[theora] <video src="*.ogg">

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Sun, Jan 17, 2010 at 8:08 AM, Denver Gingerich <denver at ossguy.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 1:38 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Fortunately flash itself proves that massive adoption through manual
>> client installs is possible.
>
> To be fair, Adobe scored a distribution deal with Microsoft that got
> Flash shipped with most versions of Windows XP.  While we don't know
> the terms of the deal, I'm betting Adobe didn't get that for free.
>
> I'm not saying we can't get massive Theora decoder adoption, just
> saying it's not as easy as it was for Adobe (unless we have a big
> corporate backer).
>
>> On Thu, Jan 14, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Michael A. Peters <mpeters at mac.com> wrote:
>>> Java really is not
>>> the best tool for the job. Hopefully basic ogg vorbis/theora comes to
>>> flash soon.
>>
>> I don't think anyone is anticipating formal support from Adobe in the
>> flash binary distribution. So, about the best we could expect is a
>> flash-vm implementation.
>
> Agreed.  I've pitched Adobe on adding free codec support but there
> isn't much interest on their side:
>
> http://ossguy.com/?p=330
>
> Note in particular the comments, where John Dowdell (an Adobe
> employee) explains why he doesn't think Adobe should use Theora/Dirac.
>  There seem to be two major reasons:
>
> 1. perceived lack of quality per bitrate compared with H.264
> 2. production shops use "H.264 workflows"
>
> I think it's important that we address these issues (yes, I know #1
> has been addressed repeatedly and it's hard to do more than we have
> already) or at least that we're aware of them.  Also, there is the
> perception that a move to Theora is not in the users' or content
> producers' best intrest:
>
> "The big desire for consumer support of patent-unencumbered codecs
> seems to come from that small minority of toolmakers -- not consumers,
> not content creators."

You'd be surprised about the number of content creators that would
happily use Theora if the tools were available.

At last year's open video conference in New York, a large number of
content creators was very keen on an open codec.
But of course their first goal is to create content, so if the tools
are not available, or difficult to use, changing is not possible.

It is a long road and it will take time. Incidentally, when H.264
tried to get into the market, it took several years, too.

Cheers,
Silvia.