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Comment by cdeutsch | Hacker News Reader

Do you encode video for the web? Do you know how long it has taken to reach a point where there is almost a ubiquitous codec? I've been in the business for 10 years. Yesterday may have been the peak of ubiquity.

This is a selfish move by Google to put the screws to Apple. There's no question it's going to hurt users in the short term because they'll have to rely on Flash to playback H.264. And users are going to be using Flash a lot because the people like me who are in the business of encoding and hosting video will not be switching to WebM anytime soon. The millions of iOS devices and the higher ups who own them will dictate this for years to come. This is where your idealism meets reality.

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So only iOS counts? Because that is the only platform <video> matters on right now.

I'm glad to see Apple calls the shots and Google is in the wrong for making a move in its own interest. And in the interest is places that don't want to pay a software patent cartel for permission to innovate.

No, but Apple is the biggest factor. I'm willing to bet more corporate decision makers have iPhone's than Androids (which also don't support WebM by the way) and when you're selling a video hosting and asset management service that matters.

These are the other extremely popular devices that support H.264 and most will not be supporting WebM anytime soon so why would I encode in WebM until they do.

Android devices.

Sony PSP.

Sony Playstation 3.

Xbox 360.

Blackberrys.

Some Symbian Phones.

Windows Phone 7.

I'll jump on the WebM bandwagon as soon as more then 50% of the popular consumer devices support it. Taking away support for an established and popular codec just makes you an asshole and will be nothing more then an inconvenience as long as Flash player supports it and is included with Chrome.

It'll be one of those things where time will tell.

I have sympathy for those involved in encoding but one has to remember that disruptive technologies are called disruptive for a reason. If WebM takes off its going to cause someone pain during the process... :)

Since you edited I'll edit too:

Which of those devices will still be around and usable in 5 years? Which ones won't be replaced by shiny new hardware? Your timeframe is a bit different than Google's.

But why do you care so much? Google did what they think is right for them and the web long-term. They're not in the business of making your job easy and certainly aren't in the business of extending ubiquity of what they feel is a harmful codec.

You don't have to agree. If you don't want to re-encode to WebM then don't. The users using browsers that don't support H.264 natively will get the Flash wrapper. If they don't like it they can use a different browser that does H.264 natively or go to a different content provider who will encode in WebM. Free market.

If WebM proves popular and wins the format war, we get a (FUD aside) license free codec. If it doesn't, at worst we get status quo of part-Flash, part-H.264 video experience, and at best we get your dream of H.264 ubiquity. Where's the loss?

I care because I like Chrome and was enjoying using it to play H.264 video. I may switch to Safari.

I also care because I was very excited about the near ubiquity a video codec had finally reached in 2010. I don't want to go back to encoding for multiple formats (I hate you 3GP). I won't encode multiple formats until I have to, but the transition to a new standard is always painful and time consuming. If WebM "wins" I get to re-encode thousands of videos and since we now outsource that to Zencoder that means thousands of dollars to do so.

Switching away from a browser is realistically the most powerful way you can influence a browser maker's decisions these days. Do it if you feel strongly about the situation.

(As an aside, price for outsourced video encoding is on order of magnitude close to dollars per video? I did not know that.)

It's priced $.02 to $.05 per minute so depends on how long the content you have is. We have lots of training and event content which is typically longer then a YouTube clip.

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