Lets start with the video format. A format consists basically of a set of rules and parameters that define the video. This is the native resolution, color depth, the frames per second among other parameters. Video format examples are the DVD video format, the 3GP video format or 1080p and 1080i formats.

A video codec acts as a interpreter for the video format or formats it supports. Devices and software use codecs to compress and decompress video.

It is used by video players to determine how the video needs to be played correctly on the system. Many video players on a computer system come with their own set of binary codecs that only they can use. Codec packs on the other hand install codecs system wide so that applications like Windows Media Player can make use of them to play specific video formats.

A container more or less bundles multiple files. For videos, this is usually the video and audio track. More advanced container formats can include other data types as well like menus for example. Popular container formats are avi, mkv or mov.

One advantage of using a container for a video is that programs can use different codecs for the tracks of the video. It is therefor possible to use one codec for the video and one for the audio, which is often preferable to using a single codec.

To paraphrase: The video format sets the rules, the codec interprets them and a container format is a meta format that bundles multiple files into one container.

Problems will arise for Internet users once the acceptance and use of HTML5 video rises on the Internet. The clear winner for now is Adobe with its Flash technology, as it is being used as a fallback on many sites. A common misconception surrounds H.264. Many users believe that it might replace Flash on the Internet. That’s however not possible considering that H.264 is a video codec and Flash Player a multimedia runtime. H.264 encoded videos need to be loaded into a player, like Flash on the web or a desktop video player.

Regardless of that, it is still true that Flash is used as a fallback if the web browser does not support the HTML5 video format that is embedded on a page. To paraphrase: Flash based players are the most common to play H.264 contents, and Flash may be used as a fallback if the browser does not support the format or WebM.

Here is how you can test if your web browser supports WebM or H.264. Visit the following links with your browser of choice. Your browser supports the standard if the videos play, if you get errors, the standard is not supported.

WebM Test Video

H.264 Test Video

Now that you found out that your browser is not capable of playing at least one of the formats, you may want to add support for the missing format to play all HTML5 videos regardless of codec.

Microsoft recently has published extensions for the Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browser that add H.264 support to the browser. It has to be noted that the extension will only work under Windows 7, previous operating systems are not compatible.

Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome [download]
HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Plug-in [download]

Google on the other hand has created a plugin for Internet Explorer 9 that adds WebM to the web browser.

WebM Video for Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 (Preview) [download]

Instead of supporting both codecs in their web browser, Microsoft and Google have made the decision to produce plugins for each other’s browser to add support for the video codec that they favor and support.

Microsoft made an announcement a while ago that Internet Explorer 9 would support the VP8 codec on Windows 7 if it was installed on the user system.

Please let us know in the comments if you have successfully downloaded the VP8 codec and managed to play WebM videos in Internet Explorer 9 afterwards.

Two browser camps have been formed. On the one side Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Opera which are supporting Webm8 (VP8) and Theora videos, on the other side Microsoft Internet Explorer and Safari which H.264 videos. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer furthermore supports VP8 videos if a VP8 codec is installed on the computer system.

Microsoft recently created an extension for the Firefox web browser that added support for H.264 videos to the browser (see HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox Add-on). The extension made use of built-in capabilities of the Windows 7 operating system to add support for H.264 videos to Firefox.

Microsoft’s Interoperability Bridges and Labs Center has now released a similar extension for Google’s Chrome web browser. The extension is compatible with Google Chrome 8 or later and the Windows 7 operating system.

This Extension is based on a Chrome Extension that parses HTML5 pages and replaces Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in so that the content can be played in the browser. The Extension replaces video tags only if the video formats specified in the tag are among those supported by Windows Media Player. Tags that contain other video formats are not touched.

The Extension also checks if the browser version already supports MP4 (H.264) video codec, if so the extension is not used.

The current version of the Extension still uses the Windows Media Player Plug-in APIs to control video playback, so there are some differences between the methods/properties defined in the emerging HTML5 standard and those available in the Windows Media Player plug-in. We are working to fix this limitation in the next release.

Google Chrome users running Windows 7 who want H.264 support in their web browser can download and install the extension from the project website to do that. The release notes are available here.

That’s a problem from a user perspective. The HTML5 Extension for Windows Media Player Firefox add-on by Microsoft tries to add support from H.264 videos in Firefox. The browser plugin only works in Firefox 3.6 or later and only under the Windows 7 operating system. In other words, Windows 7 users with Firefox 3.6 or higher can use the plugin, everyone else cannot.

But what is the add-on doing exactly?

The Extension is based on a Firefox Add-on that parses HTML5 pages and replaces Video tags with a call to the Windows Media Player plug-in so that the content can be played in the browser. The Add-on replaces video tags only if the video formats specified in the tag are among those supported by Windows Media Player. Tags that contain other video formats are not touched.

The add-on works on most pages that try to play H.264 video but not on all. Microsoft explains the issues that can be encountered the following way:

In some cases Firefox might fail to play a video even if the Add-on is correctly installed because the page might be using a call to canPlayType to determine if the browser can play H.264 content. Typically the check is done either using createElement(‘video’) or getElementsByTagName(‘video’) and then call canPlayType(‘video’mp4′). In both cases the call will return empty string even if the Add-on is installed and the browser could play H.264 videos.

