All posts tagged ‘H.264’

File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Basics
Apr
26
2011

Google Pools WebM Video Supporters for Patent Protection

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Google has announced the new WebM Community Cross License (CCL) initiative. The new group is designed to create a patent-safe haven around Google’s WebM video codec for HTML5 video. Members of the new CCL initiative agree to license any WebM-related patents to each other under royalty-free terms.

The WebM codec is one of several ways web developers can deliver native HTML5 video on the web, without requiring the Flash Player plugin or other proprietary, non-standard tools. The other major codec, H.264, is older and more widespread, but carries expensive licensing fees for broadcasting sites like YouTube.

So far Firefox 4, Opera, Chrome and Internet Explorer 9 (via a plugin) all support the WebM codec. Apple’s Safari and Mobile Safari are the lone holdouts for H.264 (IE9 also supports H.264).

Microsoft, which many suspected would ignore WebM, has thus far remained cautiously supportive of WebM. While the company doesn’t include support out of the box, it has pledged to support users who “install third-party WebM video support on Windows.” Many of Microsoft’s concerns about WebM revolve around unresolved patents and licensing.

Google’s CCL initiative seems geared at least in part to assuage Microsoft’s patent fears, laying out in clear terms how participating companies will handle patents. In short, organizations that join the CCL agree to license any essential patented WebM technologies to other members of the CCL under royalty-free terms, affording each member a measure of protection against potential patent lawsuits.

For the launch Google has put together 16 companies including AMD, Cisco, LG and Samsung, as well as browser makers Opera and Mozilla.

The elephant in the room is the MPEG-LA organization which governs the licensing of the H.264 codec. MPEG-LA recently closed out its call for the submission of patents essential to WebM, but has yet to announce any lawsuits against WebM. That does not of course mean that MPEG-LA has failed to come up with any potential WebM patent violations. In fact, not announcing anything helps build the sense of patent fear, uncertainty and doubt that surrounds WebM at the moment.

But MPEG-LA may have problems of its own. The U.S. Department of Justice is reportedly investigating the group to see whether the organization is trying to stifle competition from Google. Our friends at Ars Technica report that DOJ investigators are “looking into whether MPEG-LA or its member companies (which include Apple and Microsoft) are making an active effort to cripple adoption of WebM.”

While WebM’s future may still be in doubt, Google is clearly pushing forward regardless. The company has already removed H.264 support from its Chrome web browser and recently began serving up WebM videos on YouTube. With the new CCL initiative Google has expanded its range of WebM allies beyond just browser makers and is well on its way to having a patent pool that can back up WebM against MPEG-LA.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Feb
14
2011

MPEG LA Starts the Search for VP8 patents

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MPEG LA, the one-stop shop for motion video patent licenses, yesterday announced a call for patents essential to the VP8 video compression algorithm — the algorithm that is fundamental to Google’s WebM video format. MPEG LA is asking organizations that hold patents believed to cover integral, unavoidable parts of the VP8 algorithm to come forward and submit those patents to the licensing company. The patents will in turn by analyzed by MPEG LA, and those deemed to be relevant will be pooled together. The pooled patents will then be available to license as a single convenient bundle.

In its promotion of WebM and VP8, Google has insisted that all the relevant patents were developed by codec company On2, which Google purchased last year. The patents can be licensed from Google without payment of any royalties or any restrictions on usage. Google has been heavily promoting WebM for use with the HTML5 <video> tag, which allows plugin-free video to be embedded in webpages, and the royalty freedom is a key part of WebM’s value proposition.

Competitive codecs such as the open and industry standard H.264 require royalties to be paid by software and hardware developers. Companies like Opera and Mozilla, as well as the W3C group that is developing the HTML5 specification, deem these royalties be an unacceptable impediment to their usage. They have no such qualms about the royalty-free WebM.

If MPEG LA is successful in assembling a patent pool, that royalty freedom could come to an end. The company is soliciting patent submissions until March 18th. Once the submissions have been made, it will determine which patents are essential to VP8; only those patents that are unavoidable can form part of the patent pool. The owners of those selected patents will then decide on the license conditions they wish to impose, and these conditions could include royalty payments.

Whether this will happen, of course, is the big question. MPEG LA might fail to form a patent pool altogether: it may receive no relevant patent submissions, in which case the patent pool process will likely end. Such an outcome still won’t mean that WebM is in the clear — a company may feel that it’s more lucrative to avoid a patent pool and allow WebM usage to become more widespread before asserting claims — but it would probably imply that there aren’t dozens of potential claimants just waiting to come forward.

