Support NeoGAF

[Lord Error]

There's a video here: http://www.digital-digest.com/news-61385-On2-Video-Codec-VS-H264.html comparing VP8 and H.264 side by side. However, it seems to be from ON2, so the video source they chose and the encoder they used for the H.264 video may not have been optimal.

OK, I correct myself - the old FLV Video format wasi/s ON2-VP6, not VP8. For all I know now, VP8 might be much better, I don't think I had a chance to use it. H264 is much better than VP6 though.

 

[CharlieDigital]

OK, I correct myself - the old FLV Video format wasi/s ON2-VP6, not VP8. For all I know now, VP8 might be much better, I don't think I had a chance to use it. H264 is much better than VP6 though.

Actually, it looks like they were H.263 . . .

Again, see the video I linked here: http://www.digital-digest.com/news-61385-On2-Video-Codec-VS-H264.html (and see my caveats on the last page).

 

[Lord Error]

Actually, it looks like they were H.263.............

On youtube, possibly - I just assumed their FLVs would be VP6 as well - I know I just never encoded a video in FLV format that was using anything but ON2-VP6, or the old-old Sorenson Spark. Then when H264 became supported, it was immediately obvious that it was much better in everything.

VP8 does look very good in that comparison video though, and it seems to offer good quality even at such low bitrate (for a 1080p video)

 

[CzarTim]

I just want Hulu to switch from flash, rest is whateves.

 

[Vic]

But ON2/VP8 is still a pretty crappy old codec. It's the old Flash FLV format that's been made all but obsolete when Flash started supporting H264.

You're talking about VP6 which is what the FLV specs use, not VP8.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

WebM natively comes to FFmpeg

Since FFmpeg’s native VP3/Theora and Vorbis decoders (these are video/audio codecs praised by free software advocates) already perform better than the ones provided by Xiph (libvorbis/libtheora), it is highly likely that our native VP8 decoder will (once properly optimized) also perform better than Google’s libvpx. The pattern here is that since each libXYZ has to reinvent its own wheel, they’ll always fall short of reaching the top. FFmpeg comes closer simply because our existing wheels are like what you’d want on your next sports car.

This is pretty big news for reasons I somehow can't quantify. :lol Just trust me.

---​

Winamp now supports WebM

The latest version of our media player, Winamp 5.58 now officially supports WebM video. What is WebM video you ask? WebM is an open, royalty-free, media file format designed for the web.

WebM video files play directly in your media player or web browser using a new technology called HTML5. No plug-ins are required, but you must install a web browser, or use a media player such as Winamp 5.58 (or later), that supports WebM.

Benefits of WebM:
- Very high quality video
- Great video playback performance, even on older computers
- 100% free and open to everyone
- Supported on popular video sites like YouTube

WebM's file structure is based on the Matroska container. WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. The video streams are compressed with the VP8 video codec, while the audio streams are compressed with Vorbis audio codec.


We are excited to be one of the early supporters of the WebM project. And will continually improve & enhance our feature set so that Winamp will remain, The Ultimate Media Player! Lean more about the latest Winamp 5.58 release.

 

[Interfectum]

Google, game, set, and match.

Better luck next time Jobs.

Apple directly benefits from this as well. I'm sure Jobs will be okay.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

As a side note I was erroneously posting WebM news in the Google I/O thread, not knowing about this one. Well, I'll be posting this stuff in the HTML5 thread when that's finished.

This makes VLC and Winamp as the two mainstream media players that support WebM in final releases. Hope to see more in the coming months.

 

[Twilight Princess]

flash will stay forever and ever

 

[PetriP-TNT]

flash will stay forever and ever

Well I sure hope not.

 

[Zombie James]

That was quick...

Back when I originally reviewed VP8, I noted that the official decoder, libvpx, was rather slow. While there was no particular reason that it should be much faster than a good H.264 decoder, it shouldn’t have been that much slower either! So, I set out with Ronald Bultje and David Conrad to make a better one in FFmpeg. This one would be community-developed and free from the beginning, rather than the proprietary code-dump that was libvpx. A few weeks ago the decoder was complete enough to be bit-exact with libvpx, making it the first independent free implementation of a VP8 decoder.

