The Google Chromium blog discussed the HTML Video Codec Support in Chrome, and announced that the WebM/VP8 codec will be part of HTML5's <video> tag support as well as Theora. However, the bombshell comment was:
Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
The HTML5 specification cannot agree on a standard for video on the web, as open source foundations (like Mozilla) cannot afford the H264 licensing fees for the code, whilst Chrome supports both open-source and licensed software. Meanwhile, Apple is driving H264 adoption with its hardware and software choices and has no interest in supporting an open-source codec which may have patent issues surrounding it.
Until recently, Chrome was seen as best-of-both since the HTML5 video tag would support both WebM and H264 video. Unlike existing objects (which use a plug-in architecture to allow extension after the fact), the HTML5 video tag does not permit additional codecs to be installed. As a result, Firefox, Opera and (in the future) Chrome will be unable to see H264 encoded videos.
The reverse is also true; users of Safari or iPhone/iPod devices won't be able to see WebM encoded content – but since H264 is a widely used standard (it's the encoding used under the covers for Flash as well as Blu-Ray discs) the balance of video encoding is heavily in the H264 camp. Since there is less video available in WebM, there's less of a pressing reason to encode for it, which is why Chrome is making this change.
The hope is, by making Chrome only understand WebM encoded videos for the video tag (like Mozilla and Opera), Google will switch the balance of power to encourage the wider adoption of the WebM codec. The comments are highly polarised on the matter, with more against the move than for it:
This is a really poor decision for users and site designers alike. Right now I can encode video in one codec, H.264 and serve it to all modern browsers and mobile platforms, using either the video tag or a Flash wrapper.
If Chrome drops H.264 support from the video tag, then Chrome users will just get H.264 with a Flash wrapper. I'm not encoding in another codec. Peace.
- As a content publisher and developer using HTML , I'm taking this opportunity to make the necessary changes to my sites so that Chrome also gets the Flash plugin fallback that IE and Firefox get. Bandwidth is expensive, and h.264 is a miracle-worker in that regard.
Interesting move. IE9 will ship with h264 and webm support, while safari, flash, iOS devices, portable gaming devices, some consoles, and the majority of 3G-capable phones (see 3gpp standard) only handle h264 as a sane web video format.
Every platform which doesn't support h264 either ships with flash preinstalled, or has an install base of over 90%. Clearly, the format which has won is H264 - the single video format every browser supports, everywhere. This remains true until google retracts their recent statement on bundling Flash with Chrome.
The Flash issue is that despite dropping H264 support, Flash is still supported, which is a closed-source. Ironically, Flash is the best way of serving H264 video to browsers that don't have built-in support, so the majority of video publishers are just going to serve the same video content as a Flash object rather than transcoding.
- Let's be realistic here: Chrome is ~10% of the browser market. Their decision to support WebM over h.264 won't kill HTML5 . In fact, once fireFox 4 is released with WebM, the majority of users with non-beta browsers that support HTML5 video will be using WebM.
- It is a mistake to suggest this decision supports some nebulous "open source community". Google is making a choice here that supports the web. Anyone who thinks that h264 is free in any way is mistaken. Google seems to be taking a longer term view here, and should be applauded for accepting some short term pain in exchange for very real, very measurable long-term benefits.
- To those that are saying that it is a stupid move, you are the stupid ones. Me as a user, I want a one universal web browser codec. I don't want to switch to Google Chrome and then see that it cannot play the video that Firefox plays, or Safari. If all the browsers move to OGG Theora codec, it'll be legit, and will teach Apple a thing or two about the cost of licensing H.264 codec.
- The only reason to drop H264 is to hit iOS users in their faces, when Youtube drops H264. The war has already begone.
Whilst H264 is licensed, consumption of the video over the internet is free (and will be for the lifetime of the license), hardware and software decoders have fees associated with it. InfoQ have covered this before and the situation is unlikely to change; hardware device manufacturers will continue to build H264 support into products (since it's required for Blu-Ray players already). The ideological split has no common ground, which is why Chrome tried to appease both groups with dual support initially.
Ars Technica has generated a similar amount of comments on its story on Google removing H264 support from Chrome, though they also note:
Microsoft's substantial browser market share and the popularity of Apple's devices simply can't be ignored by the content producers. It's likely that many content producers will continue using H264 and will simply use Flash instead of the HTML5 video tag to display video content to browsers that don't natively support the H264 codec.
Whatever the outcome, Chrome dropping H264 support is unlikely to change the way producers generate content, even if the way they serve it does change. And with Android devices being able to run Flash, it seems that the hardware standard will remain H264 for some time to come.