This sort of outcome might well see Microsoft’s current neutral stance towards WebM (it will work in Internet Explorer 9, just as long as a suitable third-party codec is installed) become more overtly positive. Redmond might start shipping a WebM codec of its own, for example.

If MPEG LA does form a patent pool, the license terms will be critical. MPEG LA exists to monetize patents, however, so it’s unlikely that any patent pool would permit the kind of indiscriminate royalty-free license that Google currently offers. More likely, they would choose terms similar in kind to those of H.264; Web video may be free, but decoders still incur a royalty. This would put WebM implementors in a difficult position — either drop WebM support, pay up, or risk going to court to fight a patent infringement suit.

An infringement suit is an unappealing prospect: even if you win, the drain on your financial resources can mean that ultimately, you lose. This is especially problematic for organizations like Mozilla, since Google offers no indemnification for users of WebM — if Mozilla gets sued, Google won’t step in to help. As such, the safest, most conservative option for Opera and Mozilla would be to drop support. Google has deeper pockets and can better sustain a legal attack, but even there, the company has to weigh its options carefully. A lost court case could cost tens of millions of dollars. Paying up just to avoid the problem may very well be the better option.

But paying up is problematic too. VP8 is, for most purposes, inferior in quality to H.264. H.264 is much more widespread in software tools, hardware accelerators, and so on: it’s enormously widespread already. If VP8 loses its key feature — royalty freedom — implementers may very well decide that, since they have to pay anyway, they’d be better off paying for the superior, more widely used H.264 license, and abandoning WebM entirely.

Whatever happens — and it will probably be many months before we find out — this is bad news for WebM. The formation of a patent pool directly undermines Google’s claims about the codec — and yet, even if MPEG LA fails to create a pool, question marks surrounding the codec will remain.

This article originally appeared on Ars Technica, Wired’s sister site for in-depth technology news.

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File Under: Browsers, HTML5, Multimedia, Web Standards
Feb
2
2011

Microsoft Puts H.264 Video Back in Google Chrome, Considers WebM for IE

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Microsoft has announced a plug-in for Google’s Chrome web browser that allows Chrome on Windows to play H.264 web video through the HTML5 <video> tag. The new plug-in comes on the heels of Google’s decision to remove H.264 support from Chrome and focus on the company’s competing WebM video codec.

You can grab the new Chrome plugin from Microsoft. Microsoft previously released a similar H.264 plugin for Firefox, which also only supports WebM video.

The video move is the latest sign of a collision between the two tech giants, who now compete directly in search, courtesy of Microsoft’s Bing initiative and mobile, where Google’s Android is taking market share and the new Windows Phone 7 is struggling for a foothold. Google has also launched various cloud-based applications that take aim at Office. This week, the two threw punches over search, with Google claiming Microsoft copies its results, and Microsoft complaining the Google perpetrated a sting worthy of a spy novel.

Now the two are sparring over web video. Google has thrown its weight behind the WebM codec, which the company owns, while Microsoft supports H.264. However, Microsoft says that, provided Google makes some changes, it may be willing to support the WebM codec as well.

While HTML5′s video tag promises a native way to watch video in your browser, video codec support among browsers is divided. Firefox, Opera and Chrome support the WebM codec while Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s IE9 support H.264. As it stands there is no “it just works” solution, which means most websites still use Flash video players.

Microsoft’s H.264 plug-ins for Firefox and Chrome are part of the company’s attempt to be pragmatic — since Windows includes native support for H.264, users should be able to watch H.264 video even if the browser doesn’t support it. On the other side of the coin, Internet Explorer 9 will be able to play WebM video through a similar third-party plug-in.

However, while Microsoft isn’t including native support for WebM in the next version of IE, it doesn’t appear to totally rule out the idea. As part of the plugin announcement, Dean Hachamovitch, corporate vice president for Internet Explorer, outlines some of Microsoft’s problems with the WebM codec. The main problem is that Microsoft is concerned about WebM’s potential patent risks.

Google insists that it owns all of the patents covering WebM and the VP8 video codec. But the company offers no indemnification for costs incurred should a patent lawsuit arise. That means that anyone distributing WebM/VP8 could be on the hook for any patent-related fees that might come up.

