At Google I/O last week, Google announced that it would be open sourcing what it calls the WebM video codec. Immediately, there was talk about this “open” codec becoming the video format of the web, with browsers like Firefox and Opera jumping on the bandwagon as fast as they could. While I think that it is great to have an open codec, not encumbered by patents, and that anyone can produce and consume freely, I also think that we are already so entrenched with h.264 video that it will be almost impossible to just “switch” to this new codec. Here is why all of the hype around this codec is unfounded:
- h.264 is already available nearly everywhere – h.264 video is viewable on nearly all devices. It is available on both Mac and Windows computers with no installation necessary, on nearly every mobile device including the iPhone, iPad, and even Android devices. This ubiquity will make it hard to compete with.
- Lack of hardware decoders – there are hardware decoders for h.264 video in almost every mobile device, and even some laptops and desktops. This makes decoding h.264 video very fast, and uses less CPU cycles than a software decoder would, while raising the battery life considerably. The reason that you can watch a movie for 10 hours straight on an iPad is because the hardware decoder for the h.264 video uses very little power. So why can’t these devices just add a WebM hardware decoder? First of all such a chip doesn’t exist yet, but more importantly, there probably isn’t the room for two decoders in today’s already cramped devices. For instance, all of the video in Apple’s iTunes store is encoded using h.264, and thus they need the h.264 decoding chips in their devices. They are not going to add a second chip just unless several major content producers switch their videos to WebM with no h.264 fallback.
- Lack of encoders – applications that produce video content do not export WebM video, but they do export h.264. This can be consumer grade applications like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, or professional applications like Final Cut. Of course, you can get a converter, but that adds an additional step that, depending on how long your video is, could take a long time (video conversions are slow). Also, depending on browser support, they may need to produce a WebM version, an h.264 version, as well as a Flash version. I don’t think that content producers are going to want to do this, just so that their videos can be in an “open” format.
- Patents – Apple and Microsoft both have patents in h.264 video, and they probably don’t want to lose their investment to an open source codec. In the case of Apple, they also have millions of videos that they sell in the h.264 format. They aren’t just going to convert it to WebM overnight.
- Content producers will not want to switch – content producers have just begun switching to h.264 and away from Flash so that they can gain support on mobile devices that don’t support Flash, like the iPhone. They won’t want to switch video formats yet again. There isn’t a compelling reason for them to switch – h.264 is supported everywhere, and where it isn’t (like Firefox) they can provide Flash fallback (which plays h.264). One format everywhere.
Question of Openness
While Google touts WebM as “open for anyone to implement and improve,” h.264 is open as well – it just isn’t free. According to Engadget:
Although H.264 is an open standard, in that it was developed by a consortium of companies and anyone can make and sell an encoder or decoder, it’s not free — you’ve got to pay for a royalty fee to use it, and the rates are set by the MPEG-LA, which collects payments and distributes them to its members.
It seems to me that whenever something is touted as “open,” it immediately gets all sorts of hype. Open has become a buzzword like Ajax was a few years ago. It seems that everything open is automatically “better,” and I think that this is wrong. I think that instead of assuming the superiority of an “open” product, we should instead be treating it like any other product, letting the best format win. Mozilla doesn’t really have to pay the royalties for including h.264 support in Firefox because they could just as easily shell out this task to the operating system, which already supports the playback of h.264 video and pays the royalties. While I understand the concerns that Mozilla has with using a closed video format, I don’t think that this should stop them from using the defacto standard for video that h.264 has become.
Bottom Line
Big companies have a lot of money in h.264 video which is already ubiquitously available, easy to encode, and fast to decode with low powered hardware decoders. Content producers have already invested time and money in switching away from Flash to h.264 and will not want to invest more time and money in order to switch to WebM. h.264 has become the defacto standard for video, and I just don’t see this changing overnight. This is why I think that the WebM video codec, as much as it is hyped, will fail.
May 31, 2010 at 10:39 am
1,5. I can’t remember which version exactly but I think the latest Flash player has support for WebM and thus making possible to play WebM when you have Flash Player installed.
