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to clear it up, the flash players can/are using h264, the current wmv was microsoft's attempt at mp4, but h264 beat it, of course microsoft didnt embrace it and are doing a good job and messing up the media distribution online.

also theora as i understand was another competing codec that lost to h264 and only opened up after.

anyways, i don't even really understand why there is debate for an official codec or object wrapper for HTML5, but i'd prefer it would be something standard instead of some obsolete and technically inferior codec that lost the mp4 race.

Although MPEG 4 ASP is by the far the most popular format for 'downloading'. I dare say this is going to change soon and MPEG 4 ASP as whole has past is past its peak. If you look at any of the HD content on the web today it will all be in H264. Even SD DVD rips are starting to use H264.

P.S. Doesn't .mov also use H264?

Depends how you export. You can put a lot of different formats on .mov, but h.264 is one of them, yes. Apple is pushing h.264.

MPEG4-SP/ASP has indeed passed its peak. Even the XDiV team is currently working on MPEG4-Part10 (which is nothing but another name for h.264), and the DivX Corp *purchased* MainConcept who have an h.264 implementation. As you understand, the main MPEG4-SP/ASP providers are moving to an h.264-like implementation too.

Microsoft's WMV and VC-1 are h.264-like in many ways too.

Even on the mobile space, Nokia now has h.264 support on their Symbian S60 3.1 phones, while in the past they would only use h.263 or MPEG4-SP.

Edited 2007-12-12 07:16

it seems even today people are still confusing codecs with containers.

for instance, WMV is not a codec but a container the holds a video and audio codec inside.

also to be clear ,it needs stressing it seems:
Mpeg4-part2 is AKA divX/Xvid/ASP
(the old hat one)
Mpeg4-part10 is AKA AVC/H264
(the one EVERYTHINGS is using today or will be soon, from HD-DVD, HD-BR, HD/SD STBs, DVB, IPTV, web streaming, and personal end user multicast streaming, just use it....)

VC-1 infact has its roots in DivX and is just an extension of that, it is not good for low bitrates and it DOES NOT have a lossless MODE like AVC/H.264 does.

see this chart for more info
http://img297.echo.cx/img297/8742/compchart2fa.png
as you can see only AVC/H.264 and Snow are have lossless modes.

a container can be any of the common formats and you put your code(s) inside that, containers include anything from
.AVI, .MPEG, .TS (transport stream is a good choice), .VOB, .mov, .qt .WMV* .mkv .asf and more...

also dont get the options confused with the profiles levels, for instance keep in mind the Broadcasters wouldn't use anything other than the Main or High Profiles at Level 3 (SD) or Level 4 (HD).

so its best if you too only use main and high today and into the future.

if your confused , just remember that AVC/H.264 (and its AAC audio equiv) is becoming the world standard and for a container your best bets are .mpeg, .TS , i favour this one as you can have many streams inside it and the editing/cutting tools are becoming better as time passes for it.

you could for instance do 2 or 3 encodes/transcodes
and include them all inside the one file, one an HD version, one an SD version and a PIP version for your wireless DVB VLC multicast LAN and ISP if they finally turn on the generic multicast for ipv6 and even the old ipv4 kit.

btw , can anyone remind me of the right sizes to use for CIF/PIP format but widescreen PAL AVC, i always forget that and is that size best/optimal at 500kbit/s or less?.

Edited 2007-12-17 07:56

H264 is the standard format for exporting videos in iMovie atleast, thought you can choose like 20-30 others aswell.

It doesn't (any longer): http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/#video0


Theora is already old and outdated today.

