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HTML 5’s support of using the Ogg Theora video format in the upcoming <video> tag looked really promising for innovation in the web video area, but not everyone agrees on the new spec.
The critical different between Ogg Theora and the competing H.264 formats are that Ogg carries no petent license fees, while H.164 requires anyone who implements it to pay a patent license. Because of this, Mozilla and Opera would prefer to use the Ogg Theora format, as planned
Apple and Google, however, aren’t jumping on the boat, though. Apple, who has been a major supporter of H.164, using it extensively in iTunes videos, is apparently concerned about unknown patents which Ogg might violate. (Remind you of the whole Novell-Microsft thing?) Google, on the other hand, simply cites Ogg Theora’s supposedly lower quality, though they have not released anything to back the claim that Ogg offers much lower quality at the same bandwidth.
It just doesn’t make sense to make a video format that requiers a patent license in a standard like HTML. HTML is an open standard so that people can implement it – it shouldn’t depend on someting you have to license.
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Yonah, you’re missing the point. Theora is better because it’s not encumbered by patents, and it’s reasonably good. It’s not state of the art, but it’s usable, and the majority of stakeholders prefer patent unencumbered technology if they can choose.
The real problem is that often they can’t choose because patented codecs have become a de-facto standard. This is what we need to change, and then let the market decide.
I’ve used Ogg Vorbis since it was introduced. For end users, it was nice for one reason: it performed better than the current standard, MP3. However, Ogg Theora can’t say the same when it comes to video. Don’t forget that unlike Vorbis, Theora was not developed from scratch. It was derived from VP3, and old codec developed by On2 Technologies, then donated in 2001. A proprietary format that cost them money to develop which they then gave away for free when it was no longer useful to them. The devil is in the details in this case. Also bear in mind that VP6 is widely used now for Flash 8 based encodings. The same company recently announced VP7, designed to outshine H.264/AVC. Ask yourself, “If Theora is so awesome, why would On2 bother working on something else?”
There you have the problem, and why Google is right. With Vorbis it was easy for a simple end user like to me compress my own files and see the difference in quality verses MP3. With Theora, I get files that really don’t look any better than Xvid/Mpeg4 and neither can hold a candle to the jaw dropping quality I get from H.264. There is a popular website trumpeting the quality of Theora, but they compare it with H.263, a format standardized shortly after I got out of high school. That was well over 10 years ago. The zealots who’ve been pushing for Theora are pulling their hair out over “Freedom” and nothing else seems to matter. Sorry, I want freedom too. I want the freedom to use whatever video compression technology on my website, even if I have to pay for it. Odds are if I’m paying for it, it’s because it meets my needs better.
Google has checked their facts. No doubt they did even more extensive testing than I did and found Theora is a dud. Free, but a dud. What’s ironic here is that many of Theora’s biggest supporters aren’t developers and have never had to pay any licensing fees for anything in their life. When it’s your dollar going into the product, then YOU decide how you want to spend it.
On that note, I feel the HTML 5 support for Video and Audio is a mistake. Such tasks are better suited for plug-ins. However, the standard is not even finished, so hopefully they will go back to the drawing board and come up with better solutions.
I am glad HTML 5 will support Ogg Theora. Let’s hope that Theora gets more recognition it deserves in the future. Oh, and I am fully agree with you: “Those who said Linux sucks are not nice, ignorant, and ultimately wrong!”
Apple wants to do H.264 because Apple HAS PATENTS on that!
Searched about ogg and Google’s Chrome on the web,
it seems that Google’s Chrome will support ogg:
Another step towards an open web — Google’s Chrome browser is going
to support Theora video natively with the HTML5 video tag:
http://blog.internetnews.com/skerner/2009/05/google-chrome-3-adds-html5.html
http://codereview.chromium.org/115625/diff/1/2
safari may actually be the one affected here and loose even more users…
even M$ might have support for it by the time ie9 is out
oh n google should really check their facts, make more tests and start contributing back some improvements
+1
people couldn’t care less what apple thinks
Yonah – As a website owner, your not the one who pays to use the commercial codec. In most cases, the browser vendor will have to pay. This is probably unrealistic for smaller web browsers, particularly those not supported by larger companies. As a plugin, I don’t have a problem with commercial codecs. As part of an open standard, though, I don’t think commercial codecs should be required.