The importance of open video on the Web
|Time:||15:45 - 16:30|
|Day:||Friday 22 January 2010|
|Location:||Civic Suites 1 and 2 (Town Hall)|
HTML5 introduces <video> and <audio> elements that allow media playback on the Web without requiring proprietary browser plugins. This is a big step towards allowing entirely-free software stacks to be first-class citizens on the Web, but patent-encumbered codecs are still a barrier. Mozilla is trying to improve the situation by promoting Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora as baseline video and audio codecs for the Web.
In this talk, we will explain why unencumbered baseline codecs are critical for the Web and for the free software community. We will talk about why Vorbis and Theora are the focus of our efforts today, and how we are promoting them for use on the Web. We will explain (and demo) how HTML5, HTTP and unencumbered codecs let us treat video as "just another data type", lowering deployment barriers and opening up a huge range of possible uses for video on the Web --- this isn't just about Youtube. We will talk about how people can support the open video mission.
Robert O'Callahan works for Mozilla on Gecko layout and rendering, and manages the Mozilla Auckland development team which is responsible for (among other things) HTML5 video and audio in Gecko/Firefox. In a previous life he worked at IBM Research on programming languages and program analysis.