Google to Open-Source VP8 for Html5

[Soopafresh]

http://newteevee.com/2010/04/12/google-to-open-source-vp8-for-html5-video/

Google will soon make its VP8 video codec open source, we’ve learned from multiple sources. The company is scheduled to officially announce the release at its Google I/O developers conference next month, a source with knowledge of the announcement said. And with that release, Mozilla — maker of the Firefox browser — and Google Chrome are expected to also announce support for HTML5 video playback using the new open codec.

Google hopes to stem that divide by making VP8 open source, providing a high-quality and open alternative to existing codecs. On2 first announced VP8 in late 2008, promising more efficient video compression than other available codecs. At launch, On2 went so far as to claim that it could provide “50 percent bandwidth savings compared to leading H.264 implementations.”

[SatStorm]

Few tests I done sometime ago (a year or so) with VP8, didn't show me better picture compared to x264. Did something change in the meanwhile?

[Kerry56]

This is an interesting analysis of VP8: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

[ronnylov]

Even if the quality is lower with VP8 I think it is good that it is a free format without any license issues for video on internet. h.264 is free now for non-commercial use on internet but you do not know what kind of fees MPEG-LA might put on it in the future.

I also like the idea of html5 where the browser itself contains the video player so you can avoid flash in the future. The webm container which use VP8 and ogg seems like a nice alternative for video freedom on internet. Hopefully the VP8 encoder will improve quality in future but it is a long way to reach the quality of x264...

Personally I would have preferred if h.264 became a free format so we could enyou native h.264 play back without the use of flash in the web browsers.

[Bonie81]

Making Open Source is inviting Developers for future improvements for FREE!
VP8 with vorbis audio (with audible artifacts, still buggy), Just can not match x264 and AC-3 quality and performance.

It's a long journey to travel on country roads.