3. This won’t be a problem as WebM will be open and therefore can be used as an encoder without much problems. Any opensource program will definitely start using it because they can’t use h.264. Other programs such as FinalCut, iMovie will also probably start supporting it.
I think one major factor in this change will be Youtube. When Youtube switches from h.264 to WebM then many will follow. If Youtube makes switch it probably means that most platforms will start supporting WebM also.
May 31, 2010 at 4:31 pm
[...] 5 Reasons Why Google’s WebM Video Codec Will Fail It’s hard to believe that something that many reviewers said they couldn’t tell the difference quality wise will fail. Too many people can’t afford the cost of Apples solution and having it free always makes a tool more popular. You can read his reasoning here. [...]
June 1, 2010 at 6:27 am
1. Just because h.264 is currently ubiquitous doesnt make it insurmountable. electronic makers wouldn’t have to stop supporting h.264 altogether, and I’m sure most of them wouldn’t mind supporting a popular and free to implement standard along side of it, as many devices already support multiple video formats.
2. Even though the spec for WebM was just released intel is already considering building hardware support for it and if it becomes the standard video format for HTML5 you can bet they will.
3. The WebM project home page already has a list of encoders/transcoders listed http://www.webmproject.org/tools/ and I’m sure many more will continue to add support for WebM just to use it as an additional selling point.
4. I think the single factor that could stand in the way of WebM video is the h.264 patent group who want h.264 to be the non free video standard for the web and everything else.
5. Content producers may have brand loyalty to their OS, hardware and software manufacturers but I doubt most of them care what codec they use as long as it produces quality results, in fact I think many of them would even be happy to use a free tool with a free format instead of expensive software with format to boot.
@egon YouTubes HTML5 video player already supports WebM along with H.264
June 6, 2010 at 3:08 pm
Interesting article.
We are content producers and to be honest, we’ll easily switch to whats best – in terms of quality, cost, filesizes etc. But yes we are all using H264 at the moment
However, H264 royalties will kick in next year (2011) and this opens up competition some what and will certainly shift people towards OGG and WEBM more surely?
Regarding Egons comments – since Google own Youtube then its probably quite likely that the switch would be made. Something I hadnt considered and again you are right the the world will follow suit.
Lack of encoders – thats easily resolved….
Hmm – one to watch this…
Louise
August 7, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Being free, means that you get to keep more money, and it’s about making money. Disregard the patent trolls, and IP stealers, info, for a moment and think about it business wise.
I don’t have to pay a quasi org, that doesn’t really offer much protection, apart from the fact that they are all big boys and you have to be a big company with lawyer lined pockets to play hardball.
Then take a royalty free, no fee solution, where what you sell makes you money, and you don’t have to give it away.
Hmmmmm, big choice that one
Seriously, if someone makes a patent run against Webm and fails, H264 days will be numbered, it make take a few years, but a patent trail fail would mean the death of H264. Until that time there’s enough FUD to make people nervous enough, not to buy into Webm too deeply.
September 2, 2010 at 9:04 pm
I don’t think you understand what you wrote in point #2. Embedded SOC’s, like the ones powering mobile phones, use programmable DPS’s. It’s “hardware decoding” in the same sense that mpeg formats can be offloaded to the GPU in desktops and laptops–its still completely software/driver based. All that is required is a software update containing a driver that supports DSP-assisted webm encode/decode for the phone. Alternatively (and less likely), a driver could utilize NEON instructions, which are surprisingly fast, leveraging the CPU to accelerate the functions. I already have webm support on my n900, it’s not optimized at all, but it functions well for non-HD content.
March 16, 2011 at 9:01 pm
Hello Devon, I would like to know if I could discuss a project with you via a more secure communication, email? I’m currently running into a few JavaScript issues and as a student its tough to find knowledgeable java programmers
April 26, 2011 at 1:07 pm
i’ve come to a complete understanding:
-hardware decoding h264&VC1 in ati/amd hardware UVD equals 5.8 million transistors.UVD2~10millions.
