google is killing MPEG LA by droping h264:

[BlackStar]

Yeah, W3C didn't have an IMG tag before 2006...

H.264 patents will expire too. Will you in a few years come back here and say "H.264 patents expired" like you just did with JPEG? No, don't think so. JPEG was just as petent encumbered back them as H.264 is now. So clearly "The W3C does not accept web standards that require loyalties" is not true.

And don't forget GIF too...

GIF was a royal fuck up, glad you acknowledge that. Do you really wish to fall into the same trap with H.264?

You keep mentioning JPEG, yet fail to do the necessary research. Here, let me help:

Although the "baseline" variety of JPEG is believed patent-free, there are many patents associated with some optional features of JPEG, namely arithmetic coding and hierarchical storage. For this reason, these optional features are never used on the Web.

Source: http://www.w3.org/Graphics/JPEG/

The 2004 patent debacle was caused by submarine patent trolls and those patents were invalidated.

The H.264 situation is *completely different* to JPEG.

[Remco]

Yeah, W3C didn't have an IMG tag before 2006...

H.264 patents will expire too. Will you in a few years come back here and say "H.264 patents expired" like you just did with JPEG? No, don't think so. JPEG was just as petent encumbered back them as H.264 is now. So clearly "The W3C does not accept web standards that require loyalties" is not true.

And don't forget GIF too...

Please show me where the W3C recommends either JPEG or GIF as a baseline image format in 2006. Also, please go away, stop all innovation, and come back when H.264 will be free of patents. (Hint: see ya in 2028.)

[RealNC]

Well, to be strict, W3C does not accept Free standards either! "The W3C does not accept web standards that require loyalties" is just wrong from the base up. It does not accept *any* formats. All it does is provide an IMG tag and now a VIDEO tag.

You're free to support whatever format you want in your browser. W3C certainly doesn't tell you that WebM is allowed and H.264 isn't. Don't try to put W3C in the group of people called "codec pushers" :P

Also, H.264 can be used without paying royalties on the web; I believe some time ago an announcement was made that this will be true for a few years to come.

[Ex-Cyber]

Also, H.264 can be used without paying royalties on the web; I believe some time ago an announcement was made that this will be true for a few years to come.

AFAIK, that license only applies to sites serving the videos; player/camera/etc. products must still pay fees.

[Remco]

And you may not earn a single cent with those videos. The MPEG-LA will come knocking on your door if you add some ads.

[Ex-Cyber]

And you may not earn a single cent with those videos. The MPEG-LA will come knocking on your door if you add some ads.

No, ads are allowed, but if you actually charge users (whether on a video-by-video basis or by subscription) then you start having to pay some pretty hefty royalties. The idea here is apparently to give a free pass to YouTube, DailyMotion, blip.tv and the like so that the format becomes "the standard", and then milk Netflix, iTunes, the porn vendors, etc..

[pingufunkybeat]

p.s.: If you want to know more (and you trust Wikipedia) about the H264 / MPEG-4 Part 10 specification, click here.
Maybe you'll learn some interesting things...

Cheers

It's not the H264 specification that anybody is worried about, it is the fact that implementing that spec requires a license from a number of patent holders. In other words, you are not legally allowed to distribute a H264 codec without explicit permission.

That is what everybody is worried about.

And why are you thanking me?

[cl333r]

Youtube moving from h264 to VP8 (WebM) will happen, but not soon.

First Google needs the promised version of Adobe Flash supporting WebM/VP8 to come out and wait a year or two until the vast majority of users switch over to this newer Flash version. Given this, even browsers like IE and Safari will be able to play Youtube's WebM through Flash which will serve as a wrapper - something Chrome, Firefox and Opera won't need.

However, Google also needs more flexibility when it comes to managing the video streams from JavaScript - which are not supported yet (stuff like buffering, DRM) - but they're all underway.

So I think Youtube's transition to WebM will surely happen - but for the transition to complete it will take like 2 to 5 years, depending on how quickly the needed JavaScript functionality lands into FF/Chrome/Opera browsers and how quickly the WebM enabled Flash version comes out and gains above ~90% market-share.

[devius]

So I think Youtube's transition to WebM will surely happen - but for the transition to complete it will take like 2 to 5 years, depending on how quickly the needed JavaScript functionality lands into FF/Chrome/Opera browsers and how quickly the WebM enabled Flash version comes out and gains above ~90% market-share.

Flash auto-updates itself on windows and mac doesn't it? In linux the package managers take care of that as well, so it probably won't take long to reach that ~90% market-share, after it's launched.
On a side note, the iPad doesn't have flash, yet it has a youtube application that offers the same functionality as the website. How do they do that?

[RealNC]

There's an article at ars technica about this. This snippet was rather interesting:

"Google is now building a community around WebM (similar to that around Theora), but it hasn't taken any steps to submit WebM to ISO, ITU, or SMPTE for formal open standardization. The company is preferring to keep it under its own sole control.

For Google to claim that it is moving to "open codecs" is quite absurd: H.264 is very much an open codec. WebM is not."