[whatwg] Video Tag Proposal

[Kelly Clowers]

2010/3/28 Sir Gallantmon (ニール・ゴンパ) <ngompa13 at gmail.com>:
>
> When the img tag was made, all browsers initially supported BMPs, didn't
> they? Nobody complained about implementing support for an image format. The
> GIF format made things hairy later, but with JPEG and PNG, the issues
> eventually resolved themselves. But the img tag was made at a time when
> there was no format soup for images... Or at least, not one nearly as
> serious a problem as the video tag.

Also, image formats are less complicated to implement than video, both in
the codec itself and the fact that images don't have to worry about subtitles,
containers, seeking, sound, etc.

> Without a baseline codec, there is no guaranteed usefulness to the audio or
> video tags. As for audio, I suggest supporting at least WAV (or FLAC) and
> Vorbis at least.

That was the recommendation before all codec references where removed.
Currently among HTML5 browsers, I believe only Safari does not support Vorbis
(they all support pcm wav). Safari uses QuickTime, so if Apple would bundle
XiphQT, Safari would be set. Who knows what MS is planning for IE9, but I don't
think they would object too much to having Vorbis as an option,
especially if they
are using DirectShow. A great many high-profile games have used Vorbis,
including MS-published Halo and Fable.

Really, the audio situation seems fairly manageable. Vorbis even has an
advantage in size/quality over most other codecs, especially the so-common
MP3.

> For video, our best shot is either Dirac or Theora. Unless
> somebody else has any other decent reasonably available open source,
> royalty-free codec that can be used for the video and audio tags?

Well, if Google frees VP8...


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers