Videos were About to Change

The original idea of this entry was to announce HTML5 videos inside the blog, I mean, changing from my well known flash flowplayer to the brand new HTML5 video tag. But finally I decided it is too early for such a change, please see my reasons below.

HTML5 video is a new feature that is being adopted by browsers quickly. Nevertheless the never-ending fight between browsers is now focusing on the formats/codecs supported by this new feature. At the moment there are three codecs in the game:

• OGG Theora: Open source and patent free, it was recommended by HTML5 specification in first drafts but the standard removed later its mention replacing any reference to concrete formats.
  
• H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Codec widely used, good speed, compression, hardware decoders, and video quality, but covered by patents. Except in particular cases, users of H.264 have to pay licensing fees to the MPEG LA, a group of patent-holders including Microsoft and Apple.
  
• VP8. Google's acquisition of On2 will reportedly result in the open-sourcing of On2's proprietary codec, VP8, which would make it a possible option for HTML5 video. Community is awaiting for google and now it is not a real choice.

At the moment Apple (since safari 3.1) browser only supports H.264. Microsoft IE9 platform preview 3 is announced to support H.264 too. Open source browsers only support OGG (firefox since 3.5, konqueror since 4.4 or epiphany since 2.28). Chrome is the only one that supports at this time both codecs (since 3.0).

It is already known I use debian testing as linux distribution, taking it as example firefox/iceweasel is at 3.5 version, epiphany is 2.29.3 and chromium-browser has just entered to unstable (5.0.375.29). So almost every debian testing browser supports video, and more generally, it can be said any linux distribution has right now a good support for HTML5 video (OGG format). Apple safari has no problems either and it has been supporting video feature for a long time (H.264). But the problem comes with Microsoft Internet Explorer, neither 7 nor 8 supports new video tag, even the just released IE9 platform preview 2 does not support it (it seems that we have to wait til end of June for preview 3 and H.264 support). Assuming IE9 previews are alpha (developer target) releases and final IE9 will not support XP I gave in and I held my unstoppable wishes of change back.

Videos were going to use both codecs (H.264 and OGG) in order to support all browsers that nowadays deal with video tag. Here it is an example of the failed HTML5 attempt using the video from Integrating Skype into a Portal post.

<video width="640" height="400" autobuffer="true" controls="true">
  <source src="out.mp4" type="video/mp4"/>
  <source src="out.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
  Your browser doesn't support the video tag.
  You can <a href="out.ogv">download the video here</a>.
</video>

It is hard to slow your ideas down and even more if the infamous IE is the guilty one.

Keep trying!

EDIT: Google has just open-sourced VP8 with WebM (VP8 video + vorbis audio container). The source code can be found on the project web site. So the rules of the game have been reset again.