basically, the new war is wether or not html5 video should choose to support a video codec that is open source or not.  there are three main codecs that are in the running, 2 are open source, and one is h264, which currently is free, but some fear if they get a deal locked in with html5 that they (MPEG LA) would begin to charge for licensing fees.  I could see mpeg la being some evil bastards and doing this, i mean, everyone wants to make a buck.  i personally have been a big supporter of the h264 codec and have been using it for a while now and trying to get my clients to realize what a good codec it is also, so i’m hoping that mpeg la doesn’t become the evil villain that people think they would if they were able to get the deal for the video codec in html5.

the other two codecs in the running are open source, one is ogg, mainly supported by firefox, and the other is a potential codec that google is going to release called vp8, which google didn’t create, but acquired when they purchased on2.  everyone can see the advantage to using either of these codecs, mainly they are open source, so if the html5 war goes to one of them we would be guaranteed, hopefully, that they would stay open source and free.

one of the main problems i see with bringing in the new codecs is getting everyone used to using the new codecs.  personally, i don’t mind learning a new codec, everyone has it’s own little quirks you have to learn, but i’m worried about the ease of use of the codecs.  the vp8 codec isn’t out yet so i can’t talk about it, but the ogg codec is out and you can get a plugin for firefox here that will allow you to use the web browser to create the file.  the user interface to create the ogg is pretty easy and well laid out, but i did have one problem with it.  for some reason no matter what bit rate i would input it would do something completely different and this never was fixed after multiple tries.  also, the bit rate the compressor would spit out was never consistant.  this will make it extremely difficult to give a client a video at a specific bit rate if they request it and also if you have limited space from your web host and need to keep your videos small.

i’m sure by the time html5 and video within it really catch on all these problems will be solved, so really probably nothing to worry about, just more video codec problems to deal with, which is always fun.

prost netz!