Some have dismissed Microsoft’s patent worries as an example of Microsoft spreading “fear, uncertainty and doubt” about WebM, but Microsoft does have history on its side in this case. As Hachamovitch points out, such patent lawsuits often don’t arise until a technology is in widespread use. So just because no one is suing over WebM now, doesn’t mean they won’t in the future. Hachamovitch cites the JPEG photo compression format, pointing out that JPEG was around for ten years before the first patent lawsuits appeared. Eventually the patents in question were ruled invalid, but not before millions of dollars were spent defending and licensing JPEG.

Of course the same patent threats potentially hang over H.264, but the MPEG-LA consortium — the governing body that oversees the patents surrounding H.264 — provides a kind of legal buffer between H.264 licensees and any lawsuit.

Surprisingly, Hachamovitch says that, if Google is willing to indemnify WebM users against patent lawsuits, “Microsoft is willing to commit that we will never assert any patents on VP8.” Of course that doesn’t mean other companies won’t, but it would be a huge step forward for WebM if Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon. Google did not respond to a request to comment in time for this story.

For now at least Microsoft has chosen a pragmatic approach — plugins. There will be a WebM plugin for Internet Explorer and H.264 plugins for Firefox and Chrome. In the end, Windows users will be able to watch just about any video on the web regardless of which browser they’re using. It might not be an ideal solution, but it is one that, from the user’s point of view, just works.

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File Under: Multimedia
Aug
26
2010

MPEG LA Extends Web Video Licensing Moratorium Until the End of Time

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The group that oversees patents on the H.264 video format has announced it will not charge royalties for H.264 videos that are freely broadcast on the internet.

The MPEG Licensing Association (MPEG LA) holds patents on AVC/H.264, the most widely-used video format on the web.

The group announced earlier this year that it would extend a moratorium on royalty fees for H.264 videos on the web from 2011 until the end of 2015. Thursday’s announcement extends this royalty-free period for “the entire life of [the AVC Patent Portfolio] license.”

This means that as long as H.264/AVC videos are around, publishers can post them on web pages and people can watch them in their browsers without having to pay any licensing fees.

The moratorium is only for the Internet Broadcast AVC video patent, which covers videos that are freely available via a web browser. Thursday’s announcement basically extends the status quo until the end of time — you don’t have to pay MPEG LA royalties to watch H.264 video on the web from free services now, and you won’t have to in the future.

The MPEG LA says it will continue to collect fees on AVC/H.264 video that consumers pay for. The video format is used on Blu-Ray discs and on most on-demand and paid video delivery services, such as iTunes. It will also continue to collect fees from software that ships with the coders and decoders required to play H.264 video — even software that’s distributed for free, such as web browsers.

Clearly, the MPEG LA is feeling pressure from the WebM Project, a new initiative launched in May that seeks to build a patent-free web video format. The project has created the WebM format as an alternative for H.264 and other patent-encumbered formats. WebM has already gained the support of Mozilla, Google and Opera, all of which are shipping new versions of their browsers with support built in. It has also gained the support of developers passionate about free and open web standards, especially as the web increasingly moves towards HTML5-based video experiences that work without the aid of plug-ins like Flash.

As promising as WebM’s advancements are, H.264 remains the dominant format for video on the web by a very wide margin — about two thirds of web video is H.264. By extending the royalty moratorium, the MPEG LA is likely trying to maintain that dominance on the web and encourage content providers to continue to use its format for publishing videos. By doing so, it also guarantees the group a revenue stream of licensing fees from the tools used to create, encode and watch those videos — cameras, editing software, authoring suites and web browsers.

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File Under: Browsers, Multimedia, Web Standards
Apr
30
2010

Microsoft Says Web Video in IE9 Is All About H.264

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ie9

Microsoft’s next browser will support native playback of videos using HTML5, but it will only support H.264, and not its more open alternatives.

In a post on the official IEBlog Thursday, Microsoft’s general manager of Internet Explorer Dean Hachamovitch outlined his company’s position in the ongoing Flash vs. HTML5 video debate. He says that when it comes to playing web videos without plug-ins, Microsoft will support H.264-encoded videos in its browser. He makes no mention of those encoded with Theora or any other codecs, and nobody is expecting Microsoft to support anything other than H.264 — Hachamovitch first mentioned singular support for H.264 in IE9 last month when he showed off an early version of the browser.

