WebM and Theora

It is all about the codec.

Containers

Files are files. avi, mov, mp4, mp3 - These are file formats. They have little to do with codecs beyond what is "normally" contained within these file formats. These are containers. These hold the data you see and hear on the screen.

Codec

A codec is the math that is run on the data to make it something that you can store one digital media. The end result is a big pile of numbers that mean nothing until you run them backwards (decode) through the codec and back in to the proper data to display or play on a sound card.

Money

Companies spend a lot of money making a better codec. If you make a better codec the world will create YouTube and pipe it in to every computer in the world. Then, you can drop the hammer and force every one to pay you baskets full of cash or you will turn off the spigot.

The reason there are a million different codecs has nothing to do with which is better or which is easier. It all boils down to money. Which will protect my content and make me look better and thus worth more to every one in the world?

Theora and WebM are free as far as I can tell. I have not done a lot of homework. The quality is not as good as H264 in my opinion. I can't put up an example on YouTube because YouTube converts everything to their format, which happens to be H264 or Flash move format at the writing of this article. YouTube is, however, dropping H264 because of rights.

Apple: The Ambiguity of "Open" and VP8 Vs. H.264 Posted by CmdrTaco on Monday January 17, @12:37PM "With all the talk about WebM and H.264, how the move might be a step backwards for openness, and Google's intention to add 'plugins' for IE9 and Safari to support WebM, this article attempts to clear misconceptions about the VP8 and H.264 codecs and how browsers render video. Firefox, Opera and Google rely on their own media frameworks to decode video, whereas IE9 and Safari will hand over video processing to the operating system (Windows Media Player or QuickTime), the need for the web to establish a baseline codec for encoding videos, and how the Flash player is proprietary, but implementation and usage remain royalty free."

SlashDot

Hit the SlashDot article for a bunch of informative links.