"must" was never used, "should" on the other had.

basically ogg for both audio and video was put forward as a kind of baseline. without it the media tags becomes a kind of joke, as one just moves the video controls out of the flash file and the plugins are still needed for the codecs.

but, as anyone could expect that ogg should at least be supported, everyone would be using it unless they had some kind of specific reason not to.

as for choosing? i would go for open vs quality any time...

hell, i suspect that most users would not care as long as they had a simple way to put that family movie online. or maybe that shaky party movie, taken using a low quality mobile phone or camera while drunk.

only issue then is that you really need to look around to find a chip that can encode ogg native. but you will find plenty of chips that will do mpeg/h264 in one form or other...

and i think thats whats getting the codec companies and hardware companies up in arms. they either loose market share (cant sell their IP to others), or have to find new chips to put into designs. designs that maybe have been on the drawing board for a year or more, waiting for the steam to run out of the existing ones.

ogg is a wild card in all this, and was suggested by the wild card in the browser field, opera.

thing is, they all know ogg would be acceptable for most users. just look at how much high def formats in audio and video stand vs divx and mp3 (to use known examples). i suspect that the non-technical consumer is tired of formats that give no no practical value vs the old ones. the cd is dead, long live the audio file, and there the mp3 have become ubiquitous (but i cant help wonder what would happen if you could get ogg support in those small flash devices from sandisk, or heaven forbid, the ipod. this not because of quality, but because you didnt have to run into alternative os's that could not support the format because of some vague patent issues).

the dvd is dying a similar death. and for most, hd-dvd or blu-ray isnt interesting as its still a physical format. and one that requires the user to replace both player and display for it to be of any use. hell, is there not a physical audio media based on dvd? does anyone own, or know of someone that do, any copies in that format?

all im saying is that for most users quality comes second to ease of use. and whatever format that would be the base line for streamed media on the net would be king of ease.

and introducing a wild card, by someone that have no vested interest in either hardware or codec. they only produce a browser, for many platforms.

hmm, when i think about it i can suspect one reason for opera suggesting ogg, licencing. as it stands, they have to licence flash, windows media and maybe quicktime to make sure that they are covered when supplying a third party (like say nintendo) with a browser for their product.

with ogg they could probably show the middle finger to all of those, and keep the difference.

so i guess everyone have some kind of interest in the choice of codec chosen, and i fear that quality is the last of those.

'thing is, they all know ogg would be acceptable for most users. just look at how much high def formats in audio and video stand vs divx and mp3 (to use known examples). i suspect that the non-technical consumer is tired of formats that give no no practical value vs the old ones. '

I think most users have no idea what formats are or care - nor should they have to. They just watch films, there not interested in OSS values, they just want to be able to view their films in what ever media player comes with their computers.

'all im saying is that for most users quality comes second to ease of use.'

What research have you done on the subject?. Ease of use for most people would probably be that it runs in Windows Media Player or iTunes and that they don't need to download or install anything else just to see the 'shaky party movie, taken using a low quality mobile phone or camera while drunk.'

bingo, except here we are talking about a web format, and more and more people upload their small videos to pages like youtube for no other reason then to share it with friends and family via im, community sites or their blog/webjournal.

i see it first hand every day.

when the file is in the cloud, they dont care about windows media player or itunes, its in their browser it needs to work.

and right now, to get anything like this working there, every browser needs a plugin (unless your a IE user in windows or a safari user in osx, and you only browse pages that use a matching format).

thing is that the most repeated issue with ubuntu and similar is that one have to download some codec pack or other to get media going.

if ogg got a foothold on the web, then it may get the leverage needed to be used in larger numbers elsewhere.

at that point the codec argument on alternative os's, while not going away fully, becomes greatly diminished.

hell, one can even start to ship computers that use "alternative" cpu's. a arm laptop anyone? where the biggest drain on battery is the back light of the lcd?

yes, people dont care about oss. but they care about usability, and they care about cost. and right now oss has a advantage in the latter. but because of copyright and patents, not so on the former. if the former was to change, things could get highly interesting.

hell, many have moved their digital life into the clouds, or more specifically that google branded one. think about the impact if those low cost "gos" computers could "just work" with anything the web had to offer?

HTML 4.x is more or less agnostic towards picture formats [1] :

This laissez faire approach has caused some medium to major problems for web developers, customers and the software vendors behind browsers in the past ( GIF not unanimously acceptable due to software patent baggage, no png support in IE < 7, etc. ) and it is likely, that the W3C aims at a bit more specificity for future standards / recommendations, especially since the potential for troubles inherent in the current situation with several competing, incompatible ( and differently licensed) video codecs is magnitudes higher than for picture formats.

