Is google webm going nowhere?

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soom1245

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Feb 1, 2012
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Webm started off with a bang but seems to have fizzled. In the beginning google pays 100 million dollars for a company just to turn around and open source the property, opera and firefox announce support, youtube announces support, adobe flash announces support.

But since then nothing has really happened. Adobe still hasn't added webm to flash, google said they would drop h264 support from chrome in january 2011 but current chrome still has it.

Webm seems like another google wave, strong start but then nothing after. Do you think webm will get any better or is google going to drop it like google wave or hand it off like google sky map?
 
Gothgar

Gothgar

Lifer
Sep 1, 2004
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FoBoT said:
Web MD is that medical site where you can find out why you are sick
Click to expand...

dangers-of-webmd.jpg
 
Patranus

Patranus

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Apr 15, 2007
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Just like 95% of Googles products WebM is a patent nightmare and will therefore go nowhere.
 
destrekor

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
Gooberlx2 said:
You mean html5? Not the same thing.
Click to expand...

Sort of.

I had to google this, as I had no idea what this was.

Youtube uses HTML5 to deliver WebM video... not sure if HTML5 is required to deliver the video specifically, in any browser (that also supports the video file format), or if that's just how Youtube decided to do things.

If WebM is the ONLY video format that can stream seamlessly through HTML5, then I would say I really want the format to succeed. If it's simply another video format, and other filetypes combined with HTML can work just as well... I don't care. Well, take that back... I don't care unless there is a tremendous drop in file size with no loss in image quality... then I would demand WebM gets supported by everyone. Less bandwidth required to view videos on the web? Yes please. :)
 
Gooberlx2

Gooberlx2

Lifer
May 4, 2001
15,381
6
91
destrekor said:
Sort of.

I had to google this, as I had no idea what this was.

Youtube uses HTML5 to deliver WebM video... not sure if HTML5 is required to deliver the video specifically, in any browser (that also supports the video file format), or if that's just how Youtube decided to do things.

If WebM is the ONLY video format that can stream seamlessly through HTML5, then I would say I really want the format to succeed. If it's simply another video format, and other filetypes combined with HTML can work just as well... I don't care. Well, take that back... I don't care unless there is a tremendous drop in file size with no loss in image quality... then I would demand WebM gets supported by everyone. Less bandwidth required to view videos on the web? Yes please. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, webm is just the codec, derived from google's acquisition of vp8, they wrap in html5. Pretty sure that h.264 can stream via html5 as well. Similarly, webm can be used in flash, like h.264 is....or at least that was adobe's plan at one point. The opt in/out thing with youtube is switching between html5 vs flash...regardless of the video codec wrapped in it.

I believe h.264 remains the best video codec in terms of quality and compression. And since whatever patent consortium committed to not enforcing royalty payments for stuff like web delivery (so long as it's free to the end user)...no one's really made any effort to NOT use their codec.
 
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soom1245

Junior Member
Feb 1, 2012
6
0
0
destrekor said:
Sort of.

I had to google this, as I had no idea what this was.

Youtube uses HTML5 to deliver WebM video... not sure if HTML5 is required to deliver the video specifically, in any browser (that also supports the video file format), or if that's just how Youtube decided to do things.

If WebM is the ONLY video format that can stream seamlessly through HTML5, then I would say I really want the format to succeed. If it's simply another video format, and other filetypes combined with HTML can work just as well... I don't care. Well, take that back... I don't care unless there is a tremendous drop in file size with no loss in image quality... then I would demand WebM gets supported by everyone. Less bandwidth required to view videos on the web? Yes please. :)
Click to expand...

High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) will be better than h264 but that's many years away from being a reality.

In terms of bitrate efficiency, webm is worse than h264 but better than xvid. So to achieve the same picture quality webm needs ~10% bigger file size from last benchmarks i read.


I don't get why google bothered to buy on2 to release webm and then not follow through. Sure google makes billions a quarter but the webm project has to be a drain on resources. Lastest statistic from youtube says that 60 hours of video get uploaded every minute.

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2012/01/holy-nyans-60-hours-per-minute-and-4.html

So they take the upload and encode everything twice, once for h264 and again for webm. The cost of doing that has to be significant: hard drives to store, cpu's to encode, buildings, etc.

If google really wanted force the issue they could make android and chrome only support webm out of the box and also announce a date when youtube will be webm only.


That would get things moving
 
destrekor

destrekor

Lifer
Nov 18, 2005
28,799
359
126
Gooberlx2 said:
Yeah, webm is just the codec, derived from google's acquisition of vp8, they wrap in html5. Pretty sure that h.264 can stream via html5 as well. Similarly, webm can be used in flash, like h.264 is....or at least that was adobe's plan at one point. The opt in/out thing with youtube is switching between html5 vs flash...regardless of the video codec wrapped in it.

I believe h.264 remains the best video codec in terms of quality and compression. And since whatever patent consortium committed to not enforcing royalty payments for stuff like web delivery (so long as it's free to the end user)...no one's really made any effort to NOT use their codec.
Click to expand...

Now that you mention it, I'm pretty sure HTML5 was developed from the ground up to support h.264, even being the first specifically mentioned codec.

soom1245 said:
High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) will be better than h264 but that's many years away from being a reality.

In terms of bitrate efficiency, webm is worse than h264 but better than xvid. So to achieve the same picture quality webm needs ~10% bigger file size from last benchmarks i read.


I don't get why google bothered to buy on2 to release webm and then not follow through. Sure google makes billions a quarter but the webm project has to be a drain on resources. Lastest statistic from youtube says that 60 hours of video get uploaded every minute.

http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2012/01/holy-nyans-60-hours-per-minute-and-4.html

So they take the upload and encode everything twice, once for h264 and again for webm. The cost of doing that has to be significant: hard drives to store, cpu's to encode, buildings, etc.

If google really wanted force the issue they could make android and chrome only support webm out of the box and also announce a date when youtube will be webm only.


That would get things moving
Click to expand...

If the user uses Chrome, and uses HTML5, WebM is default - and some choose HTML5 regardless - so the end result is possibly Google saving money as the servers are taxed less, and bandwidth is lower (I'm assuming this to be the case - financials, otoh, I can only imagine).

I wonder what youtube apps for smartphones use by default. mobile browser-based is flash, and thus not WebM.
 
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