

Why Google was correct in Chrome dropping H.264 - arpit
http://www.arpitonline.com/blog/2011/01/11/why-google-was-correct-in-chrome-dropping-of-h-264/

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calebgilbert
Google as a business is well within it's rights to do whatever it wants to
further it's business interests, and/or tick off it's competition. Let's just
not keep saying it's all for the user.

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MJR
The real question is will Google follow through and remove all support for
H.264 from YouTube. That will be the telling sign that they're serious.

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donaq
Just because you're not a suicide bomber doesn't mean that you're not a
serious Muslim.

~~~
InclinedPlane
Just because you're not a double negative doesn't mean that you're not a
confusing sentence.

~~~
donaq
Haha good point. How would you have put it, though?

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svlla
Chrome ships with Flash. Flash plays H.264. Thus, Chrome still supports H.264,
now it just has to go through Flash.

There are Android phones with H.264 hardware support. There are no Android
phones with WebM hardware support (software support, yes).

So... there is no point to converting YouTube videos to WebM: it doesn't
benefit Android, it doesn't benefit Chrome. It would be a pointless waste of
space.

~~~
pedanticfreak
Flash will support WebM in a future version. Additionally, Google could update
the iOS YouTube app to support WebM in a future iOS version.

Once both reach sufficient market saturation YouTube will be able to
completely switch from h264 to WebM.

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svlla
No point in updating the iOS app unless there's going to be hardware support.

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pedanticfreak
Two possibilities.

First, Google could go software only for older hardware. It will suck for
them. But by the time YouTube phases out h264 there will be few of these and
the latest hardware will accelerate both WebM and h264.

Second, there could be a way to utilize the h264 hardware decoder to work with
WebM through a wrapper. The ffmpeg decoder for WebM is basically a wrapper
around the existing ffmpeg h264 decoder already. I've never worked with
decoders myself, but this at least seems plausible.

Regardless, I think bundling WebM software decoding along side h264 decoding
in the YouTube iOS app is a no-brainer even if YouTube doesn't take advantage
of it right away.

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pedanticfreak
HTML5 video is DOA and Google might as well lay the groundwork for the next
round. Major content providers don't support HTML5 video. Netflix, Hulu, and
anyone else with intellectual property to protect want nothing to do with it.
So we're going to need to keep our proprietary plugins and our proprietary
apps through the HTML5 era. Even YouTube needs to stay proprietary.

So if HTML5 video is DOA, why support h264? Why be democratic when people are
going to use Flash and Silverlight anyway? At least this way there might be a
real push for the standard HTML5 video codec to be free and open source.

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guywithabike
_WebM video is DOA and Google might as well lay the groundwork for the next
round. Major content providers don't support WebM video. Netflix, Hulu, and
anyone else with intellectual property to protect want nothing to do with it.
So we're going to need to keep our proprietary plugins and our proprietary
apps through the WebM era. Even YouTube needs to stay proprietary._

Your argument goes both ways.

~~~
pedanticfreak
Actually they are equivalent. HTML5 video tag is codec agnostic. In this
instance HTML5 includes to both WebM and h264 video over HTML5. Both are DOA.

So why support h264, which is scary and patent encumbered, when Google can
give a little boost to its own WebM standard at no risk to Chrome's viability
in the browser market?

