On 7/19/07, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Mozilla intends to support video playback in Firefox using the new <video> tag [1], but such support is not likely to arrive before late 2008 according to John.
I didn't want to comment on this last night before getting an update, to make sure something hadn't changed since I last checked on this.
You make native Ogg support in firefox sound somewhat further off than I think it is. If you'd like to use it today, you'll have to build a copy of firefox with it:
http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/07/firefox-video-element-patch-version-2.h... http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/2007/07/building-video-element-enabled-firefox....
(Chris is a Mozilla contractor who is working on the <video/> support)
So we have:
1) An existing player system which works on a substantial number of systems without any additional software installation.
2) For systems that it doesn't work for, support can be added either by installing Java (which is still required by many other sites), or by adding a media plugin (like VLC) both of which aren't specific to Wikimedia at all. 2b) Keep in mind that Flash doesn't ship built in to any desktop OS, it also requires an install, it just happens to be installed fairly widely. 2c) I could also make a point that Linux distros are already shipping Theora so right now the only zero install web video solution is Theora, but I agree that Linux desktops are utterly insignificant.
3) True native support support for Theora is already in the Opera beta, and in FF with a patch, and it will find its way into mainstream versions of these browsers sometime in the next year (especially with our support, no doubt). Nothing precludes MSFT joining in as well.. Perhaps it's not likely, but it wasn't them opposing Vorbis+Theora support in HTML5 (Apple was the only opposition).
So if software installation is acceptable we're already got what we need. If it's not acceptable, we're already not too far worse than if we were flash based (sometimes the powers that be have installed Flash, sometimes they have installed Java, sometimes both, sometimes none). ... and once mainstream browsers ship with native support, we'll have even better support for people who are unable or unwilling to install anything.
I must admit that one of the responses I initially considered was just to ignore the thread completely:
The addition of the transcoding infrastructure alone would be a substantial project with substantial complexity... I've basically been making our video work by myself with some help from Xiph folks (esp. Maik Merten) and our Mark Ryan (for the pretty skin). Although I've tried to solicit help from other folks inside Wikimedia and our communities, none has been forthcoming.
I suspect that if I had ignored the thread entirely nothing would have happened because the interest in actually doing something about Multimedia support is very small compared to the interest in talking about it or meeting with Big Names about it.
In any case. I've blathered enough on commons list for this month. I've 'shown you my code'. It's a kludgy solution at the moment but it apparently works for hundreds of thousands of people. With no action on our part it will magically become much better a yearish from now, and it doesn't compromise freedom in the slightest... thats a lot more than anyone can say about the hypothetical, trancoding, cross-site, flash based, web 2.5 speculation which has been offered as an alternative. :)