Comments on: Empowering Content Creators, Not Platforms With H.264 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/ This is the blog of Brooks Andrus. Here, at irregular intervals, you may find digital noise centered around the activities of an early 21st century technologist. I work for TechSmith Corporation, but this web space and the views found on it are entirely my own. Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:49:45 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Convergence: Silverlight 3 To Support h.264 Video http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-48554 Convergence: Silverlight 3 To Support h.264 Video Wed, 10 Sep 2008 05:02:55 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-48554 [...] creators and the industry as a whole out. It’s a move away from vendor lock-in and toward customer empowerment. Microsoft has big plans for Silverlight. They want it to be embedded on a lot of platforms (mobile [...] [...] creators and the industry as a whole out. It’s a move away from vendor lock-in and toward customer empowerment. Microsoft has big plans for Silverlight. They want it to be embedded on a lot of platforms (mobile [...]

]]> By: Brooks http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45938 Brooks Thu, 22 May 2008 14:52:41 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45938 @Bill - Yep, that's me, but thanks for making fun. ;-) @Bill - Yep, that’s me, but thanks for making fun. ;-)

]]> By: Bill Scanlon http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45936 Bill Scanlon Thu, 22 May 2008 14:03:03 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45936 Is that you're voice on the video? Doesn't sound like you. Sounds like you doing a video narrator voice...which I guess it is. Is that you’re voice on the video? Doesn’t sound like you.

Sounds like you doing a video narrator voice…which I guess it is.

]]> By: Brooks http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45762 Brooks Mon, 19 May 2008 20:59:04 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45762 @Tony - Do I expect Microsoft to drop VC-1? No. Do they risk continuing to be irrelevant in the video space as long as the go it alone? Yes. Should we expect big business to cooperate for the greater good? Yes. In fact, in the video broadcast industry they've been doing this for a very long time. I think you've seen the video industry as a whole recognize that no one is going to own the entire stack (MS is about the only one refusing to recognize this at this point) and that competing formats hurt vendors and consumers. While format competition still flairs up from time to time (BluRay vs HD-DVD) there's tremendous pressure for consolidation to occur -- the paralysis of multiple distribution formats is just too high. I would argue we're well past the tipping point on the web video front (Adobe bringing h.264 to Flash was the nail in the coffin). Everybody, except for MS has conceded and is backing / supporting h.264 and MS isn't even a legit player in the web video playback market (Flash Player has 95% market share). This is why I see the burden being on MS rather than on everyone else (if they were talking from a position strength -- 95% market share -- it would alter the discussion a bit). It's up to MS to make themselves relevant. @Tony - Do I expect Microsoft to drop VC-1? No.

Do they risk continuing to be irrelevant in the video space as long as the go it alone? Yes.

Should we expect big business to cooperate for the greater good? Yes. In fact, in the video broadcast industry they’ve been doing this for a very long time. I think you’ve seen the video industry as a whole recognize that no one is going to own the entire stack (MS is about the only one refusing to recognize this at this point) and that competing formats hurt vendors and consumers. While format competition still flairs up from time to time (BluRay vs HD-DVD) there’s tremendous pressure for consolidation to occur — the paralysis of multiple distribution formats is just too high.

I would argue we’re well past the tipping point on the web video front (Adobe bringing h.264 to Flash was the nail in the coffin). Everybody, except for MS has conceded and is backing / supporting h.264 and MS isn’t even a legit player in the web video playback market (Flash Player has 95% market share). This is why I see the burden being on MS rather than on everyone else (if they were talking from a position strength — 95% market share — it would alter the discussion a bit). It’s up to MS to make themselves relevant.

]]> By: Tony Dunckel http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45709 Tony Dunckel Sun, 18 May 2008 20:35:40 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45709 Brooks - you're singing to the choir here, but MS has a lot of influence across the various parts of the puzzle. Is it realistic to that the big 3 (Microsoft, Adobe and Apple) will all concede and centralize around the same format? Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is can we really expect big business to make a play for the greater good of the consumer and that seamless experience we all think is nirvana at this point? Brooks - you’re singing to the choir here, but MS has a lot of influence across the various parts of the puzzle. Is it realistic to that the big 3 (Microsoft, Adobe and Apple) will all concede and centralize around the same format? Perhaps a better way to phrase the question is can we really expect big business to make a play for the greater good of the consumer and that seamless experience we all think is nirvana at this point?

]]> By: And He Blogs » links for 2008-05-17 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45650 And He Blogs » links for 2008-05-17 Sat, 17 May 2008 18:52:58 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45650 [...] Empowering Content Creators, Not Platforms With H.264 (tags: andrus flv h.264 video webcast flash) [...] [...] Empowering Content Creators, Not Platforms With H.264 (tags: andrus flv h.264 video webcast flash) [...]

]]> By: Brooks http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45584 Brooks Fri, 16 May 2008 20:08:26 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45584 @Trav - Great link bro. Hardware is definitely more of an issue now that there's increasing emphasis on battery life in laptops and smaller form factor mobile devices. On the desktop front it was completely reasonable to rely on pure software decoding since CPU speed increases were a given and power was an unquestioned constant. I'm definitely looking forward to more chip driven decoding and looking to vendors to have the hooks / APIs that allow 3rd party software to directly pipe the decoding / encoding to the dedicated hardware. Content creation apps are going to be getting significantly richer which is great news. @Trav - Great link bro. Hardware is definitely more of an issue now that there’s increasing emphasis on battery life in laptops and smaller form factor mobile devices. On the desktop front it was completely reasonable to rely on pure software decoding since CPU speed increases were a given and power was an unquestioned constant.

