Interesting discussion on h.264 and flash

[Peedy]

Open source royalty free is nice but getting the big boys like apple microsoft etc to add support for them is slim. h.264 is a developed open standard however there are license fees. Another downside for open source codecs is that your editing and production tools pale in comparision to the commercial codecs. h.264 is supported in every modern software, whereas open source codecs have one off tools which is hard to develop a professional workflow. Good for the geek who wants to do some video but for professional peeps it won't cut it.


As far as quality I haven't seen anything better than h.264 these days.

[Elli]

Originally Posted by Peedy

Open source royalty free is nice but getting the big boys like apple microsoft etc to add support for them is slim. h.264 is a developed open standard however there are license fees. Another downside for open source codecs is that your editing and production tools pale in comparision to the commercial codecs. h.264 is supported in every modern software, whereas open source codecs have one off tools which is hard to develop a professional workflow. Good for the geek who wants to do some video but for professional peeps it won't cut it.


As far as quality I haven't seen anything better than h.264 these days.

Have to agree with you on all points there. I was reading all these threads on encoding in x264 last night, but it seems like a ton of technical fuss for the same result.

[Peedy]

Originally Posted by Elli

Have to agree with you on all points there. I was reading all these threads on encoding in x264 last night, but it seems like a ton of technical fuss for the same result.

Yup its the biggest problem with DivX, Ogg, Theora, and many other open codecs. Until the professional level tools are there to produce them I don't see them gaining much traction.

For example I love using FLAC (free lossless audio codec) for my master music rips from CDs. Its open so no vendor lock in, great quality, and free. However my iPod won't play them, a Zune won't play them and there are only a couple of players available for the desktop. Yet if I went with Apple Lossless or the windows media equivalent, I would have much more support in players and devices. Yet i'm at the mercy of what these vendors do and if one day they choose not to support these formats anymore then I am either stuck converting them to something else (a lot of work) or could even be shit out of luck.

There are pros and cons to both sides, but just like I have developed workflows for photos using photoshop's PSD format which isn't entirely open I live by that sword because at the end of the day the tools are there for production.