-hardware decoding VP8 in WEBM container is, according to webmproject site,1.4 million transistors.
BUT!WARNING!
GOOGLE and the rest interested in slaying VC1=microsoft,h264=not under google controll,THEY KNOW THAT THE MOST TIME CRITICAL STEP IN DECODING IS ALREADY HARD IMPLEMENTED AS PART OF h264/vc1 decoding in GPU’S.
THEY ONLY TAKE ADVANTAGE IN THE COMMON HARDWARE STAGES IN ORDER TO IMPOSE THEIR’S OWN FUTURE COPYRIGHT.
TODAY THEY SAY:FORGET THE 6-10 MILLIONS TRANSISTORS YOU HAVE AND COULD USE,”PLEASE” USE ONLY 1 MILLION OF THEM,THE “QUALITY” WILL BE ENSURED BY US IN SOFTWARE,FOR NOW ONLY(till we get it all,the market, with our’s copyright),and the future will be bright.
IF this is not piracy at the highest level,with hundreds of millions of victims-both PEOPLE and transistors.
to further make the point:on youtube=google,with WEBM at 360p movies are WORST THEN ON FLASH technology.WHY?because they only use the FIRST stages of the hardware in GPU.for 1080p I CANNOT TELL!WHY?because FULL SCREEN IS NOT AVAIBLE.because full screen 1080p on WEBM simply does not the necessary hard implementation and the software rendering spoils everything.
moreover:if you think that full VP8 usage will necessitate only 1.4 millions transistors,you are wrong.decoding is one part,whole rendering is biggest part.
VP8 encoding stuffed in webm container is no holly graal,is just a cheap trickery to obtain furtive leverage(like a rapist in the power of the night).
April 26, 2011 at 1:33 pm
this shady business is enhanced by the GPU producers.they want to push us into buying the latest video card,with gpu’s priced for their’s 1 billion transistors,when all that we ask for is decent 360p videos,without stutter and without 40% cpu usage on a single core.upsssss!i said core?let’s not forget the CPU makers-like the mmx on pentium 1,they could spare some silicon for hard decoding video.so i say,not being some wow,cysis addicted freak craving for 16 cores on cpu and directx12,4 billion transistors gpu.
LET’s LOOK OTHERWISE:adobe flash plugin in flash4 was 200kB in size.TODAY the evil dll is over 5 MEGABYTE!what for are those megabytes?they cannot use but the highest priced videocards to hard render 1080p flash!!!!!!!!!
conclusion:all they are looking for is MONEY!they will neglect their’s own mother for .1 cents apiece
+ for nice boxed pieces of shit they are selling.
April 26, 2011 at 3:57 pm
example:video flash cannot use hardware acceleration on UVD from ati/amd BUT it can use UVD2-latest from ati.
why?not because uvd2 has more stages in the dedicated(for h264/vc1) hardware decoder but because uvd2 has,in my opinion,in between stages,especially the first ones,TAPS,outlets,dedicated mechanisms to extract the partial decoded information from the gpu to the cpu.since with uvd2 everyone can divert the information from the processing pipeline,some nasty people use this opportunity to “evolve”,to ENFORCE some proprietary derivation from MAINSTREAM:flash diverging from h264,VP8 diverging from h264.they only use the discrete cosine transform part and throw all the rest,that we paid for all together on the video card.with OUR MONEY they turn against us.if we have used “no brain” video cards,like in the past,this discussion would not have had any meaning,n’est pas?
April 26, 2011 at 4:06 pm
the monopoly on h264 was enstated by US,the hundreds of millions of un-connected people.i guess that the monopoly for the 30 milion hours of video on youtube belong to the better part to us.the money to the worst.
May 5, 2011 at 8:03 pm
these days i realized that intel put in their’s latest processors,the i series announced in january 2011,a hardware decoder for h264.a guess google can and will strangle up even intel.
May 5, 2011 at 8:05 pm
the benchmark,”golden standard”,still is mr. gates and i.b.m.