WebM - an open web media project
webmproject.org
webmproject.org
http://nightly.mozilla.org/webm/
One of the most important parts here is that Google owns the patent rights to VP8, and is licensing them to the public under a royalty-free grant -- but the grant doesn't apply to anyone who files a patent suit against VP8, which means the patents are still useful for defensive purposes.
* This is, of course, part of the outcome Mozilla hoped for from not supporting the non-free H.264 format.
You'll have to ask a lawyer whether it's truly irrevocable, but clearly that's the intention.
(Little editorial comment: There will be no fight, Theora is already dead. That was already pretty clear yesterday and there can be no more doubt about it today.)
"a container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container"
I wonder what reasons they have for not using Ogg, or at least real Matroska? I notice their container format doesn't support subtitles, and is "undecided" on tags. Why on earth would they drop such important functionality, especially when every other modern container supports them?
It would be nice if Google and Mozilla add support for VP8 in Ogg or Matroska, so users can continue to use existing processing tools for web video.
e: Looks like there's already an Ogg mapping for VP8 at < http://people.collabora.co.uk/~slomo/webm/ogg-vp8.pdf >
That's ridiculous. Smart competitors commoditize complements. Google's goal is to commoditize content and content players. When cash stops exchanging hands for content it starts exchanging hands for advertising. This is a strategic move by Google, not an altruistic move.
Say hello to your new master, same as the old master.
Biggest news imho, Adobe Flash Player is listed as a supporting software, but I can't see any details yet. Pretty good list of supporters altogether actually:
VP8 has the best chance of becoming the HTML5 video standard since Mozilla flat out refuses h.264, yet Apple and MS have yet to publicly suggest refusal VP8.
The iPad and iPhone won't be the only players in the game. Android is getting more popular, and if Google releases a tablet that plays WebM youtube videos, I don't see why Apple wouldn't try to support it as well.
[1]: http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2010/04/interesting-ti...
And one of the low cost platforms for Android phones had a mysterious "On2" hardware acceleration block on their schematics at least 6 months ago.
A quote from ARM today on the VP8 announcement:
The efficient processing is helped by the fact that the VP8 codec is already optimized for Cortex-A/v7A class processors with the NEON SIMD (Single Instruction Multiple Data) engine. NEON allows the ARM CPU to work on multiple bits of data in parallel, and optimizations for ARM11 processors are also available
http://blogs.arm.com/software-enablement/support-for-vp8-and...
a container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container
Am I the only one who couldn't help laughing when reading that part?
This is the kind of progress that makes me happy to tears.
If those two claims hold true, VP8 has significantly more value than the current options and should be the standard.
And codecs are really really hard to create, for technical and legal reasons. It's not like 5 new production-ready video codecs come up every year. We might not see another credible open source codec for five years.
"We believe that it is in the public interest for HTML5 video to be backed by multiple, open and royalty-free codecs available in a way that is consistent with the W3C license standards. We would absolutely consider H.264 if MPEG LA would make it available under open web terms as defined by the W3C standards. We stand by our position on Theora." (Mozilla press statement)