loans,
trying to make some potential money in the future while spending money that he
does not have in the present.

I think that WebM will have the preference of this public if they are not
aiming Apple products. For me this will happen just because MPEG LA was
incompetent enough and did not knew how to deal with the situation, opening
the standard to small business, not charging users and business that only
stream the using codec, things like that that the consortium never clarified
(they never defined the "broadcast market" from which they plan to charge
royalties from).

More could be said about why I think H.264 will be a thing of the past in the
following years, but them my comment would be too big.

------
mryall
I actually see lack of H.264 support as more of a blow for those desktop
browsers than anything else. With both Firefox and Chrome on the desktop
refusing to support the video codec preferred by most (non-PC) device vendors,
and both mobile browsing and video usage on the web dramatically increasing, I
can't see this having any long-term effect other than marginalizing these
browsers for the majority of users. Users who just want to visit a video site
and have it work equally well on any device they happen to be using.

H.264 is royalty-free for at least the next 5 years, has widespread hardware
encoding and decoding support and its patents will eventually expire. Removal
of this codec from Chrome just doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sure all
those people who have recently switched to Chrome won't find it too hard to
switch away if the "more open" video support starting burning through their
laptop battery three times as fast.

------
teye
Don't like it? Branch Chromium and retain H.264 support.

First customer here.

------
mhd
So are we going to get third party Chrome distributions that backport the
missing H.264 functionality?

~~~
blasdel
To date Chromium has always supported whatever codecs its bundled copy of
libavcodec was compiled with.

Hopefully they do not purposefully constrain the codec support, like Microsoft
did. IE9 uses the system's DirectShow plugins, but whitelists the specific
codecs because they don't want to dynamically load shitty DivX binaries into
the browser and expose them to the DOM. It sucks but it was the right decision
considering the circumstances.

------
mbreese
And exactly who does this end up helping? I'm all for open formats, but I'm
more for compatibility.

------
timc3
Must be part of the long game by Google. Stop supporting h.264 and push their
own format in their browser, which also means ChromeOS and GoogleTV.

The format will need hardware because it is so difficult to decode with
software.

Google gets hardware support on their laptops and mobile devices, changes
YouTube to be WebM only, forcing Apple/Windows/Nokia/SonyEricsson to need
hardware to decode.

Consumer loses out (the video quality of this, and the image quality of their
image format is not exactly what should be expected to be released in a new
format for 2011).

~~~
TechNewb
Or people just stop using Youtube, and use Blip, Dailymotion, and any other
'modern' forward thinking video services instead.

------
CountSessine
I'm sort of happy that Google is doing this. I'm not always happy with google
and what they do - not being evil sure as hell doesn't make you a good guy -
but if there's another bunch of guys who aren't on the 'good' side, it's MPEG.
I really would like to see the HTML <video> tag evolve in a way that doesn't
require an MPEG technology.

HOWEVER, I'd like to raise a couple of points.

One is that the x264 devs, easily some of the most codec-knowledgeable people
in the world, have raised questions about VP8's patent exposure. It's fair to
say that On2 didn't have to worry about getting sued over implementation
details of VP8 as long as its design was hidden and proprietary, but I'm quite
confident that google is going to get shaken down over webm, a lot like
Microsoft did with VC1. Unlike Microsoft and VC1, Google will settle and
license the patents in question, with indemnification for webm users, because
webm is more important to them than VC1 was to MS. But it's going to cost
them.

Second, anyone serving video now has a nice low-resistance path that means
encoding exclusively in h264 - served up via the html5 <video> tag for iPhone
and newer browsers, and served up inside flv with a flash plugin for older
browsers. H264 isn't going to go away anytime soon, so google wants everyone
to start encoding 2x now - with h264 and VP8. Or I guess you can just start
using YouTube...?

------
emehrkay
I'm the go-to guy in my office for html5 video(audio) and this just made my
job that much harder. Shit, today I just found out that our videos arent
playing on android devices now this

------
ot
Reminds me of "embrace, extend, extinguish".

BTW, will it be possible to enable it back with an extension? I don't really
want to stop using Chrome because of this.

~~~
ubernostrum
Well, when Mozilla drew their ideological line in the sand and said they'd
refuse to allow Firefox to use OS codecs, Microsoft responded by releasing a
Firefox extension that delegates H264 playback from HTML5 video elements to
Windows Media Player.

Perhaps they'll end up doing the same for Chrome?

