[ Note: Mike Shaver gives the short version of this post. I have done a great job of burying the lead here. There's a post from the Wikimedia Foundation on the topic and a post in the Mozilla Blog as well. ]
[ Update: There's a good note on ajaxian, the most important of which is the last paragraph. Have a look. ]
Everyone agrees that the open web is becoming more important in our shared human experience. Our applications, conversations and relationships are moving online and Mozilla finds itself more and more at the heart of defining both the underlying technology and the end-user experience of users of the web. It’s an important role to have, and it’s one of the reasons why operating as a non-profit with a full understanding of our mission and impact are important.
Taking the long view, the open web as a technology platform isn’t something that we see in human history very often. The printing press let you replicate knowledge cheaply and easily. Television and radio lowered the cost of distribution of media. The web took away the centralization of big media and anyone can produce and distribute. The costs of replication, distribution and reaction have dropped to near zero.
I personally believe that this is because of the technology choices that were made in the early days of the evolution of the web. Human-readable formats for documents, simple programs delivered as source code and the ability for anyone to be able to post and create. There were no ivory towers or professional developers in those early days so the act of creation had to be simple. Web technology required you to be technical-minded, but didn’t require huge amounts of training to get started. Mixed with the end-to-end principle of the Internet and the fact that just about anyone could set up a server or a client meant that the web didn’t grow with the backing of huge players, but became a huge shared collection based on the small efforts of thousands of individuals.
The result of that has been an explosion of creativity and investment from single individuals all the way up to the largest companies. Anyone can have an impact and anyone can affect the technology direction of the web. Because anyone can build tools without permission that speak the lingua franca of the web, you can find tools to do just about anything. It’s a truly vibrant marketplace.
There’s one exception to this: video on the web. Although videos are available on the web via sites like youtube, they don’t share the same democratized characteristics that have made the web vibrant and distributed. And it shows. That centralization has created some interesting problems that have symptoms like censorship via abuse of the DMCA and an overly-concentrated audience on a few sites that have the resources and technology to host video. I believe that problems like the ones we see with youtube are a symptom of the larger problem of the lack of decentralization and competition in video technology – very different than where the rest of the web is today.
In my mind there are two things that help drive that kind of decentralization:
- You should be able to easily understand how something moves from a computer-readable format to something that is presented to a user. For example, turning HTML into a document, turning a JPEG file into a picture on the screen or using HTTP to download a file.
- You must be able to implement and deliver that technology without requiring anyone’s permission or license. In reality this means that it should be available on a royalty-free basis and without encumbered documentation.
In the video world, there are some formats that fit the first quality: Some formats are documented, understood and even widely deployed. But more often than not they are subject to to per-unit royalties, large up-front fees and creating content in those formats (the encoders) are often so expensive as to be prohibitive to all but only the deepest-pocketed corporations or well-funded startups. And there are very few video formats that meet the second. This is not the kind of decentralization that made the web thrive. It is quite the opposite.
So now we get to the Mozilla part of this story: what we’re doing about this.
- In Firefox 3.1 we’re including support for the OGG container format with the Theora video and Vorbis audio codecs for the <video> element. They represent one of the few combinations of formats that fits both the criteria above. They aren’t perfect formats, but they are certainly good enough for how video is used on the web today. And they are improving with time.
- We’re also supporting the development of open video with a grant of $100,000 (USD) that will be administered by the Wikimedia Foundation to develop and support Theora. You should expect to see some really great stuff coming out of that funding. That work will make its way back into Firefox as well.
- The other thing we’re able to do is to make video a first class citizen on the web. This means we can do things with video and let it interact with other types of content (SVG, Canvas, HTML) in ways that haven’t been possible to date. We hope that by releasing video from the plugin prison and letting it play nice with others we’ll be able to open up a new wave of creativity around video. But more on that in another post.
We don’t expect that by doing this we’ll change things overnight. Far from it – changes like this take time. But we can certainly do our part to at least make it possible for these things to develop. We want to see a market for video like we’ve seen for the web. And this is our put to get that process started.
