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Post date: Aug 27, 2012 4:57:38 AM
Originally posted May 23, 2010
Back on August 5th, 2009, I read that Google acquired On2 Technologies, a company that designs video codec technology. I then heard about an Open letter to Google made by the Free Software Foundation asking Google to release the On2 VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license.
After finding out about this, I did my part and somewhat joined in on the petition by way of mentioning it on Google Buzz.
Well it turns out that during Google I/O, just this last Wednesday (May 19th, 2010), there was an announcement that there is now a Google-sponsored project called WebM which is dedicated to creating an open and royalty free video format for use with HTML5 video. That same day Google began releasing the VP8 codec under a BSD-style, royalty-free license.
To me this is a huge development in what media on Internet and connected devices will be like in the coming years along with HTML5. Previously there have been closed-source, patented codecs, like MP3 (for audio) and H.264 (for video). With the VB8 codec being opened up, MP3 and H.264 will finally loose ground, and soon we’ll have not only browsers no longer requiring 3rd party MP3 and H.264 codecs to play music and video on the Internet (they’ll just be in by default in the browser/Operating System you use), we’ll also have devices such as our smartphonoes, set-top boxes, and video cameras able to playback and record in an open format that I feel will become the standard on everything. This also opens up the door for video and audio editor software to become much cheaper and the open source ones to get much better, since the companies and people making the software will no longer need to license and pay royalty fees due to using the closed codecs their software had to use to appeal to the masses (who didn’t really know any better either, it just worked and if they weren’t pay ing the license, why change).
OGG vorbis, an open source audio codec, had always been competing with MP3 but it never took off because hardware manufacturers knew nothing better and MP3 had already had a huge foothold in the industry. In the Linux world, OGG vorbis and their open video codec, Theora, had a strong foothold, due to a decison for the closed codecs needing to be added manually to get H.264 and MP3 to work. Adding these codecs was something I’ve always had to do since my MP3 player only plays MP3′s, and my video camera only records in H.264 video, so the only way to play it back is to use an H.264 codec. With Google making the VP8 codec open, which is as good as (or better) than H.264, hardware manufactures will have an incentive (license/royalty free codecs) and will hopefully start making devices which support these open standards. Initially we might see hybrids which support many types of closed and open codecs, but I suspect that in the end, Free as in Free, and Open will win out!
For more information on WebM, including how to start using VB8 (in development/nightly built versions of browsers now, but we’ll all be using it soon probably without even knowing, things will just work!):
The Free Software Foundation’s statement on WebM and VP8, congratulating Google after it was opened up:
http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement-on-webm-and-vp8
Info on VP8:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP8
Comparison of a previous open codec, which almost made it:
http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html
A video showing the H.264 and VB8 codec side-by-side:
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