As these benchmarks show, ffvp8 is clearly much faster than libvpx, particularly on 64-bit. It’s even faster by a large margin on Atom, despite the fact that we haven’t even begun optimizing for it. In many cases, ffvp8′s extra speed can make the difference between a video that plays and one that doesn’t, especially in modern browsers with software compositing engines taking up a lot of CPU time. Want to get faster playback of VP8 videos? The next versions of FFmpeg-based players, like VLC, will include ffvp8. Want to get faster playback of WebM in your browser? Lobby your browser developers to use ffvp8 instead of libvpx. I expect Chrome to switch first, as they already use libavcodec for most of their playback system.

Keep in mind ffvp8 is not “done” — we will continue to improve it and make it faster. We still have a number of optimizations in the pipeline that aren’t committed yet.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Was going to post that... eventually. Glad to know I'm not the only one up to date on this stuff.

The post says ffvp8 will probably make its way into the next VLC. Awesome. I really hope the two teams (Google's libvpx and x264's ffvp8) keep sharing ideas and get both encoders/decoders as fast and efficient as possible. This is only the beginning. As he said, they haven't even started working on full Atom support.

 

[Pctx]

Good updated news. As we get further away from adobe having a death grip on some content, it seems the web is truly ready for a revolution.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Adobe and the MPEG-LA. Don't forget them, they both have an equal death grip on internet video.

 

[NomarTyme]

That was quick...

woah. My netbook is happy about this.

 

[zoku88]

Good updated news. As we get further away from adobe having a death grip on some content, it seems the web is truly ready for a revolution.

You shouldn't really put blame on Adobe, it's not like they're resisting this change (they are actually supporting webm.)

It's mostly a content provider thing, since they were afraid of their videos being copied.

 

[SouthernDragon]

I am not fully understanding this thread, but Google is doing something good.

So yay!

 

[hateradio]

I am not fully understanding this thread, but Google is doing something good.

So yay!

Basically: A new decoder (and encoder (?)) is being produced through FFMpeg, so it's open source. In all computers, it works better than the official libvpx. It's still in the early stages, so once it's optimized your web videos should play as smooth as butter in all systems.

 

[ThatObviousUser]

http://blog.webmproject.org/2013/03/vp8-and-mpeg-la.html

Google and MPEG-LA call a truce over possible anti-VP8 patent pool/scary submarine patent threats, VP8 implementers now indemnified against any patents those in the MPEG-LA hold.

Today Google Inc. and MPEG LA, LLC announced agreements that will result in MPEG LA ending its efforts to form a VP8 patent pool.

The arrangement with MPEG LA and 11 patent owners grants a license to Google and allows Google to sublicense any techniques that may be essential to VP8 and are owned by the patent owners; we may sublicense those techniques to any VP8 user on a royalty-free basis. The techniques may be used in any VP8 product, whether developed by Google or a third party or based on Google's libvpx implementation or a third-party implementation of the VP8 data format specification. It further provides for sublicensing those VP8 techniques in one successor generation to the VP8 video codec.

We anticipate having the terms of our sublicense ready in the next few weeks. When those terms are ready we will blog about them here, so watch this space.

We launched the WebM Project in May 2010 with the goal of providing the web with a high-quality, open, royalty-free video codec that anyone can use, and that can inspire future innovators. Today's announcement is an important step toward that goal.

 

[.GqueB.]

What are you nerds yammering on about?

 

[wsoxfan1214]

What are you nerds yammering on about?

Thank you for your contribution to the topic. You can leave now.

Good to hear. Hopefully this shit can move forward now.

 

[Slavik81]

Why not post a new thread?

 

[ThatObviousUser]

Why not post a new thread?

I've posted several in the past and they never got that many posts, lol.

 

[ymmv]

Thank you for your contribution to the topic. You can leave now.

Good to hear. Hopefully this shit can move forward now.

Too late. VP8 serves no purpose at all by now. H.264 is the default standard, and H.265 is going to be its successor.

 

[Oppo]

Too late. VP8 serves no purpose at all by now. H.264 is the default standard, and H.265 is going to be its successor.

If you still want to serve HTML5 video to Firefox users, you still need VP8/WebM.