The argument over which web video playback technology to support has been a point of major tension among browser makers ever since last year, when the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) bowed out of the debate, declining to recommend any single video technology for HTML5. The result, so far, is a stalemate — Microsoft and Apple are supporting H.264, Mozilla and Opera are supporting Ogg Theora and Google, for the time being, is supporting both.

As we’ve said before, H.264 is a dangerous path for web video to go down, mostly because there are patents and licensing issues associated with it that keep it from being freely used. It should be noted that both Microsoft and Apple — the two main proponents of native H.264 playback in their browsers — hold patents in the H.264 patent pool.

Other technologies, such as Ogg Theora and VP8, appear to be a much safer alternative for video on the web to remain free and open, which is why the browser makers who have no stake in H.264 (Mozilla and Opera) are pushing for Theora.

Google Chrome’s support varies based on platform, and there’s a rumor the company will release the VP8 video technology it now owns under an open source license soon.

Curiously, there’s no mention of Silverlight in Hachamovitch’s post. But he doesn’t tie Flash to the whipping post like so many others have been quick to do. His words on Flash are quite tempered. Diplomatic, even:

Today, video on the web is predominantly Flash-based. While video may be available in other formats, the ease of accessing video using just a browser on a particular website without using Flash is a challenge for typical consumers. Flash does have some issues, particularly around reliability, security, and performance. We work closely with engineers at Adobe, sharing information about the issues we know of in ongoing technical discussions. Despite these issues, Flash remains an important part of delivering a good consumer experience on today’s web.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia, Software
Apr
5
2010

Miro’s New Multi-Format Video Converter Rocks

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mirovideoconverter1

The team behind the Miro project has released a new video converter tool that makes it dead easy to publish videos on the web that work in all browsers.

It’s called, appropriately enough, the Miro Video Converter, and it’s an entirely new and separate desktop software product by the same people who brought you the Miro open source video player.

The tool can convert just about any video format to Ogg Theora or H.264/MP4. It works with Flash video files (.flv) which is a huge bonus. It also works with DivX/AVI, MOV, Windows Media and MKV, among others. It uses ffmpeg and ffmpeg2theora to handle the conversions.

The experience is incredibly simple — just drag and drop a video onto the application window and choose an output format. You can get a file that will play in a web browser with native video support, or you can choose to resize your video for portable devices like the iPhone and iPod, Droid, Nexus One and PSP (There’s no iPad preset, but we should expect one soon).

Miro Video Converter is available for free from Miro’s website in Mac and Windows versions. There is no Linux version yet. Like the Miro player, it’s an open source project.

Continue Reading “Miro’s New Multi-Format Video Converter Rocks” »

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Feb
4
2010

Royalty Deadline for H.264 Extended, But It’s Still Bad for the Web

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As if the web’s video codec issues weren’t complex enough, the group that controls the licensing and royalties for the H.264 video codec has announced that H.264 will remain royalty-free until the end of 2016.

One the surface it sounds like a good thing — at least until 2016, you’re free to post H.264 videos on your web site without paying royalties to MPEG-LA, the controlling body. But after 2016, MPEG-LA could charge you whatever it wants — even an Austin Powers-style one million dollars per second of video.

MPEG-LA’s latest move seems ripped straight from a crack dealer’s marketing guide — “Here kid, the first hit’s free.” Then, once the web is even more heavily invested in H.264 than it is now, MPEG-LA can set its royalty fees at whatever rate it wants, sit back and reap the profits.

This news comes at a time when the web is in a heated debate over how to best display videos in the browser. The vast majority of content providers rely on Flash (which can decode H.264) to show videos. The certainty of Flash’s longevity on the web was thrown into question by the recent arrival of the iPad, which, like the iPhone, iPod Touch and other mobile devices, doesn’t support the Flash Player software. Some sites are experimenting with using HTML5 to display videos in either H.264 or Ogg Theora file formats. But different browser makers have chosen to support different file formats because of the licensing complexities — Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Google are all picking different sides.

It’s important to understand that the royalty fees being deferred by MPEG LA are in addition to the licensing fees the group already has in place (at over US$50,000 per year). Proponents of H.264, along with many unaware users, often argue that the licensing fees are irrelevant because web users like you and I remain unaffected by them.

But that doesn’t mean that the licensing fees won’t affect the web. Sure, the fees are no big deal for Apple, YouTube and other established players, but what if you want to build a web video encoding service to compete with YouTube and Vimeo? Well, if you want to serve your video to iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad users you’re going to need to come with $50,000+ in licensing fees.

