Submitted by “The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software.”
Me thinks YouTube should wrap the H.264 content in another kind of container than Flash.
And what player would they use? QuickTime?
They could use… Flash, which will play H.264 in its native container quite happily (obviously only in recent releases, though).
silverlight!
there’s no silverlight plugin for linux
Edited 2008-02-25 02:50 UTC
they are working on it:
http://www.mono-project.com/Moonlight
/double post FTL
Edited 2008-02-25 17:37 UTC
I seriously doubt google will use Silverlight. Google and MS are competitors, I’m sure there is nothing wrong with silverlight, but why would Google empower a direct competitor?
And when you say “they are working on it” too bad ‘they’ is not Microsoft. I would hate for anyone not using a MS operating system to be 1 update away from having a version of Moonlight that actually works with the current version of Silverlight.
i don’t trust them
(the can’t even get docx to work between office 2007 and 2008)
They use whatever player is installed in the user’s machine by using the EMBED tag correctly, that is pointing to the file instead of the app they want to use.
There is absolutely no reason to use flash for that usage.
Even totem in Linux is able to play videos in well done pages in moz, I was actually surprised to see unexpectedly.
One more reason not to use flash.
I’m gonna remove it again from my XP install I think. It eats up the cpu (so the battery too) on the laptop with those stupid I-put-4-times-the-same-ad-in-flash websites anyway.
That’s a good way to cause compatibility problems. Sometimes your video plays in QuickTime, sometimes Totem, sometimes not at all. The HTML5 video tag may fix this problem if it ever gets deployed.
Meanwhile, a Web page author can ensure that the behavior is consistent by specifying a particular player.
The reason why Flash / FLV is chosen by the people distributing content online is that it allows them to safely assume that the overwhelming majority of their visitors already have the necessary software installed.
From the perspective of technological idealism, directly embedding H.264 is of course preferable. But the reality is that it usually doesn’t come down to a choice between FLV or directly embedding something like H.264 – much more often, the choice is between FLV and WMV / QT / Real / etc. Given the pragmatic context, I think that Flash is at least a lesser-evil.
On a related note, Flashblock does a wonderful job of stopping flash ads from running unless you click on them. http://flashblock.mozdev.org/
I think instead Youtube will be happy to embrace this DRM feature for selected content.
Even if it will be broken soon after release, it’d still give Old Media comforting assurances about the security of their content.
Especially when paired with a resolution increase in Youtube video.
“Even if it will be broken soon after release, it’d still give Old Media comforting assurances about the security of their content.”
In one way you are right, media companies and content owners can be relatively sure about the quality of content that they submit to Youtube and more of them might embrace content distribution on Youtube.
On the other hand, user submitted content is still not protected and that is the problem content owners have with Youtube.
Content providers want more of a TheyTube than YouTube, hence, DRM is not the answer they’re looking for.
Edited 2008-02-24 23:05 UTC
Thanks Adobe for putting a bug (DRM) in Flash that will benefit only corporations.
Youtube chose Flash for business decision. Trying to add more restriction might hurt Adobe in long term because companies can switch to another format at anytime. Concerning the adoption of H264 inside flash container, that would be really a bad idea because that format only suit for a small group. The majority of users don’t have high Personal Computer specification nor larger bandwith online and don’t care about the quality as long it is viewable. Why not adopting a more open format where companies and community contribute altogether without further restriction?
Or, they could just not use the optional DRM in flash video if they don’t like it?
h.264 compresses smaller than most codecs. It’s only associated with high bandwidth because it’s used for HD content.
If you compress a file with, for example xvid, and with x264, at the same subjective quality the x264 file will be smaller.
Whilst the file may be smaller the processor requirements to decode that file are, probably, much higher. It actually depends which level of H264 one uses. There are “lo-def” versions of the specification. More advanced uses (backwards and forwards prediction capabilities, key frame abilities and lots of complex motion prediction stages plus a more complex bit encoding technique) will require more compute power and storage.
There is a trade off to be made. The more compression applied to a signal, whilst resulting in a drop in bandwidth required for transmission, necessitates an increase in compute bandwidth at the decompression end. The third dimension on this graph would be signal to noise ratio.
YouTube actually chose Flash and H.264; all videos uploaded since around June 2006 have been automatically encoded as H.264, and a lot of the older ones have been progressively transcoded too.
