WebM: The Truly Open Video Format is here!

[Sonist]

Google announced that it is opening VP8, the video format it recently acquired for over $130 million.

Huge news for the web, as it provides the missing piece in HTML5: open video (H.264 is proprietary, regardless of what Steve Jobs tells you).

Hopefully, coming to a website and a tablet near you very soon.

From the WebM Project page:

"The 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."

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by Sonist

Google announced that it is opening VP8, the video format it recently acquired for over $130 million.

Huge news for the web, as it provides the missing piece in HTML5: open video (H.264 is proprietary, regardless of what Steve Jobs tells you).

Hopefully, coming to a website and a tablet near you very soon.

From the WebM Project page:

"The 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."

Awesome news I've been talking to some fellow videophiles on another forumwho say this is going to blow up big time in the coming months. Where's the happy bouncing icon...oh there it is....


EDIT: There's also an SVN version of FFMPEG available. OH happy day

[ardeegee]

Gosh, an "open" MPEG-4 compatible video codec! Only 9 years after xvid, an "open" MPEG-4 compatible video codec!

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

Gosh, an "open" MPEG-4 compatible video codec! Only 9 years after xvid, an "open" MPEG-4 compatible video codec!

XVID is reverse engineered from Microsoft's crappy hack, hence the winking semi-colon in their logo (at least it used to have that in it). XVID is h.263 based without any of the complexities and niceties of modern codecs like VP8 and h264 (very limited multi-core support, except again with hacks). WebM has been engineered from source to to take advantage of modern container formats (MKV based) and purpose driven for web delivery. Comparing it to xVid is like comparing realvideo to mpeg2. Not that I don't like XVID, I do, but it has always lived in a grey legal area when it comes to patents, and this WebM format will do away with that nasty aspect of implementation, plus all the modern codec benefits you get from open-source and rapid development.

Yes, I like video.

[=X=]

Very cool, I thought it was a very shady act that MS and Apple are getting ready to sue the Open Source community for using h.264 codes yet Apple was pushing this very technology as an HTML5 standard.

I'm glad to see Google has introduced an open solution. With all the major players backing it up, it should stick as the new HTML5 standard.

Rumors are that MS will included support for WebM in IE9 but considering they where in cahoots with Apple I'd be surprised.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

XVID is reverse engineered from Microsoft's crappy hack, hence the winking semi-colon in their logo (at least it used to have that in it).

You're confusing xviD with Divx which was "winking" because of DiVX.

[lene1949]

I bought a movie for the first time on iTunes... Can I burn that to disk?

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

You're confusing xviD with Divx which was "winking" because of DiVX.

True So XVID Is a hack of a hack of a hack. I remember using XVID for one of my first rips and the then newly released Gordian Knot software. It took 18 hours to process the DVD and spit out a 700mb XVID with mp3 in an .AVI. Ahh the fun of video encoding, every damn year you need a more powerful computer to just to keep up speed.

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by lene1949

I bought a movie for the first time on iTunes... Can I burn that to disk?

Nope, it's infected with horrible Apple DRM that means you're tied to Apple and Itunes when you want to use it. Piracy, I'm afraid, has all the major e-tailers of purchasable video beat hands down.

[ardeegee]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

True So XVID Is a hack of a hack of a hack. I remember using XVID for one of my first rips and the then newly released Gordian Knot software. It took 18 hours to process the DVD and spit out a 700mb XVID with mp3 in an .AVI. Ahh the fun of video encoding, every damn year you need a more powerful computer to just to keep up speed.

If I remember right (now depending on old memories, not google) Divx was the hack of the Microsoft MP4 codec. They then made a "clean room" version Divx when they wanted to go commercial. xviD forked off the open source Divx when Divx went closed source-- but I don't remember if xviD comes from the hacked MS code or the "clean room" code.

If you are talking about AutoGK, and it worked the same way then that it works now (first demux AC3, then convert it to MP3, then test compressibility of video, then run two encoding passes) that's 5 steps slowing it down. When I first started creating Divx files using DeCSS and Flask, it did a 1-step conversion-- and took over 24 hours to convert a typical movie at 320x240. Uphill both ways, in the snow. (This was on an AMD K6-2 400 MHz.)

[Dusty Bottoms]

Originally Posted by ardeegee

If I remember right (now depending on old memories, not google) Divx was the hack of the Microsoft MP4 codec. They then made a "clean room" version Divx when they wanted to go commercial. xviD forked off the open source Divx when Divx went closed source-- but I don't remember if xviD comes from the hacked MS code or the "clean room" code.

If you are talking about AutoGK, and it worked the same way then that it works now (first demux AC3, then convert it to MP3, then test compressibility of video, then run two encoding passes) that's 5 steps slowing it down. When I first started creating Divx files using DeCSS and Flask, it did a 1-step conversion-- and took over 24 hours to convert a typical movie at 320x240. Uphill both ways, in the snow. (This was on an AMD K6-2 400 MHz.)

Yeah, XVID was the fork of the DIVX project, and all this is just so full of memories I'm feeling misty I remember Flask and DECSS and TMPGENC before that for doing VCD's and then KVCD's and then SVCD, but the one I cut my teeth on was the original GK, without the Auto part (AutoGK still works now) you had to do all the separate steps one after the other and then run compressibility tests and apply filters, man it was protracted. And if I'm recalling correctly the first movie I ever converted was the Matrix and I had a 20GB hd Now I can do 720p real time from Blu-Ray dumps on my video encoding rig

I'm hoping that WebM becomes ubiquitous as a delivery format, because we've not had any kind of official video standard as yet. The next step is to see if the file sharers jump on this. Once they do, it'll take off in leaps and bounds (even though I'm reading it's technologically inferior to h264).

[joblack]

Yes, the dictatorship of Apple and Adobe is broken.

Freedom for the Internet

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

Nope, it's infected with horrible Apple DRM that means you're tied to Apple and Itunes when you want to use it. Piracy, I'm afraid, has all the major e-tailers of purchasable video beat hands down.

Thanks...

[Jaime_Astorga]

Originally Posted by joblack

Yes, the dictatorship of Apple and Adobe is broken.

Freedom for the Internet

Amen. Truly this is awesome news for the future of the tubes.

[lene1949]

Originally Posted by Dusty Bottoms

Nope, it's infected with horrible Apple DRM that means you're tied to Apple and Itunes when you want to use it. Piracy, I'm afraid, has all the major e-tailers of purchasable video beat hands down.

Is there any way I can watch this on my TV?