There has been a technical discussion on wikitech-l regarding the recommendation of a browser for the high quality open video experience.
Some native implementations are ~presently~ non optimal and the java cortado applet we use where no native support is available is a poor user experience relative to native support. Therefore we are considering informing people who want to view video that for a high quality expericne with free formats they should use a particular browser. Presently that browser is Firefox 3.5. Key to this recommendation is we will continue to support playback in other browsers the best that we can but we should inform people that a better experience is possible. This hopefully will encourage other browser vendors to improve the free format experience and support or lose market share.
== Technical Support Considerations ==
* Mozilla Firefox 3.5 release version -- has worked closely with the xiph community and supports html5 ogg theora video natively with a high quality experience across all platforms.
* Apple Safari -- supports html5 video but recommends the h.264 as the format. To support ogg you must install the xiph qt components written by xiph.org community members. The installation involves downloading a file, mounting an install image and dragging a component to the library/components folder on the target machine. ** In the present release version of Safari its difficult to reliably detect if the browser support the video tag with free formats. ** Seeking past what has already been downloaded does not work. ** The quicktime framework / ogg component does not work well with server side seeking helpers we have been developing.
* 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.
* Opera -- Was one of the first browsers to demo ogg theora support in their browser. They are presently working on re-including it in a release. ~presently it does not support the video tag~
* Microsoft IE -- has no support for the video tag and no support for ogg theora. We support playback in IE via the java cortado applet.
** the java cortado applet is a fall-back for browsers that don't support the native video tag. Its not a very high quality user experience. Sometimes java crashes the browser, it generally takes a while to startup; seeking does not work very well and video is not cached causing more expenses to the wikimedia foundation on repeat video views.
== Institutional Support Considerations ==
Institutional the Mozilla foundation has worked with Wikimedia and the xiph.org community to realize Ogg Theora video in the open web platform. They supported wikiemdia/xiph.org with a 100k grant early this year to improve the ogg libraries for playback, improve codec encoding quality and develop open source server side technologies for improved seeking performance.
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?
Also have not heard much from Microsoft regarding free formats. Again I think market pressures are the only thing that will drive adoption in this case.
== Proposed Approach and Proof of Concept ==
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 or see it in action: http://metavid.org/wiki/File:FolgersCoffe_512kb.1496.ogv
Note that informing the user that a better experience is possible with alternative browser software, it will not disable or remove our fall-back java support.
peace, --michael
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.
2009/7/9 Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org:
There has been a technical discussion on wikitech-l regarding the recommendation of a browser for the high quality open video experience.
Some native implementations are ~presently~ non optimal and the java cortado applet we use where no native support is available is a poor user experience relative to native support. Therefore we are considering informing people who want to view video that for a high quality expericne with free formats they should use a particular browser. Presently that browser is Firefox 3.5. Key to this recommendation is we will continue to support playback in other browsers the best that we can but we should inform people that a better experience is possible. This hopefully will encourage other browser vendors to improve the free format experience and support or lose market share.
Promoting any one browser for any reason is kinda dicey. Given how contentious browser wars are it wouldn't look to good from the POV of remaining neutral. Has anyone managed to work the firefox code into Konqueror yet?
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Promoting any one browser for any reason is kinda dicey. Given how contentious browser wars are it wouldn't look to good from the POV of remaining neutral. Has anyone managed to work the firefox code into Konqueror yet?
Konqueror isn't a serious suggestion as a casual install - anyone on Unix who has Konqueror has expressly chosen it, anyone who hasn't has a couple of hundred megabytes of KDE to download. And it's officially alpha on Windows and Mac.
Saying "and Konqueror" is giving undue weight in the name of pseudo-neutrality.
At present, it's helpful that Firefox 3.5 is the ONLY release browser that does the job. Best get in there while we can.
- d.
2009/7/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Promoting any one browser for any reason is kinda dicey. Given how contentious browser wars are it wouldn't look to good from the POV of remaining neutral. Has anyone managed to work the firefox code into Konqueror yet?
Konqueror isn't a serious suggestion as a casual install - anyone on Unix who has Konqueror has expressly chosen it, anyone who hasn't has a couple of hundred megabytes of KDE to download. And it's officially alpha on Windows and Mac.
Saying "and Konqueror" is giving undue weight in the name of pseudo-neutrality.
At present, it's helpful that Firefox 3.5 is the ONLY release browser that does the job. Best get in there while we can.
Which means any announcement will be so low key that it won't help anyone or it will be read as Firefox being the "official" browser of wikimedia. And Konqueror would at least have let us dodge that one (Iceweasel on the other hand doesn't really get that effect).
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
Again, you're making suggestions to create an image of pseudo-neutrality. The VLC plugin is notoriously problematic in practice. Your suggestion would be actively misleading. I strongly suggest you read the wikitech-l thread.
- d.
2009/7/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
Again, you're making suggestions to create an image of pseudo-neutrality. The VLC plugin is notoriously problematic in practice. Your suggestion would be actively misleading. I strongly suggest you read the wikitech-l thread.