H.264 is designed to be a jack-of-all-trades of CODECs; low bitrate H.264 is comparable to low bitrate Flash, at the mid-level, it’s comparable (whilst using less space, generally) to Xvid/DivX, and it also makes for decent high-def. It’s also a CODEC that balances being patent-encumbered with widespread support quite well; the patent rules on it are clear (as it’s part of the MPEG suite), and everything from mobile phones to PVRs support it. It’s not open in the same way that Theora is, but Theora is, frankly, crap, and doesn’t have any mainstream support (outside of desktop Linux distributions, where VLC and mplayer are often installed by default).
Insofar as Adobe are concerned, they wouldn’t have built DRM support for Flash/Media Server unless customers were asking for it. It’s not mandatory—not every .flv is going to be DRM’d, but some of them most definitely will be.
Theora may be not in par with H.264, but it is just right for websites and works fine otherwise. And we never run into this kind of DRM-trouble.
Just some things to do:
– write to your favourite video portal and request full support for Theora videos
– write to your local and national government bodies and request taht they publish their videos in Theora+Vorbis instead of proprietary codecs (after all they use taxpayers money for this and we should expect free and unrestricted access to information produced therein)
– use it in your applications
– vote for bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382267 in Firefox – if would be good if it lands in 3.x (won’t be in 3.0)
– ask from Opera for an updated test build that renders Theora+Vorbis inside browser
– use it for your own videos (I’ve used it for a year, and it’s fine)
– promote this approach http://spreadopenmedia.org
Sorry, this discussion has nothing to do with codecs. Promoting Theora will do nothing to slow the spread of DRM, since content owners who demand DRM will either simply avoid Theora or will wrap Theora with DRM.
Well, I don’t see a valid way of legally using DRM for Theora streaming.
How come? Most DRM schemes these days are independent of codec, they can wrap everything you throw at it. And there are no licensing issues, as Theora is distributed under a very permissive BSDish license.
Theora is open, so anyone can legally wrap Theora video in DRM if they want to. No one has actually done this yet because no one cares about Theora today, but if Theora becomes widely used you can bet that DRM will arrive.
That sounds pretty cool. Now where is my Theora plugin for Firefox so I can start using it?
VLC Media Player at http://www.videolan.org and its Mozilla-plugin is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, et al and does this fine (I’ve used it in Windows and Linux for my intranet application that streams Theora video). In Linux also Totem-plugins for Firefox work fine.
>Theora may be not in par with H.264,
Theora isn’t even comparable with XVid/Divx, VP3 video _is_ of low quality. Flash is using VP7+.
I agree completely and think your ideas are great.
Another core group would be smartphoneproducers who for some reason think Real is an option these days.
THe most likely part to go for some Open Specification is likely BBC I’d say. But now that Google owns Youtube, I’d love to see ’em just “switch” to Theora or similar in the name of righteousness =). This could be a great tactical move as it would definitely hurt the Windows platform quite a bit that information is accessible on other platforms without the Adobe Veto.
Also, if Youtube / Google would do this, then I would seriously claim that would drive many many other sites to follow.
The problem with Theora is that in comparison to modern codecs it’s awful.
The quality doesn’t even begin to approach that of other modern codecs. I believe this is due to them not using patented mechanisms, and more power to them for their attempt to create a fully open source compatible codec, but unfortunately I don’t think it has a hope of being adopted until they can find a way of providing similar compression and quality levels as codecs like x264.
No, don’t do that.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the sentiment, but the trouble is that Theora is rubbish. It’s rubbish compared even to XVid/DivX, let alone H.264 or WMV9.
Admittedly, work is (finally) being done to improve the quality of the reference encoder, and that’s great, but it doesn’t solve the problem that Theora is a codec that is (at least) two generations old.
Where the free software/free culture people should be focusing their attention now is Dirac; a state-of-the-art wavelet-based codec developed by the BBC. It is, according to the BBC’s lawyers, patent unencumbered, and is on its way to being standardised as VC-2 (Microsoft’s WMV9 is VC-1). An MIT-licenced implementation, Schroedinger, has been developed by Fluendo, and has just hit 1.0.
Exciting times!
OMG! I’ve always known that Dirac is being developed, but it seemed to be in dormant state. Now it looks like that things have moved very fast. And that’s only good.
This blog sums up the state of things http://sonofid.blogspot.com/
Did some checking and pretty new Schrödinger is already available in Debian Unstable and Testing. Even first GUI-app is available: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/oggconvert . And GStreamer-aware apps are already able to play Dirac video.
In true open-source manner OGG-container seems to be able to play Dirac+Vorbis http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/OggDirac .
The same time FFmpeg-team is looking for a competing codec with the same feateure set (Snow). These indeed are interesting times.
