[whatwg] <video> element proposal

Gervase Markham gerv at mozilla.org
Mon Mar 5 02:31:42 PST 2007


Maik Merten wrote:
> Okay, this is a rather lengthy list. So I'll hurry up and put my opinion
> into a nutshell:
> 
> * Video support in browsers is important IMO. Otherwise the web may more
> and more slip into dependency on Flash or similiar formats ("We have to
> use Flash anyway for video, so why not make the whole site with Flash?").
> 
> * Browser makers should negotiate on one base format. This format should
> be free and available on all platforms. I don't say formats that need
> patent licensing are evil by-itself, but I'm pretty sure Debian and
> Fedora would have to remove video support from their browsers if that
> functionality would depend on a format that needs such licensing. To my
> knowledge only Ogg Vorbis+Theora are performing well enough and are
> usually accepted to be "safe" and open.

I had about three goes sending a message saying the following in a more 
reasoned and verbose way, but my computer is playing up. So, in brief:

The Theora developers have a deployable codec, but it's not the 
reference implementation currently available for download (which is 
slow, incomplete and crashes on malformed input). This next-gen codec 
could be cleaned up and shipped fairly quickly if people expressed an 
interest in putting it in something.

They estimate the increase in download size for a browser shipping Ogg + 
Theora-ng + Vorbis at 130k.

Gerv



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