[whatwg] H.264-in-<video> vs plugin APIs

[Chris DiBona]

> We certainly believe so, but I'm certainly not qualified to evaluate
> the different techniques.
>
> Would Theora inherently be any less able to than any other codec
> system, though?  I hope you're not saying that it has to be H.264
> forever, given the spectre of the streaming license changes at the end
> of 2010.

No, but it is what I worry about. How agressive will mpeg.la be in
their interpretation of the direction that theora is going? I don't
think that is a reason to stop the current development direction (or
the funding of it) but I thought that Dirac, with the BBC connection,
might make a better opponent politically than Theora.

> If Youtube is held back by client compatibility, they should be glad
> that we're working hard to move ~25% of the web to having Theora
> support in the near future!  Google could help that cause a lot by
> putting (well-encoded, ahem) Theora up there, even if it's just in the
> experimental /html5 area.  It wouldn't hurt to use the reference
> libraries rather than ffmpeg for the client either, since we've found
> significant differences in quality of experience there.

It is client compatibility first, and global/edge bandwidth restricted
as well. I'd prefer to ship with the reference libraries and have told
the team as much.

> Mike
>



-- 
Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc.
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Personal Weblog: http://dibona.com