Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble

Fun fact: in the interests of forward compatibility, Firefox appears to have used liboggplay for its video pipeline.<p>This means that if they ever want to use <i>anything</i> other than Theora, they will have to completely rewrite the entire video system. Apparently the problem with doing something sane like using Gstreamer is that... it's LGPL. Which apparently isn't free enough for them.<p>They also force YV12 -&#62; RGB conversion in software on playback and do two sizeof(videoframe) callocs per frame, leading to the tremendous irony of having video playback vastly slower than Flash.

I'm not sure how that article turned into a treatise on how mean Microsoft is, but I stopped reading after the first third of it. Someone let me know if it picked up after that. :)<p>Not to shill for my employer or anything, but Ryan Paul wrote a really good overview of the whole HTML5 video thing the other day: <a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the-html-5-video-codec-debate.ars" rel="nofollow">http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/07/decoding-the...</a>

Some more sophisticated analysis from the author in the comment thread:<p><i>"I did read the Ars article, which similarly voices the "free codec is good, international standards body specifications are evil" thing everyone has been repeating.<p>The bottom line is that x264 is GPL so the whole "Linux users can't use H.264 video" is simply wrong, and in the big picture Mozilla and Opera don't really matter. Once Chrome starts gaining traction, do you really think Google will see any need to dump $50 million on the remains of Netscape's ashes? And what purpose does Opera serve other than to make the EU feel like it has some say in the browser market?"</i><p>Sounds like someone pissed in his cheerios. Bloody fanboys.

Amazing; the very first sentence in the article is factually incorrect:<p><i>Pundits are roasting Apple over a scuffle raised by Mozilla and Opera to define the free Ogg Theora video codec as the official way to present video on the web in the new HTML 5 specification.</i><p>There was never any attempt to define Theora as the "official way to present video". It was merely provided as a baseline, a lowest-common-denominator format that could be relied upon by content providers.<p><i>Ogg Theora is based upon VP3 video technology originally proprietary to On2, and subsequently abandoned after it became obsolete.</i><p>Theora is not obsolete; it is superior to most popular codecs, such as XVid, WMV, and QuickTime. In standard-definition encoding, it's even superior to modern proprietary codecs such as H.264:<p><a href="http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html" rel="nofollow">http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html</a><p><a href="http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/youtube/" rel="nofollow">http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/youtube/</a><p><i>Apple has also voiced concerns that Ogg Theora may be encumbered by unknown patents. That risk isn't significant to Mozilla and Opera, both of whom could simply abandon the format for something else [...] Apple also has a bankroll to attract patent trolls that Mozilla and Opera both lack.</i><p>This hand-waving ignores that Google will also be supporting Theora, and undoubtedly has deeper pockets than Apple. Besides, a risk of unknown patents applies to <i>any</i> video codec. There's no technical or legal reason to exclude Theora support.

JPEG, GIF, PNG are used as long as nobody threatens us with patent lawsuits.<p>Just make H.264 free for the world to use (without fine print legalese) and we will adopt it and support it inmediately.<p>Meantime, theora is the only free and viable option.