Firefox Closer to Supporting Open-Source Video Codec

Firefox Closer to Supporting Open-Source Video Codec

Mozilla will be releasing a new version of Firefox that could increase the use of open-source video software.


Firefox 3.1, the next major release due by early next year, will likely include support for a new HTML tag specifically for embedding video in Web pages. Firefox 3.1 will also support royalty-free video codec Ogg Theora. Firefox developers said that they've started working on native Theora support, and test builds of the browser incorporating the new feature are obtainable.



The code committed so far is well underway according to a Mozilla engineer who has been handling the project, "but it's a start towards using a common codec across all platforms and will improve as we get towards the 3.1 release." When the upgrade is finalized, Firefox users won't have to download a plugin to play Theora content. Another cited advantage is that Web developers can just use a <video> tag to mark content, rather than needing JavaScript to launch a video.



Videos in formats such as .AVI can be converted to Theora using VLC, an open-source streaming media server, video player and converter from the VideoLAN Project. Another open-source converter is ffmpeg2theora. Firefox's work will streamline the delivery of video to users, wrote a user by the name of J5 on his blog.