Firefox users who want to watch H.264 encoded videos may want to try out the add-on to do so. Another option would be to switch to a web browser supporting H.264 natively, which is also the only option for non-Windows 7 Firefox users, at least at this point in time.

So in this article I am going to discus how to install the necessary codecs to get these media types running in both Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04.

A necessary proclamation

Unfortunately Linux is hindered by licensing issues. This is why you will be hard-pressed to find a major distribution that ships with pre-rolled in MP3 support. It’s frustrating, but it’s a reality when dealing with licenses. Does that mean you have to go without listening to MP3′s and other file formats? No. You can still enjoy them, you just have to install support for those tools yourself (or allow the system to install them).

Auto-install

This is especially true for Ubuntu 10.04. When you try to use a new media type in one of the players (such as Rhythmbox or Banshee), Ubuntu will attempt to install the necessary files, applications,. and/or codecs in order allow that media player to work with said multi-media file. This works most of the time. It’s only during those occasions which it doesn’t work that will have you frustrated because you can’t use that multi-media. Fear  not.

Figure 1

Fedora 13

There is a very simple tool, called AutoX (by Dangermous – no relation to the famous cartoon character), that you can use to install nearly any codec for Fedora 12 and 13 in both 32 and 64 bit versions. You can install it with the commands:

su

rpm -Uvh http://dnmouse.org/autoten-4.7-2.fc13.noarch.rpm

After you install, you run this with the command autoten as the root user. If you do not have all of the necessary dependencies, it will install them at first run. Once running you click on the button for the codec you want and it will install (see Figure 1). Very simple.

Ubuntu 10.04

With Ubuntu 10.04 you will have to issue a few commands to get your codecs installed. Before you run those commands you need to add repositories to apt. The command to add those repositories is:

sudo wget –output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list

Now issue the command:

sudo apt-get –quiet update

Finally the next two commands will finish up the job:

sudo apt-get –yes –quiet –allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring

sudo apt-get –quiet update

You are ready to install the codecs. I will just list them out for you.

Non-free codecs: sudo apt-get install non-free-codecs

DVD support: sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libxine1-ffmpeg gxine mencoder

Hopefully, after running the commands above, you should the codec you need installed OR now Ubuntu 10.04 should be able to auto-install any codec you need.

Final thoughts

Thanks to licensing issues it’s not a perfect world for Linux and multi-media, but it is getting close. With tools like you have above, getting your distribution up and running with multi-media isn’t all that challenging.

WebM video might however be exactly the compromise that most companies where looking for. You might remember that the major browser developers could not agree on a single standard for HTML5 video. Some backed Theora while the rest backed H.264 instead.

Both video formats were problematic either because they were proprietary (H.264) or missed features like hardware acceleration (Theora).

WebM video already has the backing of four of the five major browser developers. Microsoft yesterday confirmed as the fourth developer after Google, Mozilla and Opera that they would support WebM video in Internet Explorer if the WebM codec was installed on the user’s system.

When it comes to video and HTML5, we’re all in. In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows. (via)

Apple is the remaining company that has not announced support for WebM video yet.

WebM uses the VP8 video codec by On2, a company that was acquired by Google, and Vorbis for audio.

Which browsers support WebM Video right now?

Opera, Mozilla and Chromium all have created browsers supporting WebM Video. These browsers are all experimental versions. The feature will be later implemented into stable versions of the browsers.

• Opera: Windows, rest on this page.
• Chromium: Windows, other operating systems here. Google Chrome to follow on May 24.
• Mozilla Firefox: All releases available here.

How to test WebM video

Youtube automatically encodes every video that is uploaded to Youtube in 720p or higher in WebM as well as H.264.

• Go to http://www.youtube.com/html5 and participate in the HTML5 video beta
• Search for videos, e.g. trailers
• Add the parameter &webm=1 to the search url and hit enter again
• Select a video from the result’s listing and play it.
• A HTML5 and WebM logo should be displayed at the bottom of the screen

Not all videos support WebM video yet. You can try this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTNBwIAY9Zo for instance to test your web browser’s support for WebM video.

Installed Codec (via Shell Extension City) is another fine NirSoft tool that displays all installed codecs of a Windows 2000, 2003, XP or Vista system in a table. All meaning all Codec drivers and DirectShow but not binary codecs which are used by some applications like MPlayer.

The software lists the name of the codec, its installation path and file, the company that developed it and if it is enabled on the system. Each codec in the list can be disabled which has the effect that this codec will not be used to play the supported multimedia files. Excellent if you want to make sure that a specific codec is playing certain videos.

Removing some of the installed codecs can be achieved by disabling the codecs first and checking if the videos still play fine. If that is the case I would temporarily move them to another directory and if nothing bad happens delete them from the system. Most of the codecs installed on my Windows XP system are from Nero 8 which is kinda strange because I have not installed all those additional converters and tools that come with it. The codecs seem to get installed nevertheless.