~~~
ot
That would fix Windows, but for my personal use I care more about Mac and
Linux

~~~
Locke1689
How about this: I think vp8 is technically a piece of shit but I really like
chrome, so if HTML5 video becomes common enough that I need it I will do it
myself for OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD.

------
jwr
A very bad decision.

First, H.264 != VP8/WebM. WebM is roughly equivalent to H.264 Baseline Profile
and can't get the quality/compression of even H.264 Main Profile. I won't even
mention H.264 High Profile, which is crucial for HD content.

Second, there is no hardware support for decoding VP8 right now, while there
is for H.264. Which means that if publishers indeed start dropping H.264
(which I hope won't happen), we'll get stuck for years with mobile devices
that get poor battery life. Instead, we'll get promises of Great Things "just
around the corner, in a couple of months". That's similar to the perpetual
cycle of great, smoothly working Android devices which always exist in the
future tense.

Third, no one knows if VP8/WebM is immune from patents. It most likely isn't,
it's just that nobody has laid claims yet. Most modern video processing
techniques are patented in some way and sticking fingers in your ears won't
make those patents magically go away.

~~~
pornel
Re: Third, nobody knows if anything is immune from unknown-by-definition
patents, and MPEG-LA does not protect against them either:

> _Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?_

> A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential
> patent.

<http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/FAQ.aspx>

However, as far as known patents go, VP8 is clean. I'm pretty sure Google put
incredible effort in analysing the risk before making themselves troll target.

The codec is very close to violating many patents, but with "strange
omissions" (<http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377>) that make it non-
infringing. IANAL, but that sounds like great strategy — there are unlikely to
be two different 99% overlapping patents (that would survive re-examination
and apply to VP8 only), and you can be sure you're not infringing the known
one.

If you look at list of supporters:

<http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/>

That's patent troll dream. Everyone to sue, from small fish to test claims on
to biggest pockets to drain. And yet, no trolls appeared.

------
natmaster
Looks like Mozilla wins this one.

~~~
webXL
I agree now after seeing this: <http://arewefastyet.com/>

------
gaiusparx
Sad move, the web take years to more or less standardize on H264. Ain't WebM
an inferior alternative at the moment? The reason cited "our resources
directed towards completely open codec technologies.", so we can expect Flash
to be removed as well? I can see next up in the horizon: YouTube to remove
H264 support.

------
willheim
This is not an issue. We currently face the same inefficiency of having to
encode videos in multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your
vid on other platforms? Pretty open. What's the issue? Just some inefficiency.
It means that all videos have to be encoded in a few formats in the backend
and a browser detector to tell our server which video to play. As long as the
end user isn't harmed I don't see the big deal with Google supporting Google's
own format (that they have opened up with a protected royalty-free format).

As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that
require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at you).

~~~
dev_jim
> _As it is right now there are probably several elements toyour site that
> require different rendering depending on the browser (IE6 I'm glaring at
> you)._

There's a big difference between an additional CSS stylesheet and encoding and
storing every single video on your site twice.

> _We currently face the same inefficiency of having to encode videos in
> multiple codecs today. Want your vid on iOS? H.264. Want your vid on other
> platforms?_

Most companies do not encode their videos with multiple codecs. They encode
with H.264 and the video will work with an HTML5 player in IE9/Chrome/Safari
on the desktop and Safari/Android on mobile. Fallback to Flash is available
for older browsers and Firefox. Companies will continue to use this scheme, it
just means that Chrome users will now be stuck with a crappy bug-ridden flash
player as opposed to a native player.

------
davej
Descriptivists and Prescriptivists

[http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-
prescriptivis...](http://jacobian.org/writing/descriptivists-and-
prescriptivists/)

------
ck2
Shouldn't video codecs be done as plugins in browsers anyway?

Give us the tags to support it but leave it up to a plugin.

I know that multiple developers can focus on different parts of a browser's
codebase at once, but it still doesn't make sense to me that a browser
codebase should maintain a video codec as advanced as H.264 which constantly
has room for performance/quality improvement.

------
knodi
O great now its back to flash.

Pretty shitty move by google.

------
joakin
What I get from here:

They have a codec that performs like this other one, but open for everybody to
use without paying royalties. They have an agreement with most browsers to
support this codec. None of the other browsers want to pay royalties for these
codecs.

Well... the plan is clear

------
TechNewb
As a content producer, this upsets me. I would only consider WebM if it is
superior to h.264. But either way I'm having second thoughts about using
Chrome and Youtube if they really nix h.264. Google thinks they are bigger
than they really are.

------
pohl
Does anybody know if it is possible to disable Chrome's automatic updates so
that one can pin their version of chrome to the last release that supported
H.264?