Note, that - to my knowledge - the current draft speaks of "SHOULD" and not of "MUST" wrt these multimedia codecs, e.g. vendors would be able to claim compability with HTML5 without supporting Theora ( So much for being more specific this time around :-)
).

The situation is a royal mess, agreed. The strict guidelines of the W3C and their aim at vendor independence, cross platform and FOSS compability rule most established (properitary) codecs out. In the light of this commitment (and since it is safe to assume that the bulk of tomorrows video content will be delivered
via what we call now webpages while the current trend towards a higher diversification of the consuming software platforms is likely to continue) the HTML5 spec can not neglect the discussion of video formats without risking a fragmentation of the web along vendor lines (or facing little adoption, which is imho not unlikely).

On the other hand, we have the situation that the big boys (Microsoft, Apple, Nokia et al) have invested considerable amount of time, development man-hours, money and patent cross licensing deals to keep the
legal mine field underneath their favoured formats clean. And while it is imho likely, that Ogg-Theora is the best researched contemporary video format when it comes to "IP" risks, even I can understand why in this age of patent trolls the big vendors have reservations about introducing additional (e.g. additional to their own, already established formats) risks of submarine patents. This seems to be at least the major, official argument against Ogg-Theora in this discussion (although I'm pretty sure, that other aspects of Ogg-Theora - no DRM underpinnings, no properitary vendor backing it 100%, being truly cross platform and therefore a potential lock-in-breaker besides its - agreed - lackluster performance ) contribute to the reservations.


[1]http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/objects.html#edef-IMG

This "guy" knows what she's doing. FFmpeg is used by MANY (and I mean, MOST) GUI front-ends out there. Just because PSP3Video9 or PSPVideo9 or SUPER or WinFF or FFmpegX or VisualHub have nice GUIs, it does not mean they don't use ffmpeg underneath, because they DO. FFmpeg, stable or unstable, random or not random, it is the *most used* utility for conversions. Even more than mencoder, I would say.

Even vimeo.com, uses ffmpeg to decode the files its users upload on the site.

mencoder uses ffmpeg too (among other things), doesn't it?

Well put "guy" ;-)

i think you dont know what you are doing.

ffmpeg is very stable, and its the best codec package that exists. If you cannot handle it, well, less power to you!

I am not part of the main team anymore. I only contribute occasionally. It has been like that since 2005.

If that is correct, then why can we not vote your posts down ?

Because I am still a moderator here, even if I rarely moderate anymore.

Which of these reasons did you try to vote her down for?
Yes, this comment includes personal attacks/offensive language
Yes, this comment is off-topic
Yes, this comment is spam or includes advertisements
Yes, I think I am on Digg and am big & clever when I mod down opinions I don't like

I was not talking about her last post, I was talking about generally.

Erm, do you really have to come here, be off topic, for a simple typo? Mention it on the story that's relevant, ask for a fix over the typo, and move on. No reason to be off topic here.

It's just you. Your tool is only as good as it is, and the tool picked is the most popular one.

Edited 2007-12-12 10:05

She talks about the quality of the resulting video files too, and AFAIK that is independent of the implementation of FFMPEG.

This is not always true. If you want to do video as videography, like myself and my buddies do, you go to places where quality is good. For example, look at my youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/EugeniaLoli
I only have TESTS there, it's like a bag of socks.

My MAIN videography site, for me and most of the Canon HV20 enthusiasts, is Vimeo which supports 1280x720p:
http://vimeo.com/eugenia/videos

See the difference?

in the same way that any enthusiast will not settle with budget gear, big woop...

sad to say eugenia, but your coming of as just another mediaphile. as in, the same kind of people that rant and rave about flac, pcm or whatever being the lowest acceptable format for their media of choice.

or to bring in that sad old car, the people that will not settle for a 4-cylinder stationwagon, if they can get their hands on something with a big more "meat".

what we are talking about here is the common man format, the one that joe will use for his family video. the same joe that will film his newborn using a cheap camera or maybe even his phone. the joe that dont care that upping the megapixels on his compact camera isnt equal to upping the quality of the photos taken.

the term i guess im looking for is "good enough". and to me thats a term that the people you seem to personify right now, just dont grasp. it seems that unless its perfection, its no point in doing it at all...

