Ogg Theora, Vorbis as HTML 5 defaults?
p2pnet news | Open Source:- Should Ogg Theora (video) and Ogg Vorbis (audio), neither of them subject patent licensing fees, be default formats for the planned video and audio elements in HTML 5 browsers?
The question sparked heated debates and, “Ian Hickson, a Google employee involved in Google’s work with the W3C and responsible for editing the forthcoming HTML 5 specification, has made a clean break,” says Heise Online.
Following endless public and private discussions, he’s concluded no codecs, “are likely to attract a consensus among the members of the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) for integration into their browsers,” he says in a post on WHATWG, according to the story,which goes on:
“These could be used for playing back multimedia content on the internet without requiring the installation of proprietary plug-ins. Some firms, for example, feared a risk of “submarine patents“, while others advocated the much more efficient H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC), although it does incur licence fees.”
Heise says Hickson summarizes the views of browser developers like this »»»
- Apple declines to integrate Ogg Theora into the QuickTime used by Safari, pointing to a lack of hardware support and the uncertain patent situation.
- Although Google has incorporated H.264 and Theora into its Chrome browser, it says Ogg Theora doesn’t yet deliver the “quality per bit” required for YouTube sites.
- Nor does Google feel in a position to supply an H.264 licence to Chrome distributors.
- Mozilla argues the same point and has backed Theora for Firefox 3.5.
- Opera refuses to integrate H.264, finding the licence fees incredibly high.
- Microsoft hasn’t yet said whether it’s even considering supporting the viceo element.
But, “If Ogg Theora is further improved, if hardware supports the format, and if Google distributes the codec for long enough without being sued, Theora could become the de facto web standard,” Hickson says.
The situation with audio isn’t quite so dramatic, “because besides Ogg Vorbis and MPEG 4 AAC there are many more options,” and, “There’s also the fact that the patents for the de facto web standard MP3 will expire in a few years’ time.”
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Heise Online – No mandatory audio and video codecs in HTML 5, July 6, 2009
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July 6th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Wait, so if Ogg Theora is not subjected to patent licensing fees, why would anybody get sued for distributing it?
July 6th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Well, it appears to be the (as yet, completely unfounded) fear that somehow a patent already exists, somewhere out there, that someone may decide at some point, is infringed on by the free release of Ogg Theora. So, then that someone would take on the biggest bank account in court (which, of the aforementioned parties, is Google with a market cap @ $128B), and then Apple (with a market cap @ $122B) and see if they can either score a settlement (which could set a precedent from which to launch other lawsuits against smaller “infringers”), or be sued out of existence by these two companies.
I didn’t reference MS here (clearly larger than both) because it’s pretty obvious that they have no interest in supporting Theora in any way (they have their own Windows Media codecs that they’d probably rather be the HTML5 standard, so they can collect the patent licensing fees from all the web browsers).
So, it doesn’t seem to be a concern that anything is wrong with the technology, just fear of a malicious law suit, uncertainty of patent trolls, and doubt that adequate “hardware support” exists (at lest from Apple).
In regards to Theora delivering ‘the âquality per bitâ required for YouTube’, this is simply a case of the open source director at Google speaking without really knowing what he’s talking about, essentially making assumptions, and probably without any real discussion with Xiph.org about their codecs.
Here’s a good-enough comparison: http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html
Make your own decision, here…
July 17th, 2009 at 10:18 am
When Nokia were furiously FUDding about Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora, suggesting AAC instead … they somehow neglected to note that they are beneficiaries of the AAC patent pool. I can’t think how such a detail escaped mention; must have been an unfortunate error.