Safari doesn't stream H.263 video???

Question

Level 1

26 points

Safari doesn't stream H.263 video???

It appears Safari doesn't stream H.263 video. iPhone has wifi and Apple shouldn't expect iPhone
users to throw away their existing camera and video products that don't do H.264 yet. What's
the reason for not supporting H.263?

PC, Windows XP Pro

Posted on Oct 23, 2008 12:25 AM

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Answer 1

SolarPower Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 25, 2008 1:19 PM in response to Tamara

What so bizarre is that MJPEG which utilizes a lot more network bandwidth works just fine with wifi under Safari. So it doesn't make any sense for not supporting the H.263 MPEG-4. I hope Apple
will address this issue soon.

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Answer 2

Tamara

Level 6

13,744 points

Oct 23, 2008 4:48 AM in response to SolarPower

No one here knows why Apple chose one format and not another.

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Answer 3

Oct 26, 2008 8:59 AM in response to SolarPower

What so bizarre is that MJPEG which utilizes a lot more network bandwidth works just fine with wifi under Safari. So it doesn't make any sense for not supporting the H.263 MPEG-4.

It does when you consider that H.264 (which the iphone supports) uses a bitrate of, at most half that of H.263.

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Answer 4

SolarPower Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 26, 2008 9:26 AM in response to Noiseboy2006

Bandwidth is less of an issue when we're talking about wifi. My point is MJPEG which utilizes even
MORE bandwidth than H.263 MPEG-4 works fine with wifi under Safari. Apple shouldn't expect
iPhone users to throw away their cameras and video equipments that don't do H.264. Apple
needs to support H.263 MPEG-4 during transition, just like allowing to run Windows on a Mac.
BTW, we're talking about MPEG-4 here, not MPEG-2.

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Answer 5

Tamara

Level 6

13,744 points

Oct 26, 2008 9:46 AM in response to SolarPower

There is software that will allow you to convert h263 to h264 format.

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Answer 6

Oct 26, 2008 11:00 AM in response to SolarPower

Apple shouldn't expect iPhone users to throw away their cameras and video equipments that don't do H.264.

I don't think they expect that, but I do suppose they expect you to convert your video to a format that the iPhone supports. H.263 has been around since 1996 and has been superseded by other more efficient codecs.

MJPEG was designed in part to enable easy streaming via HTTP and is still commonly used as such.

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Answer 7

SolarPower Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 26, 2008 4:48 PM in response to Tamara

I'm not talking about playing a recorded video file. Rather, a live video streaming from a device
like IP security camera. Some of the cameras do support H.264 but many don't including high
end ones. Not yet anyway. There is no good reason for Apple to allow MJPEG and then not
supporting the H.263 MPEG-4. That's my point.

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Answer 8

SolarPower Author

Level 1

26 points

Oct 26, 2008 4:59 PM in response to Noiseboy2006

I do have video conversion software. But that doesn't do me any good for streaming live video
from IP security camera. Many cameras simply don't do H.264 today including the ones that
cost around 2K.

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