A Sun Video Codec?
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 by Enrico
Michael and I recently read this article on a relatively new project at Sun: “a royalty-free and open video codec and media system”.
There is much debate among members of the W3C about what codec should be the standard for embedded video on the Internet. The W3C has insisted that any video codec standard for the web should be open and unencumbered by patents. The inclusion of video in web standards seems to have been fueled by the popularity of Flash Video delivered by sites like YouTube. Adobe has pushed hard for H.264 and other members have pushed for Theora, a video codec from the Xiph.org foundation, known for Ogg Vorbis. As far as I can see, the matter hasn’t been settled yet.
So why would Sun want to throw their hat into this ring? Personally, I think it’s a strategic move to promote Java on the desktop. Java has done quite well in the enterprise but on the web Flash is basically eating Java’s lunch and Java desktop applications seem to be plagued by performance problems — the JVM is quite large and, at the moment, it is necessary to load it all into memory in order to run a Java application. I hear Java 6 and 7 are promising some better management of that overhead but the point still stands: Java on the desktop isn’t doing so well.
If Sun’s new codec were to become the standard video codec for the web and they created a Java implementation of it, they could possibly rejuvenate Java on the desktop. Sites that previously used Flash Video would switch to Sun’s new video format to comply with standards — web 2.0 sites are especially conscious of standards — and Sun’s implementation of that format in Java would become the preferred way to deliver that video. If the implementation is good enough, developers just might be willing to give Java on the desktop a second glance.
Interesting move, Sun. Now let’s see what you do with it.
Tags: Java/J2EE, Open Source, Sun