Wikimedia Community Debates H.264 Support On Wikipedia Sites. 247
bigmammoth writes "Wikimedia has been a long time supporter of royalty free formats, but is now considering a shift in their position. From the RfC: 'To support the MP4 standard as a complement to the open formats now used on our sites, it has been proposed that videos be automatically transcoded and stored in both open and MP4 formats on our sites, as soon as they are uploaded or viewed by users. The unencumbered WebM and Ogg versions would remain our primary reference for platforms that support them. But the MP4 versions 'would enable many mobile and desktop users who cannot view these unencumbered video files to watch them in MP4 format.'
This has stirred a heated debate within the Wikimedia community as to whether the mp4 / h.264 format should be supported. Many Wikimedia regulars have weighed in, resulting in currently an even split between adding the H.264 support or not. The request for comment is open to all users of Wikimedia, including the broader community of readers. What do you think about supporting H.264 on Wikimedia sites?"
Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Wikimedia should stand their ground to provide a good reason for device manufacturers to add support for open video formats.
Re: (Score:2)
I can't see how Wiki has all that much leverage.
When did you last see someone turn down one Smartphone for another because it couldn't play a wiki video?
Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't see how Wiki has all that much leverage.
Looking at the list of most popular websites [wikipedia.org], I think only facebook & youtube would have more influence on video-standards settings.
When did you last see someone turn down one Smartphone for another because it couldn't play a wiki video?
Never, but it can add to a list of small frustrations, getting a user to switch manufacturers next contract renewal. You don't have to be the sole reason for a change to have leverage over manufacturers.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Looking at the list of most popular websites, I think only facebook & youtube would have more influence on video-standards settings.
People don't visit Wikipedia for the videos any more than they read Playboy for the articles. That you even put it in the same class as YouTube only makes you sound delusional, they are 99.99% video and Wikipedia is 99.99% not. When Google that owns the VP8 codec, owns YouTube and makes Android and Chrome don't want to eat their own dog food and push their own codec on their own site to their own devices and browser it'll never be more than an obscure alternative for ideological circlejerks, like art critics patting each other on the back for recognizing true art while the rest of the world watches Hollywood blockbusters.
Even Firefox has surrendered [thenextweb.com] on this one and said they'd use the binary blob Cisco provides, if Wikimedia wants to be the Japanese soldiers hiding in the forest 10 years after the war is over and keep denying it's over and that they lost it's their problem. And by forest I mean /. where Ogg Vorbis never dies even though it totally* failed to catch any mainstream use. * Cue the counterexamples, the way Munich shows that Linux is totally going to take over the desktop. But to use an old proverb, one swallow does not a summer make.
Re: Stand their ground (Score:2)
That's funny because people do actually read Playboy for the articles.
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Even Firefox has surrendered on this one and said they'd use the binary blob Cisco provides
In their own words, Firefox developers were betrayed by Google for not honoring its promise to drop h.264 from chrome [cnet.com]. Google really dropped the ball on that one.
"We lost, and we're admitting defeat. Cisco is providing a path for orderly retreat that leaves supporters of an open Web in a strong enough position to face the next battle, so we're taking it,"
The battle was lost and does weaken the open Web supporters position, but the war rages on in the likes of formats such as VP9 and Daala ("Daala is a novel approach to codec design. It aims not to be competitive, but to win outright," Montgomery said).
This pressure of Wikimedia is just another salvo from the proponents of software patent encumbere
Re-buy everything after switching (Score:3)
Never, but it can add to a list of small frustrations, getting a user to switch manufacturers next contract renewal.
Someone who switches from an iPhone will lose all his purchased videos, all his purchased books, and all his purchased iPhone apps. Only the music is DRM-free. He would have to re-buy everything else on Android, provided that they're even available on Android and not exclusive to iTunes. The iPhone, for example, is the only phone that can stream video from Amazon.
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I have watched Wikipedia being pulled up on two different smartphones simultaneously to settle argument/doubts more times than I can count now over the years.
"Oh, your phone can't play that wikipedia video - ha! - what a crappy phone you should get one like mine next time."
