Google's assumption: People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows
What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash.
Lose all round, then.
What will actually happen: Chrome will get served h.264 wrapped in Flash.
Lose all round, then.
Adobe is gonna support webm. So having only one format is gonna be possible.
Browsers who supported or were gonna support H264 :
- Safari (5% market share) - IE9 (0% market share right now, probably around 15% in 3 years) - Chrome (around 13 %)
Browsers who supports Webm :
- Firefox (30% market share) - Chrome - IE9 will probably support it via codecs which is better than nothing
The big deal breaker i see is the mobile devices who natively support H264. But as a long term move i can only approve what google is doing.
Also :
> People will add WebM encoding to their already complicated video workflows
Most people video workflow is youtube/vimeo/dailymotion video workflow. All of which seems ready to support webm.
You kind of buried this but this is the true deal breaker. There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders.
And Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9).
The very article states that there are hardware WebM decoders, not only that but Google is licensing the technology for free as in zero dollars:
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...
2) If I'm not mistaken they're not general purpose computers. If they were what would be the point? Why not use a math coprocessor?
They are not general-purpose, but that doesn't mean they're not easily re-programmable either. Consider the example of GPUs.
I want to say some SNES games used a DSP chip, there are several known to emulator authors, including two versions that used the exact same hardware with different microcode (and therefore different abilities). So it's been done before at least.
The accelerator units are usually filters that operate over a region of memory while processor is busy computing something else. These can be made fixed function, however most of them are programmable to support multiple steps in codec processing.
TI I believe is the largest vendors of DSPs for hardware decoding/encoding
is that true? how many released mobile devices have hardware support for the webM decoder?
Well i mentionned it. I'm at least partially intellectually honest :)
> Firefox doesn't support WebM yet. You'll have to wait on version 4 (0% market share right now as you said for IE9)
That's totally true, but from experience and statistical evidence, i think firefox users are more inclined to upgrade their browser than IE user are.
> There aren't (and probably won't be) hardware WebM decoders.
I don't think that's true
Very true. Our site has had for a while only a couple percent of non 3.5+ Firefox traffic.
They link to a relevant announcement in the linked blog post:
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/01/availability-of-webm-vp8...
And the update rates of Firefox and Chrome and totally different from IE, especially since version 9 doesn't support XP.
http://googland.blogspot.com/2011/01/g-availability-of-webm-...
The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. We have the IP running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well.
Flash also supports h.264 video, as do most mobile devices (Android, iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Windows Phone 7, Zune even) and game consoles (XBox, PS3, and afaik the Wii). In fact from what I can tell, the only platform that doesn't support H.264 is Firefox without Flash. Compare that to the massive amount of existing platforms and devices which don't support WebM (and have no hardware WebM decoding), and it seems like moving to WebM makes much less business sense.
(yes, it'll consume battery like a dry horse drinks water in a desert)
For mobile devices, that's a huge deal. There are no resources more scarce than battery power on a mobile device.
Personally, I just leave my mobile devices plugged in most of the time anyway so they're always topped off, but that's just me.
DOES NOT COMPUTE.
In the car? Plug it in.
etc.
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Battery_memor...
And of coure it's only a coincidence that most of those are the ones competing with a Google product.
Thats going to take a while - the lead time on new DSP families isn't quick.
And how long before their are optimized open source libraries like ffmpeg and x264?
Announcing the world’s fastest VP8 decoder: ffvp8
(09:50:48 PM) sjuxax: Guy on HN said this: "ffmpeg only has a working webm decoder. xvp8 (the x264-based encoder) hasn't been touched for a few months and is basically vaporware"
(09:50:50 PM) sjuxax: true?
...
(09:52:34 PM) Dark_Shikari: not quite true
(09:52:42 PM) Dark_Shikari: close, but not quite.
(09:52:58 PM) Dark_Shikari: 1) the github tree hasn't been updated
(09:53:05 PM) Dark_Shikari: there is more stuff that isn't in the tree yet
(09:53:13 PM) Dark_Shikari: 2) Ronald is dealing with his first baby boy, give him some slack
(09:53:20 PM) Dark_Shikari: 3) Google just hired him full-time for a year to work solely on xvp8
and later on...
(10:12:27 PM) Dark_Shikari: tl;dr: it's kinda vaporware, there's a bit of work done, but it will stop being vaporware in march when Ronald goes to work for Google.
So I'd say expect IE9 to be closer to 27% in 3 years.
Of course this ignores two big questions:
1) Is IE still hemorraging market share? 2) Does IE9 actually reverse the trend of people using Chrome?
