Re: [rtcweb] On the topic of MTI video codecs

[Daniel-Constantin Mierla <[e-mail]>]

On 10/31/13 4:10 PM, Olle E. Johansson wrote:
> On 31 Oct 2013, at 10:02, Neil Stratford <[e-mail]> wrote:
>
>> On 30 Oct 2013, at 17:55, Adam Roach <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>
>>> As Jonathan mentioned earlier, this morning Cisco announced that it will be open sourcing an H.264 implementation as well as gratis binary modules compiled from that source and hosted by Cisco for download. Mozilla will be modifying Firefox to support H.264 by downloading Cisco's binary module.
>>
>> It seems like most of the groundwork is being done here for a real codec plugin API which would obviate the need for any particular codec to be selected as MTI.
>>
>> Can we encourage this new codec plugin API to be developed in an open way as part of the standards process and therefore be supported in all browsers? (Enabling for example the addition of VP8 to a browser that may not natively ship with it.)
> I don't agree. The idea was to create a realtime web platform without the need for any plugins or downloadable modules. We've had that for ages and it is not a good solution.
>
> I am still for a MTI codec or set of codecs so we always can set up video calls, regardless of implementation and if it's possible to download by policy or network conditions a specific binary.
Downloading a binary opens doors for tons of risks, knowing that lot of 
carriers do caching or interpose themselves (e.g., it happens very 
commonly for dns to redirect you to some adds page when typing an 
invalid domain), thus is easy to replace the original source, so a 
rather complex security mechanism has to be put in place.

Even the argument that the code can be compiled and signatures compared 
is not really feasible - simply it cannot be done by mobile devices - 
they don't have the sdk installed.

I can't see an impediment for Cisco to grant the main web browsers 
(e.g., Mozilla, ...) to simply have the codec built in, using the BSD 
open sourced codec. If the webrtc is going to the masses, then the 
yearly fee cap will be reached anyhow.

For the sake of clarification, I am not in a favor of a particular video 
codec, but the one to be selected has to be embedded directly in all 
browsers, specially in those open source, for full transparency. 
Otherwise, better as Neil said, make it a plugin API so there can be 
many providers - with binary blob download, there has to be an API 
anyhow, make that the standard.

Daniel

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