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

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 11:45 PM, Mike Shaver<mike.shaver at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 13, 2009 at 9:37 AM, Chris DiBona<cdibona at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

I'm also very excited to see Ogg Theora/Vorbis support being included
into Chrome, which will even further increase the percentage of
coverage.

As for Safari and any other software on the Mac that is using the
QuickTime framework, there is XiphQT to provide support. It's a
QuickTime component and therefore no different to installing a Flash
plugin, thus you can also count Safari as a browser that has support
for Ogg Theora/Vorbis, even if I'm sure people from Apple would not
like to see it this way.

Opera have experimented with Ogg Theora/Vorbis and the latest test
builds seem to include support for Ogg Theora/vorbis, even if I'm
going by anecdotal evidence here.

So, the only real problem that we have with coverage is Internet
Explorer. Now, if somebody was to sponsor the development of an
ActiveX control for Ogg Theora/Vorbis support, we would solve this in
a flash. Most of the implementation work for it is done: in about 2004
at the CSIRO we developed oggcodecs, which are DirectShow filters for
Xiph codecs. We also had an experimental ActiveX control, but it would
need to be rewritten largely. Just like Adobe (or at the time
Macromedia) didn't expect Apple or Microsoft to develop support for
their video players, we don't have to wait for that either.

I don't see "coverage" as a fundamental problem that should hold back
Ogg Theora/Vorbis support. Instead, I see it as a financial problem -
somebody has to just put the money towards it.

Best Regards,
Silvia.