Lair Of The Multimedia Guru

2011-01-17

Chrome droppings

Google is planing to drop h264 support from the video tag in chrome html-video-codec-support-in-chrome and more-about-chrome-html-video-codec. With some blah blah about open and patents

  • real network, rv1, rv2, rv3, rv4 failed
  • Apple SVQ1, SVQ3 (there was no 2) failed
  • Microsoft MSMpeg4v123 WMV* failed
  • On2 VP* failed
  • Google VP ehm i mean webm ….

About open, ITU H.264 was developed on a public mailing list namely JVT-experts, using public FTP containing software, spec drafts, proposed changes, test results, meeting protocols and god knows what else. Anyone could read in near realtime what was discussed, proposed,changed and why and any expert that wanted to contribute iam pretty darn sure would have been taken serious. google webm is On2 last video codec, that to the best of my knowledge was developed behind closed doors by On2 and On2 people where on the jvt-expert list.

So calling webm more open than h264 is a insult at best, calling it less patent encumbered is something that will only be found out once its widespreadly used and third party companies have enough financial interrest in cross checking their patents against it. And about which has better compression vs quality, that was elaborated by others to great lengths already. I guess google needs a new motto, like dont be stupid

Filed under: VideoCoding — Michael @ 05:04

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