That sort of word of mouth marketing has a subtle hard to measure influence on peoples next phone contract signing agreement choices. I can't say how significant it is, but you would be hard pressed to discount it as not being significant
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That wiki is used frequently has almost nothing to do with it.
Lets face it, Wiki uses very few videos anyway, (thank god) and you aren't going to settle fact based arguments by watching videos on a phone.
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And I would counter, HA, my phone works on all the other video sites, including Amazon (which that other one doesn't). Seems wikimedia is the one with the crappy site.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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I would just provide a JS-only decoder, and when it runs really slowly and poorly, I'd say "iPhone's don't support non-commercial video very well. We did the best we could, take it up with Apple".
Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Android already supports WebM (http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html). I'm thinking this is more of a "should we care about the people with iPhones?"
My answer would be "no." That'll add more pressure on Apple to not be jackasses w/ their mobile OS.
Remember Flash? Me neither. Fighting H.264 is tilting at windmills. The vast majority of people couldn't care less about free (to them) video formats as long as stuff works and looks good.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Flash? People didn't care about free or not, so Flash was big and fighting against Flash was tilting against windmills. But today Flash is greatly diminished. Thus the lesson here is to NOT give up pushing back against H.264.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? I can watch and rip to H.264 with free (as in beer) tools. Is this some political thing? My tools don't convert to *.BasementVirgin, or whatever format this is. Just Works wins for me, sorry.
The "next format" is H.265, as far as I care, but only when that Just Works.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem is that the format is not free. I don't care about video at all really, I just don't like to see yet another proprietary format being promoted over open formats. It won't necessarily just work for you if you're a commercial entity. Those tools to rip are not necessarily legal either if they haven't paid the patent license fee.
It is true that more and more people don't give a shit about this stuff anymore with everything and its DNA being patented. They just want convenience and entertainment
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And why shouldn't they, is my point. The system is working fine if people get convenience and entertainment. Freaking out over DRM etc on principle is irrational. If it blocks normal people just trying to watch/play/shift/whatever their paid-for entertainment, as game DRM has a habit of doing, then it's a problem. But we've seen companies get bitchslapped by their customer base when they cross that line, and accepted when they only cross obsessive geeks making philosophical points. I see no problem wit
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The only reason Flash fell out of favour was because Steve Jobs didn't want to install it on iPhones.
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Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Flash is still in use at 80% of the sites I visit.
Apple's management are jack-asses. Let the consumer harass them instead of whining to the websites that their iShiny's don't work.
Have you been under a rock for the past couple years? Flash is dead, and Apple killed it. It went from being used on damn near every site around to less than 15% today. It cannot be used on an iOS or Android device. Adobe has abandoned it. You should be thanking Apple for leading the charge to kill that turd instead of cursing them as jackasses.
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Flash the scripting and site building language may be dead, but the media player is most emphatically alive.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Interesting)
Depends on your traffic. I run a content rich site for a client of mine and we realized something as we did our quarterly review: Mobile users are now 60% of all traffic to her site. Of that, the biggest block of users are from iPad at almost 30% of all traffic. iPhone makes up another 18% and all Android devices make up about 13% of our traffic. There is another 6% of traffic that is iPods. So as it stands right now iOS is over 50% of all traffic.
Think we are going to ignore iOS? Think again. Instead we've decided that it's time to add a native mobile app for iOS targeting specifically iPad.
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Android already supports WebM (http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html). I'm thinking this is more of a "should we care about the people with iPhones?" My answer would be "no." That'll add more pressure on Apple to not be jackasses w/ their mobile OS.
