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WebM, VP8 and VP9

Revision as of 19:52, 4 August 2011 by Ciaran (talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 199.168.136.44 (talk) to last revision by Ciaran)

WebM is an audio-video format requiring no patent royalties (something very rare in among audio-video formats). WebM has the backing of organisations such as Google, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and FSF. VP8 was originally developed by On2, which was bought by Google, who released the format as free software.

WebM uses the VP8 video format and the Ogg Vorbis audio format.

Using and advocating WebM

Technical details

WebM defines the overall format, with:

  • The overall file structure based on the Matroska container
  • Video compressed using the VP8 video codec
  • Audio compressed using the Vorbis audio codec

Google's WebM software

The WebM project claims that WebM is 100% free, and open-sourced under a BSD-style licence.[1]

VP8 video codec

VP8 is a video codec and format created by On2 (now owned by Google) and recently released as open source under a BSD-like licence. It offers a higher quality alternative to the Ogg Theora codec, in the battle against the proprietary and patent-encumbered H.264 standard. The Xiph Foundation, which manages development of Ogg Theora, has announced their support for WebM.[2]

MPEG LA threats

The CEO of MPEG-LA, Larry Horn, claims to be preparing a patent pool to be used against VP8, and thus WebM.[3] The threat may not be credible since similar claims were made against Ogg Theora but never materialised.

Google countered with a WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative (25. April 2011).

Related pages on ESP Wiki

External links

References

  1. http://www.webmproject.org/about/
  2. "Xiph.Org announces support for the WebM open media project". http://www.xiph.org/press/2010/webm/. "The Xiph.Org Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the WebM open media project as a project launch partner. As announced earlier today at the Google I/O Developer Conference, the WebM format combines the VP8 video codec, the Matroska container, and the Vorbis audio codec developed by Xiph into a high-quality, open, unencumbered format for video delivery on the Web. Xiph will continue to contribute to WebM as a whole and collaborate in its further development and deployment." 
  3. http://www.mpegla.com/main/pid/vp8/default.aspx