RE: Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8

Hi

Gregory Maxwell's comment on the article is worth reading:
http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2010-May/047795.html

Kind regards
Trygve Lie



On Thu, 2010-05-20 at 13:34 +0200, Davy Van Deursen wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> On May 20th, 2010 at 12:10, Raphaël Troncy wrote:
> > Cc: 'Media Fragment'
> > Subject: Re: Google launches open WebM web video format based on VP8
> > 
> > Dear all,
> > 
> > > Fyi …
> > > http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/19/google-launches-open-webm-web-
> > video
> > > -format-based-on-vp8/
> > 
> > Indeed, it was for me one of the highlight of yesterday's Google IO 
> > keynote. I was excited by the news, given the support it receives:
> > Mozilla, Opera, Google + Adobe (Flash), therefore IE and Safari. But 
> > then, I read this blog post: "The first in-depth technical analysis of 
> > VP8", http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377 which I recommend to read ....
> > 
> > The author wrote: "VP8 would be 'H.264 Baseline Profile with a better 
> > entropy coder', better than theora ... but the main problem of patent 
> > will still be here given the resemblance with H264."
> > 
> > I would be happy to get the opinion of Davy who has more deep 
> > knowledge of how codecs work ...
> 
> The in-depth technical analysis is indeed a must read in the context of this
> discussion, and I agree with the author of this analysis: VP8 performs worse
> than H.264/AVC while it probably still have to deal with patent issues (in
> particular for its spatial intra prediction method -> quoting from the
> analysis: "H.264’s spatial intra prediction is covered in patents and I
> don’t think that On2 will be able to just get away with changing the
> rounding in the prediction modes"). The key question here is "does VP8 has
> patent problems or not?". I'm not an expert on that so I don't know the
> answer. Only if it does not have patent problems, VP8 is a valuable codec
> for Web video and a good update for Theora, otherwise it is just yet another
> H.264/AVC competitor who didn't made it ...
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Davy
>

Received on Sunday, 23 May 2010 21:48:58 UTC