Posts tagged flash

Google and h.264. Hypocrisy? Hardly.

0
389 days
by in Browsers, Web

For all of the people out there claiming that Google just wanted to make a “big announcement” on “Verizon iPhone day,” it sure has created quite the buzz. I sincerely doubt that was their mission, but if somehow it was, I’d say they succeeded. Big time.

But for all of the absurd tech pundits who seem to think that removal of h.264 is a bad thing, you’d think the world was coming to an end. But this really is a good thing! Especially for consumers!!

I mean, look at the facts…

  • h.264
    • Almost half (like 47%) of PC browsers in use on the web don’t support h.264. (Firefox, Chrome, Opera…the former two which are still climbing the market share charts)
    • The two browsers that do support h.264 are IE 9 and Safari. IE 9 isn’t even really showing up on the usage charts at this point, and Safari barely holds 5% market share–doesn’t seem to be going much of anywhere.
    • The MPEG LA strictly controls h.264 licensing. It’s currently able to be used “royalty free” to end users, but that clause doesn’t apply if the content encoded in h.264 is produced commercially. Encoders and decoders (hardware and software alike) are required to pay patent licensing fees. (One reason BluRay movies cost so much more than traditional DVDs)
    • h.264 is a well supported codec among consumer electronic devices, and is a “standard” in terms of wide digital media and film studio use. Beyond the ITU group though (which really isn’t a standards body), the codec is not truly a standard–especially in the realm of the web, where there is no native support except via a Flash layer.
    • h.264 is not an open standard or an open source project. In any way. Whatsoever. Period. Anyone declaring otherwise is either mistaken or lying.
  • webm
    • All of the aforementioned browsers (excepting Safari, of course) will fully support the webm codec.
    • webm is an open source project, completely unencumbered by license fees
    • It is fully supported by Google and too many other hardware and software manufacturers to list.
    • While not a true web standard (yet), it is in line with the w3c’s philosophy and is backed by every major open-source browser vendor.
    • It easily matches h.264 in both quality, speed, and efficiency (i.e. neither codec is superior to the other).

As I stated before, the above list is not my personal opinion, it is supportable fact.

Anyway, Google moving away from h.264 is great news for those of us who want an open, unbiased, unencumbered, and generally “free” web! Naturally, the people who support h.264 as a web standard are probably fans of communism and socialism too–just sayin’. It’s not that I’m against the format, just the philosophy behind it. If h.264 could shake the shackles of the MPEG LA and be completely open sourced, I wouldn’t have a problem supporting it whatsoever. But corporations are greedy, so I don’t see this happening anytime soon.

What about Flash, though? I’ve seen many articles and tweets criticizing Google for being huge hypocrites for not removing Flash support from Chrome as well. Unfortunately, most of these folks are mindless drones who have listened to the lies told to them by those with agendas…like, oh…a certain CEO of a major Fruit company. The fact is (and I’ve definitely addressed this in previous posts) that Flash is a web standard, is open-source, and isn’t a video codec. It’s a rich media file format that just so happens to support video in addition to a ton of other stuff. The part of Flash that isn’t open source, is Adobe’s content creation and playback tools. There’s not much stopping any other developer from writing their own open source Flash production tools. I suspect that they’d just have trouble selling it against Adobe’s gold standard products. Google is not being hypocritical at all! Especially since Flash will support webm as well as a plethora of other formats.

Here’s the thing about Flash. The main reason most content publishers are still using it (other than its ubiquity) is the fact that it supports content protection (read: DRM). I’m not a fan of DRM by any means whatsoever. In fact, that was my main complaint with the whole iTunes model earlier this decade. But DRM aside, if Google quit supporting Flash on Chrome, they’d be significantly limiting users’ web experience. There’s not much by way of native h.264 video on the web, so this point is moot. Examine Mozilla’s stand on the issue as well and a similar pattern emerges. They won’t support the majorly encumbered h.264, yet they built better support and security for Flash directly into the browser.

Bottom line: I won’t be supporting h.264 or any browser that does include native support. webm will become the dominant web video standard over the next decade and any who do not provide support for it in their hardware or software will be left in the 2000s. Face it: an open web is better for everyone.

Adobe Flash: A Second Look

0
535 days
by in Browsers, Digital Media, Web

I wrote an article a few months ago regarding the future of Adobe’s Flash vs. HTML5. Certainly a global comparison of the two is a flawed approach since there are advantages and disadvantages to both sides. The side that boycotts HTML5 in favor of Flash is wrong 100%, but then again, so is the group that would have everyone believe that HTML5 is the next generation replacement for Flash and that Adobe’s Flash platform is basically dead. (Yes, CEOs of popular companies can be wrong too!)