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Pingback from Ogg and Friends Challenge Flash | Ramblings on January 28, 2009 at 5:13 pm
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Drone ask “who will use it”?
Well for a start wikipedia will use it!
All the websites that can’t afford the Adobe tools will use it.
Great blog post BTW!
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> All the websites that can’t afford the Adobe tools will use it.
This is not true. There is *no* *need* to buy any adobe tools! Actually, you have to setup usual HTTP server capable of serving of these mp4 files. Flv are a bit more tricky but still could be generated by opensource tools and streamed by opensource servers like Apache or lighttpd.Some pretty old example how to deal with Adobe stuff by only opensource tools (ming to create SWF file with player, ffmpeg to generate stream, etc):
http://klaus.geekserver.net/flash/streaming.html
So, please stop telling about Adobe tools – these are just one of options.
P.S. you’re both posting incorrect information and using my nick, this is not looking very good at my opinition.
And what about wikipedia… it’s so annoying to read these nasty messages claimig that I do not have proper player to play this. Actually I installed VLC and mozilla plugin everywhere but on some machines wikipedia video still not plays and site keeps claiming I do not have proper player (I’m usually using VLC plugin to firefox). So if you want example of second-rate service, wikipedia IS such service in terms of their video.Why youtube never fails to play video and wiki does? Opensource is good. When it works and beats proprietary stuff. Otherwise it is just abusing buzzwords to push half-working and poorly crafted stuff into the masses, sorry for such direct and non-polite words. This will not work: you cannot cheat anyone in opensource world.
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Hello We Gerardo Antonio and Eduardo are developing a web player,
Style Flash player, the name of the project is Xagon the urls http://code.google.com/p/xagon/, Xagon the idea that it’s simple and elegantSaludos Gerardo and Eduardo
This proyect is player for Ogg Theora/Vorbis Tecnology. For Firefox 3.1
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I suppose the comment I just left in an older thread would have fit just as well here. The short version – including the relevant quote from this post:
“we’re including support for the OGG container format with the Theora video and Vorbis audio codecs for the <video> element.”[emphasis added]
Again – why no attention to the <audio> element? Unlike the case with Theora vs. the most ubiquitous proprietary alternative video codec, Vorbis is an upgrade from the most ubiquitous proprietary alternative audio codec (mp3). (More detail in my previous comment linked above) -
We’re supporting the
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… audio element.
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Sorry – I should clarify. I didn’t mean that I thought Mozilla wasn’t working on the <audio> element. I know they are (and I’m kinda stoked about it, actually). I was just referring to the avalanche of recent “When Firefox 3.1 is finally released at some unspecified future date, it’ll support video!” articles and blog postings, and none of them seem to mention the support for the <audio> tag and the Vorbis codec. While a lot of people complain that Theora is, at best, “about as good” as the current lowest-common-denominator video that it aims to replace, the Vorbis audio codec is a clear improvement over the lowest-common-denominator .mp3.
I just think there’s cause to “market” the <audio> tag support a lot harder, that’s all.
(For the record, I do think Theora will be quite decent for most uses on the web, especially if anybody gets around to doing the hard work of making a faster, more efficient encoder. There’s really no reason to generate web-videos of frat-boys chugging beer or kittens playing in 1080p H.264…)
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Ahh, yeah, you’re right. I guess because video is something that people think about and audio isn’t. And vorbis is better, that’s a very good point. Changing the conversation. Thanks for the advice – expect to see my messaging change in the future.
Also frat boys ftw++.
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I’ve been working with Digital Video since 1992.
I *love* the idea of the open source video, it is way overdue.
Rather than complain about Theora not being the newest video CODEC etc, the emphasis should be about the Media Container capabilities.
If implemented correctly will save a lot of bandwidth and provide better quality.This is my wish list.
