Firefox interview: Ogg, HTML 5 and the future of web videos

For the first time in 10 years, W3C felt the pressure on a new generation of web. The voice of HTML 5 is getting higher and higher. The most striking function of HTML 5 is the support for video tags, audio can be directly embedded into webpages like images without the involvement of third-party plug-ins. Among the many web video technologies, xiph.org is a non-profit organization.
Ogg theora and Vorbis in charge of maintenance are being valued.

Ogg is an open-source project with no restrictions on usage fees or patent fees. It has been around for several years. However, in the Napster era
In the past, Ogg was criticized for its poor quality and bloated file sizes. In this regard, flash and QuickTime adopted H.264
Better yet, silverilight will soon adopt H.264. However, with the increasing popularity of open-source projects, more and more developers are paying attention to Ogg. Their efforts make Ogg
Video quality issues have been greatly improved.

At the recent Google I/O conference, Google demonstrated how chrome directly built in Ogg support
And directly play the video out of the plug-in. At that time, Mozilla's Jay Sullivan was invited to the stage. He said that the next major version of Firefox will support Ogg.

Recently, webmonkey
We have the honor to go to Mozilla Firefox Supervisor Mike Beltzner.
Damon sicore, Mozilla platform Engineer Director
Web video and Firefox 3.5 (released by the end of June
. During this period, we talked about how Mozilla fully adopts open standards. Beltzner and sicore also made a series of demos using Firefox 3.5 and Google Chrome.
, Apple Safari
And opera
You can experience direct playback in the Ogg video sub-browser.

Webmonkey:

To what extent does Firefox 3.5 currently support open videos?

Mike Beltzner:

We release not only the HTML 5 video tag, but also the Ogg theora decoder, which means you can directly watch the Ogg theora encoded video in your browser.

Beltzner showed us a movie video.
,
Intuitive, and Flash
Different, when I use the hotkey to enlarge the webpage font, the video is also enlarged. You can also right-click the video and choose Save As to save the video to your local device. I checked the webpageSource code, You can see the video embedded
In video tags, like images, video control relies on
Javascript, he modified the webpageCodeIn the lower right corner of the video, an icon is added to change the size. By dragging this icon, the video will change the size.

Webmonkey:

The video quality is good and clear.

Beltzner:

We are very proud of the overall playback quality. A year ago, I could not imagine that we were able to do this, and dared to compete with the current video encoding technology. Recently, Chris DiBona of YouTube is on a list of emails.
YouTube is very interested in Ogg. However, the current Ogg bit rate is not ideal, and the file size is also large. If you change to Ogg, it is estimated that the entire Internet will crash.

Xiph worked with us to compare the current YouTube encoding with Ogg. At the same bit rate, the video definition is similar, and the Ogg can be a little clearer, for HD YouTube videos, Ogg should be much clearer. I am very excited that this is only the result of a year.

Webmonkey:

How do you think HTML 5's direct support for videos will change the web? What will happen in the next 6 months or 6 years?

Beltzner:

Within six months, you will see more sites like Dailymotion. They will detect users' browsers. If their browsers support this, they will use Ogg and video tags to output videos to users.
.
I think you will see that content sites are happy to do this because they have the ability to recode all their videos with free encoders. Ogg theora
The encoder is completely free, and you don't have to worry about patent issues. They don't have to worry about what player you use, and you don't have to worry about your hardware. Ogg theora can run on windows,
Mac, Linux, embedded devices, and mobile devices.

Beltzner has made two demos: using JavaScript and CSS to insert common content into a video, and using CSS to implement transparent effects on a video.

Webmonkey:

What about 6 years?

Beltzner:

From now on, within six years, you will see that Ogg has replaced the existing technology as PNG has replaced GIF. PNG is very similar to this. At the beginning, we used a patented GIF and JPEG, and the emergence of PNG brought us free options.

At the same time, it is worth mentioning that although Adobe has launched many cool-like things for flash in the past few years, it is only unilateral, if people make some cool things in HTML 5, we can simply view the source code of the webpage to see how it is implemented.

Webmonkey:

One of the main problems currently exists is multi-browser support, and IE8 does not support Ogg. Do you think people will be involved in the end? Are you worried?

Beltzner:

We don't care too much about the content. That's why people use videos. People access a video not because they have a corresponding player, but they want to see it, if we continue to work hard to make it easier for people to share interesting videos online, these things will be popularized on the web.

Damon sicore:

The most important thing is that we have a client to play these videos.

Webmonkey:

How is theora used on a set-top box? For example, boxee uses a Mozilla-based browser to play web videos.
. Are there any restrictions on playing 1080i or 1080p HD videos?

Beltzner:

This encoding supports all devices. Currently, it is more suitable for web videos, but those that support 1080 p are just around the corner. A year ago, when you used Ogg to play 1080 p videos, your computer will be hot, but now it's different, even in 1080 p, Ogg is not as good as H. 264, but in quick approaching.

Additional reading

• Learn more about HTML 5
• Saving HTML5 offline storage with JavaScript
• The web forms 2.0 line will be replaced by HTML 5
• HTML 5 is changing the Web
• 5 expected functions of HTML 5
• When HTML 5 meets Google
• Will HTML 5 end with flash and Silverlight?

This Article International Source: http://www.webmonkey.com/blog/How_Firefox_Is_Pushing_Open_Video_Onto_the_Web
Chinese translation Source: comsharp CMS
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