One Codec to Rule Them All
February 17, 2011 by John38
In the beginning years of web video, you might encode Real, Windows Media, and Quicktime versions of your movie, in several sizes, so anyone visiting your site could watch, figuring everybody was bound to have at least one of those plugins.
Then a lot of people got cable modems and DSL which removed the need to provide tiny movies for dialup customers.
Flash then updated their nearly universal browser plugin to embed flv video content. Many developers migrated to Flash video, because posting one movie is easier than posting three. Flash seemed to have won, for the time being.
But then, the H.264 codec, also known as AVC, burst upon the scene, popularized by its support in Quicktime 7 starting in April 2005. It immediately blew everyone away with its amazing quality and low bitrate requirements, being able to present stunning quality HD video that started playing almost immediately (when encoded by an expert compressionist).
H.264 became the standard codec adopted by manufacturers for all kinds of devices – from camcorders from Canon and Panasonic to Apple iPods, iPhones, and Apple TVs, Sony PlayStations & PSPs, Archos TV, Microsoft Xbox 360s and Zune players, cell phones and many other devices.
Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of Windows computer owners were buying Apple iPods, which neccesitated downloading iTunes & Quicktime, so the Quicktime browser plugin was gaining ground very quickly on Windows computers (as well as being installed on 100% of Macs).
So then, there was once again a dilemma for internet video producers; stick with Flash with wider browser support; or go with Quicktime H.264 for better quality and device compatibility? Or both?
Finally, the momentous announcement came from Adobe in August of 2007 that the ubiquitous Flash plugin would support H.264 encoded video, and even provide special hardware acceleration to make fullscreen H.264 video play more smoothly. The confusion was over. H.264 had won the codec wars, perhaps forever.
After that, the race was on to come up with the best H.264 codec and encoder. For now at least, the clear winner is the x264 variation.
To see the best h264 converter on the planet, visit dv-kitchen.com
I have a older 2.167 ghz single core pc with 2gb of ram and Ati 4650 1gb video card. I am using windows xp.
When I have Hardware Acceleration enabled playing flash video in any browser, in full screen it will crash and freeze up my pc usually with in a few min.
But if i use other programs like lets say Hulu Desktop It won't crash with Hardware Acceleration enabled.
I wonder why it only crashes in a browser? I tried several browsers same result. So when I use Hulu Desktop I have to switch back in forth between having Hardware Acceleration enabled and disabled. I do this so Hulu Desktop won't lag .
Hulu Desktop minimum system requirements is a dual core pc. My pc is a single core but plays fine anyways.
I wonder if they will ever fix this full screen bug?
Luis,
My post is really about designer needs, not developer needs, but here's my take on your comments.
For developers, Flex Builder provides a great IDE (based on Eclipse), supports ActionScript (which is a better version of ECMAScript than that supported by any browser today), and has a programming model that will be very comfortable to anyone who has ever used HTML, XUL, or even WPF.
As for hardware acceleration: WPF/E isn't hardware accelerated, and WPF's hardware acceleration has severe limitations. Judge on real-world performance, not feature checklists.
Quicktime browser plugin is a joke.. Apple should focus on improving that instead of taking shots at Flash.