I think you got the "jackasses" upside down here. Google, as they have done on other occassions, bought a video codecs with the sole purpose of upsetting the established standard. WebM is not patent encumbered until it is successful, and if it ever is successful, there will be patent owners trying to blackmail. Just as Google / Motorola have tried themselves. I mean that is a pathetic joke, attacking h.264 as being patent encumbered, and then patent trolling.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Interesting)
The open formats lost this round. Sorry, but with H2.64 we've finally had a "Standard Codec" and format that allows content creators to encode the media once and just about reach everyone. If the open standards offered a significant technical advantage, i.e. better compression without loss of quality or faster encoding vs H.264 then they'd be open to listening. But as I've talked to a lot of content creators over the past few years, many of whom remember the days of creating a quicktime video, a Windows Media video, a Real Player video and none of them wish to go back to it. And for these people the cost of paying for a H.264 encoder license is trivial compared to royalties they have to pay for images, video, and music.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But that's exactly it: the world doesn't just revolve around people who are paying royalties on image/video/music. If Wikipedia accepts this, then the people who can't afford to pay that (and that includes many people who just don't want to deal with such licenes, for whom even $0.01 is too much) get screwed.
Open codecs aren't about being the best, they're about being for everyone.
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There's also no reason they can't be the best, but certain media cartels have packs of lawyers that are certainly going to take a run at making sure it doesn't happen.
"These people?" (Score:5, Insightful)
And for these people the cost of paying for a H.264 encoder license is trivial compared to royalties they have to pay for images, video, and music.
And what about the developing world that is slowly coming online via shared community hubs? Won't they have the right to publish content too without paying exuberant rents compared to their income? The cost is trivial for everyone. I am sorry but open formats are the only way forward for a level playing field. All we are seeing with this WWF/H.264 debacle is a small amount of vested interests trying to justify extracting rents from the world population, when non are really required.
That these closed proprietary formats/DRM are clawing their way back into our "open" standards, services like Wikipedia and browsers is a testament to how committees, foundations (and once democratic institutions serving the public interest) can be infiltrated by vested interest and their purpose corrupted slowly from the inside out. It is a slippery slope, read todays news to see how absolutely low you can slide [nakedcapitalism.com].
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They will benefit from Wikipedia adding H.264 support to the same extent everyone else will, because WebM and OGG will remain the reference formats, and content will be automatically transcoded.
It would certainly be advantageous for all devices to have WebM and OGG support, but not having H.264 on Wikipedia isn't going to strongarm Apple into supporting WebM and OGG.
I don't like proprietary formats, but when talking about automatic transcoding for device support it is something that I think is necessary and
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s/wikipedia/wikimedia
Re:"These people?" (Score:5, Insightful)
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If people see yet another format that Apple has decided they don't want you to see, it's another reason for people to avoid their intentionally crippled environment. What exactly is their reason for not supporting an open format? I'd like to hear their reasoning.
Battery life and Nokia (Score:2)
What exactly is their reason for not supporting an open format?
One reason is battery life, as it'd have to be decoded on the CPU instead of on the dedicated MPEG ASIC. When you really need to make a call, you don't want to lose touch after having watched a bunch of videos earlier in the day. The other is Nokia's decision to assert its patents against the use of VP8.
It's hardwired (Score:2)
StrongARM (Score:2)
Is "strongarm" an appropriate word for what Apple is doing?
Apple has been strongarming on its mobile platform [wikipedia.org] since around 1998 when the MessagePad 2000 [wikipedia.org] came out.
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Using h.264 allows for hardware decoding of the videos, which is much more power efficient than the alternative "open" codecs. Therefore, having wikimedia trying to force "open" codecs would cause all users to use up more bandwidth, consuming more electricity, which is generated (mostly) from burning coal, and polluting our planet. Why would wikimedia want to actively pollute our planet like that? Do you know how many people each year die or have their lives shortened due to smog and other airborne conta
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Fallacy: Appeal to emotions [nizkor.org]. h.264 has hardware support because the few that seek rents from it (the eight MPEG-2 patent owners -- Fujitsu, Panasonic, Sony, Mitsubishi, Scientific Atlanta, Columbia University, Philips and General Instrument, CableLabs and certain individuals) have organized hardware support, as a good investment. When open codecs are dominant, they too will supported more widely by hardware and these eight companies will have to follow. References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9 [wikipedia.org]
http: [techcrunch.com]
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Actually the reality is that the contents creators are locked by the fact that a few majors manufactures refuse to support free formats.
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By "spy-phone" I assume you are referring to android and it's default to send everything you type into your address bar to google.
What alternative was there at the time? (Score:2)
The people upset are those who can't access the videos on there iDevices.