1. Have a Container/Transport similar to Quicktime or MPEG-4
That is, independent layered media tracks.These Media Tracks are.
a) Text for subtitling/caption.
b) SVG, PNG and JP2K(?) for vector and raster graphics.
c) Definitely Vorbis and don’t forget Speex for ultra-small speech encoding.
d) Theora while not the best CODEC, I think it should be *good enough* and it can be upgraded in the future when a better than h264 becomes available.
e) Include MIDI, like Quicktime, but with much higher quality MIDI instruments set and a even a synthesizer, this could make a huge difference. In Quicktime there is one from Roland, but the quality is mediocre and Adobe Flash has none.
f) On-the-fly transitions,zoom and pans, (this will save more bandwidth than H264 alone)Emphasize SIMPLICITY/MINIMALISM, avoid unnecessary fluff like Media Skins, VRML/3D or other bloat that cause bugs and crashes.
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The immediate goal should be OGG with Theora, Vorbis, Speex and a ROCK SOLID and simple player interface. Put all the effort in STABILITY and make sure there is a tool to create OGG content.
Later grow from there by slowly adding the rest of media types.
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I’m a bit vague as to how the various technologies fit together, but is the aim to incorporate CMML support?
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I don’t think we’re adding any specific support for CMML, but I suspect it’s possible to add something like it once the video support is available.
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Just curious, is Mozilla planning on adding any other codecs besides the ogg ones? H.261 is almost certainly patent free, and MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio probably is patent free as well.
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We’re starting with the one that’s the most obvious and competes well with other codecs. We’ve got backends in bugzilla to plug into the media codec layers on the various operating systems. But the goal here wasn’t really to give access to every codec under the sun, as nice as that sounds. It’s more to find a few common royalty-free baseline codecs that everyone could implement, improve and ship. OGG + Theora is one, OGG + Vorbis is another.
Is there a specific role that you would see H.261 and MPEG-1 with Layer 2 audio filling that Theora and Vorbis do not?
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It sounds as though Dirac is likely to be added to a later version eventually for video, at which point between Theora and Dirac there’ll be a “bandwidth is more important”/”video quality is more important” choice for Firefox-native <video>.
(I know mpeg1 USED to be the “lowest common denominator” codec a decade ago, but I don’t imagine there’s much reason to add it these days. On the other hand, I also know I’m not really qualified to make firm pronouncements on this topic, so feel free to tell me I’m full of crap…)I imagine flac might make a good choice for the <audio> “quality more important than bandwidth” equivalent, though with Vorbis actually being competitive with higher-end codecs I don’t imagine there’s as much need for it.
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Yeah, on the audio side we also support .wav files for
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Supposedly it should be possible stick virtually any kind of data into an Ogg stream (I’m under the impression that was one of the design goals), so I’d be surprised if you couldn’t do pcm-in-ogg audio.
For me, the only real question remaining is how many more months of delays there’ll be before firefox 3.1 gets released…
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MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio is supported by both Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player. The near complete committee draft ISO CD 11172 was publicly available in December 1991, so it is old enough to serve as prior art for any patent filed after Dec 1992. I’ve searched the internet, the ISO patent database and I asked on Kuro5hin and the gstreamer mailing list and I have been unable to find any unexpired patents listed for it. As well, the MASCAM audio standard (1988) and H.261 video standard (1990) are almost certainly patent free and MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio is quite similar to those older codecs.
I could be wrong, but I think that MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio is the best patent free codec that both Quicktime and Media Player already support. If Microsoft or Apple or Nokia or some other company say that Ogg Theora might not be clear of patents, it might be worth it to ask for them to investigate if MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio is clear of patents and offer to implement MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio in Firefox if they do pay for the lawyer work and find that it is patent clear.
I have an extra motive, because if someone did patent clear MPEG-1 encoding, then there would immediately be a way for open source software to legally create video CDs and video DVDs.
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“MPEG-1 with layer 2 audio is supported by both Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player.”
I’m pretty sure most Linux systems also have MPEG1 decoding software readily available as well. Thing is, that suggests there is not any reason to put it native in Firefox – the format and codec in question is already supported by the underlying system. I would assume source audio or video would “fall through” down to the system’s playback plugins and play <video> in that format using them.The point of having “native” Ogg Vorbis/Theora is to have a lower-bandwidth, higher quality “legally free” format available on all platforms. I’m pretty confident that the quality/bandwidth ratio is much better with both Vorbis and Theora than the even older mpeg1 video and mpeg1-layer2 audio.
