You have, you just didn't notice it. VP9 is the primary coded used by YouTube. Since Apple refused to support it (and their mobile devices are popular), Google also offers YouTube in H.264, which has lower quality and worse compression.
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Safari for Mac to Support WebM Video Playback 11 Years After Its Launch
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You have, you just didn't notice it. VP9 is the primary coded used by YouTube. Since Apple refused to support it (and their mobile devices are popular), Google also offers YouTube in H.264, which has lower quality and worse compression.
VP8 was a mess. It didn't offer any quality or performance benefits over the already-hardware accelerated H264, didn't offer any power efficiency benefits, was just as complicated to implement in the hardware for acceleration, and possibly was in violation of several H264 patents (or at least Google didn't offer any assurances that WebM was clear of any H264 violations).
I haven't looked at VP9, but possibly VP9 addresses this and as well as HEVC is just as messy as VP8 (or at least the patent standoff between the pools are just insane).
Is the thumbnail a regularly embedded JPEG as on umm /b/ you can see the preview and then you forget you're on mobile Safari and you're SOL... so i hope they add it to mobile webkit, but still not worth losing a jailbreak over if they do add it in the iOS14 branch...but i will guess if added, will be on iOS 15, ...
It’s actually a good question. Adding support for additional formats – even ones that are years old – increases the attack surface of the OS, both technicality and legally. Even keeping support for existing formats is a risk, which is why support gets dropped sometimes.
I imagine WebM is going to support AV1 seeing as Google is a major member of that group (as is Apple, Netflix, Amazon etc).
So WebM container using AV1 and Opus codecs would be the holy grail. Open source, royalty free and arguably the best video and audio codecs you can get.
As soon as Apple's chips support AV1 hardware decade/(encode) there will be a major shift from the likes of Google and Netflix to actively using it.
Currently the latest AMD, Nvidia, Intel GPU's support AV1 decode. I assume as the XBSX and PS5 use the RDNA2 GPU they also have the ability to support hardware decode, even LG's TV's support AV1.
The future is AV1 and it wouldn't surprise me if this is the year Apple includes hardware support for it. Finally rid ourselves of H.264 and HEVC.
WebM - AV1 + Opus
WebP - AVIF
Everything else can be deprecated after that.
So WebM container using AV1 and Opus codecs would be the holy grail. Open source, royalty free and arguably the best video and audio codecs you can get.
As soon as Apple's chips support AV1 hardware decade/(encode) there will be a major shift from the likes of Google and Netflix to actively using it.
Currently the latest AMD, Nvidia, Intel GPU's support AV1 decode. I assume as the XBSX and PS5 use the RDNA2 GPU they also have the ability to support hardware decode, even LG's TV's support AV1.
The future is AV1 and it wouldn't surprise me if this is the year Apple includes hardware support for it. Finally rid ourselves of H.264 and HEVC.
WebM - AV1 + Opus
WebP - AVIF
Everything else can be deprecated after that.
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There's absolutely no way H.266 is going to triumph over AV1. All the biggest players like Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon etc are part of the AV1 working group. Why would they want to pay for a format when they can use one for free (and direct its' development)?
H.266 is dead on arrival. I haven't seen a single piece of silicon that supports even hardware decode.
Maybe it ties into their recent privacy changes? Idk much about WebM but as other have pointed out it’s undergone a change in what powers it behind the scenes recently as well.
Don't really care about Safari being behind the times since I use Chrome on MBA M1 and it supports embedded webm fine. Here's a demo.
https://www.webmfiles.org/demo-files/
https://www.webmfiles.org/demo-files/
I like x264. I can download movies online and watch it on my smart tv without problem. x265 is even better but doesn't work on smart TVs and uses a lot of CPU (battery last way less playing on my laptop).
Does WebM have better features? Or it's just the free alternative?
Does WebM have better features? Or it's just the free alternative?
The situation with webM is that it was optimized for low rez video, for which it provides slightly better quality with slightly better compression than H.264. The problem is that WebX was developed for low rez video, while H.264 was developed for higher rez video.
when higher rez video is made, and played back, the situation is reversed. Then WebX has poorer quality, and less efficient encoding than H.264. The differences are fairly easy to see. The higher the rez, the greater the difference.
while Apple’s ignoring it had something to do with its loss of interest, the main reason was that as higher quality was being shown on the web, H.264 was preferred. Nobody wants to be accused of showing lower quality than their competitors. And the fact is that the license fees for H.264 and it’s successors is rather small, and doesn’t affect 90% of producers, and it affects 0% of users. Only large producers pay a fee that‘s significant, and that’s still tiny compared to the costs of production and distribution.
when higher rez video is made, and played back, the situation is reversed. Then WebX has poorer quality, and less efficient encoding than H.264. The differences are fairly easy to see. The higher the rez, the greater the difference.
while Apple’s ignoring it had something to do with its loss of interest, the main reason was that as higher quality was being shown on the web, H.264 was preferred. Nobody wants to be accused of showing lower quality than their competitors. And the fact is that the license fees for H.264 and it’s successors is rather small, and doesn’t affect 90% of producers, and it affects 0% of users. Only large producers pay a fee that‘s significant, and that’s still tiny compared to the costs of production and distribution.
WebM is just a container? You can optimize it for whatever you want, you can do 4k HDR with 4:4:4 subsampling if you want using AV1.
HEVC licensing is an absolute mess and only in the last couple of years become something approaching acceptable in cost. It's a big part of the reason virtually everyone is gunning for AV1 so they can ditch royalty codecs that can be a pain to license.
WebM typically uses Google VP9 codec which is arguably on par with H.264, initially it used VP8 which was worse than H.264, maybe that's why you are confusing this? WebM now supports AV1 which destroys basically anything.
My guess is Apple is readying hardware support for AV1 and that will typically be delivered (over the web) using WebM.
WebM is just a container and within the container there can be different video and audio codecs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_container_formats
I'm glad I'm not the only one who get's this. Container =! Codec
Honestly, this article is incredibly outdated. It quotes Steve Jobs from the time that WebM was a wrapper for VP8, in which Steve was right, but with the advent of VP9 that has really changed.
VP9 has been adopted and is available in all major web browsers. iOS and iPadOS have supported VP9 since last year.
The news isn't that "Apple" is adopting VP9. The news is that the Mac is adopting it.
VP9 has been adopted and is available in all major web browsers. iOS and iPadOS have supported VP9 since last year.
The news isn't that "Apple" is adopting VP9. The news is that the Mac is adopting it.
So I read the headline as saying “you launch safari, and 11 years later the video starts playing,” and I’m thinking, maybe it’s time to update your device.
The article, both the source and MR are mixing up WebM as a container format and VP9 as a video Codec.
I could support both WebM and MP4 and not be able play a damn thing with any video codec. The question is if Apple started to support VP9 with WebM on MacOS Safari. Which no one seems to have an answer.
I could support both WebM and MP4 and not be able play a damn thing with any video codec. The question is if Apple started to support VP9 with WebM on MacOS Safari. Which no one seems to have an answer.
Well, Safari would need to add support for both the container and VP9 in order to play 4K Youtube, so it's not wrong it's just simplifying things a bit.
