[Lazarus] Promoting Lazarus: A Case Study Video

[Nikolay Nikolov]

On 02/16/2015 11:29 AM, Giuliano Colla wrote:
> Il 16/02/2015 04:47, Den ha scritto:
>> It also plays for me, Ubuntu 14.10 64bit, Chrome.
>>
>
> Thanks to all for the feedback.
> Given other's experience, I tested with Linux-FC14 and it works for me 
> too.
> It must be a CentOs 6 specific issue. Most likely a decoder is 
> missing, because it isn't strictly Open Source. RH is very accurate in 
> providing only purely OS software. Sometimes it's a nuisance.
> I'll investigate.
It's not because of "open source"-ness, but due to patents. The H.264 
codec is heavily patented in the United States and other countries and 
requires an expensive license fee to use:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing

Free browsers such as Firefox only provide H.264 playback capability, if 
the underlying OS has the codec installed. So, it only works in Windows 
and Android, because Microsoft and Google have paid the license fees for 
distributing the codec with the OS.

If you want to support free operating systems, it's better to also 
provide WebM or Ogg/Theora versions of the video:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora

Unfortunately, there are some very popular devices (e.g. the iPhone and 
the iPad) that *only* support H.264 and that don't allow you to install 
other codecs, so if you want the best compatibility, you need two 
versions for every video - one H.264 and one WebM or Ogg/Theora :(

Nikolay
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