Google saves web video: Launches new completely free codec

[Asher]

Google open-sourced the VP8 codec, which they bought recently when they got On2. It's competitive with h264 in quality. Now VP8 is 100% open-source, and royalty free.

They also launched a new container for web video: WebM. Based off of Matroska (mkv) with support for things like multiple audio streams to choose from, subtitles, chapters, titles, etc. It marries VP8 video with free Ogg Vorbis audio.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/google-launches-open-webm-web-video-format-based-on-vp8/

Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8

Google's plan to open-source the VP8 video codec it acquired when it purchased a company called On2 hasn't exactly been a secret, and the company's finally made it official today as part of a new format called WebM. The WebM container is based on Matroska, with VP8 video and Ogg Vorbis audio streams packed inside -- Google says the format is efficient enough to support playback on lower-power devices like netbooks, tablets, and handhelds, while the encoding profiles are simple enough to limit complexity when you're trying to create WebM files. WebM is open-sourced and licensed royalty-free under a BSD-style license, so all those H.264 patent licensing concerns shouldn't be an issue -- and as you'd expect, Mozilla is supporting WebM right off the bat, with support in Firefox nightly builds as of today. Chromium nightlies will also support WebM as of today, with Chrome early access builds getting support on May 24 -- and Opera is listed as "coming soon." Google's also going to be supporting the format as an option for YouTube playback, so that should drive adoption in a big way, but the big question is whether Apple and Microsoft will roll WebM support into Safari and IE and onto their mobile platforms. We'll see -- Google definitely has the ability to push a format into the mainstream.

Summary? Suck it, Apple. There's no ****ing way they can back h264 now with their "wide open internet" bull****.

[Fake Boris]

[Asher]

Firefox 4 nightlies and Chrome nightlies already support it. Opera has pledged to support it. Every single video on YouTube is being converted to it.

http://hacks.mozilla.org/2010/05/firefox-youtube-and-webm/

Five important items of note today:

1. Google will be releasing VP8 under an open source and royalty-free basis. VP8 is a high-quality video codec that Google acquired when they purchased the company On2. The VP8 codec represents a vast improvement in quality-per-bit over Theora and is comparable in quality to H.264.

2. The VP8 codec will be combined with the Vorbis audio codec and a subset of the Matroksa container format to build a new standard for Open Video on the web called WebM. You can find out more about the project at its new site: http://www.webmproject.org/.

3. We will include support for WebM in Firefox. You can get super-early WebM builds of Firefox 4 pre-alpha builds today. WebM will also be included in Google Chrome and Opera.

4. Every video on YouTube will be transcoded into WebM. They have about 1.2 million videos available today and will be working through their back catalog over time. But they have committed to supporting everything.

5. This is something that is supported by many partners, not just Google and others. Content providers like Brightcove have signed up to support WebM as part of a full HTML5 video solution. Hardware companies, encoding providers and other parts of the video stack are all part of the list of companies backing WebM. Firefox, with its market share and principled leadership and YouTube, with its video reach are the most important partners in this solution, but we are only a small part of the larger ecosystem of video.

We’re extremely excited to see Google joining us to support Open Video. They are making technology available on terms consistent with the Open Web and the W3C Royalty-Free licensing terms. And – most importantly – they are committing to support a full open video stack on the world’s largest video site. This changes the landscape for video and moves the baseline for what other sites have to do to maintain parity and keep up with upcoming advances in video technology, not to mention compatibility with the set of browsers that are growing their userbase and advancing technology on the web.

At Mozilla, we’ve wanted video on the web to move as fast as the rest of the web. That has required a baseline of open technology to build on. Theora was a good start, but VP8 is better. Expect us to start pushing on video innovation with vigor. We’ll innovate like the web has, moving from the edges in, with dozens of small revolutions that add up to something larger than the sum of those parts. VP8 is one of those pieces, HTML5 is another. If you watch this weblog, you can start to see those other pieces starting to emerge as well. The web is creeping into more and more technologies, with Firefox leading the way. We intend to keep leading the web beyond HTML5 to the next place it needs to be.

Today is a day of great change. Tomorrow will be another.

