HTML 5 will be video agnostic

 

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Posted on 6 Jul 2009 at 10:36

HTML 5 will not specify which video and audio codecs should be used on the web, after browser developers failed to agree on which format to use to display video in web pages.

The draft HTML 5 specification includes new audio and video tags that will allow browsers to run content natively, without needing to install separate plug-ins. Support for the tags have already been implemented in the latest version’s of Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox web browsers.

But HTML 5 working group was also planning to mandate single video and audio codecs to be used in conjunction with the tags. Initially this was to have been the open source Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis codecs, but that was dropped following objections by Apple, Nokia and others.

By contrast, Mozilla is a big supporter of the Ogg formats, contributing $100,000 to further their development and, with the release of Firefox 3.5, implementing support for playing Ogg content using the new tags.

But with Apple refusing to support Ogg in QuickTime, citing “lack of hardware support and an uncertain patent landscape”, Ian Hickson, HTML 5 editor, was left with no choice but to drop the sub-sections of the specification that would have set the standard.

“There is no suitable codec that all vendors are willing to implement and ship,” wrote Ian Hickson, editor of the HTML 5 specification for W3C.

“I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML 5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined, as has in the past been done with other features like IMG and image formats, <embed> and plugin APIs, or web fonts and font formats.”

Apple wanted Hickson’s group to pick the H.264 codec, but Mozilla and Opera objected to the “obscene” cost of licensing the relevant patents. Likewise, Google, but it wasn’t too happy with Ogg either, claiming that it doesn’t have the “quality-per-bit” suitable for high-volume sites such as YouTube.

Microsoft has given no indication whether Internet Explorer will have any support for the new tags.

Hickson says that it will be several years before there is even the faintest possibility of agreement. As for audio, Hickson says the situation is less critical “as there are more formats”.

Author: Simon Aughton