blog/data/2011-01-12-video-standard.txt

   1 Title: Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt;
   2 Tags: english, standard, video
   3 Date: 2011-01-12 22:10
   4
   5 <p>Today I discovered
   6 <a href="http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome">via
   7 digi.no</a> that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
   8 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html">yesterday
   9 announced</a> plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &lt;video&gt; in
  10 the browser.  The argument used is that H.264 is not a "completely
  11 open" codec technology.  If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
  12 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
  13 "<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 – Not The Kind Of
  14 Free That Matters</a>".  It is not free of cost for creators of video
  15 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
  16 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
  17 licensing the patents needed for H.264.  Some background information
  18 on the Google announcement is available from
  19 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome">OSnews</a>.
  20 A good read. :)</p>
  21
  22 <p>Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
  23 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
  24 the Internet.  This can only be done by publishing using free and open
  25 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
  26 for these free and open standards.  At the moment there seem to be two
  27 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support.  Some
  28 browsers support H.264, and others support
  29 <a href="http://www.theora.org/">Ogg Theora</a> and
  30 <a href="http://www.webmproject.org/">WebM</a>
  31 (<a href="http://www.diracvideo.org/">Dirac</a> is not really an option
  32 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
  33 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
  34 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
  35 Wikipedia keep <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video">an
  36 updated summary</a> of the current browser support.</p>
  37
  38 <p>Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
  39 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
  40 <a href="http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions">presents
  41 the mind set</a> of these people quite well.  His rhetorical questions
  42 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
  43 <a href="http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM">presenting
  44 the issues with H.264</a>. Both are worth a read.</p>
  45
  46 <p>Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn't free,
  47 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin.  This
  48 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
  49 <a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm">todays
  50 blog post</a>, which I find to put the issue in context.  To me it
  51 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
  52 browser while still allowing plugins.</p>
  53
  54 <p>I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
  55 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
  56 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse.  A lot of TV
  57 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
  58 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
  59 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
  60 publishing.  Suddenly this belief is shaken.</p>
  61
  62 <p>An interesting question is why Google is doing this.  While the
  63 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
  64 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
  65 perspective.  One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
  66 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
  67 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
  68 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
  69 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
  70 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
  71 video format not requiring royalties at all.  A third reason might be
  72 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
  73 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
  74 I guess time will tell.</p>
  75
  76 <p>Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
  77 <a href="http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html">more
  78 background and information on the move</a> it a blog post yesterday.</p>