The Evolution of Web Video
Dec 16
If you’re iffy on the geek-talk surrounding video on the web, you’re not alone. Like everything technical, there are multiple layers of complexity to ‘appreciate’, and nothing is static — it all changes over time. What you knew yesterday is obsolete today. In fact it was probably obsolete yesterday! So what’s the average human to do? Reference a handy visual-aid, of course:
Sure, this isn’t the complete picture. Why isn’t early MPEG on here? What about player technologies, like Flash Player? Where’s YouTube? Honestly, I left those things off because they dilute the minuscule amount of humor I’m working with here… but, I’ll justify it this way: the story of video quality on the web is mostly about the advancement (and adoption) of compression algorithms — the underlying mathemagic that squeezes video down to something less than than mammoth-magnitude. (I’m not kidding about the magic: one second of uncompressed standard-definition video is about 30MB. Compressed with h.264, it’s about 63KB. That’s a reduction of about 500:1!)
The point is, walk before you run. Know that h.264 and MPEG4 are the compressors that pass for ‘good’ on the web right now, and you won’t be left behind with Australopithecus and the other IE6 users. Then note this: that last guy in the diagram still has a way to go…
Dec 17 at 15:12
This graphic is begging to be animated, complete with simulated compression.
Jan 11 at 17:31
Do you consider IE6 a browser that should be supported now that we have so many new browsers? I personally feel it’s a dinosaur on the verge of exstinction, would love to hear your thoughts on that. But great point on the 500:1, love me some h.264.