We didn't put "this PNG file doesn't look right because you are useing IE6" anywhere. Effectively suggesting that people should switch to anyone browser is the kind of thing that is likely to cause problems down the road. Ideally we will always be introducing new formats and the like and when that happens other providers will have a legitimate complaint if we don't recommend them.
Incidentally in the demo version the smaller version of the file (the thumbnail) the recommendation doesn't work too well in seamoneky 1.1.17 since it escapes the video box.
Works fine in IE 6 though which is probably more important.
2009/7/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
Again, you're making suggestions to create an image of pseudo-neutrality. The VLC plugin is notoriously problematic in practice. Your suggestion would be actively misleading. I strongly suggest you read the wikitech-l thread.
Here, I'll even do some of your homework for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/extensions/OggHandler/OggPlayer.js?10
- d.
2009/7/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
Again, you're making suggestions to create an image of pseudo-neutrality. The VLC plugin is notoriously problematic in practice. Your suggestion would be actively misleading. I strongly suggest you read the wikitech-l thread.
Here, I'll even do some of your homework for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/extensions/OggHandler/OggPlayer.js?10
- d.
I assume you are pointing to the "Downpreffed VLC because it crashes my browser all the damn time -- TS" comment.
Still another problem with recommending an option is well when this happens:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Videoscreengrab_of_Morris_C8_towing.o...
As you can see following the recommended course of action results in a far from idea experience. Now to be fair [[File:Morris C8 towing.ogv]] is known to cause problems when played but it does work on the VLC plugin with firefox 3.0 at least on my system.
As long as we don't explicitly recommend a player that isn't directly our problem. Once we do that claim becomes harder to make.
2009/7/10 geni geniice@gmail.com
2009/7/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/9 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Mention VLC plugin perhaps?
Again, you're making suggestions to create an image of pseudo-neutrality. The VLC plugin is notoriously problematic in practice. Your suggestion would be actively misleading. I strongly suggest you read the wikitech-l thread.
Here, I'll even do some of your homework for you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/extensions/OggHandler/OggPlayer.js?10
- d.
I assume you are pointing to the "Downpreffed VLC because it crashes my browser all the damn time -- TS" comment.
Oh so THAT's why Wikipedia insists on loading that damn Java applet, instead of the VLC plugin I installed. Cortado crashes MY browser (and sometimes my whole computer) all the time, to the extent that even as a long-time editor who knows something about these matters, and a fairly tech-proficient user, I now just avoid videos on Wikipedia entirely. That should change now I have FF 3.5 (but I can't test it now because I'm at work with 3.0)
Pete / the wub
2009/7/9 Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org:
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 or see it in action: http://metavid.org/wiki/File:FolgersCoffe_512kb.1496.ogv
My preference would be to provide a visible playback help link to a simple overview page (pop-up?), essentially a better "Media help", perhaps with a soft reference to open standards. Unfortunately, community-created help pages tend to accumulate vast amounts of instruction cruft that distracts from simple high-level information.
Whether for this or for other purposes, we need a tracking wiki page that has a super-compact table of current browser support for HTML5/Ogg Vorbis and Theora. Is there such a table already?
2009/7/10 Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org:
Whether for this or for other purposes, we need a tracking wiki page that has a super-compact table of current browser support for HTML5/Ogg Vorbis and Theora. Is there such a table already?
Here it is, it's pretty simple:
Browser | Supports Theora in <video>? --------------+----------------------------- Firefox 3.5 | Yes All others | No
As I noted, trying to pretend otherwise in an attempt not to point out that precisely one browser in fact does the job, and it happens to be quite a popular one, is indulging in misleading pseudo-neutrality.
- d.
Hoi, Does this mean that you would advise against Ubuntu for their use of iceweasel and their inability to provide the 3.5 release in a timely fashion ? Thanks, GerardM
2009/7/9 Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org
There has been a technical discussion on wikitech-l regarding the recommendation of a browser for the high quality open video experience.
Some native implementations are ~presently~ non optimal and the javaHoi, cortado applet we use where no native support is available is a poor user experience relative to native support. Therefore we are considering informing people who want to view video that for a high quality expericne with free formats they should use a particular browser. Presently that browser is Firefox 3.5. Key to this recommendation is we will continue to support playback in other browsers the best that we can but we should inform people that a better experience is possible. This hopefully will encourage other browser vendors to improve the free format experience and support or lose market share.
== Technical Support Considerations ==
- Mozilla Firefox 3.5 release version -- has worked closely with the
xiph community and supports html5 ogg theora video natively with a high quality experience across all platforms.
- Apple Safari -- supports html5 video but recommends the h.264 as the
format. To support ogg you must install the xiph qt components written by xiph.org community members. The installation involves downloading a file, mounting an install image and dragging a component to the library/components folder on the target machine. ** In the present release version of Safari its difficult to reliably detect if the browser support the video tag with free formats. ** Seeking past what has already been downloaded does not work. ** The quicktime framework / ogg component does not work well with server side seeking helpers we have been developing.
- 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.
- Opera -- Was one of the first browsers to demo ogg theora support in
their browser. They are presently working on re-including it in a release. ~presently it does not support the video tag~
- Microsoft IE -- has no support for the video tag and no support for
ogg theora. We support playback in IE via the java cortado applet.
