{"id":1328,"date":"2010-05-21T09:14:15","date_gmt":"2010-05-21T13:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/?p=1328"},"modified":"2010-05-21T09:14:15","modified_gmt":"2010-05-21T13:14:15","slug":"google-releases-open-source-web-video-codec-further-complicating-html5-video","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/2010\/05\/21\/google-releases-open-source-web-video-codec-further-complicating-html5-video\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Releases Open-Source Web Video Codec, Further Complicating HTML5 Video"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, Google gave a $120 million dollar gift to the web&#8230;a new HTML5 compliant video format. \u00a0The $120 million price comes from what Google paid to acquire On2 Technologies, the creator of the video format. \u00a0The format or codec itself is called VP8 (which has actually been around for a while) but Google has christened it as WebM. \u00a0It&#8217;s intended to compete with the other leading HTML5 video formats, H.264 and Ogg.<\/p>\n<p>The VP8 codec, or WebM, is claimed to provide up to 50% better performance than competing formats. \u00a0For those of us who have done a little testing with WebM, that claim is not entirely true. \u00a0At least not yet.<\/p>\n<p>As far as video quality goes (which is subjective), WebM quality seems to be on par to slightly lower than H.264. \u00a0For file size, WebM seems to produce slightly larger file sizes vs. H.264&#8230;around 15% larger in my limited testing.<\/p>\n<p>But the wildcard is that WebM is supposed to have fewer playback issues than H.264 (it&#8217;s less processor intensive for the viewer&#8217;s computer). \u00a0Unfortunately, I can&#8217;t confirm or deny this as native browser support for the WebM format is still forthcoming.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, for those of you keeping score, here&#8217;s how the latest HTML5 video wars shape up with the addition of WebM:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Internet Explorer\/Safari\/iPad\/iPhone<\/strong> &#8211; These browsers\/devices support H.264 for HTML5 video. \u00a0Actually, Internet Explorer doesn&#8217;t support HTML5 at all, but IE 9 (whenever it comes out) will do both HTML5 and H.264. \u00a0By the way, both Microsoft and Apple are rumored to have monetary interests in the actual H.264 codec, which is not open-source.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Firefox<\/strong> &#8211; They refuse to support H.264 because it&#8217;s not an open-source video codec. \u00a0They support the open-source Ogg format. \u00a0They will also support WebM. \u00a0By the way, Apple (and others) are rumored to be looking at legal options that will stop Ogg and WebM from actually being open-source. \u00a0Go figure. \u00a0Whatever is best for the web, right?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Google Chrome<\/strong> &#8211; Currently supports both H.264 and Ogg. \u00a0And obviously they will support WebM too&#8230;perhaps exclusively. \u00a0YouTube will include WebM in their <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/html5\" target=\"_blank\">HTML5 Experiment<\/a><\/strong>. \u00a0If you join the experiment, you can add the characters &#8220;&amp;webm=1&#8221; to the end of video URL&#8217;s to watch WebM videos (provided you have a supported browser).<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0And then you must provide a 4th format&#8230;Flash&#8230;as a fallback for those people who aren&#8217;t using HTML5 supported browsers\/devices.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00a0Kind of makes you long for the days when there was a so-called single, universal format. \u00a0It was called Flash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Wednesday, Google gave a $120 million dollar gift to the web&#8230;a new HTML5 compliant video format. \u00a0The $120 million price comes from what Google paid to acquire On2 Technologies, the creator of the video format. \u00a0The format or codec itself is called VP8 (which has actually been around for a while) but Google has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[560,558,559],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1328"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1348,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1328\/revisions\/1348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}