Even without the royalty fees arriving in 2016, the licensing costs alone put start ups at a disadvantage, meaning that an H.264-encumbered web might well miss out on the next big leap in web video sharing.

Then there’s the decoding side of the equation.

At least part of the reason Mozilla and Opera refuse to support H.264 is the licensing fee necessary for software that decodes H.264. While both companies can likely afford it, smaller players can’t. For example, if you want to distribute your own version of Firefox, or simply create something totally new — some next-generation web browser or add-on based on Mozilla code — again, get ready to pony up the licensing fees if you plan to support H.264.

Even using Flash to decode H.264 doesn’t protect you from the licensing fees. As the Adobe H.264 page notes: “commercial use of the Flash Player to decode H.264 video may require a separate license.”

We’re not saying there’s anything wrong with H.264 or MPEG-LA’s desire to make money off it, but let’s not delude ourselves — H.264 isn’t a viable solution for the web’s open video woes.

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File Under: HTML5, Multimedia
Jan
21
2010

YouTube Embraces HTML5, But Stops Short of Open Web Video

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Google is now offering up YouTube videos using HTML5′s next-generation video tag. But this advancement is only available to those surfing with Chrome or Safari — Firefox and Opera users need not apply.

YouTube’s HTML5 video support effectively eliminates the need for Adobe’s Flash plug-in for viewing videos on the site. The move comes in response to a survey where users voted “support HTML5 open web video with open formats” to the top of the YouTube’s feature request list.

Unfortunately for fans of the open web, Google seems to have stopped reading at “support HTML5″ because “open web video with open formats” is entirely missing from the new features.

To test YouTube’s new HTML5 support for yourself, head to the TestTube page and enable the new features for your account. Just make sure you’re using either Google Chrome browser or Safari because those are the only two browsers that support the new features.

The video quality of HTML5 playback (shown below in a screenshot taken with Google Chrome on a Mac) is a little chunkier than the Flash version, but it works. The frame rate is just as smooth and the player controls, which are JavaScript and CSS, operate as you’d expect.

this is a SCREENSHOT

Eliminating the need for Flash means YouTube videos will be less likely to crash your browser and should stop your PC’s cooling fan from turning into a jet turbine, but it doesn’t really advance open video on the web — it just moves from one proprietary solution (the Flash plugin) to another, the H.264 video codec.

While Google’s early support for the new HTML5 <video> tag is a win for HTML5′s vision of a web without plug-ins, unfortunately Google’s HTML5 support also highlights what will be a thorn in the side of open web video for some time: codec compatibility issues.

At the moment, YouTube’s HTML5 video support is limited to web browsers that support the H.264 video codec — namely Google’s Chrome and Apple’s Safari. Because the W3C declined to specify a standard video codec to go along with new video element, the choice of codecs to support lies with each web browser.

Browser manufacturers are split into two camps, those that support the free, open Ogg Theora codec (Chrome, Firefox, Opera and others) and those that support the proprietary H.264 codec (Chrome and Safari). Internet Explorer is entirely removed from this debate, as it does not support the video playback capability of HTML5 — in fact, IE support for HTML5 in general is almost entirely nonexistent, even though all the other browsers are racing to build in support.

Google’s decision to start with the H.264 codec is disappointing since Mozilla and Opera have declined to pay the expensive licensing fees for H.264 and instead support Ogg Theora for open video on the web.

What makes Google’s choice of video codec even more regrettable is that the Ogg Theora codec (a free, open video codec) works in Google Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Had Google opted to support Ogg Theora, only Apple would have been left out of the fun.

Furthermore, the latest version of Firefox — version 3.6, which was ironically released within hours of Google’s YouTube announcement — expands the browser’s ability to play videos using proposed HTML5 standards, including support for fullscreen playback. But Firefox’s video capability is limited to Ogg Theora.

However, there may be a simple practical reason YouTube chose to start with H.264 — it most likely already has most of its videos in H.264. Thanks to the YouTube application for the iPhone and Flash 10′s H.264 support, behind the scenes much of YouTube’s video is likely already in H.264.

Hopefully Google will add support for Ogg Theora in the near future, after all the number-one request in YouTube’s survey wasn’t more HTML5 support, it was “support HTML5 open web video with open formats.”

We welcome this baby step away from web video plug-ins, but keep in mind that we’re still some ways away from truly open, free video on the web.

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