Edited 2007-12-12 10:37

> your coming of as just another mediaphile. as in, the same kind of people that rant and rave about flac, pcm

Not really:
http://eugenia.gnomefiles.org/2007/08/13/producers-howl-over-sound-...

think about it for a moment...

You failed to see his point.

Some anal people are always going to pick the better format over the "right" format, so you and your buddies can go play in the h264 park over at noteveryonecanviewme.com and the rest of the planet who just wants to share videos of their dog falling over or the most recent happy slapping plot on sites like youtube.com blip.tv etc. (Not everyone can view YouTubes either, but again, that's a format issue)

You want to share exceptionally bandwidth wasting video? Fine, just dont spoil the party for everyone who doesn't.

PS, also nice to see the only reason you're posting the article is because of replies on:
http://www.j5live.com/?p=421
Nice to see OSNews being an unbiased source of information

say "good enough" and we agree.

there is no such thing as good in this debate, only good enough for the use its intended for.

and this is not about streaming the latest from hollywood onto that HD tv in the living room, its about putting a already "crappy" recording onto a public page for ease of distribution.

I accused you of posting a blog-style rant on a news site, I feel I am correct. If you want to push your own agenda, keep it to your own site. You might want to keep the ass calling there too.
However, I shall correct the speaking-from-ones-arse comment:

Your other blog entry again repeats the same thing. You've said W3C has done the wrong thing which is incorrect, the spec is at the WHATWG atm. However, it cannot progress to the W3 with any technology that isn't royalty-free, so however much you wave the h.264 flag, they can't accept it.
If, in the discussions, they can convince whomever that the 264 baseline spec would be RFed, then we all win. Except we still might not; who's to say another vendor wont ignore the spec, promote their format, and we're back to the codec/browser/os wars. Lovely.

Picking a reasonable baseline codec for the video&audio tags is the best possible idea, even if we compromise marginally on quality.

"Most people want GOOD quality. So you are in the minority my friend."

YouTube isn't good quality, it is however used by a lot of people. I am not in this category though; I am just arguing with your bullshit.

"""
Most people want GOOD quality. So you are in the minority my friend.
"""

FWIW. I desire adequate quality. Something I can watch comfortably. Beyond that, it's pretty much just refinement which I would likely not notice unless I were obsessing on the quality issue. The difference is simply not that valuable to me. I strongly prefer an open standard, and the benefits that is likely to bring both now and in the future.

Of course, higher quality is an easier sell to the general internet-browsing public. It would have been nice if Ogg could have claimed a victory. Oh, well...

Edit: I should add that I am simply accepting Eugenia's conclusions as to quality, for the sake of argument, because:

1. I have not paid enough attention to notice a difference in quality between the two.

2. It's unproductive to argue about something so subjective as that.

Edited 2007-12-12 16:03

This is not always true. If you want to do video as videography, like myself and my buddies do, you go to places where quality is good.

Well, whatever. People still use MP3, which has been inferior sound-wise to the original CD for some time, but by God, people still use it and refuse to use anything else.

Think worldwide including Africa, Central and South America and several part of Asia. Not many people have the luxury to get high quality movies. With the project like OLPC taking effects, using another proprietary format won't be a viable option.
AFAIR, Theora is still open to the public so you are welcome to bring suggestion or join them to improve it. It is always easy to complain yet somehow, it is hard to not participate to the development.

Edited 2007-12-12 20:24

And Theora is more widely available than H.264? Seriously?

And Theora is more widely available than H.264? Seriously?

You're missing the point. If video content is to become as ubiquitous and easy to get and use as web content, which is what people have been angling for with HTML 5, then we need a reasonable baseline that everyone can implement themselves - free software, open source software proprietary etc. - with a reasonably small risk.

It's not a question of being 'widely available', as Nokia and some others are pathetically trying to say. I dare say that HTML was a useless format to many in the early nineties. I also dare say that people would have said "Why should I convert my CD tracks into MP3 when MP3 isn't widely used and it has a somewhat inferior quality?"

It doesn't work like that.