** the java cortado applet is a fall-back for browsers that don't support the native video tag. Its not a very high quality user experience. Sometimes java crashes the browser, it generally takes a while to startup; seeking does not work very well and video is not cached causing more expenses to the wikimedia foundation on repeat video views.
== Institutional Support Considerations ==
Institutional the Mozilla foundation has worked with Wikimedia and the xiph.org community to realize Ogg Theora video in the open web platform. They supported wikiemdia/xiph.org with a 100k grant early this year to improve the ogg libraries for playback, improve codec encoding quality and develop open source server side technologies for improved seeking performance.
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?
Also have not heard much from Microsoft regarding free formats. Again I think market pressures are the only thing that will drive adoption in this case.
== Proposed Approach and Proof of Concept ==
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 or see it in action: http://metavid.org/wiki/File:FolgersCoffe_512kb.1496.ogv
Note that informing the user that a better experience is possible with alternative browser software, it will not disable or remove our fall-back java support.
peace, --michael
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
This is totally off-topic and also a low blow. Please join #ubuntu on irc.freenode.net and ask about FF3.5 (or search google; no shortage of information) - I think you'll find the answers more satisfying than this email misleadingly suggests.
-Mike
On Fri, 2009-07-10 at 17:53 +0200, Gerard Meijssen wrote:
Hoi, Does this mean that you would advise against Ubuntu for their use of iceweasel and their inability to provide the 3.5 release in a timely fashion ? Thanks, GerardM
2009/7/9 Michael Dale mdale@wikimedia.org
There has been a technical discussion on wikitech-l regarding the recommendation of a browser for the high quality open video experience.
Some native implementations are ~presently~ non optimal and the javaHoi, cortado applet we use where no native support is available is a poor user experience relative to native support. Therefore we are considering informing people who want to view video that for a high quality expericne with free formats they should use a particular browser. Presently that browser is Firefox 3.5. Key to this recommendation is we will continue to support playback in other browsers the best that we can but we should inform people that a better experience is possible. This hopefully will encourage other browser vendors to improve the free format experience and support or lose market share.
== Technical Support Considerations ==
- Mozilla Firefox 3.5 release version -- has worked closely with the
xiph community and supports html5 ogg theora video natively with a high quality experience across all platforms.
- Apple Safari -- supports html5 video but recommends the h.264 as the
format. To support ogg you must install the xiph qt components written by xiph.org community members. The installation involves downloading a file, mounting an install image and dragging a component to the library/components folder on the target machine. ** In the present release version of Safari its difficult to reliably detect if the browser support the video tag with free formats. ** Seeking past what has already been downloaded does not work. ** The quicktime framework / ogg component does not work well with server side seeking helpers we have been developing.
- 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.
- Opera -- Was one of the first browsers to demo ogg theora support in
their browser. They are presently working on re-including it in a release. ~presently it does not support the video tag~
- Microsoft IE -- has no support for the video tag and no support for
ogg theora. We support playback in IE via the java cortado applet.
** the java cortado applet is a fall-back for browsers that don't support the native video tag. Its not a very high quality user experience. Sometimes java crashes the browser, it generally takes a while to startup; seeking does not work very well and video is not cached causing more expenses to the wikimedia foundation on repeat video views.
== Institutional Support Considerations ==
Institutional the Mozilla foundation has worked with Wikimedia and the xiph.org community to realize Ogg Theora video in the open web platform. They supported wikiemdia/xiph.org with a 100k grant early this year to improve the ogg libraries for playback, improve codec encoding quality and develop open source server side technologies for improved seeking performance.
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?
Also have not heard much from Microsoft regarding free formats. Again I think market pressures are the only thing that will drive adoption in this case.
== Proposed Approach and Proof of Concept ==
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 or see it in action: http://metavid.org/wiki/File:FolgersCoffe_512kb.1496.ogv
Note that informing the user that a better experience is possible with alternative browser software, it will not disable or remove our fall-back java support.
peace, --michael
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
2009/7/10 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Does this mean that you would advise against Ubuntu for their use of iceweasel and their inability to provide the 3.5 release in a timely fashion ?
That question really doesn't make any sense in context. Why would we advise *against* an OS?
- d.
2009/7/10 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2009/7/10 Gerard Meijssen gerard.meijssen@gmail.com:
Does this mean that you would advise against Ubuntu for their use of iceweasel and their inability to provide the 3.5 release in a timely fashion ?
That question really doesn't make any sense in context. Why would we advise *against* an OS?
Ubuntu is as much a software package including an OS as a pure OS. It can be considered amusing that the bundling that got Microsoft into trouble has become standard practice for pretty much any general user orientated OS these days.
2009/7/11 geni geniice@gmail.com:
Ubuntu is as much a software package including an OS as a pure OS. It can be considered amusing that the bundling that got Microsoft into trouble has become standard practice for pretty much any general user orientated OS these days.
This is a misconception: they got into trouble for abusing their monopoly by software bundling, not for the software bundling itself.
In any case, your comment in no way actually advances the original question.
- d.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org