Google removes H.264 from its browser/system Options

[2Bdecided]

I grant you that it is free for use for some purposes at present, but this is the MPEGLA's "bait and switch" to get it firmly entrenched in the industry and profit later on.

Possible - but MPEG-2 has been more entrenched for several years (all DVDs, almost all SD digital broadcasts, some HD digital broadcasts, HDV, etc) and while the patent owners certainly make nice profits, I don't hear people screaming that MPEG-2 on DVDs is evil and we should all use something else.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

Just a thought: as a content provider, I'd already be providing H.264 in flash (and also not in flash) to lots of different devices, from iPhones to HDTVs.

The point where I'm going to stop delivering it via flash is a few years away at least. The point where I'm going to stop using H.264 completely is many years away.

Having to deal with another codec, and one that may be less efficient, is a headache I can do without. Unless it helps me reach more users, forget it. The other side of this Chicken-and-egg deal is that unless content providers force users to upgrade to watch the content, most users won't bother - except of course Firefox and Chrome users get updates without asking.

If a content provider is going to go through the hassle and expense of supporting a new codec, it'll be to HEVC one day. That's what all these discussions forget - H.264 itself has a shelf life.

Cheers,
David.

[googlebot]

If a content provider is going to go through the hassle and expense of supporting a new codec, it'll be to HEVC one day. That's what all these discussions forget - H.264 itself has a shelf life.

Following the recent comments, this

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) is a proposed video compression standard, a successor to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (Advanced Video Coding), currently under joint development by the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) and ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG). MPEG and VCEG have established a Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC) to develop the proposed HEVC standard.

doesn't qualify as open enough.

To qualify as "open" according to the recent meaning, development and control of the standard should be under control of one single entitiy (e. g. Microsoft, Google, etc.), that owns some associated patents, but itself does not charge any royalties for them and promises the latter forever. That's about the main, significant, here recently proposed difference, when you take into account that open source implementations are nothing special in a world where they are available for all contenders.

This post has been edited by googlebot: Jan 20 2011, 16:45

[romor]

two weeks ago MPEG announced intent for new royalty-free web video compression standard: http://mpeg.chiariglione.org/meetings/daeg...daegu_press.htm

and

MPEG-LA seeks for your help to collect more cash if possible: http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/vp8/default.aspx

which BTW will end questions about WebM patent infringements

[NullC]

The point where I'm going to stop delivering it via flash is a few years away at least. The point where I'm going to stop using H.264 completely is many years away.

FWIW, Adobe has announced plans to include WebM in flash as well. (Though at the pace they move you may have long since abandoned flash by then ).

From what I've seen, many sites are quite aggressive in dropping support for older versions of the flash client (intentionally or not). So the codec choice may be even more of a non-issue even for people still using flash in the not-too-distant future.

[romor]

VP8 codec update, named "Bali" released: http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/03/vp8-co...i-released.html

Note that comparisons against H.264 linked in this thread are made with WebM launch release, not the Aylesbury release

[romor]

Fresh WebM VP8, Ogg Theora, x264 SSIM benchmark:

One pass:





Two pass:

Conclusion

For comparisons between vpxenc and x264 baseline the conclusions from the previous article remain true “Although comparisons in quality are always somewhat subjective these benchmarks do show VP8 video encoded by vpxenc can be very competitive in encoding speed to quality ratio with x264 ‘baseline’ at the higher quality settings in both one pass and two pass modes. With faster encoding settings x264 ‘baseline’ clearly preforms increasingly better than vpxenc.”

However the tests in this article do show a more substantial gap in quality between x264 ‘high’ and the best quality vpxenc can currently achieve.

[smok3]

romor: Do you actually understand this graphs? isn't SSIM scale from 0 to 1 (what would be dump SSIM?)? Is it correct to call SSIM quality, ect? What's up with this vpx 1 thread vs 4 threads - in the same sentence with h.264 profiles? What is the purpose of measuring baseline profile at all?

All: Any cool command lines to test Bali with all the 'quality based' encoding scenarios? Do we have and OSX compile of vpxenc?

questions, questions

This post has been edited by smok3: Mar 28 2011, 07:59

[romor]

did you check quoted link source?

[smok3]

did you check quoted link source?

about what exactly?
edit: more questions added to previous post.

[romor]

Google spins fast:

all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM...
...we’re also working to transcode our entire video catalog to WebM...So far we’ve already transcoded videos that make up 99% of views on the site or nearly 30% of all videos into WebM

In keeping with our goal of making videos universally accessible, we will continue to support H.264 as an important codec for video on YouTube

src: http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2011/04...now-served.html

[Robertina]

WebM patent fight ahead for Google?