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Google, Mozilla and Opera develop open source video codec

Google, Mozilla and Opera have joined foreces in a new high-quality, open video format that could end the ongoing debate about the video support in HTML 5: the WebM Project.

HTML5 port of Quake II game engine

Wow! A group of googlers developed a HTML 5 based port of id Software’s Quake II. So, we can play Quake II in a common web browser (well, just Safari and Chrome for now) without any plug-ins. You can read about the project on Google Web Toolkit Blog, watch a demo on YouTube or get the code on the project page on Google Code.

Google & HTML5

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“Google’s HTML 5 Work: What’s Next?” talks about the possibilities of HTML 5 for developers and the way Google thinks the new elements could improve our experience using web applications.

You can also download the 20 slides in PDF format.

The status of the video tag

The video element colud allow us to include a video or movie without the need of a plugin such as Adobe Flash, which seems to be the de facto standard nowadays. But one of the main problems for a massive implementation is the lack of an agreement for a common video codec on all browsers.

The two most popular candidates seem to be Ogg Theora (open source) and H.264 (proprietary) but…

  • Apple refuses to implement Ogg Theora because of the lack of hardware support and patent issues.
  • Google implemented both options in Chrome but, due to licensing issues, cannot allow the use of the H.264 codec to third-party applications and stated that they believe Ogg Theora’s quality-per-bit is not yet suitable for the volume handled by YouTube.
  • Opera won’t implement H.264 because of the license costs.
  • Mozilla stands in the same place as Opera, due to the costs to downstream distributors.
  • Microsoft has not yet commented about the issue.

So, what could be the future of the video implementation? Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification, sees to possible solutions:

1. Ogg Theora encoders continue to improve. Off-the-shelf hardware Ogg Theora decoder chips become available. Google ships support for the codec for long enough without getting sued that Apple’s concern regarding submarine patents is reduced. => Theora becomes the de facto codec for the Web.

2. The remaining H.264 baseline patents owned by companies who are not willing to license them royalty-free expire, leading to H.264 support being available without license fees. => H.264 becomes the de facto codec for the Web.

It seems that, for now, there’s no chance for a standard solution. For the time being, we can see some beta implementations of the video tag in sites like Dailymotion or Youtube, each with their own approach to the subject.