- From: Silvia Pfeiffer <silviapfeiffer1@gmail.com>
- Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 18:59:46 +1000
Hi Ian, I have just posted a detailed reply on your email to public-html (http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html/2009Jun/0830.html), so let me not repeat myself, but only address the things that I haven't already addressed there. On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:50 PM, Ian Hickson<ian at hixie.ch> wrote: > I considered requiring Ogg Theora support in the spec, since we do have > three implementations that are willing to implement it, but it wouldn't > help get us true interoperabiliy, since the people who are willing to > implement it are willing to do so regardless of the spec, and the people > who aren't are not going to be swayed by what the spec says. Inclusion of a required baseline codec into a standard speaks more loudly than you may think. It provides confidence - confidence that an informed choice has been made as to the best solution in a given situation. Confidence to Web developers, confidence to hosting providers, confidence also (but less so, since they are gatekeepers in this situation) to Browser Vendors. In my opinion, including a baseline codec requirement into a W3C specification that is not supported by all Browser Vendors is much preferable over an unclear situation, where people are forced to gather their own information about a given situation and make a decision on what to choose based on potentially very egoistic and single-sided reasons/recommendations. In fact, it is a tradition of HTML to have specifications that are only supported by a limited set of Browser Vendors and only over time increasingly supported by all - e.g. how long did it take for all Browser vendors to accept css2, and many of the smaller features of html4 such as fixed positioning? I firmly believe that making the decision to give up on baseline codecs is repeating a mistake made and repeatedly cited as a mistake on the lack of specification of a baseline format for images - which is one of the reasons why it took years to have two baseline image codecs available in all browsers. We could try the other route for a change and see if standards can actually make a difference to adoption. > Going forward, I see several (not mutually exclusive) possibilities, all > of which will take several years: > > ?1. Ogg Theora encoders continue to improve. Off-the-shelf hardware Ogg > ? ?Theora decoder chips become available. Google ships support for the > ? ?codec for long enough without getting sued that Apple's concern > ? ?regarding submarine patents is reduced. => Theora becomes the de facto > ? ?codec for the Web. This to me is a defeat of the standardisation process. Standards are not there to wait for the market to come up with a de-facto standard. They are there to provide confidence to the larger market about making a choice - no certainty of course, but just that much more confidence that it matters. > ?2. The remaining H.264 baseline patents owned by companies who are not > ? ?willing to license them royalty-free expire, leading to H.264 support > ? ?being available without license fees. => H.264 becomes the de facto > ? ?codec for the Web. That could take many years. > I would encourage proponents of particular codecs to attempt to address > the points listed above, as eventually I expect one codec will emerge as > the common codec, but not before it fulfills all these points: OK, let me try to address these for Theora. The replies for Vorbis are simply "yes" to each of these points. > ?- is implementable without cost and distributable by anyone Theora is. > ?- has off-the-shelf decoder hardware chips available "decoder hardware" for video means that there are software libraries available that use specific hardware in given chips to optimise decoding. It is not a matter of hardware vendors to invent new hardware to support Theora, but it is a matter of somebody implementing some code to take advantage of available hardware on specific platforms. This is already starting to happen, and will increasingly happen if Theora became the baseline codec. > ?- is used widely enough to justify the extra patent exposure This is a double requirement: firstly one has to quantify the extra patent exposure, and independent of that is wide uptake. We are now seeming wide uptake happening for Theora with Dailymotion, Wikimedia, Archive.org and many small & medium size video platforms (such as thevideobay, metavid, pad.me) taking it up. As for the extra patent exposure - with every month that goes by, this is shrinking. And obviously many players have already decided that the extra patent exposure of Theora is acceptable, since already three Browser Vendors are supporting Theora natively. > ?- has a quality-per-bit high enough for large volume sites Your main argument against Theora is a recent email stating that YouTube could not be run using Theora. Several experiments with current Theora encoder version have demonstrated that this statement was based on misinformation and not on fact. Until I see fact that confirms that YouTube would indeed be unable to run using Theora, we have to assume it is myth. Current Theora indeed has a quality-per-bit high enough for large volume sites. > On Thu, 22 Mar 2007, Thomas Davies wrote: >> >> Having been pointed at this discussion by Christian, I thought I'd let >> you know a bit more about where Dirac is as a royalty-free open source >> codec. We're certainly very keen for Dirac to be considered as one of >> the supported video formats. > > It's unclear to me why Dirac hasn't received as close investigation as > Theora and H.264. I encourage you to approach the browser vendors directly > and discuss it with them. I expect, however, that the situation is > basically the same as with Theora (some UAs would be happy to support it; > others would cite lack of off-the-shelf hardware decoders and an unclear > patent landscape). It has been stated that Dirac's performance on low resolution video (the YouTube-size videos) is relatively poor, while Theora is very strong in this area. Dirac will, however, become very important when we will start seeing large resolution video being exchanged over the Internet. Thus, I can see a future where we now prescribe a baseline codec for HTML5 being Theora, but in future we may see additional work being done on this part of the standard to extend it to other prescribed baseline codecs that will be more appropriate to the conditions that we will find ourselves in wrt the Web and Internet bandwidth. No standard is for eternity. > On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Dan Dorman wrote: >> On Dec 11, 2007 9:06 AM, Joseph Harry <jharry at lapcat.org> wrote: >> > One thing to remember, HTML is created by people who can be bought, >> > and it is clearly what has happened here. >> >> Hey, let's not get carried away. Ian et al. have been working tirelessly >> and scrupulously on this spec; there's no reason to cast aspersions on >> anyone's character. > > Joseph is right that I can be bought... but sadly for me this has never > happened with HTML5. :-( ?I guess I picked the wrong area to work in if I > wanted to make money through bribes! We do standards to better the world - that is our bribe. :-) > On Tue, 11 Dec 2007, Manuel Amador (Rudd-O) wrote: >> > >> > Actually those are pretty much the only reasons being taken into >> > account here. Sadly, Ogg doesn't keep the Web free of IP licensing >> > horrors, due to the submarine patent issue -- as Microsoft experienced >> > with MP3 and with the Eolas patent over the past few years, for >> > instance, even things that seem to have well-understood patent >> > landscapes can be unexpectedly attacked by patent trolls. >> > >> > This does suggest we need patent reform, but in practice this is out >> > of scope for HTML5's development. We can't design our spec on the >> > assumption that the patent system will be reformed. >> >> Interesting. ?Finally patents have brought free multimedia innovation to >> a standstill. ?Two quite long paragraphs to say "we admit defeat". > > No, that was just a tactical withdrawal. This e-mail here is the one that > admits defeat. :-) First rule of standards: never give up! > On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Shannon wrote: >> >> Ian, are you saying that not implementing a SHOULD statement in the spec would >> make a browser non-compliant with HTML5? >> Are you saying that if a vendor does not implement the OPTIONAL Ogg support >> then they would not use HTML5 at all? > > No, I'm just saying that there's not much point requiring a codec unless > everyone implements it. We don't gain anything saying "you can do Theora, > or you can do something else, you know, whatever you feel like". Unfortunately, your current defeat is doing exactly that: giving the message to do whatever you feel like. Including a Theora prescription and having it only partially supported with at least give a large part of the world an interoperable platform and that's all HTML has traditionally been. HTML has not managed to replace word processing formats, or pdf. Proprietary formats will continue to be used no matter what. But if we want to use a compatible format, at least the spec has made the decision for us on what that format is. Best Regards, Silvia.
Received on Tuesday, 30 June 2009 01:59:46 UTC