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 What you knew yesterday is obsolete today.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.
May 10 at 17:36
I do find it odd that they put mpeg so late in the game, although Flash Players and YouTube would fall under the FLV formats.
May 11 at 07:56
@Brian:
Like Abe mentions, early MPEG isn’t on there, but the one they do list, MPEG-4, did come later in the game. MPEG-1 (Video CD video) and MPEG-2 (DVD video) came earlier, but aren’t mentioned. I’m not sure if the graphic intends to depict the evolution of digital video formats and codecs, or just ones that were used for web delivery.
May 11 at 08:13
Yes, my focus was on web video specifically. Which doesn’t excuse omitting MPEG-1 or DivX, which both saw enough usage on the web to justify inclusion. What can I say… there were only so many Neanderthals in the drawing.
May 11 at 10:23
Oh, I read the article again and saw that you actually explain that early mpeg isn’t on there. On an unrelated note, I think animated gif video is highly underrated in the realm of web video formats.