2009/7/9 Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org:
- Google Chromium -- supports h.264 and ogg theora video natively. Again
ogg performance is not very high quality. It uses the ffmpeg library which features a non-optimal theora decoder. Things like seeking presently don't work very reliably.
Does Chromium actually support h.264?
Chrome will *next* version but not this one.
While Apple does at least support adding in of codecs into the quicktime system and some people form Apple have had friendly conversations with us. The Apple Corporation essentially says "it can't ship default support for xiph because of perceived patent risk". With Google shipping Chrome with ogg support the submarine patent argument (that no other large company is shipping ogg) would appear to be less valid. Perhaps we as "wikimedia" could help apple do the right thing?
There's no fallback provision for iPhone users. This is because of Apple's active decision not to support Theora.
Either we appear defective ("Sorry, we can't serve you a file you can use, we suck") or we correctly note that the problem is Apple's decision ("Sorry, your iPhone cannot play this video as Apple does not support Ogg Theora").
Apple are presumably not ashamed of their decision. Perhaps we could ask what they consider a suitable wording and go from there.
Presently the proposed solution is to soft link to the Mozilla Firefox browser: see mockup: http://metavid.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/upgrade_to_firefox.png
I'd say "For better" rather than "For best." There should probably be a link to an editable page where people will doubtless go into intricate geeky detail.
There remains the question of what to do for iPhone (and presumably Nokia) users whose phone providers have actively decided to exclude Theora from their devices.
- d.