The past couple weeks have been big news for Adobe since they just released the final version of Flash 10.1 for Android–more or less the first full version of Flash for mobile devices. (Yes, I realize there’s stuff out there for Symbian users as well.) This release has prompted another slew of news about the platform’s performance on Android 2.2 based devices, and unfortunately, it has received some scathing reviews. Part of this is due to some pretty unrealistic expectations that Flash on mobile devices would provide a comparable experience to Flash on a desktop. Adobe didn’t promise that–they promised a cross-platform framework that could be used to write code once and publish it anywhere. We’re not totally there yet since not all mobile platforms support it, but we’re getting there. This is the first real push by Adobe into the space, and my theory is that they spent a great deal of time making sure Flash Mobile was written well enough to quickly and easily move it to other platforms. That much remains to be seen.

But, this brings me to a bigger debate going on among the web developers, designers, and content creators of the world. Should all video be moving toward HTML5 implementations or would it be better to stick with the tried-and-true Flash-based video mechanisms? Not long ago, I would’ve said that pushing toward HTML5 native video players would be the best idea across the board, but I’ve recently reconsidered that stance.

I definitely think that HTML5 is a good start to a future where interactive content is available without the need for 3rd party plugins, but even if the drafted standard gets ratified in the near future (which is still highly doubtful), I’m not convinced that going Flash-less is the right move!

There’s a lot built into Flash that HTML5 cannot (currently) match. For instance, Flash is capable of adjusting the bitrate of a streaming video on the fly whereas HTML5 is not. This means that you can watch a video at a resolution of 720p on your laptop or desktop, then switch to your mobile phone and continue watching the same video at a lower resolution like 480p. This is very much necessary for a variety of reasons: 3G networks are slower and possess a higher latency than wired broadband connections, not all mobile devices are capable of processing the amount of data required to render a 720p video, much of the higher-bitrate benefit would be lost regardless, and the less data used over the wireless spectrum, the better. (An important consideration for bandwidth-capped AT&T customers, for sure!!)

Also, current HTML5 video implementations don’t present the same player flexibility that Flash does; in other words: less-intuitive play controls, and no video-overlays such as comments and ads (yay!?). HTML5 video can have issues at full-screen, fail to scale properly at various resolutions, and provides direct access to the video source. A major reason many content providers will outright refuse to use HTML5 video is due to the lack of content protection (TV networks) as well as many of the other aforementioned reasons (Hulu). While I’m certainly not a proponent of any DRM implementation (video, audio, or otherwise), many corporations aren’t similarly minded. They’ll choose Flash over HTML5 simply because Flash helps protect the content from would-be pirates and downloaders. The open-source community has been trying to explain this to the media conglomerates for years, but with little result. Sigh.

Even Apple (Adobe’s biggest opponent) unofficially recognizes this! Why else would all of their videos, trailers, and movies continue to stream in the (extremely proprietary) QuickTime format rather than straight HTML5 H.264-encoded video?! And while we’re on the topic of Apple, let me just once and for all settle something else: Steve Jobs’ comparison of Flash to the floppy disk is inherently flawed for the obvious reason that software is freely, easily, and transparently upgradeable, whereas hardware just isn’t. On the other hand, in the interest of fairness, Microsoft still pushes most of its video using Silverlight, which is a nice experience, but is no more or less a good idea than is QuickTime.

All-in-all, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t be pushing toward a more open web, but as politically-mired as HTML5 has become, I’m not sure, in this specific instance, if that’s truly the way to go.

Your thoughts are–as always–quite welcome in the comments!

Quicktime better than Flash?

6
656 days
by in Web

Somehow I can just hear Steve Jobs saying something along the lines of: If it supports or uses Flash, they blew it.

The CEO of Apple is notorious for condemning other companies’ implementations of various technologies and his recent comments are no exception. Two big targets: Google’s Android mobile OS and Adobe’s Flash rich-media platform. Jobs is a huge proponent of web standard technologies like HTML 5, JavaScript, and CSS 2.1/3 replacing older, proprietary technologies like Flash.

Now, hang on just a minute. Something’s been nagging at the back of my mind lately about Apple’s website (a site that doesn’t comply with HTML5 standards, by the way). I jumped on http://apple.com/getamac and clicked on “Watch the Ads.” Yep, just as I suspected, Apple provides it’s website videos, demos, and other presentations using Quicktime.

Let me say that again: Quicktime.

Now, if there’s one technology that’s bloated, slow, buggy, not guaranteed to be installed on any Windows PC, and is certainly NOT a web standard–it’s Apple Quicktime.

If everything Jobs has been saying lately is any indication, I would’ve expected that all media on Apple’s websites would use H.264-encoded, HTML5 compliant video. But such is not the case. If the target of your ads is non-Mac users, then why in the world would you use Quicktime? If not HTML5 video, it seems logical to at least use Microsoft Silverlight (which is installed on some 55% (not 75% as stated previously) of all computers out there–Macs AND PCs), if not Adobe Flash (which has a 98-99% marketshare).

But Quicktime??

Hmm–sensing just a little bit of hypocrisy there, Steve…

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