The HTC Dream didn't exist when the original iPhone came out, and when Android came out, iPod and iPhone were still using DRM on music. What viable alternative was there when people first started to get locked into the iEcosystem?
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Wikimedia's mission:
The question is does supporting H.264 media files help or hinder their mission?
If their goal is to disseminate the educational content effectively then it would seem logical that they provide a media format that is widely supported.
It's really up to WebM and Ogg to promote their format. Wikimedia should stick to their own mission which is to provide educational content.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Insightful)
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On the flip side, wikimedia also pays bandwidth fees, and they can save money by sending videos using h.264 over the larger VP8/WebM format, likely a LOT (1000x) more than for any license fee.
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Interesting)
Wikimedia should stand their ground to provide a good reason for device manufacturers to add support for open video formats.
The best way to do this, should they choose to support the H.264 format, is to add a tiny annoyance to video files in that format.
Like a 5 second intro that displays their policy in the format war, and how users are better off with the open version of the video.
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Spending donations on H.264 licenses doesn't help either.
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Spending donations on bandwidth to cover the less efficient VP8/WebM video format doesn't help either.
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Re:Stand their ground (Score:5, Insightful)
Or prove superiority.
Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
No, if you want to push an open standard, you go to prove its superiority. Why do you think Google has basically abandoned VP8 (which is a crap unimplementable standard) and pushing hard for VP9? Because the next-generation codec war has just begun. And it's between h.265 and VP9.
h.264 war is lost - there is too much entrenched.
But the next gen codec war is not, and in the battle between h.265 and VP9, there aren't as much legacy to worry about. If VP9 is completely royalty free, guess what? The industry consortium will pick it, even if it is inferior to h.265 because being able to crank out parts with VP9 decoders for free means more profit for them. (And didn't Google pretty much pay off all royalties for VP9?).
Standing your ground may win you the battle, but if you lose sight that h.264's relevance is going to diminish in the next few years to be replaced by the next gen h.265, then you've lost the war. Best to move on, and put your energy into promoting VP9 so it becomes standard.
Hell, Google's stopped promoting VP8 a while ago - they wanted to add it as an option for YouTube, and it's fizzled out for that reason - Google realizes it's not worth winning the WebM/VP8 war - it's too entrenched. Just move on to next gen when the standards are still malleable and inclusion and acceptance are easy.
And it'll be an easier sell, too. Right now if you make a graphics chip, you're going to pay the h.264 royalties even if you want WebM/VP9 because it's an expected feature. But in your new chip, you're still paying for h.264, but VP9, you don't have to pay! You as the manufacturer get to keep that extra 25 cents per unit.
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Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
No, if you want to push an open standard, you go to prove its superiority. Why do you think Google has basically abandoned VP8 (which is a crap unimplementable standard) and pushing hard for VP9? Because the next-generation codec war has just begun. And it's between h.265 and VP9.
h.264 war is lost - there is too much entrenched.
This is probably the best point I have seen so far.
H.264 hardware support has been in most SoCs (system on a chip) built into set tops and mobile devices in the last 6+ years. The fight for this generation is in fact over.
H.265 is already planned to go into 2015 devices (TVs and BD players) in order to support upcoming features like 4k and HDR - but, there is still a chance to get VP9, etc in there. And the savings, even if $1 per unit, would be enough to get companies like Google (Chromecast) or Roku (w
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I suspect many of the manufacturers will ignore VP9 and go with H.265 anyway because many of the big boys in consumer electronics are part of the H.26x patent pools through their codec patents and dont have to pay as much in royalties as the little guys do.
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And often not even much on the chip - for a decent implementation it's mostly microcode running on the same hardware...
A day late and a dollar short (Score:2)
H.265 is already planned to go into 2015 devices (TVs and BD players) in order to support upcoming features like 4k and HDR - but, there is still a chance to get VP9, etc in there.
Netflix and Amazon aren't waiting until 2015 to anchor their position as the leading providers of 4K video.
Netflix says video streaming of its programming in ultra-high definition will work for buyers of new UHD sets from LG, Sony, Samsung, Vizio and others upon purchase.
