[whatwg] Video Tag Proposal

[Kelly Clowers]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 10:49, Ashley Sheridan <ash at ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Sun, 2010-03-28 at 10:29 -0700, Kelly Clowers wrote:
>
> 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
>
> I was under the impression that Apple were one of the main opposers to using
> free codecs in-place of their proprietary QuickTime.

For Theora. They haven't really said much about Vorbis AFAIK. And I think an
audio codec is less likely to have patent issues than a video codec (especially
since Vorbis has a lot of high profile use that should have drawn out any patent
trolls) , and that is what Apple supposedly is worried about.

> Also, when was the last time you ever knew Microsoft to go with standarised
> formats when they can just as easily push one of their own?

<shug> MS isn't quite who they used to be. They open-source things, and put
things under the open specification promise, and they seem to be very serious
about CSS3 and (X)HTML5 standards now. I think there is at least a chance of
them supporting Vorbis.


Cheers,
Kelly Clowers