WebM: The On2 codec is here, with support from Google, Mozilla, and Opera

Author Topic: WebM: The On2 codec is here, with support from Google, Mozilla, and Opera  (Read 951 times)

Offline Muhammad Younus

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he WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone.

The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors.

WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.

WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container.



It happened. Today, Google is up on stage at I/O unveiling a new WebM project alongside a slew of partners (notably: Mozilla and Opera on the browser side) that gets the On2 codec out into the open. This is huge news for the fight for Open Video, and everyone will now have eyes on Safari.

YouTube will be a huge push here, and you can go to their html5 version: http://www.youtube.com/html5 and check it out. Today it is available in trunk builds on Chromium and Firefox. Soon, an Opera beta, Chrome dev release, and more.

The project is going after:

Openness and innovation. A key factor in the web’s success is
that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP are open
for anyone to implement and improve. With video being core to the
web experience, a high-quality, open video format choice is needed.
WebM is 100% free, and open-sourced under a
BSD-style license.

Optimized for the web. Serving video on the web is different
from traditional broadcast and offline mediums. Existing video
formats were designed to serve the needs of these mediums and do
it very well. WebM is focused on addressing the unique needs of
serving video on the web.

Low computational footprint to enable playback on any device,
including low-power netbooks, handhelds, tablets, etc.*

Simple container format

Highest quality real-time video delivery

Click and encode. Minimal codec profiles, sub-options; when
possible, let the encoder make the tough choices.

* Note: The initial developer preview releases of browsers supporting WebM are not yet fully optimized and therefore have a higher computational footprint for screen rendering than we expect for the general releases. The computational efficiencies of WebM are more accurately measured today using the development tools in the VP8 SDKs. Optimizations of the browser implementations are forthcoming.

Congrats Open Web.

Update: Flash will ship VP8, as will IE9. Now everyone looks at the Safari team :)

(One thing though about IE9 support: “In its HTML5 support, IE9 will support playback of H.264 video as well as VP8 video when the user has installed a VP8 codec on Windows.”). That is a bummer.
Muhammad Younus
Software Engineering Department.