Google Enables VP9 Video Codec In Chromium 161
An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google revealed that it was planning to finish defining its VP9 video codec on June 17 (today), after which it will start using the next-generation compression technology in Chrome and on YouTube. The company is wasting no time: it has already enabled the free video compression standard by default in the latest Chromium build."
Re:Firefox support (Score:5, Informative)
I went to the Mozilla IRC [irc] (have Chatzilla [mozilla.org] installed before clicking) and typed this:
firebot: vp9 bugs
and got this:
Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023 [mozilla.org] , , nobody, NEW, Implement VP9 video decoder in Firefox
So it's not ASSIGNED to anybody yet, meaning "when" it'll be patched in isn't known.
And now you won't have to ask about a Firefox bug on slashdot ever again, because you know a more reliable place to ask.
Re: Firefox support (Score:5, Informative)
> but last I heard Firefox didn't support webm/vp8 only ogg
It's been available for years now. They added support for webm/vp8 around 2010*
For a better comparison see the chart a few lines down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Browser_support [wikipedia.org]
*https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2010/05/19/open-web-open-video-and-webm/
As patent encumbered as H264... (Score:0, Informative)
Google's dreadful Codecs are as patent encumbered as H264, but with none of the advantages. x264, the open-source H264 encoder, is the best video encoder on the planet. x264 gives the best quality for filesize. x264 gives the best quality for encoding speed. x264 gives the best quality for low latency streaming. x264 does it all, and does it fantastically well.
x264 is free. x264 does NOT come from the NSA R+D division we know as Google. All modern computer hardware decodes H264 (the video streams produced by x264). H264 decoders in software are available for free from the VLC project.
VP8 is extremely crap. VP9 is a tiny bit less crap at best. Both codecs came from a company that (badly) stole compression methods from openly published descriptions of the MPEG initiatives, and used the fact that the codec was originally closed-source to hide this fact. When Google bought VP8, it bought a complete dog of a codec.
Using VP8/VP9 from Google is as bad as buying the Xbox One from Microsoft. Support the true open-source movement. Support true excellence in programming. Support a team that has worked tirelessly to optimise their work on EVERY PC processor, from both AMD and Intel. Support the best video encoder in the world. Support x264, and tell Google where it can stick its proprietary garbage. .
VP9 vs. H.264 (Score:5, Informative)
VP9 is still a work in progress, so no hard numbers as yet. One of its goals is to achieve 50% better quality with the same bitrate compared to VP8. Another goal is to provide a better encoding efficiency than H.265 which has the same approach on achieving a better quality around 50% compared to H.264.
Google actually did a direct comparison between VP9 and H.264 on a sample file at its recent I/O event and showed off a 63% reduction in file size. As for the quality, see the pic for yourself [favbrowser.com].
As for the licensing issue, Google cut a deal with the MPEG-LA consortium that controls H.264 to licence their patents [webmproject.org] for VP8 and VP9. So there is low possibility of any user of VP9 of being bogged down by patent lawsuits.
Why should you care? Unlike H.265, VP9 is free for commercial use [osnews.com]. If your use is non-profit, there is no difference between the two.
Re:Versus H264 advantages are what? (Score:5, Informative)
From a technical point of view it's basically h265's peer. That's partially because it's largely based on the same tech as h265, in the same way VP8 was largely similar to h264. And is speculated that it has the same licensing issues that VP8 had, for most of the same reasons.
And the speed issue is entirely due to an almost complete lack of hardware support. And while h265 already has announced and demonstrated support, I am not aware of any VP9 support so far.
And doing VP9 decode in software has order-of-magnitude higher requirements than VP8. If YouTube serves up a VP9 video to your phone, you'll wish for the good old days of Flash video.
From the q&a afterward, it is mentioned that average vp9 quality is within 1% of h.265, but it didn't sound like h.265 was anywhere near ready to roll out, with the only available option being a horrifically slow reference encoder. As for speed, they claim it is about 40% slower than vp8, which is twice as fast as h.264. As such, vp9 should handily outperform h.264 in software.
The open source and royalty free vp9/opus [opus-codec.org] combination sounds like an very compelling option for the html5 video tag, and may become a de facto standard before h.265 is widely deployed. Hardware support for vp9 is also in the works, so if the codec lives up to the claims, there no longer appears to be any good reason to put up with the MPEG LA.