I’m definitely looking forward to more chip driven decoding and looking to vendors to have the hooks / APIs that allow 3rd party software to directly pipe the decoding / encoding to the dedicated hardware. Content creation apps are going to be getting significantly richer which is great news.

]]> By: Brooks http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45582 Brooks Fri, 16 May 2008 20:02:23 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45582 @Ryan - Thanks for the props. I'm using the Kimili plugin for WordPress to do the embedding, but I don't believe that has anything to do with the enclosure showing up in the feed. Because of the popularity of podcasting / blogging hybrids, WordPress is pretty good about sniffing out podcast formats and writing the enclosure tags into the feed. Anytime you reference an .mp4, mp3, .m4a, .m4b, or .m4v file in a post WP will do the work for you. This is one of the reasons why I was a bit bummed to see Adobe moving forward with the f4v naming convention. I believe I understand some of the reasoning, but it means you won't leverage the existing interoperability there is right out of the gate. I definitely want to hear more color from you guys about this decision. @Ryan - Thanks for the props. I’m using the Kimili plugin for WordPress to do the embedding, but I don’t believe that has anything to do with the enclosure showing up in the feed. Because of the popularity of podcasting / blogging hybrids, WordPress is pretty good about sniffing out podcast formats and writing the enclosure tags into the feed. Anytime you reference an .mp4, mp3, .m4a, .m4b, or .m4v file in a post WP will do the work for you.

This is one of the reasons why I was a bit bummed to see Adobe moving forward with the f4v naming convention. I believe I understand some of the reasoning, but it means you won’t leverage the existing interoperability there is right out of the gate. I definitely want to hear more color from you guys about this decision.

]]> By: Travis Stoliker http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45580 Travis Stoliker Fri, 16 May 2008 19:05:59 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45580 Great post, Brooks. I agree H.264 is a game changer. I can't wait until the H.264 chips start showing up in laptops and other components for hardware decoding/encoding. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070308_001806.html Great post, Brooks. I agree H.264 is a game changer. I can’t wait until the H.264 chips start showing up in laptops and other components for hardware decoding/encoding.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070308_001806.html

]]> By: Ryan Stewart http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45579 Ryan Stewart Fri, 16 May 2008 18:32:54 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45579 Excellent post, and I agree. How did you embed the video? It showed up in my feed reader as just a regular MP4 embed that you could download. I thought it was a nice touch to have the visible Flash movie and the H.264 download so I wondered if you had to do anything special. Love the blog, it's becoming one of my favorites. =Ryan rstewart@adobe.com Excellent post, and I agree.

How did you embed the video? It showed up in my feed reader as just a regular MP4 embed that you could download. I thought it was a nice touch to have the visible Flash movie and the H.264 download so I wondered if you had to do anything special.

Love the blog, it’s becoming one of my favorites.
=Ryan
rstewart@adobe.com

]]> By: Mateusz http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45558 Mateusz Fri, 16 May 2008 09:20:06 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45558 Naturally there are many codecs which are free , look at OGG theora, or dirac. Naturally there are many codecs which are free , look at OGG theora, or dirac.

]]> By: Brooks http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45554 Brooks Fri, 16 May 2008 08:31:04 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45554 @Thijs - the last time I checked On2 held patents for the vp6 codec that flv uses. FFMPEG has an implementation of the h.263 codec, but that doesn't mean its unencumbered (Macromedia licensed h.263 aka "Spark" from Sorenson). So, I'm not certain you can assert flv is free. Maybe someday, there will be a killer, patent free, open source codec for video, but I'm not holding my breath (Sun announced their intent to work on just such a thing recently, but their media track record stinks...remember JMF). @Thijs - the last time I checked On2 held patents for the vp6 codec that flv uses. FFMPEG has an implementation of the h.263 codec, but that doesn’t mean its unencumbered (Macromedia licensed h.263 aka “Spark” from Sorenson). So, I’m not certain you can assert flv is free.

Maybe someday, there will be a killer, patent free, open source codec for video, but I’m not holding my breath (Sun announced their intent to work on just such a thing recently, but their media track record stinks…remember JMF).

]]> By: Thijs http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45552 Thijs Fri, 16 May 2008 08:12:29 +0000 http://www.brooksandrus.com/blog/2008/05/16/empowering-content-creators-not-platforms-with-h264/#comment-45552 In your video you ask why use anything else then h264, and one answer could be: FLV is free and doesn't contain any patent or licensing restrictions, while H264 requires you to pay royalties for every video. From <a href='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264#Patent_licensing' rel="nofollow">Wikipedia</a>: "In countries where software patent regulations are upheld, the vendors of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use" In your video you ask why use anything else then h264, and one answer could be: FLV is free and doesn’t contain any patent or licensing restrictions, while H264 requires you to pay royalties for every video. From Wikipedia: “In countries where software patent regulations are upheld, the vendors of products which make use of H.264/AVC are expected to pay patent licensing royalties for the patented technology that their products use”

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