Unless VP9 decoding is implemented in hardware chips like H.264 is and H.265 is going to be, it'll likely fail.
It sucks, but I'd much rather have a "non-free" codec that plays smoothly on all my devices than a "free" codec with lag issues on everything but my computer.
Try playing 1080P H264 videos on your tablet/phone without using the H264 hardware decoder and you'll know what I mean.
Decoding H265 and VP9 will likely be even more resource intensive than decoding H264 already is
And really, does the closedness of H264/H265 really matter at all for the end users? x264 seems pretty free to me, what is the difference in reality?
x264 isn't remotely free to you. If you use that encoded video in any business capacity at all that doesn't meet the "free internet content for end users" definition, you're going to hear from them MPEG-LA lawyers about licensing. And note that isn't a license they're offering, just a promise. They can change their mind at any time.
And a quibble about words: h.264 isn't "closed". The standard is well-understood and easily available, and there are free high-quality implementations of both sides of the codec. What you mean to say is that it is "proprietary" and that its use is subject to IP laws and licensing restrictions.
x264 isn't remotely free to you. If you use that encoded video in any business capacity at all that doesn't meet the "free internet content for end users" definition, you're going to hear from them MPEG-LA lawyers about licensing.
Are you sure you're not scaremongering just a bit here?
For one thing, the royalties typically don't kick in until projects have reached a significant size. Using H.264 is explicitly free up to that point for those users, even if you accept the validity of the patents etc.
Moreover, it seems unlikely that lawyers would trouble a lot of small companies anyway, at least in places like Europe. Firstly, they'd have to notice them. Secondly, they'd have to know that the use wasn't properly authorised (since bringing a groundless lawsuit in a loser-pays system can be expensive -- you don't see the equivalent of the xxAA shakedowns over here for similar reasons). Thirdly, are heavyweight industry lawyers really going to risk a legal action that could set a precedent that these patents are unenforceable, destroying their entire business model across an entire continent, just to extract a modest amount of licensing fees from a small business? If they wanted to pick that fight, I suspect the unlucky business having to defend itself would suddenly find itself with a lot of well-financed friends.
Firefox has native vp8/webm support. I know as I use it when I visit Youtube pretty much everyday and watch webm (vp8) videos. I don't have flash installed.
I don't think that's what he meant. Firefox was the last browser to refuse to use (not just ship, but to even use already-installed) patent-encumbered video codecs. i.e. even if you had an h264 decoder on your PC, Firefox would refuse to play h264-encoded videos. This was their (very obstinate) stance for years, and has been a source of much consternation within the FF community, as theirs was the only browser to refuse to play many online videos not available in vp8 or theora. They finally gave in last month and will now use an h264 decoder if such a decoder is installed on your PC (though FF does not ship with, nor (to the best of my knowledge) will ever ship with, such a decoder).
H.264 has never mattered for developers either. Windows, OSX, iOS and Linux have all had OS libraries that developers could use to handle H.264 content. This will continue with H.265.
Whether it is built into the browser or not means nothing so long as Flash dominates web video. And Adobe will already need to license H.265 because of Premiere.
I've been using the web without Flash installed on my system for months now - an it really surprised me how little I have to jump into Chrome (with its built in flash) to play a video!
Flash is headed for irrelevance - I doubt it will make much difference at all in this format choice. What will matter a lot more is what format mobile devices are able to play.
I've been doing the same. The only time I need to switch to chrome for video is when I want to watch ad-supported videos. One caveat is that most of my video consumption is Youtube, a little from Vimeo and almost nothing from anywhere else.
Other than some minor annoyance of flipping to Chrome, the only real downside to browsing without Flash is that there's a surprisingly number of sites that silently fail without warning if you don't have flash installed. I'm looking at you, eBay.
I'm really curious...do most sites now fall back to HTML5-compatible players even on the desktop?
I'd love to uninstall Flash, but it'd be a major pain if I had to switch over to Chrome every time I wanted to visit an MP3 blog or news site (think CNN or The Verge with their proprietary Flash video players).
EDIT: Also, last I checked, HTML5 videos on YouTube could not be played in "true" fullscreen (they'd only take over the browser window, not your entire screen). Has that changed?
News sites would probably be the ones that would make you flip over to Chrome, as well as MP3 sites I guess. The Verge falls back properly, as do pretty much all YouTube videos.
Most browsers (at least Safari definitely does) do proper full screen too.
I'm not sure if the experience would be as good with Firefox as I'm not sure if they support H.264 yet. But I heard that was planned.
I'd encourage you to try it for a while - it's free and pretty quick to re-install Flash if it gets too annoying.
When serving video, Flash can act as a container for any type of video, as such it can serve VP8/VP9 just fine. There is no technical barrier here.
As for VP9 being a 'non-starter', nonsense. The reason Google is creating their own in-house codec is obvious, 'online' video will be used in an ever-increasing number of services in the future, services which Google wants to provide. As such Google wants their own codec so that they don't have to licence from someone else.
When you record video in your Google Glass or play/record in <insert Google product/service here>, it will use Google's own VPx codec.
I am well aware that Flash can act as a container. But that container by default will have H.265 since Adobe is already a licensee. So why would anybody not use it ?
And Google Glass is vapourware and YouTube/Chrome supports H.264 so not buying the whole Google will put its weight behind VP9 argument. We heard it before with VP8.
Web video players aren't the only application in the world for video codecs. VP9 will be a great option for anyone writing native code, for example phone apps or PC/console games.
Sure. But I was just assuming that VP9 would be similar to VP8 which found most of its usage in a web browser.
But VP9 is pretty much a non starter for any embedded device as well. Apple, LG, Microsoft, Samsung, Sony are patent licensors so they have every reason to use H.265 in their own products. So that takes cares of the majority of all of the mobile and console markets.
Then you still have the situation where even if H.265 and VP9 are supported equally everywhere why would anybody use it. H.265 will be technically superior, be built into the core OS SDKs and have far, far better tool support from content creation to editing to output.
