On Wednesday, Google gave a $120 million dollar gift to the web…a new HTML5 compliant video format. The $120 million price comes from what Google paid to acquire On2 Technologies, the creator of the video format. The format or codec itself is called VP8 (which has actually been around for a while) but Google has christened it as WebM. It’s intended to compete with the other leading HTML5 video formats, H.264 and Ogg.
The VP8 codec, or WebM, is claimed to provide up to 50% better performance than competing formats. For those of us who have done a little testing with WebM, that claim is not entirely true. At least not yet.
As far as video quality goes (which is subjective), WebM quality seems to be on par to slightly lower than H.264. For file size, WebM seems to produce slightly larger file sizes vs. H.264…around 15% larger in my limited testing.
But the wildcard is that WebM is supposed to have fewer playback issues than H.264 (it’s less processor intensive for the viewer’s computer). Unfortunately, I can’t confirm or deny this as native browser support for the WebM format is still forthcoming.
In any event, for those of you keeping score, here’s how the latest HTML5 video wars shape up with the addition of WebM:
Internet Explorer/Safari/iPad/iPhone – These browsers/devices support H.264 for HTML5 video. Actually, Internet Explorer doesn’t support HTML5 at all, but IE 9 (whenever it comes out) will do both HTML5 and H.264. By the way, both Microsoft and Apple are rumored to have monetary interests in the actual H.264 codec, which is not open-source.
Firefox – They refuse to support H.264 because it’s not an open-source video codec. They support the open-source Ogg format. They will also support WebM. By the way, Apple (and others) are rumored to be looking at legal options that will stop Ogg and WebM from actually being open-source. Go figure. Whatever is best for the web, right?
Google Chrome – Currently supports both H.264 and Ogg. And obviously they will support WebM too…perhaps exclusively. YouTube will include WebM in their HTML5 Experiment. If you join the experiment, you can add the characters “&webm=1” to the end of video URL’s to watch WebM videos (provided you have a supported browser).
In a nutshell, what this all means is that you have to produce your videos in 3 different formats if you want everyone using the variety of HTML5 supported browsers/devices to be able to watch your videos. And then you must provide a 4th format…Flash…as a fallback for those people who aren’t using HTML5 supported browsers/devices.
And all of this for a format (HTML5 video) that was intended to make video simple and straightforward for everyone, by providing one universal format. Kind of makes you long for the days when there was a so-called single, universal format. It was called Flash.
Dave, I thank your for your outstanding initiative, your videos are very well made and your tips of great value. What can you comment about Divx, is it worth to encode videos in this format for future video websites ?
jac
Here we go again!!!
Why can’t life just be simple?
I was wondering what had happened to VP8 after it was first shown, and now we know. At the time, the quality of VP8 definitely looked to be better than H.264, but that was from videos on On2’s own website. If Google have got it now it will be pushed to the max (if it’s going to end up the preferred format on YouTube – which I’ve no doubt will happen – then it becomes the de facto standard anyway).
Interesting about Apple and H.264, particularly after Steve Job’s blast at Adobe over ‘proprietary formats’ (and from the owner of iTunes!).
I “think” get the why Google enjoys competing in this new video space but what I am still a little foggy on is how this will translate on the mobile web and if Android will have an edge over Apple’s iPhone?
Dave, thank you for this brief and concise post about these different web video formats. You framed the nutshell in a way that no one else has. I’m a little confused about Firefox not supporting h.264. Are you referring to Firefox in the HTML 5 standard. One can view h.264 on firefox now but you have to have quicktime installed on your computer to play it. If you could clear this up, I’d be much obliged.
@Jose – Divx requires a browser plugin just like Flash, Silverlight, QuickTime, etc. HTML5 video does not require any browser plugins, which is part of the point of HTML5 video.
@Doublejnyc – I was referring to the HTML5 standard, i.e using the tag to embed videos.