I wrote:

[video src="foo.ogg"]Your browser does not support the video tag[embed src="foo.ogg" /][/video]

I know you can write something like Your browser does not support the video tag: but it’s useless to write so much code…

What are the right circumstances? Anything that promotes the use of the format. This consists of 3 important things:

* Tools
* Player support
* Content

I can’t comment on tool support, but it sounds as if it’s workable, albeit with a lot of room to improve in terms of ease of use and popular encoder support. Speed might also be an issue, I’m not sure.

Player support will receive a massive boost from inclusion in Firefox. Ideally, Mozilla (yes, Mozilla) should create and promote simple-to-install “plugins” for other browsers, the way Vlad has been trying to add support for canvas in IE. This could be as simple as writing a .js file that looks for tags and replaces them with s + installing the codecs if missing. Standalone player support *will* follow if this is done (look at how common .flvs have become). One problem: I notice that Firefox’s implementation doesn’t appear to have a full screen mode. This is critical for adoption.

Wikipedia is one great source of current and future content. Somebody should also set up a more liberal video sharing site based on Ogg Theora vids exclusively — the idea is *not* to create a popular site that might replace YouTube, but rather to stimulate the creation of new Theora content.

Ultimately, Dirac looks like it will beat H.264 in quality/bitrate. It would be a natural complement to Theora today, and would be its eventual successor once processing speed is less of an issue.

I note that nobody (beyond Apple & Nokia) seem to have an issue with Vorbis…

* Note that efforts like this (http://www.osnews.com/story/19019/Theora-vs.-h.264) are of no practical value in assessing /desired/ quality, because the author didn’t ask users whether the quality is acceptable. Something similar happened with HD video — which is why uptake of pure HD (i.e. ignoring special features, multi-channelling etc.) has been so ridiculously slow, because it turns out most people don’t care for the higher quality.

* Internet broadcast (non-subscription, not title-by-title) – Since this market is still developing, no royalties will be payable for internet broadcast services (non-subscription, not title-by-title) during the initial term of the license (which runs through December 31, 2010) and then shall not exceed the over-the-air free broadcast TV encoding fee during the renewal term.

So post 2010, it won’t even be free as in beer.

H.264 is pretty much king of the hill it destroys all other encoders in terms of quality (note: don’t compare against Apples 264 encoder as there’s is the worst).

The odd man out Microsoft will be including H.264 in the next version of Windows or Windows Media Player. H.264 support was pulled at the last moment from a recent update to Vista media capabilities so its going to happen.

Flash has already gone H.264 along with DivX 7 which is also H.264.

With the massive industry support behind H.264 not to mention swarms of H.264 encoders that cater to every possible use & market (especially content authors who are the most important), Theora has a huge mountain to climb.

The only way it will ever get traction is if someone convinces Microsoft to include support for Theora in Windows Media Player/Internet Explorer, there is no way anyone is going to switch away from H.264 en mass just because of principle.