[Hauldren Collider]

apple can suck google's hairy balls now

[Krill]

Isn't it fun watching Google rape all of the evil bastard corporations in the world?

[Koyaanisqatsi]

*waits patiently for Microsoft to announce IE support*

[Asher]

http://openvideoalliance.org/2010/05/google-frees-vp8-codec-for-html5-the-webm-project/

What was announced

-WebM is a new open-source project sponsored by Google.

-VP8 is now a royalty-free video compression technology (“codec”), like Theora. It’s licensed using a BSD-style license. “WebM and the codecs it supports (VP8 video and Vorbis audio) require no royalty payments of any kind. You can do whatever you want with the WebM code without owing money to anybody,” reads the project blog.

-VP8’s audio companion is actually Vorbis, Theora’s sister codec.

-Chromium, Firefox, and Opera builds are available today. Chrome builds will shortly follow. No statement yet from Microsoft or Apple regarding support in their platforms.

-Some WebM-formatted videos are now available for users who are in the YouTube HTML5 beta. so Google is already leveraging its position to advance open video. All videos that are 720p or larger uploaded to YouTube after May 19th will be be encoded in WebM as part of its HTML5 experiment. Google will continue to offer H264 files as well.

-WebM support in Android is expected in the Gingerbread release (currently planned for Q4, 2010)

-Google engineers are working closely with the ffmpeg project, Sorenson, and others to ensure that a wide variety of software packages and embedded devices will play VP8 video. DirectShow filters are available today for Windows users to try, and GStreamer plug-ins are coming soon for Linux users. Many existing devices will support it through future firmware upgrades—Google is going head-to-head with H264 for set-top boxes and mobile devices. Google is also funding research for hardware decoding. “We’re working closely with many video card and silicon vendors to add VP8 hardware acceleration to their chips,” reads the project page.

-Interestingly, Adobe will also be incorporating the VP8 codec into the Flash player.

HTML5 and the next generation video web

First, a little background. Most videos on the web today are delivered using a combination of proprietary technologies: Flash and H264. These technologies were essential to early innovation with video on the web, and they will be here for some time to come. But for the continued evolution of the medium, free and open video technologies must be made available to developers, businesspeople, and creators.

HTML5, like Flash, enables developers to write advanced web applications, including video. But HTML5 has a significant advantage over Flash: applications written in HTML5 are woven into the fabric of the web. Content delivered in Flash is usually stuck in a silo. Flash apps generally don’t talk to the rest of the web. It’s hard for search engines and other apps to talk to Flash apps. It’s hard to integrate Flash apps with other web services.

By contrast, content delivered in HTML5 has an easy time talking to other pages and services. That’s because HTML5 is made of the same stuff as the open web. HTML5-delivered content will connect seamlessly with the social web, creating new opportunities for creators to connect with audiences. In the not-too-distant future, HTML5 video will be the foundation of amazing and ubiquitous features like audio and visual search, conversational video, and automatic subtitles. Since the next generation of rich media web applications must be integrated with the rest of the open web, it’s clear that HTML5 is the future of online video. But there is a catch: which video formats will be universal across browsers?


Split formats

Since HTML5 video began shipping in browsers last year, video format support has been split. Firefox, Chrome and Opera support the free and open source Theora; Safari and Chrome support the proprietary H264 (as will Internet Explorer sometime later this year). With such inconsistent format support, HTML5 has been slow to supplant Flash video as the preferred method of video delivery on the web. Apple’s mobile devices (iPhone and iPad) have accelerated deployment of HTML5, but Apple’s format of choice is H264. The proprietary nature of H264 has been a hard pill for open web advocates to swallow. Software and devices which use this technology must pay royalties to MPEG-LA, a licensing body which represents the interests of patent holders. This is a major problem for downstream innovators, who must wrangle with unpredictable fees, terms and conditions to use web video.

Developers must have the latitude to create new applications and business models, without asking for permission or bowing to the whims of platform vendors. Web video must not come attached with a tax.

Yet—as critics of H264 point to the unpredictable licensing fees associated with its use, and critics of Theora argue that it is technically inferior—web video formats have been in a stalemate for about a year. With the introduction of a freely licensed, high-quality codec, Google may help break this stalemate and quickly advance HTML5 adoption.

