[whatwg] <video> element proposal

[Gervase Markham]

Nicholas Shanks wrote:
> It may be a good idea to specify an either-or-both policy and include a 
> second video format, allowing vendors a little freedom as to which to 
> implement.

"Either"? But if one major browser implements one, and another
implements the other, then you end up in the situation that having a
restriction was supposed to avoid!

> Dirac (dirac.sf.net) seems like a good alternative format, but I don't 
> know what licenses are acceptable to closed-source browser vendors. 

It's MPL/LGPL/GPL, just like the Mozilla codebase. MPL should be fine
for closed-source vendors; GPL is OK for Konqueror.

I wonder how complete the Dirac code is?

I asked about Theora status in their IRC channel; MikeS said:

"There IS a decoder that I would say is suitable for widespread
shipment. The mainline theora implementation has 3 major problems: 1)
it doesn't implement 100% of the spec. 2) It's not 100% robust against
invalid bitstreams; a maliciously crafted one could crash it. 3) it's
not very fast. derf's theora-exp implementation has an encoder that 
doesn't work, but I assume that's irrelevent for a browser. The 
_decoder_ fixes all three of those major issues. we haven't done a 
formal release of that decoder, but it's in a releasable state - if 
someone was seriously interested in giving it widespread use we'd do the 
work to release it."

They think you could get ogg + theora + vorbis decoders into 130k 
compressed, without too much difficulty.

Gerv