Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

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Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Antony » Wed 14 Mar, 2012 7:42 pm

According to Mozilla considers H.264 video support after Google's WebM fails to gain traction article, Mozilla is proposing to move back to H.264 video support after some war against H.264 (or more likely, war against Apple).

Despite being a world organisation of “open source,” Mozilla clearly does not like H.264 which is open-source itself. Although H.264 is also free, the licensing says that it might not be free in the future (which I highly doubt so), but certain open-source extremists wouldn't have missed this point to bash Apple.

There was the free Ogg Theora video codec Mozilla (and many Mozilla followers) enjoyed and decided to use that format to fight against H.264. Apart from within certain extreme groups, Ogg Theora did not get well adopted.

Then, there's WebM from Mozilla's long time major financial supporter - Google.

Mozilla even tried to convince major video sites (apart from Google's YouTube) to switch to WebM. They declined. This made Firefox (and Gecko browsers) the only mainstream browser that does not support H.264.

H.264 is open-source, not an Apple technology. Except a number of open-source extremists automatically associates H.264 to Apple.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Edward » Sun 18 Mar, 2012 12:42 pm

A quick method to check if your web browser has H.264 support, is to go to http://www.youtube.com/html5

If it has a green check next to H.264, the browser has the support. Otherwise, it will display a red exclamation point, if it does not.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Fulvio » Fri 23 Mar, 2012 4:14 pm

Can anyone explain to me what this means to me, as an user? Never mind the politics.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Antony » Sun 25 Mar, 2012 8:44 pm

Fulvio wrote:Can anyone explain to me what this means to me, as an user? Never mind the politics.

There are more online video are in H.264 than other promising format (codec). From user's point of view, a user can now use Mozilla to watch H.264 video online without the need to install additional H.264 video player (e.g. QuickTime Player, VLC media player, ... etc)
This should also mean that HTML5's <video> tag should also be better supported in Mozilla browser.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Edward » Sat 31 Mar, 2012 6:40 am

The current versions of Firefox (11) and SeaMonkey (2.8, based on Firefox 11), do not support H.264 based on the test at the YouTube page I referenced above.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby ncd » Mon 02 Apr, 2012 10:59 am

Edward wrote:The current versions of Firefox (11) and SeaMonkey (2.8, based on Firefox 11), do not support H.264 based on the test at the YouTube page I referenced above.


Edward,

Any idea when Mozilla will support H 264?

Tks.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Fulvio » Mon 02 Apr, 2012 12:28 pm

On reading the original link, I see that it is from an Apple blog, which is, annoyingly hostile to Mozilla.
If there will be a switch, it will come with with v.13 (one can check the nightlies), and it may nor be so simple for one who will stick to WinXP, until the computer dies.
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby Edward » Thu 05 Apr, 2012 4:51 pm

I recall reading online from one of the SeaMonkey Status Meeting minutes, that Windows XP SP 2 would be the minimum OS that SeaMonkey would install on.

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=723316
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Re: Mozilla moves back to H.264 support

Postby ncd » Fri 06 Apr, 2012 11:16 am

Fulvio wrote:On reading the original link, I see that it is from an Apple blog, which is, annoyingly hostile to Mozilla.
If there will be a switch, it will come with with v.13 (one can check the nightlies), and it may nor be so simple for one who will stick to WinXP, until the computer dies.


Fulvio,

Ouch... I too use XP PRO SP3 and guess I'm on Flash forever. <sigh>
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