Comment by Samuel_Michon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Samuel_Michon | Hacker News Reader

From the article:

"Currently, there are countless devices used to record videos and hundreds of different video file formats."

H.264 is by far the most common. I don't know of any video camera or DSLR that records to WebM or Theora.

"certain web browsers that you use to view video online only accept certain ‘codecs’ - or programs used to encode, transmit and playback video files - and others require plug-ins (converters) to integrate the video file with the browser."

"Certain web browsers"? Chrome and Firefox are the only ones that don't support H.264 natively. To view video on those browsers, it needs to be routed through a plug-in like Flash (standard on Chrome) or QuickTime. Browsers like Internet Explorer and Safari support the majority of all web video, right out of the box, no plug-ins needed. On mobile devices, the situation is even more obvious. Android is the only OS with support for WebM, and no mobile devices have hardware acceleration for WebM, draining your device's battery in no-time. However, all modern smartphones and tablets have support for H.264, most of them with hardware acceleration.

I'm all for an open source alternative to H.264. If it's at least as good and free to use, then I hope that it will become the standard; for the web, in desktop operating systems, for mobile devices, for video cameras and DSLRs. I'm just not convinced WebM is that alternative. It's unclear whether WebM is as good as H.264, and it's unclear whether it's free to use.

> Chrome and Firefox are the only ones that don't support H.264 natively.

Chrome and Firefox are the browsers that supports html5 video with the biggest market share though.

That's a very good point. IE9 has 3% usage share right now, but because it can't run on XP, IE9 won't replace all the IE8 installs out there. In the same vein, IE10 won't even run on Vista. That's why I doubt we'll see another single version of IE being the most dominant. On top of that, Chrome usage is growing rapidly. At the current rate, Chrome will be the most popular browser in 12 to 18 months.

Chrome and FireFox (together) have the majority of the browser market full stop.

FWIW, Opera doesn't support h.264 either.

Without plug-ins, Opera Mini doesn't play H.264, WebM, or any other video formats for that matter. The other Opera products have near zero market share. That's why I don't test for Opera, just like I don't test for IE5 and Netscape.

Opera Mini doesn't have plugins, afaik. It doesn't have an HTML parser; it's a thin client which renders pages sent to it in a binary format from Opera's proxy servers.

And, in turn, no one seems to support Opera, either.

hundreds of different video file formats

So just when most people started to finally standardize around one, we're going to introduce a new one that's already opposed by some of the most important players in the industry.

> opposed by some of the most important players in the industry.

And these are? No, Apple is not one of "the most important players in the industry". Safari has only some 6% market share.

If you're just looking at browsers, then how about Microsoft, which still has a dominant browser market share.

If we're looking at desktop operating systems, Apple and Microsoft are the main suppliers. They provide built-in support for H.264, not WebM or Theora.

However, when looking at content providers, Apple is a very important player. The majority of online video content is sold through the iTunes Store. And rental places like Netflix and Hulu also rely on H.264.

Apple is one of the most important player in digital video content distribution, through the itunes store.

It’s not really sensible to only look at browsers (and, presumably, only desktop browsers – Apple has more than 6% market share of mobile devices). Which formats do digital cameras use? Which formats is content sold in?

We were pretty standardized around Flash for a couple of years there.

Flash is a delivery wrapper (and is often used to deliver h.264; I don't believe Adobe has announced any plans to support WebM) - the thing being discussed here is the format for the video itself...

Adobe has announced support for VP8/WebM, it did so quite a while ago, but not a timetable for delivery.

"Flash Player Will Support VP8"

http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/05/adobe_support_f...

Thanks, I'd missed that!

and opera and a few open source web browsers nobody uses.

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