Ogg Theora & H.264 are video codecs that we use to play video. The debate around them is about which one is going to be used in HTML5. HTML5 is being developed as the next major revision of HTML, so its basically a big ol’ language upgrade to the current version. Where the story gets interesting is how everyone has been spinning this upgrade, when Google designed Voice & other web-based applications we all stood up and said “The End of OS Centric Application”. When YouTube & Vimeo started playing around with it, we all stepped up and called it “Flash Killer”. So why don’t we take another look at this debate that has been going on for a few years.
Lets break it down step by step, to get you caught up, incase you’ve missed it. What the the point of switching to HTML5 over the current HTML way of doing things?
In simple terms, this means that you will be able to view online videos without bothering about third party plugins. So you don’t need Flash which YouTube uses or Silverlight that Microsoft was pushing for a while. You’ll just need to click play and the browser will take care of the rest.
Doesn’t sound so bad, until you realize that the HTML5 tag that you’re using to play the video has to have a method to decode the video for you. Which is where the Ogg Theora & H.264 debate comes in. These are two different routes that the industry could take so that you can watch video on the web.
H.264 is the technically superior codec since it supports hardware encoding (which is an important consideration for mobile device), and it also delivers better quality at lower bitrates; but is a property of the MPEG standards organization, which places it somewhere east of proprietary but west of public. Whatever its status is (I don’t pretend to understand exactly), it’s not free, and although it’s well-maintained and extremely common, many think that implementing a patented technology for a fundamental standard is a bad idea when there is an alternative. A question that should be popping up for you is, that H.264 is being used by me right now in video camera and I’m not paying a penny! For now, you’re not paying a penny, for now! Patents related to H.264 are owned by MPEG LA, which may extract royalty fees from content providers and distributors if they ever wish to. MPEG LA agreed to make H.264 royalty free for web use until 2015, so what happens after that? No one knows.
If you happen to be a Windows user Windows 7 ships with an H264 decoder. So, if browser vendors ever felt the need, they can simply piggy back on the built-in encoder, for which users have already paid during their OS purchase. I am not sure, but I believe the situation is similar with Apple’s OSX. However, what about Linux users? If Linux users were the only reason to have this debate, well, it would be a vehement one but it wouldn’t be as loud as it today. The debate has gotten louder and louder because of the question “Should we be building the web on standards which cost end users money?” I don’t want the price of my operating system to include things like being able to watch video online! I already begrudgingly suggest that netbook users pay to upgrade their Windows 7 Starter to Home Edition, Microsoft is already screwing Netbook users with a limited OS paying for the codec will only drive the OS price up further, just so I can watch videos!
There are a few reasons why the average Joe should care, the biggest being the outcome of this debate is going to cost you money. But there must be a free alternative?
So lets talk about the other contender the one that Opera has decided to back because, it is an Open Standard and will continue to be free well after 2015. Theora is a free and open video compression format from the Xiph.org Foundation. It can be used to distribute film and video online and on disc without the licensing and royalty fees or vendor lock-in associated with other formats. So to watch the movie no one will have to pay. A few in the field have said that “substantive codec improvements” before Theora could power a site like YouTube. Since Google is the owner of YouTube, it’s in the company’s best interest to make sure that there is a free way to keep their site running.
In order to understand how Google’s new codec is related to Ogg Theora there’s no way to avoid a little lesson in video codec genealogy: Ogg Theora is based on an erstwhile proprietary video codec called VP3.2, which was developed by a little company called On2 Technologies. On2 introduced VP3.2 in August of 2000, originally with the idea in mind to optimize TV quality video broadcasts for users with as little bandwidth as 200kbps. On2 released a successor dubbed VP4 less than a year later and announced in August of 2001 to open source VP3.2. It took a little more back and forth between open source advocates and the company, but eventually, VP3.2 became Ogg Theora. On2 meanwhile continued to develop new codecs, reaching its 8th generation with VP8, which was announced in September of 2008.
Long story short: VP8 came out eight years after VP3.2, eight years in which much happened in the online video world. Consumers got increasingly faster broadband, video hosting sites moved towards HD, and codec developers figured out a whole lotta tricks to improve things like HD streaming. That’s why some are concerned that Theora isn’t up to competing with H.264 for online video.
The video above is the response to the question I asked Jon S. von Tetchner Co-Founder of Opera “
At the end of the video above you’ll hear the question get asked what about what is going to happen once VP8 is released, the good Ol’ No Comment was used. But based on his response that Openness is the most important thing to Opera, I’d bet the farm that Opera is going to support that Open Codec too. Von Tetchner also gives us a brief run down on the state of the debate, which is fairly complicated, and where each of the giants stands on their support of the open codec. Hakon Wium Lie also weights in on the debate, so what hearing the Father of CSS and a contributor to HTML 5 has to say offers a great deal of insight.
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