The expressive power of the Web is largely made possible by open standards. HTML, the vendor-neutral markup language that serves as the underlying foundation of the open Web, helped to foster the culture of interoperability and inclusiveness that have made the Internet a success. HTML 5, the next iteration of that standard, could bring the same degree of empowerment and interoperability to rich media and other kinds of Web content.

Although HTML 5 is still in the draft process and has not yet been ratified by W3C, the nascent standard is gaining significant traction. Browser makers are implementing key features of HTML 5 and bringing robust support for some of its most advanced capabilities to end users. A growing number of prominent companies that deliver content and services on the Web are putting their weight behind HTML 5 and touting it as the way forward for building interactive Web applications and deploying rich media in the browser.

Video is one of the most significant areas where this trend will have a major impact. Some of the giants of Internet video are exploring standards-based solutions as means of breaking free from the constraints imposed by proprietary browser plugins. During the Google I/O conference last week, the search giant demonstrated a YouTube mockup built with HTML 5. In addition to using the HTML 5 video element, it also uses new HTML structural elements and other features introduced in the upcoming version of the standard. The demonstration illustrates how open technologies can be used to deliver a high-quality user experience for streaming video playback.

Another video titan that is fighting back against plugin prisons is DailyMotion. The popular streaming video website has launched an open video pilot program, providing a new beta version of its site that uses the HTML 5 video element to play content. As part of the pilot program, DailyMotion reencoded 300,000 videos with the open source Ogg Theora codec. Unlike many common video formats, Ogg Theora is not encumbered by known patents. It can be used and reimplemented freely without having to pay licensing costs.

Advantages of open video

For content providers like YouTube and DailyMotion, the HTML 5 video element offers numerous advantages. It integrates seamlessly with conventional HTML content and can be manipulated with JavaScript and CSS. This enables Web developers to build video player interfaces that are more consistent with the rest of their website. The ability to control playback with JavaScript allows video to be a more native part of the user experience in interactive Web applications.

Mozilla has crafted some compelling demos to show how the HTML 5 video element can be used in innovative ways with other Web standards. When we looked at Firefox's first steps towards implementing the HTML 5 video element in 2007, we linked to a demo in which video is natively rendered on SVG elements that can be interactively rotated, moved, and resized within a page while the videos are playing.

The more recent demonstrations are even more impressive. At the Southern California Linux Expo (SCALE) in February, Mozilla's Chris Blizzard showed how to use JavaScript worker threads to programmatically detect and highlight motion in video as it is playing. The HTML 5 features required to implement these demos will all be available in the upcoming Firefox 3.5 release. This can all be done with real JavaScript—no browser plugins or third-party programming languages are required.

In addition to the flexibility inherent in the technical benefits of the HTML 5 video element, open video also guarantees freedom from lock-in. The standard will be advanced collaboratively through inclusive processes, which means that all stakeholders have the ability to participate and are not beholden to any specific vendor. The availability of multiple interoperable implementations of the HTML 5 video standard, including some that are distributed under open source licenses, is paving the way for a more vibrant and healthy ecosystem in which no single company has complete dominance of the technology.

Video is becoming increasingly important on the Web, and it's becoming clear that content providers, browser vendors, and end users can no longer afford to have the primary delivery mechanisms for video locked up in an opaque binary blob that can't be improved or adapted to work in new environments. This is especially true in light of the growing relevance of mobile Web technology. It will be possible for anyone to adapt existing open source HTML 5 video implementations so that they will work optimally in environments with unusual resource constraints, form factors, or input mechanisms—the same cannot be said of Flash.

Flash's suboptimal performance and lack of reliability on Linux and Mac OS X (and arguably the absence of Flash on the iPhone) are emblematic of its limited portability. Browser and platform vendors can't fix Flash, but they do have the ability to ensure that standards-based open video technologies deliver the best possible experience in their own software. It's not hard to guess what approach they will favor for video delivery.

Challenges ahead

Although standards-based video solutions have the potential to deliver enormous benefits, the path to liberation will not be quick or easy. The current generation of open video technologies has a lot of limitations that will be difficult to address.

