[whatwg] Video proposals

[Maik Merten]

Håkon Wium Lie schrieb:
>  > What WHATWG has been shooting for, is one common codec.  At this point,
>  > WHATWG folks want Theora.
> 
> Yes, it's a likable format. If anyone has better ideas, this is the
> time to step forward.

There's Dirac in development right now. That's a next generation wavelet
codec, developed by the BBC. There's also an implementation of that
codec integrating with the Ogg family of codecs - Schrödinger.

However, that codec isn't stable yet (the bitstream format isn't fixed
yet so future decoders most likely won't play content encoded today) and
even both the Dirac reference implementation and Schrödinger write
different formats thanks to the spec being in flux.

http://dirac.sourceforge.net/
http://schrodinger.sourceforge.net/

Once this is solved and once it performs nicely it may be a serious
alternative to Ogg Theora. Currently it's just not ready yet for
production use.

As for licensing: "The terms of the MPL mean that as far as the BBC is
concerned, there will be no charges or royalties for the Dirac software."

Perhaps it's advisable to keep an eye on that codec for future versions
of the whatwg specification work.

>  > Apparently, that may still have some licensing
>  > issues.
> 
> Some unnamed vendor has said it's unlikely they will ship a Theora
> decoder, for whatever reason. Hopefully they will reconsider when
> Wikipedia starts using it for real.

If somehow possible it might be valuable to encourage them to talk about
the problems they have with supporting that codec. Perhaps those
problems can be resolved.

Actually it seems Wikipedia is already using Theora as their format of
choice. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Video
Seems there are several hundred videos already (notice the "next 200"
link on the page).