Edit: found it...

    
    
       defaults write com.google.Keystone.Agent checkInterval 0

------
joelhousman
1\. I've now switched back from Chrome to Safari. 2\. I'm glad that I made the
decision to switch my organizations web videos from Akamai to Vimeo & not
Youtube. 3\. Google is the new Microsoft.

------
upinsmoke
Long live Flash video?

------
hamedh
so is Google going to re-encode all their Youtube content to WebM videos now?
and i wonder if Android will continue to play h.264 videos or not.

~~~
pornel
Yes. If you opt-in to YouTube HTML5 beta you can watch many videos in WebM
already.

------
upinsmoke
ATTENTION GOOGLE! Flash is not open! Not only does Chrome support Flash, it
ships with embedded Flash plugin! What a hypocrite!

------
jcarreiro
Just switched back to Safari.

Sorry google, but I own an iPad. :(

~~~
taken11
you can switch browsers on an iPad? Last time I checked that was to dangerous
for Apple to allow there users to do.

------
jawee
It can´t be all about freedom if they´re dropping Theora too. (related: how
can Theora be so bad is Vorbis is so good?)

~~~
melpo
I think you may have misread something there. The link clearly says:

"Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and
will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future.
"

~~~
jawee
I certainly did misread; thanks for that!

------
brackin
This is very annoying their player is already terrible.

------
dstein
Google is starting to remind me more of Microsoft every day. But at least
Microsoft doesn't make their anti-competitive strategic decisions under the
guise of being "open" and "not evil".

------
jbk
This is a great move...

Mpeg-LA has been bullying everyone for too long...

------
drivebyacct2
Has everyone so quickly forgotten that Flash will soon support WebM playback?
It's a significant point in the discussion. With any flash capable browser
having WebM support, along with native support in Firefox, Chrome, Opera... it
seems there is some sense in this move.

It does seem a bold strategy, I would have probably waited at least a bit
longer.

Edit: Oh, "These changes will occur in the next couple months"

~~~
mikeklaas
And in ten years, the performance might even be acceptable.

~~~
drivebyacct2
Performance of what? I'm not defending Flash's performance, but WebM is fine,
completely acceptable. With hardware decoding continuing to advance in Flash,
I guess I don't see what your complaint is. If it's native in most browsers,
fallback in IE (they aren't going to care anyway) and potentially native even
in IE on supported hardware...

~~~
mikeklaas
Performance of the WebM implementation in Flash. It took them years to take
advantage of hardware decoding for H.264

~~~
ZeroGravitas
It took them less time than it took for Mac OS X to support hardware decoding
in Macbooks GPUs that already worked if you bootcamped into XP on the same
machine. Though it took even longer for Flash on Mac OS X because even after
Apple supported it (on limited chipsets) they didn't bother to expose it to
third parties.

------
Charuru
Next move, suddenly youtube stops encoding in h.264 and youtube won't be able
to be played on the iPad.

And Android tablets look a LOT better.

~~~
kenjackson
If YouTube goes exclusively to WebM/Flash, who wins that game of chicken?
Apple or Google?

I actually think Apple wins it as someone creates iTube. People will switch
browsers. They won't give up their iPad (at least not until there are some
better Android browsers on the market).

~~~
neworbit
"Someone" is probably Apple, with their huge new data centers et al

~~~
jarek
If it's half as successful as Ping and half as reliable as MobileMe, Google
might have a problem on their hands. (Not.)

------
pedanticfreak
Interesting. YouTube must be a mess with all of these competing formats it
needs to support. I assume it will eventually switch to WebM for both HTML5
and Flash by default and just use h264 for compatibility. Still, it must be
horrific.

~~~
Seth_Kriticos
Nope. It was stored as h264 before they released webm (and then flash played
it). When they released Webm, they started to convert all that stuff to VP8
(my guess is they should be through by now), so it's only VP8 now (via HTML5
or flash). End of story.

~~~
cpearce
Adobe has not yet shipped a version of Flash which supports VP8, or WebM for
that matter. They've remained silent on that matter since their initial
announcement at Google IO last year.

------
fleitz
Phone me when Youtube only supports WebM, this is just a PR stand.

~~~
aridiculous
Agreed. Why is everyone assuming Google will convert all YouTube to WebM?

That would be the main attack on Apple, not removing support for HTML5 h264 in
Chrome (flash is the easy backup here). There's a motive for Google to convert
YouTube to WebM to screw Apple, but it doesn't seem likely.

------
scrod
Bye bye, Google Chrome. This is me deleting you from my Mac.