Microsoft's slowness to adopt emerging standards is probably the biggest hurdle that is impeding adoption of the HTML 5 video element. Microsoft is still struggling to implement long-standing Web standards, so it seems unlikely that the software giant will jump on board with a highly complex emerging standard that is still in the draft stage. Microsoft also has some competitive interests on the table that conflict with standards-based video efforts. Specifically, Microsoft is pushing its own Sliverlight browser plugin as an alternative.

Aside from Microsoft, virtually every other browser vendor already has an HTML 5 video implementation or has publicly announced plans to develop one. Microsoft's dominant marketshare, however, largely deflates the value of that widespread support in the broader browser ecosystem. There are some factors that could potentially push Microsoft into action, but it's hard to imagine it happening any time in the immediate future.

If enough Web content developers adopt HTML 5 video and use it to deliver a better experience to users of competing browsers, Microsoft might have an incentive to join the party. One source of hope is the fact that Microsoft isn't totally ignoring all emerging Web standards. The Redmond behemoth has already implemented some nice HTML 5 features, such as persistent client-side storage, which is supported in Internet Explorer 8.

Another enormous problem with HTML 5 video is the lack of consensus on codecs. Attempts to enshrine Ogg as the default format of HTML 5 multimedia in the standard itself fell flat due to dissent from various participants in the standards process. Without the guarantee that at least one codec will work universally in all HTML 5 video environments, many content producers will be reluctant to adopt the standard. Mozilla and some other players are still pushing hard for Ogg. Firefox 3.5 will include fully functional Ogg codecs so that playback of Ogg video will work out of the box. It's unclear, however, if other browser vendors will follow that path.

Enthusiasm for Ogg among some content providers could eventually help unify the browser development community around the codec. DailyMotion clearly has a very strong commitment to the format. The Wikimedia Foundation, the organization behind the popular Wikipedia website, is also a vocal advocate of Ogg. It's worth noting that media content on Wikipedia is virtually all encoded in Ogg formats.

Although Ogg might eventually be able to gain sufficient traction to provide a universal target for HTML 5 video, the format itself still has a lot of deficiencies. Ogg Theora can't yet match the quality of competing patent-encumbered formats. In its announcement about the launch of its open video pilot program, DailyMotion acknowledges that its Ogg-encoded content has lower video quality and suffers from occasional audio crackles.

Providing additional resources to Ogg implementation developers is really the only solution to this problem. Theora reached 1.0 status last year, but still has a long way to go. Mozilla recently contributed $100,000 to fund Ogg development. This grant, which will be managed by the Wikimedia Foundation, will help pay Ogg-backer Xiph.org to continue pushing forward the codec. Status reports look promising—the experimental Thusnelda branch is becoming much stronger and fares well in some benchmarks.

Other unencumbered free software codecs, such as the BBC's wavelet-based Dirac, could deliver competitive high-quality video support in the future. The BBC's original reference implementation is said to be impractical for real-world use, but the BBC is also funding the development of a real-world open source version called Schrodinger that is becoming quite mature. According to some experts, Dirac has the potential to deliver encoding quality that is comparable (or maybe even superior) to H.264.

It's obviously going to take time for free codecs to catch up, and the proprietary options will likely move forward during that time. In order to avoid getting trapped in a perpetual following position, open video stakeholders are going to have to make a really strong effort to address the disparities in quality.

Conclusion

Open standards have the potential to reshape the way that video is used and deployed on the Web. Rising support for the HTML 5 video element is a promising sign that the major stakeholders recognize the rewards of unchaining multimedia on the Web. Google, Mozilla, Apple, DailyMotion, and others are taking steps to make open video a reality, but there are going to be many barriers to overcome along the way.

The broader HTML 5 specification draft has a lot to offer for Web developers. We took a look at some of the features last year when the W3C published a working draft. Many of these features will also help reduce dependency on browser plugins and will help make the Web a richer platform for application development.

The demonstrations at the I/O conference on Wednesday show that Google is very serious about bringing HTML 5 to the masses. The enormous popularity of the company's Web services makes Google's endorsement of HTML 5 deeply meaningful. Google has real leverage to put behind HTML 5 and will likely play an important role in making it ubiquitous.