HTML5 video element about to land in Firefox 3.1
Firefox 3.1 is about to support the HTML5 <video> element, and Opera already does. This means that both those browsers will have support for inline video in the browser without plugins. As usual, Internet Explorer lag behind, and sadly Safari does as well — they’re fast at implementing lots of stuff over at the WebKit team, but Apple don’t like easy video that isn’t in a patented format, so the Safari <video> support only plays stuff that QuickTime can do. Hopefully both corporate browsers will come around, or perhaps the WebKit team can add <video> support for Ogg Theora and then the Safari team can take it back out again if they need to — since Epiphany, the Gnome browser, is going to be WebKit, it would be great to have native video support in WebKit. (Do the WebKit Gtk hackers have commit access to the WebKit source in order to add this, I wonder?)
I’ve just pinged the blip.tv people — since they already support Ogg Theora (via Fluendo’s Cortado Java applet), they should be able to add <video> support pretty easily. (Just wrap <video src=”/video/play/12345″>…</video> around the existing player, so browsers with HTML5 support will play the video inline and others will fall back to the current player.)
Nice one Opera and Firefox teams!
The Gtk+ WebKit port already supports <video>, by using gstreamer (if support enabled at build time).
I don’t think non support of Ogg in Safari says much about what Apple likes or not, just that the pragmatic choice for <video> support on MacOSX is to use their QuickTime framework, in the same way the Gtk+ port uses gstreamer. So, I’d say lack of Ogg support in Safari is collateral damage (and note that there are Quicktime components users can install to play Ogg through the Quicktime framework, which means Safari would gain Ogg support instantaneously)
I think Firefox also uses gstreamer for its <video> support.
47 minutes later
glandium, the Firefox support recently committed to trunk uses Vorbis and Theora codecs built into the browser. This ensures that these base codecs will work across all the supported Firefox platforms - even if the codecs are not available by the platform media framework.
There is a gstreamer backend (and a DirectShow and Quicktime backend) in development and there are patches in various states of progress for these.
It would be great to see blip.tv support the video native element. Wikimedia is a good example of how this can work as they use the cortado applet, plugins or the native implementation depending on availability.
73 minutes later
The “WebKit team” and the “Safari team” are almost exactly the same people. :-)
80 minutes later
Ian: absolutely. The interesting question, to me, is whether WebKit is a genuine open-source project, separate from Apple, or not — i.e., on an issue like this, where Apple have stated that they won’t support Ogg formats but there’s not necessarily any reason for the WebKit project to follow that lead, will there be divergence?
82 minutes later
The GTK+ port of WebKit uses GStreamer to provide the video support used by the tag, so it should be able to play anything GStreamer is able to play (meaning WebKit/GTK+ already suppors ogg/theora for some time, now =)).
3 hours later
I just tested my OSX Box with Webkit and Safari 4.0 Developer Edition, both support ogg (I have Perian installed= It’s a Quicktime component that support Ogg and much more). And I prefer the Webkit/GTL+ model. Fatfox is getting fatter.
3 hours later
Looking at the latest draft HTML 5 doesn’t seem to require support for any particular codecs. Am I missing something? And Ogg Theora does appear to be working for me in Safari.
4 hours later
@ Damian: you probably need Perian a quicktime Component that support OGG very well, so you can play all the others Formats with Quicktime that QT don’t support natively.
as you can see:
4 hours later
Your comments still look like ass in Gecko 1.8.
6 hours later
Why, thankyou, James. How in particular?
6 hours later
They’re all overlapping. See http://trs80.ucc.asn.au/aq-comments-gecko-1.8.jpg or just use a gecko 1.8 browser yourself.
7 hours later
[...] Another blog entry espousing the goodness of OGG support in Firefox! Date July 30th, 2008 Filed in [...]
7 hours later
[...] Stuart: Pierre-Luc Beaudoin and Alp Toker implemented video support in WebKit GTK using GStreamer months ago, but probably (I never tried it) it needs some more love before being fully working. [...]
8 hours later
“The interesting question, to me, is whether WebKit is a genuine open-source project, separate from Apple, or not”
Well, as I’ve forked WebKit here: http://git.o-hand.com/webkit I’d say that yes, WebKit is a genuine open source project which I can do whatever I like with. Whether or not the employees paid by Apple can do whatever things that Apple does not want done with WebKit does not remove its open sourceness, any more than me refusing to add an expose-esque feature to Metacity stops it being open source.
(And others have already pointed out that versions of WebKit do support ogg videos already)
15 hours later
Dang it. http://git.o-hand.com/?r=webkit
15 hours later
[...] או כך הדרך להטמעת השימוש ב <video> עם Ogg עוד ארוכה. מן הסתם דפדפן ספארי של אפל ינסה לזנב ברעיון על מנת לא [...]
16 hours later
[...] dernières spécifications, HTML 5 comporterait, entre autres nouveautés, une balise <video> permettant d’insérer n’importe-quel fichier vidéo de n’importe-quel format dans une page web aussi facilement qu’on le fait actuellement [...]
25 hours later
I both use and like webkit but you guys seem not to have been paying attention:
* HTML5 recommended a single baseline, free, unencumbered codec for video and audio. Theora and Vorbis. Yes, an new, better web with video(!) that works on your phone and set-top box and netbook. Hurrah!
* Nokia and Apple spread patent FUD and got this taken out so that everyone would use a hotch-potch of proprietary and/or encumbered formats e.g WMA and H.264 and whatever else happened to be installed. Or just keep using Flash. Boo!
* Mozilla previously had been chickening out of this fight, and it looked like they were going to just include native framework support (e.g. Quicktime, DirectShow, Gstreamer). Which would have knee-capped Theora, made properly supporting the web illegal for many Linux distros and opened their Windows newbie audience to a nightmare scenario of ‘codec pack’ downloads.
* However, Mozilla grows a pair, turns round and uses their mighty marketshare to make the world a better place by doing the right thing. (Just as they did in the past when they didn’t bother to turn on the ActiveX support they had ready). Hurray!
So, to sum up, you Webkit guys whining that you did the *wrong* thing (only supporting whatever random installed codecs were available) 6 months before Mozilla announced they were doing the right thing (and 6 months *after* Opera announced their good intentions) gets no brownie points from me at all. So what are you all so smug about?
Let me know when you guys have any measureable marketshare for a Webkit browser that isn’t actively pushing for a proprietary future for web video.
(And yes, Apple not putting Flash on the iPhone is a positive step, and Apple’s pressuring of MPEG-4 Licencing
Authority for better licencing terms are both minor victories. That doesn’t change the fact that you open-source webkit guys have contributed exactly zero to this particular cause so far.)
2 days later