Mozilla Changes Firefox Video Policy: Native Support For H.264

[Guest]

In a rather unexpected move, Mozilla has broken out of its shell and said that it will not follow Google's hypocritical WebM strategy anymore, but shift its attention to H.265 video, especially on mobile devices.

Mozilla Changes Firefox Video Policy: Native Support For H.264 : Read more

 

[christarp]

"but shift its attention to H.265 video, especially on mobile devices."

How are these sort of things overlooked?

 

[memadmax]

Hmm, interesting.
Looks like another codec war is brewing...

 

[phatboe]

This is a sad day for Open Codecs. As much as I hate Mozilla's change of heart to including H.264 support I understand why they are doing this. I agree with Mozilla, Google needs to drop H.264 support now else WebM will never gain acceptance. If Mozilla wants to remain a key player in the web browser market they will need to support what ever format is being used the most.

 

[mrpijey]

If Google drops h264, then I'll drop Google. I can understand the debacle sorrounding licenses etc on h264, but it's become a defacto standard on the net, going against that will only hurt Google, especially when everyone else goes the other way. Open stuff is useless unless enough big hitters follow and support it so it can become a well used standard.

 

[synd]

h264 ftw!

 

[cookoy]

this reminded me of the story on OS/2 when IBM and Microsoft were jointly co-developing. Then the bombshell. MS unveiled its Windows and IBM is left holding the OS/2 bag. It's good Mozilla is not blind to these kind of backstabbing deals.

 

[frenchy]

From another perspective, it will be nice not having to make 3 different video files (mp4, Ogg, webM) so that a website doesn't require flash for playback. One video file used with HTML5 video tags makes things simpler.

 

[ravewulf]

I never understood why Firefox wouldn't at least support h.264/aac/mp3 if it was installed in the OS's audio/video subsystem or use ffmpeg. Especially when vp8 is only roughly equivalent to h.264 baseline in terms of compression and the code is a mess. On the other hand, I would like to see more support for mkv (the container format behind webm). Basically, I want the best format ignoring licensing bs.

 

[vickonl]

But.. is Theora (ogg/ogv) already dead?
I'm almost finished with converting a few 100 MPGs to OGVs.I have an external HDD with portable FireFox and with HTML5 I have made a nice looking portable videoplayer that will run with no troubles on any Windows PC.

Well it looks like theora will lose (with webm), so I should start converting again, this time to MP4 I quess.

 

[milk_inc]

Maybe they will use h.264, but using the codec x264 that until I know is free and open, maybe is the main reason they will change too for h.264.

 

[srap]

[citation][nom]milk_inc[/nom]Maybe they will use h.264, but using the codec x264 that until I know is free and open, maybe is the main reason they will change too for h.264.[/citation]
x264 is an encoder and not an encoder/decorder: means you can't use it for video playing only for encoding.

 

[killerclick]

It's a global conspiracy against FOSS. If no one can make money off it, it needs to go away. Long live capitalism!

 

[Vladislaus]

[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]I never understood why Firefox wouldn't at least support h.264/aac/mp3 if it was installed in the OS's audio/video subsystem or use ffmpeg. Especially when vp8 is only roughly equivalent to h.264 baseline in terms of compression and the code is a mess. On the other hand, I would like to see more support for mkv (the container format behind webm). Basically, I want the best format ignoring licensing bs.[/citation]
It's quite simple. Not all OSes have h.264/aac/mp3 codecs installed on the computer. ffMPEG in the future might experience licensing issues, expect in those countries that software patents aren't enforced.

 

[ravewulf]

[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]It's quite simple. Not all OSes have h.264/aac/mp3 codecs installed on the computer. ffMPEG in the future might experience licensing issues, expect in those countries that software patents aren't enforced.[/citation]
Win7+ has it, it's easy enough to add to Vista and XP, OSX has it, and Linux usually has an option to install proprietary software that usually includes mp3, DVD, h.264 (FFmpeg and others), Flash etc.

I find it unlikely that FFmpeg will face any licensing issues as it is so widely used (even in commercial programs) and no action has been taken so far on any of the large amout of codecs they have.

 

[alextheblue]

[citation][nom]vickonl[/nom]Well it looks like theora will lose (with webm), so I should start converting again, this time to MP4 I quess.[/citation]MP4 is a container. It's not a bad choice, either that or MKV. I think MP4 has slightly better compatibility/native support. but for the video stream you'll probably want to use some profile of H.264 and AAC or MP3 for the audio. x264 is probably the best free encoder for H.264, lots of software uses it by default/internally.

Anyway, only consider it if you still have the original sources. Converting lossy-lossy once is bad enough (such as converting a DVD to something more efficient). But doing it again, and from a somewhat modern source like Theora? You really start losing a lot of information, which will impact quality something fierce.[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]On the other hand, I would like to see more support for mkv (the container format behind webm).[/citation]The MKV (Matroska) container has been around for a long time. It has little to do with WebM directly. In fact, I'd bet most .mkv files in the wild contain H.264 (of varying profiles and sources) for video, and I'd warrant a lot of those use AAC for audio too.

 

[ravewulf]

[citation][nom]alextheblue[/nom]...The MKV (Matroska) container has been around for a long time. It has little to do with WebM directly. In fact, I'd bet most .mkv files in the wild contain H.264 (of varying profiles and sources) for video, and I'd warrant a lot of those use AAC for audio too.[/citation]
I have also found that most mkv files use h.264 and aac, although sometimes they have ac3 (Dolby Digital), mp3, or FLAC
What I meant was that the WebM container (.webm) is based on Matroska. The codecs behind WebM being VP8 video and Vorbis audio.
http/matroska.org/news/webm-matroska.html