[whatwg] need a way to set output format from StreamRecorder

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Thu, Nov 25, 2010 at 6:37 PM, Nils Dagsson Moskopp
<nils-dagsson-moskopp at dieweltistgarnichtso.net> wrote:
> Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1 at gmail.com> schrieb am Thu, 25 Nov 2010
> 14:05:18 +1100:
>
>> Can the decision for a file format be taken completely separately from
>> the codec decision for the <audio> or <video> element, I wonder?
>
> I believe the royalties for encoders are usually higher than the
> royalties for decoders (where royalties apply, that is: with
> proprietary standards).
>
> Also, I doubt that any self-respecting entities opposed to the
> implementation of decoders for certain royalty-free A/V formats would
> include the corresponding encoders — the risk being that more content
> would be created in formats that their own browsers could not render.

Naturally a browser that doesn't decode MPEG-4 would not implement
MPEG-4 encoding.

Apple probably already pay the max royalties for MPEG-4, so they
probably won't worry about MPEG-4 encoding support in Safari.

Also, implementing WebM or Ogg Theora encoding is just as royalty-free
as decoding them, so Mozilla, Opera and Google wouldn't need to worry
there.

So, the browsers would implement support for those codecs for which
they already implement decoding support - maybe with the exception of
Chrome which decode MPEG-4, but may not want to encode it, since it
might mean extra royalties.

It would be nice if we could all, say, encode WebM, but I don't see
that happening.

Cheers,
Silvia.