REDCODE should be in HTML 5

[Aric F.]

You may or may not be aware that as the HTML 5 specification moves forward Apple is pushing for H.264 as part of the standard and the open source fans (like the Mozilla group) want Ogg Theora.

Based on the amazing scalability of RED RAY (yes I've learned they are ditching the optical media portion and renaming it RED 4K) which I believe is based on the core RED codec REDCODE it would seem it would be a better choice for the future video format of HTML 5.

RED should push the adoption of REDCODE for HTML 5.

[Stephen Gentle]

The problem with that it that it would need not only an open source reference implementation, but would have to be completely royalty free and not have any patents on it for it to see universal use.

I don't think that RED will be willing to completely open their format up like that - at least not for a few years...

[jbeale]

Am I to understand that H.264 is completely royalty free and patent free? (I'm pretty sure that is not the case.)

[PatrickW]

Am I to understand that H.264 is completely royalty free and patent free? (I'm pretty sure that is not the case.)

Its patented... see MPEG LA.

It is royalty free for internet video use until at least dec 31st 2015.

[Andrew Gentle]

Am I to understand that H.264 is completely royalty free and patent free? (I'm pretty sure that is not the case.)

No, it is protected by patents and that is the main reason why HTML5 has problems replacing Flash for video applications. Apple will pay the royalties to support it in Safari, same with Google Chrome, but Firefox won't. Firefox will support Ogg Theora but it's quite inferior to H.264.

[Ralph B.]

RED should push the adoption of REDCODE for HTML 5.

Interesting thought. Firstly not to pick nits but I think you are referring to the .RRD or Red Ray Distribution format (as it was most recently known).

My understanding is that RED is in talks to have .RRD be a professional distribution format for motion pictures, and other media I don't know how the Motion Picture association would feel about it being a web distribution format as well. But those questions are politics. The real question is how would that format being a web standard help RED? I mean from everything I've heard it is the only thing able to distribute 4K resolution at current bandwidths so I know it would be good for the public, but I'm not really worried about the public.

RED is doing some great things and one of it's crown jewels is the secret sauce in REDCODE. To the extent that RED uses income (read license fees) to make them more viable as a company which allows them to push out more great products I'm for that! I don't know if making .RRD a web standard (probably meaning free) is the best thing for the company.

I'd love to hear different ideas on the topic from the board.

[Stephen Gentle]

No, it is protected by patents and that is the main reason why HTML5 has problems replacing Flash for video applications. Apple will pay the royalties to support it in Safari, same with Google Chrome, but Firefox won't. Firefox will support Ogg Theora but it's quite inferior to H.264.

H.264 can be better than Theora but if you compare videos encoded by sites like Youtube with Theora videos at the same bitrates, they actually are fairly similar.

[Steven Caesare]

RECODE is quite frankly, one of , if not THE, most importatnt pieces of intellectual property Red owns.

I don't see it being offered up in HTML.anything.

-sc

[Andrew Gentle]

H.264 can be better than Theora

H.264 is consistently more efficient than Theora.

Google has noted that there’s no way the company could serve up YouTube’s billions of streams using the much less efficient Ogg Theora codec, saying it would consume the world’s Internet bandwidth due to its less sophisticated compression. Ogg Theora also lacks the hardware acceleration available for H.264, making it completely unattractive for use in mobile devices from netbooks to smartphones.
Link

[Stephen Gentle]

Take a look at this comparision - http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/y...omparison.html. H.264 has the potential to be much better than Theora, but video sites don't do a great job of encoding (as it says in that article, Youtube may be sacrificing image quality for "better seeking granularity, encoding speed, or a specific rate control pattern"). In the end, the Theora video (that is exactly the same file size and has a slightly lower bitrate) is very similar to Youtube's H.264 encode, but has superior audio.