Looks like I have to stick to my original statement. Just Theora may be needed to swap to Dirac some time pretty soon
Edited 2008-02-25 17:56 UTC
Before we wail and gnash teeth it is pretty obvious that Adobe is adding it because customers (aka online content companies) have requested it. If they didn’t provide DRM I’m sure Microsoft would be more than happy to ram it in their Silverlight no questions asked – then we would be all worse off. Apple has already buckled too DRM demands with their movie and tv show downloads.
So before we bash these companies why don’t those who wish to ‘rage against the machine’ bash the companies who demanded DRM – the media companies. They’re the ones unwilling to move with the times, they’re the ones unwilling to listen to reason.
I’m no fan of big business, but lets get one thing straight, if you are going hate a company, make sure you’re directing your rage to the correct entity.
There are people which construct weapons and there are people which use these weapons. Both of them are responsible in the end. So Adobe isn’t any better than its customers.
And when Silverlight gets DRM, content providers move – we’re all screwed. Your attitude will be what will give Microsoft a foot into proprietising the internet using patented Microsoft only technologies.
It is either Adobe Flash with DRM or Silverlight with DRM, one is multi-platform, and the other is adamant to be a Microsoft Windows only technology – take your pick, you can only and must choose one of them.
Edited 2008-02-25 03:57 UTC
Silverlight/Moonlight is Windows/OS X/Linux only, while Flash 9 supports considerably more platforms: Windows, OS X, and Linux.
I can’t say that I love flash (64bit, etc), but:
On one hand, Adobe have been releasing Linux versions of flash (slow, unstable, but releasing never the less) when Linux had 0.0001% of the desktop market; More-ever AFAIK Adobe never threatened to sue clean-room OSS projects such as GNASH and swfdec for IP violation.
On the other hand, the Silverlight mono project is based on the MS/Novel deal and will remain active as long as MS feels generous/feels threatened by the EU/unthreatened by Linux. (pick what-ever suites you best).
Call me crazy, but somehow I rather place my bets on Adobe flash.
– Gilboa
KANG: It’s a two party system! You have to vote for one of us!
MAN: He’s right, this is a two-party system.
MAN 2: Well, I believe I’ll vote for a third-party candidate.
KANG: Go ahead, throw your vote away.
Yes, because as we all know, encryption kills.
Correct, and if Adobe does not provide the DRM capabilities, then media providers WILL search for an alternative.
This is like the rants the anti-MS crowd makes about Vista and DRM (while ignoring XP did have DRM as well, just more limited). In today’s world the option for an OS is either provide support for DRM and have HD playback, or do not support DRM and have no playback (Linux?). Keep in mind that outside of sphere of techno-geeks the average consumer has neither heard of DRM, nor cares much about it. Vast majority of people will never encounter DRM as far as they know it.
I would argue that now they are moving with the times, and DRM seems to be their solution. Keep in mind when pilots of TV shows air months before the show is ever broadcast this can be very troublesome to the networks. In the case of the recent NBC series Bionic Woman, the pre-air pilot received a lot of negative buzz, which is the last thing the studio or network wants happening (of course the show was horrid and got canned anyways). But the point is the media companies need to have some sort of control of digital creations.
When people were putting clips of the Daily Show on youtube, and the Comedy channel demanded they be removed, there was an uproar over this. Problem here is that people fail to understand THEY do not own these clips, Comedy channel does. Remember the days before Youtube, online video etc.? Well I do, and it seems people today just do not understand the alternative which is to simply not release anything.
Over the past decade there have been much more draconian ideas brought up. At one point there was discussion of how a media format that would be playable in set top boxes only, i.e. forget about watching movies on your computer.
No sense telling that to certain crowds who wish to just merely rant for the sake of ranting, especially if it involves the big evil corporations.
True; infact I’ll reply to this one and Wes Felter ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?302218 ) at the same time. Although Silverlight is documented, and VC1/WMA is licensable, the DRM will be a sticking point and probably not implement-able on Linux because of the need to opensource the code – mixing open and closed source is a recipe for disaster IMHO especially with the way Microsoft acts these days over patents and licensing issues.
True, or they can opt out of it by purchasing music and videos from companies who don’t have DRM; send a clear message to the media companies, “this is what we want”. Let the market speak.
The problem is, I am in New Zealand; I want to purchase episodes, but I am unable to. Thanks to their US centric policy, they fail to realise that *shock* *horror* people like me who are overseas have money AND an internet connection AND are willing to purchase their media.
I can’t work it out why so many US businesses restrict themselves to the US market – the whole point of the internet is to globalise business without needing to roll out a massage infrastructure – why don’t they allow me to purchase their television shows? because right now, I’m downloading them for free (pirated) but I would be more than happy to purchase them if given the opportunity.