(As usual, I’m assuming here, so someone feel free to step in and point out I’m full of crap if I am…)
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MPEG-1 software on Linux is actually rather hard to get in the US (as in you will have to compile it yourself). The basic problem is that MPEG-2 is patented and most of the newer decoding and encoding MPEG-1 implementations also include MPEG-2 encoding and decoding. You can use the old Berkeley Plateau Multimedia Research Group’s implementation, but they are old enough that you have to fiddle with them a bit to compile them. You can also use the MPEG-1 reference implementation and just don’t use the MP3 part. The MPEG-1 reference implementation actually stores data as ascii hex characters (for example it would input and output ‘90′ rather than ‘Z’). These encoding and decoding options are a bit of a pain.
Ogg vorbis is almost certainly quite a bit better than MPEG-1 layer 2 audio, but I haven’t seen anything on Ogg theora versus MPEG-1 (I also haven’t looked).
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Pingback from Open Video Conference: June 19-20 on March 17, 2009 at 3:30 pm
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Pingback from Fastest Firefox | Giant Spatula on June 1, 2009 at 6:57 pm
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Excellent! It is, in a nutshell, about time.
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This sounds great but moving from plugin prison means moving into browser prison (FF only). It definitely doesn’t seem like a better solution than any of the plugins currently available.
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John C. Bland II,
First of all, you can always put in some fallback content. http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2009/02/fallback-options-for-html5-video.html Second of all, Google Chrome and Opera are planning on adding support for Ogg video.
http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/a-call-for-video-on-the-web-opera-vid/
http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-May/019992.html -
Can someone from this project speak at this year’s lugg radio live *please*
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In addition to Firefox, Opera, and (probably?) Google Chrome, if you install XiphQT so that QuickTime® knows how to deal with the Ogg file format and the Vorbis and Theora codecs (among others), the just-released Safari ALSO handles Ogg Vorbis/Theora files in <audio> and <video> tags (as I confirmed for myself yesterday). (This also allows the rest of Apple’s Quicktime-based audio/video programs use the Ogg format and the associated codecs, which is what XiphQT was originally for…)
Recently I saw a patch submitted to add basic <audio> and <video> support to Konqueror, too. All that really remains is for Microsoft® to quit stamping their little feet and screaming “NO HTML5! SILVERLIGHT! SILVERLIGHT!” and join the rest of us in the 21st century. Maybe in IE 9…meanwhile, it’s looking as if outside of Redmond support for easy embedding of Ogg Vorbis and/or Theora in web pages will become rapidly ubiquitous
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@Joshua Cogliati & Epicanis
So, you go from ubiquitous plugins to *some* browser support unless you use a…umm…plugin?Don’t get me wrong…I get it and welcome the update but as far as leaving \plugin prison\ you’re only leaving one and going to another. Until IE has support you will not see any large-scale sites using it heavily because those of us working on them will not suggest using something that will only limit our user-base.
Great for the future (1.5 – 3 years maybe) but better than plugin-based video this is not, yet.
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Pingback from Building an open video movement! « commonspace on June 19, 2009 at 9:35 am
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Pingback from Open Video Welcomes Video Into the Browser on June 21, 2009 at 11:01 pm
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Pingback from What’s New in Firefox 3.5? « Sans or Serif? on June 23, 2009 at 5:53 am
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Pingback from Open Video : neuronspark on June 26, 2009 at 8:52 am
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Pingback from Tá tudo a puxar o novo Firefox 3.5 « O Vigia on June 30, 2009 at 11:32 am
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Microsoft = IE and Silverlight
Need I say more?
Thanks to all of you above for your support of Open Video.
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@Paul Hastings
Yes, please do say more. ;-) -
I totally agree with you on this article Chris. You should check out this article it has a similar insight.
http://www.nurelm.com/themanual/2009/08/13/open-video-firefox-html5/
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