Open source v. royalty free: what’s the difference?

Open source usually connotes transparency and shared development in a given software project. But equally important is the freedom to use the technology without paying for it or asking for permission to use it. VP8 is both free in price and free to adapt and use. Though H264 video is free for end users, and free for certain distributors through 2016, many vendors and businesses must pay millions of dollars to use the technology.

Further, MPEG-LA has a large patent pool, and has frequently intoned that all modern video codecs infringe on these patents. It will be interesting to see this position tested, now that Google has entered the fray with a high-quality royalty free codec.

What’s the catch?

Google wants to own its own destiny. As the largest distributor of video online, simply relying on the goodwill of the H264 patent licensors puts Google in an uncertain position. But Google is also interested in seeing more video online and across the web; that means more data to analyze, more stuff to search, more stuff to run ads against.

There’s also the possibility that the industry will be slow to adopt WebM based on submarine patent fears. A few years ago, Microsoft released the proprietary WMV9 as the open VC-1, which they claimed to be royalty-free. Shortly after this benevolent gesture, dozens of companies emerged from all corners claiming patents on VC-1. Within a year, a VC-1 licensing company was set up, and its “patent-free” status was rolled back.

The WebM project page acknowledges this possibility: “These licenses are revocable only if the licensee files a patent infringement lawsuit against the VP8 code that Google released…. standard BSD license and the VP8 license is that this license grants patent rights, and terminates if patent litigation is filed alleging infringement of the code.”

What happens to Theora?

It’s possible that this decision by Google will create an environment where there are several popular video formats (as there are currently several popular image formats). Google, in fact, has advocated for Theora as an alternative codec for mobile devices, and recently funded research for native decoding on ARM processors. As with other web formats, choice and competition are good.
Wikipedia is currently the largest site currently serving Theora video. Wikimedia Foundation’s head of communications Jay Walsh has said that the site is open to hosting multiple video formats, just as it currently hosts multiple image formats. “Ultimately, this isn’t so much about switching formats as it is about making more options available for more web users,” he said to NewTeeVee.

What about Apple iPads, iPhones, and Safari?

Apple’s mobile devices have so far been the biggest motivators in the marketplace for HTML5 adoption, as they don’t support Flash. But VP8 support is not likely, at least in the short term. The Apple ecosystem is highly deendent on H264, and all current Apple devices have on-chip decoding optimized for H264. This and custom routines in Apple operating software help preserve battery life, harmony with iTunes Store purchases, and more. It will likely be possible for users to enable VP8 support in Safari with a Quicktime component, but native support is unlikely for the foreseeable future.

[DanS]

As far as I know, the missing piece is that Google is not indemnifying the industry for use of VP8 once MPEG LA starts going after VP8 users for patent infringement.

[Asher]

If MPEG-LA does try that, I've a good feeling it would lead to patent reforms in the USA. Finally.

It's also my understanding that the most generic of the MPEG-LA patents are expiring rather soon.

[Asher]

*waits patiently for Microsoft to announce IE support*

http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx

Microsoft will support VP8 codec, as long as the system has one installed. This is not unsurprising -- the implementation of video in IE9 is a DirectShow/Windows Media Foundation component that uses system codecs.

Theoretically it'll support every codec as long as you install it on your system.

[Drake Tungsten]

YouTube censorship is far more important to me than some codec feud between Google and Apple that I'd never even heard about.

[Krill]

Supposedly WebM Spec is pretty close to h264...

http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

[Asher]

I was going to link the article but I decided not to given the source.

The author of that article has spent years of his life writing an h264 encoder and is trying to commercialize it to make money from it. He has a vested interested in pushing h264 hard.

[Asher]

http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2010...-with-webm.ars

Broadcom's chipset for mobile video acceleration (which the vast majority of phones use) will support WebM acceleration by Q3 this year.

AMD, ARM, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm (the largest mobile SoC vendor) are all collaborating on HW acceleration as well for WebM.

[Kuciwalker]

Sweet jesus yes.