That's because Ultra HD models from those makers will include the Netflix app and chips that decode signals in the so-called High Efficiency Video Coding standard, or HEVC.
The chip is required to decode signals that Netflix Inc. will compress by more than 100 times and squeeze through the Internet at a speed of 15.6 megabits per second. That's a download speed widely available from Internet providers in the U.S.
Netflix app to stream "Ultra HD" 4K video on new TVs [cbsnews.com]
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That's all pure marketing speak. Netflix can't even do 1080p video at any reasonable quality, so what makes you think they will be a "leading provider" of 4k?
And have you actually *done* any A/B comparisons of 1080p vs 4k on various content at common viewing distances? And more so have you seen 1080p w/ standard vs. HDR color ranges? It BLOWS AWAY 4k resolution for most content. Especially since at the average 10' distance of most home TVs you'd need to have something 80" or more to even notice a differ
Re:Stand their ground (Score:4, Informative)
Google's stopped promoting VP8 a while ago - they wanted to add it as an option for YouTube, and it's fizzled out for that reason - Google realizes it's not worth winning the WebM/VP8 war
What nonsense. Google didn't stop promoting VP8, they just started referring to it as WebM [youtube.com].
Incidentally, I much prefer the HTML5 player, it integrates properly with my browser controls as opposed to flash player, which was always infuriorating. And I don't know about your browser, but WebM is is available in my browser and H.264 is not.
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I have always hated the html5 player, it doesn't seek properly, doesn't respond as quickly to pause, play commands, and has far fewer options and features than the flash one. The only disadvantage with flash is that it doesn't work on iShit devices.
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And what browser is it that you have that supports WebM but not h.264?
Encoder license (Score:2)
Right now, there is NO advantage to WebM or VP8 over h.264. The only reason to choose it is purely philosophical, especially since it's inferiority.
Does "purely philosophical" include the simple fact that nobody has yet donated an encoder license to Wikimedia Foundation?
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The h.264 is already lost, and at this point, I would venture, so is the next generation.
VP9 doesn't compete with h.265 -- It almost competes with h.264, but it is still worse than that. All the 4k video devices have already included h.265 hardware decoders because there isn't an alternative. No one wants to use VP9 when it will use 60% more bandwidth than h.265. Many don't even have internet connections that could handle 4k video using VP9, and even if it did, you'd hit your monthly bandwidth cap 60% fa
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FPGA's are not very power efficient.
They're also very expensive too.
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There is abosolutely no reason for anyone purporting to provide open content to lock that content into proprietary formats.
Absolutely no reason, except:
* Using less battery
* Less studder/jitter
* Better looking videos
* Less cost in serving the content
* Less cost in receiving the content (assuming a non unlimited "unlimited" plan)
* Broader support
But besides the obvious less cost, better quality, easier to implement, you are right.
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Latte costs $4.80
Give In (Score:2, Flamebait)
I appreciate their position and somewhat support it, but they've been holding out for so long now with absolutely no effect. The only losers are the site's users. At least Mp4 is a standard, albeit not as free as idealists would like.
Not necessary (Score:2)
This is not YouTube we're talking about, where its 100% about immediacy and convenience. People can download a free player--or use a non-Microsoft/Apple browser--when they're good and ready to view the Wikimedia content.
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...or maybe IE and Safari need to "die in a fire"... they're not very good and people don't need them. These companies want their tollbooths on standard formats.
MP4 is open (Score:4, Informative)
In every meaningful sense, MP4 is the most 'open' useful video CODEC every made available. The world's BEST video encoder, x264, is open-source and free. Every worthwhile tool you need to encode, process and watch H264 video is FREE. H264 decoding is supported almost universally in hardware by everything made today.
Meanwhile, the dreadful CODEC that Google bought was created illegally by using close-source development as a method of hiding the fact that it ripped off (badly) patented MPEG standards. After Google released the source, and the truth became obvious, Google simply used its billions to pay off the various IP owners whose patents the code infringed on. Google offers its CODEC for free ONLY because Google chooses to bear the IP costs inherent in the use of its CODEC.