Yes, businesses that already use h.264 and flash will probably continue using them. But the bootstrapped websites and startups will opt for the free stuff at least initially, and of all those bootstrapped startups some will be successful enough to make some noise. And then some of the established companies will have cost cutting rounds and will look at those license fees and think about whether they really need to pay them when some of their brand new competitors aren't paying them. At this point the iPhone will start looking bad for not supporting the newest and coolest video startups that are supported on android and Jobs will eventually cave too and add WebM support to the iPhone.
Everything in the web thus far has gone towards the lowest cost and easiest alternative that is still effective, and this will not be different.
The thing is that all of those video standards use more or less the same basic math operations, just in a different way. This means that a WebM hardware accelerator would look very similar hardware wise to a h.264 one but would have different firmware.
In practice, I am sure that the hardware companies will make one hardware accelerator that can handle both h.264 and webm through different firmware programs. So you wont need much additional silicon or power to handle WebM. It might cost more, if the hardware companies decide to charge extra for WebM support, but that surcharge will not be much, because (i) they do not need to pay license fees, and (ii) there is a lot of competition in that field.
Also, Google controls YouTube. So H.264 <video> YouTube could see a sunset at some point, which would be a BFD.
You're dreaming if you think Apple could ignore WebM if it became the de facto web video standard. It all depends if WebM becomes that popular.
hristov's entire parent post was about why this sentence should end in "for now."
Two things could end the format war. 1. Apple adopts WebM (which requires WebM hardware for iOS devices) 2. MPEG LA removes all royalties from h.264
Why? Aren't the iOS devices powerful enough to software decode WebM streams?
Hopefully SIMD and GPU in high-end phones can at least partially alleviate the problem (iOS has Accelerate framework and programmable shaders).
I'm not sure what percentage of the market that is, but I'm pretty sure it's pretty small.
In comparison, all mobile devices, game consoles, and Blu-Ray players support H.264, as do all Flash installations (including the one bundled with Chrome that users can't remove), and all installations of Safari and IE9 (when it arrives).
I can't think of why anyone would want to promote flash, though.
There was a big post a while back about all the things YouTube needs to do in Flash instead of HTML5. The fact of the matter is that HTML5 video puts several of YouTube's main money-makers out of order, at least temporarily while the logic is re-implemented.
Edit: The post from YouTube about why they still need Flash is at http://apiblog.youtube.com/2010/06/flash-and-html5-tag.html .
It has happen possibly twice.
I could understand other companies not implementing WebM because it was a new codec developed by Google with no existing community or anything around it.
But such a widely used codec (all my videos are H.264), I don't understand.
Can't they just all support each others codec's, get this stupid war over with and start a large scale push of HTML5.
Once Apple supports WebM.
Once chipset manufacturers produce WebM optimized hardware decoders.
Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers purchase and integrate those WebM hardware decoders.
Once handset, set-top, etc. manufacturers develop or license software players that support WebM encoded video and file format.
Could happen the other way around. But it ain't likely.
Also, not to nitpick, but 'Java variant' seems inaccurate. Code is written in actual Java (not a variant, as far as I'm aware), and compiled to bytecode to run on the Dalvik VM (not a JVM variant).
Google drove the cost of smartphone OSes down to as near to zero as patent law will allow.
I'd say that is a game changer.
How much does WebM cost?
With Apple, the product is the device and you are the buyer. With Google, the product is you and the advertiser is the buyer. They are each winning their respective games. Superficially they are competitors, but if there is a winner, then there's a loser. How can you look at either company and consider it the loser?
Actually the more I think about it the more non-sensical your original statement and this conversation becomes. ;)
With only three or four percent of the market, Apple swallows up more profit share than the largest three phone makers combined (in the neighborhood of 40 percent). That's an astounding number, and it doesn't even include non-phone devices. At the same time, Android had tremendous growth in 2010, inevitably passing Apple in unit sales rate. It's a bit glib to simply say Google therefore beats Apple in 2010. There is nuance, and either company can be painted in the foreground.
Both companies seem to be doing wildly well with their respective mobile strategies.
For sites which only produce h.264, Chrome includes Flash which can play h.264. And every video site is going to support a Flash playback path for older browsers.
The real impact here is pretty small, other than legitimizing a free and open codec. Chrome has just moved from one must-support category to another one. Most people will never notice the difference. How is that a loss?
These changes will occur in the next couple months
By then flash will gain WebM playback support. This move is a good one and it does make sense, I don't think there is room for compromise in regards to the open internet and non-proprietary standards.
I haven't tried Flash video on my android tablet (it has a YouTube app) yet, but I've also rooted it and flashed the firmware to remove a software underclock so my experience may not be representative of any stock devices.