Edited 2008-02-25 21:19 UTC
I don’t see why flash (nor anything similar) is necessary. Everything was great before it existed.
Edited 2008-02-26 15:59 UTC
I dont generally like DRM but having it in flash may have one good affect. Sites now using WMV with DRM could switch to a platform neutral player like flash. Be nice to use Netflix service in Linux since thats what I run. Now I use it through a Windows virtual machine.
I wonder if they are even working on getting a x64 flash plugin build ready…? Instead of adding all this DRM crap, they could actually improve the portability of Flash. Using Vista x64, and I still need to use the 32bits IE7 – just for Flash!
Since when did anyone needed a browser that could take up more then 4GB’s of RAM? I don’t understand why people wail about having to use 32bit apps on a 64bit machine. For things like a web browser the 32bit version would probably be faster.
Commercial Unix that was 64bit 10years ago shipped plenty of apps as 32bit. If it doesn’t need more then 4GB of ram for addressing then there is no need for it to be a 64bit app.
Since when did anyone needed a browser that could take up more then 4GB’s of RAM? I don’t understand why people wail about having to use 32bit apps on a 64bit machine. For things like a web browser the 32bit version would probably be faster.
The speed difference should be more or less nonexistant nowadays, and you are right in that a web browser won’t benefit from being 64bit. But atleast under Linux there’s one more thing to note: if all the other software running is 64bit and then you run a 32bit browser your browser will eat a whole lot more memory than a 64bit one. Why? Because of all the 32bit versions of libraries it needs. Like if you ran 32bit Opera under 64bit KDE you’d be running two instances of Qt libraries.
That’s actually one of the reasons why I dumped 64bit Gentoo on my PC and went back to 32bit; what’s the point in running 64bit if it doesn’t bring any benefits with it and you’ll still be running 32bit software and libraries in addition to 64bit ones?
As for Windows..Well, I don’t know how it is there. I don’t know enough about Windows internals, nor do I even really care to. Does 64bit Windows have the 32bit compatibility libraries loaded at all times, or how does it work? Will a 32bit app consume more memory than a 64bit one? Someone who knows might wanna enlighten us others.
It is true that 64-bit pointers allow access beyond 4Gig, however, another benefit of the 64-bit architecture is that it allows usage of 64-bit general purpose registers… and it has twice as many of them. Your compiler has 16 registers available instead of 8 and the numbers it puts in them can be twice as many bits.
See the commment below your post that clarifies the chroot/schroot environments and the need to dynamically load the 32 bit library chain in order to run those 32 bit apps.
I have 4 GB of RAM on my 64bit Debian system and memory definitely spikes to run apps like Adobe’s Acrobat Reader and Flash.
Arrghhh…. This argument again.
1. In-order to run 32bit applications on your 64bit OS requires a –LONG– list of 32bit libraries (DLL in your case).
… And having a full set of 32bit libraries translates to: (almost) twice the OS disk usage, higher memory footprint (library image may/will get loaded twice), twice the updates (download everything twice), slower updates (more files to update), etc, etc, etc.
2. 64bit has more general purpose (GP) registers. Given the lack of GP registers in the x86 architecture – doubling the number of GP registers can yield considerable performance improvement.
3. 32bit processes are -not- limited to 4GB. Depending on your OS, each of your applications has between 2G and 3G of address space at its disposal. *
– Gilboa
* 4G/4G ignored.
This was bound to happen eventually, now that Flash can play H.264 high definition video and what not.
Unfortunately this can be a problem for the Gnash project. That said, Gnash is hardly usable as it is.
“Will Silverlight support digital rights management?
For content providers, Silverlight will support digital rights management (DRM) built on the recently announced Microsoft PlayReady content access technology on Windows-based computers and Macintosh computers.”
http://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/faq.aspx
oh well, i got better things to do,like code in linux, then sit down and watch flash videos from the net.
Well, I have only one kind of comment to this news. And it’s R rated one.
“f–k you Adobe I won’t support it.”
Goes back to listen Rage Against Machine…
Adobe pushes for the end of flash as a defacto standard.
DRM will mean flash doen’t always “just work”. And that will make MANY scramble for a replacement.
I predict if they do this, Flash will make room for not only silverlight (as mentioned), but robust open framework solutions.
Bad for Adobe, good for the competition.
Youtube IS google after all. They are not apt to switch to silverlight if adobe breaks their site, but they will be looking to replace adobe.
How much time have to pass before vendors will realise what DRM is only makining it worse for everyone?
It won’t stop from copying materials for whose, who will want to do so. But it adds additional issues on top of compability problems. In short – DRM is BAD!
why Adobe sucks.