It gets worse. The hardware support of Google's dreadful CODEC is almost non-existent, so Google class videos are frequently decoded on the CPU, using insanely greater amounts of energy. Encoding Google class video (which always gives worse results than x264 when other metrics are equivalent) also uses far more power. And you thought Google was "politically correct" and "green"?
All Google wants is control. And Google's incompetent rip-off of H264 and now their new rip-off of H265 are all about control. With H264 and H265, the user has control, and Google hates this. So Google seeds forums like this with the usual vile shills that seek to take advantage of people whose knowledge of the facts behind H264 and its horrifically bad, originally unlicensed copy, VP8, is non-existent.
PS putting Ogg (a TRUE free sound CODEC) and WebM (Google's licensed AFTER-the-fact terrible rip-off of H264) in the same sentence is as misleading an attempt at pro-Google propaganda as you can get.
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Part of the issue, I think, is that there is no 'truely open' video codec worth using. There are a few truely open video codecs, like Theora and Dirac, but they all suck - the best algorithms are patented.
Re:MP4 is open (Score:4, Informative)
It is not open in any sense of the word. The decoder is free as in beer, the encoder is not.
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H264 tools aren't free, as the codec is patent encumbered, so you have to pay license costs (one way or another). Officially, you can't use x264 either without paying royalties. So, yeah, I'm opposed to the use of H264 in open works such as wikemedia.
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In every meaningful sense, MP4 is the most 'open' useful video CODEC every made available.
Only for a very narrowly defined sense of the word "meaningful", and a particular meaning of "open".
The H.264 video standard is patent-encumbered. In some countries, the government doesn't grant or enforce patents on software, so this may not matter to you. But the USA is one country with software patents, and I live in the USA, so it matters to me.
And it matters to anyone in the USA who would like to use Wikimedia,
And to think Timothy calls himself an editor (Score:2)
But the MP4 versions 'ould enable...
I think you accidentally a etter.
Many wikimedia regulars
That should, of course, be Wikimedia, with a big wuh.
Can we replace the words "Posted by" with "Blindly rubber-stamped by"?
Disconnected from reality (Score:3)
Now there is a category of people so disconnected from reality that are ok to overpay an already excessively rich phone manufacturer that refuse to support free format, and there only reaction to there frustration is to ask a poor free project to support commercial format. I wonder how many of them have donate something to Wikipedia.
But I am not so surprised. I have observed many times that a lot of people tend to be proud of what there have payed and disregards what there have not payed, even when the reality clearly show that there money was not worth the result. It's a childish behavior to ask others to fix your own false choice.
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Thanks for the correction. I am not an English speaker.
WTF? (Score:2)
The unencumbered WebM and Ogg versions would remain our primary reference for platforms that support them. But the MP4 versions 'ould[sic] enable many mobile and desktop users who cannot view these unencumbered video files to watch them in MP4 format.'
Something is fucking wrong with this situation...
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Yes - it's called "most people don't care what their computer or mobile phone runs - they just want things to work when they click/tap them."
When a kid in middle school, working on a Windows XP computer that the district can't afford to replace, and can barely afford to (under)pay an IT staff to maintain, accesses Wikipedia to do research for a report, and can't view the video because IE doesn't support Ogg, that kid gives up on Wikipedia.
When a grandma, working on her iPhone, tries to watch a short video a
Wikipedia has Videos? (Score:2)
Never ever seen one.
Its to be bloodshed then (Score:2)
Let the contributor opt in/out.
Or doesn't anyone do compromise anymore?
--dant
Best option - insufferable self-righteousness gone (Score:2)
If the kerfuffle over this has one positive outcome - it will be the insufferable, ridiculously self-righteous Wikimedia users leaving en masse and making Wikimedia a much nicer place to contribute again...
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And mid 2000's, and early 2010's.
FYI, I'm still not sure how to pronounce either of those :)
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After having my life turned upside down by the revelation (well, at least the part of my life that deals with pronouncing file format extensions) and a short adaptation period, I now say "Jiff", as stupid as it sounds (It's Graphics, not Jraphics).
