On 7/19/07, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote:
A Flash video player that works in Gnash is within
reach - the YouTube
player now works in Gnash.
And Gnash is clearly violating at least 7 patents in the process:
Legal flash video is out of reach anywhere software patents are valid
because the only formats that can work in flash 8 require heavily and
indisputably patent encumbered formats.
In flash 9 it is, at least theoretically, possible to code support for
unencumbered formats... but no one has done it yet.
It's also less relevant these days: The player we have today supports
four different playback methods (Java, VLC plugin, Application/OGG
plugin, and HTML 5 video tag), and at least one of these works for the
overwhelming majority of *readers* (I know not nor care not about
Wikipedia regulars, they can install their own players) who attempt to
view video on our site.
With the huge victory of Ogg/Theora being made the baseline for HTML5
video (due to the need to have a basic unencumbered format universally
available), we can expect the situation to improve far more in the
next two cycles of browser development. (Opera beta already has HTML5
video tag support, and FireFox keeps toying with it but hasn't made a
public commitment about when they'll ship).
Now that we have working playback for most readers, I think it's safe
to say that our limiting factors are someplace else at this point.
Personally I don't enjoy doing videos much because it takes more work
to get a less polished (and on our projects right now, appreciated)
result.
For example, this cruddy video took many minutes to create while the
still took seconds. The video is more informative but it just doesn't
look well done.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Electronic_lock_yl88_operation.ogg