Philosophy Extending Into VideoPress

[Jeffro]

VideoPress recently made an announcement where as videos can now be displayed using only free software formats. These formats are Ogg video, Theora Video, and Vorbis audio. Right now, these choices can not be made through the self hosted version of VideoPress but plans are to incorporate those options into the plugin.

However, after reading that post, I couldn't help but think it sounded pretty familiar to the WordPress Philosophy regarding freedom.

It's nice to see that the philosophy goes above and beyond WordPress into other products that Automattic offers.

[Ryan]

Looks like Automattic is serving a big central finger to Apple!

I don't think YouTube will follow suit any time soon though unfortunately. They're still serving h.264 files. That might change once WebM support becomes more mainstream in browsers though, but by then Apple may have backed down and incorporated it into the iPhone anyway.

[aldenml]

Good luck to Automattic with this venture (VideoPress).

Then I suppose that BSD-style licenses is about freedom too. Some VideoPress's components (including the Theora library from Xiph) are not GPL.

BTW, WebM and VP8 code is BSD and specifically VP8 is full of patents and this is a note from the WebM licensing-FAQ:
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Why didn’t you use the GPL license?

One of the goals of having this code licensed as liberally as possible is to encourage adoption by as many users as possible. This includes both proprietary and free software. Using the GPL license would not be a good match for this goal.
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Freedom!!

[film_girl]

I'm just glad this isn't mandatory. Ogg sucks.

[dancole]

I'm just glad this isn't mandatory. Ogg sucks.

Why does OGG suck?

[film_girl]

Why does OGG suck?

1. It's old. Like really old. Not knocking Xiph's efforts on the audio side, but on the video side it is like traveling back to the 1990s.

2. It has poor quality/compression/bandwidth ratios, especially when compared to h.264. Even compared to VP-6 (which was the Flash default before Flash went hardcore h.264 for defaults) you have files that are larger and have worse quality. So a comparable Ogg file and a comparable H.264 file are going to differ in size. And the h.264 will likely still look better. That means more bandwidth is wasted. That's a significant reason Google cited for not considering it for YouTube.

3. No accelerated hardware support. Pretty much every video card and mobile phone chipset supports hardware acceleration of h.264. Your cable settop box supports it. Your Blu-Ray player. Your phone, your iPad and so on. WebM will have good hardware support, it appears, too. Hardware acceleration means that the video card can do the work and not the CPU. That saves battery life. That's important on mobile and on laptops. It also generates less power.

4. Most consumer video cameras and digital cameras shoot in a form of H.264. You still have to transcode when you upload yo YouTube but it's not as much of a jump as transcoding to a new format. Especially when that new format isn't as good quality wise.

[aldenml]

@film_girl, jeje, good response. Minor detail, you must talk about Theora when comparing with H.264, since it's the actual video codec. Ogg is only the container (like the MP4 file structure). And yes, Ogg sucks.

[film_girl]

@film_girl, jeje, good response. Minor detail, you must talk about Theora when comparing with H.264, since it's the actual video codec. Ogg is only the container (like the MP4 file structure). And yes, Ogg sucks.

Good point. I just often shorten Ogg Theora to Ogg out of laziness, but good point!

[Otto]

WebM is the new hotness for video formats. Every browser is going to support it.

http://www.webmproject.org/

[WraithKenny]

"The free formats setting may be expanded in the future to include additional formats free of known patent claims. The newly supported WebM file container with VP8 video and Vorbis audio is an early example of what could become a video format without known intellectual property claims prohibiting open distribution."

...mmm, new hotness...