As for PNG, how else would you pronounce it if not "Pee En Gee"?
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The patents on GIF compression expired in 2003 and 2004... the battle ended then.
Battle ended. War continues. (Score:2)
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"Twenty-oughts" and "twenty-tens."
Provided all your friends have smartphones (Score:2)
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By failing to support MP4/H264 they are defacto creating a means of censorship , i.e. denying the ability to watch the videos to those who do not share the same ideological stance.
This is bullshit. You're abusing the definition of censorship the way politicians abuse the word "terrorist".
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By failing to support MP4/H264 they are defacto creating a means of censorship , i.e. denying the ability to watch the videos to those who do not share the same ideological stance.
This is bullshit. You're abusing the definition of censorship the way politicians abuse the word "terrorist".
I can not view H.264 video on my system. I compile everything myself, and the source it is not available in a form that is legal for me to compile the codec, or interact with hardware that can decode it.
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Why exactly is Apple not supporting the open standard? I'd really like to hear the defence of that decision, from both Apple and you. That's what this whole thing really comes down to ... why is Apple explicitly not supporting open formats.
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This doesn't answer the question.
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One of the biggest sites on the web uses it, as well as many others.
Another pledge drive? (Score:2)
As far as I can see the formats have no technical, quality, or resource utilisation benefits, it comes down to licensing.
H.264 would require Wikimedia Foundation to utilize more of the resources (that is, money) donated to it.
Re: (Score:2)
you do realise that h264 is royalty free encoding
Is it also royalty-free to obtain a lawfully made copy of the encoder software in the first place? Wikimedia is a U.S. company.
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It's not wikipedia, but wikimedia, which is much more than an encyclopedia. Wikimedia is closer to a library than to an encyclopedia. Wikimedia contains wikipedia, though, if I were to insist on that comparison.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an encyclopedia
Exactly, it should just support formats that users have and not play politics.
Wrong. I think it should "play politics" in this case. Wikipedia is one of the very few sites which, because of its popularity, uniqueness, and non-commercial nature, has some leverage over browser vendors, and has more freedom than others to make use of it.
Almost everywhere else on the web it's the other way round: The browser vendors can force the site owners into compliance. If you have a smallish website and you want to provide video content on it, you often have no choice than to use an encoding like H.264 that all browsers support -- thereby furthering the agenda of consortiums like MPEG LA to steer the market towards a universal adoption of a patent-encumbered "hands off" format, and also lessening the incentive for browser vendors to support open royalty-free encoding formats. But if you run the like 4th most popular site in the world, the only one of its kind, AND you're not commercially bound to maximize your number of visitors no matter what, then you have some power to drive the web (and the whole industry) in the direction of truly open, royalty-free, "free to tinker with" video encoding formats, which would help lower costs and market entry barriers for new companies and individuals. Wikipedia shouldn't throw this leverage away.
Re:Why? (Score:4, Interesting)
Assuming the point of wikimedia is promote free codecs ( not get free information to people that want to access it )
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason the fight was given up was because Google gave up. Apparently they had no faith in WebM, despite having both formats on Youtube, so they renegged on their "promise" to drop support for H264 in Chrome.
If you ask me, it's got EVERYTHING to do with politics. Every time they do something like that, it causes trouble for competitors. Mozilla had to implement H264 when they did that. It had to also support VP9 when they introduced that. And they're having to scramble to support Media-streaming Ext
Re: (Score:2)
It's an open encyclopedia. They are all about the FREE sharing of information, it's what they are. That IS a kind of political organization. They aren't World Book selling encyclopedias at your door or Encarta helping push Windows PCs in the early 90s!
On the other hand, if the open formats have already lost then they will have to eventually give up and share what they can in the format that people can consume it in.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. Troll? No - truth.
Go ahead and play politics - but if your mission is "...to empower a global volunteer community to collect and develop the world's knowledge and to make it available to everyone for free, for any purpose." then to me "make it available to everyone" is primary take away.
"Make available to everyone" means *MAKE AVAILABLE*. They're not the Free Software Foundation. They're not GNU, they're not even Creative Commons. Their mission is to make the information available to as many people