

Google's VP9 web video codec enabled by default in upcoming Chrome - gizzlon
http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Google-s-VP9-web-video-codec-enters-home-straight-1891686.html

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reidrac
See: [http://www.youtube.com/html5](http://www.youtube.com/html5)

Unfortunately the amount of videos encoded _only_ with h.264 is still
important and you can't avoid Flash if your browser/OS doesn't provide h.264.

So yes, having open video formats and codecs available is great, but please
Google... we need you to use them.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Are you talking about YouTube? They have everything in vp8. It's something to
do with their ad delivery system that forces you back to Flash (and therefore
H.264) for some videos.

~~~
reidrac
Read the notes: [http://www.youtube.com/html5](http://www.youtube.com/html5)

Not all videos are in webm format, you can add &webm=1 to any search URL.

ie. Hacker News search: about 3,780,000 results, about 1,320,000 results with
webm flag.

In fact sometimes I get an an error like this:
[http://i.imgur.com/dBPICoM.png](http://i.imgur.com/dBPICoM.png)

(using Chromium 25.0.1364.172 with no h.264 support)

I don't know if this is because of ads or what.

EDIT: typo

~~~
ZeroGravitas
They claimed to be encoding all new videos uploaded, and to have already
processes up to 30% of their entire back-catalogue, and 99% of viewed videos
about two years ago. So I'm guessing they're pretty much done by now.

[http://youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/mmm-mmm-good-
yo...](http://youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/mmm-mmm-good-youtube-
videos-now-served.html#uds-search-results)

If I do a similar search to yours, the ones that disappear from the &webm=1
search are all presented to me with Flash, not with HTML5/H.264 but I believe
if you embed them in another site you should get the HTML5/Webm version (not
actually tested this, just read it as a workaround). You could also try
searching for them on a Wii, since it's Youtube app uses Webm.

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sologoub
One thing here doesn't make much sense - the compression algorithm technically
is a mathematical algorithm. Mathematical algorithms cannot be patented. So
why is the patent on something that cannot be patented an impediment in this
issue?

That said, I'm sure there are ways to confuse the algorithm part by throwing
some mentions of physical servers or what not into the patent application...

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taylorbuley
Theora/.ogg/Vorbis, VP8 & now VP9/webm, H.264...

Just as we were starting to finally get resolution around a "standard" Codec
for web video -- namely, Firefox recently capitulating on H.264, paving the
way for professional video on the web -- Google Chrome comes to make life
difficult anew.

I understand that Google has more skin in the web video game than anyone (viz
YouTube), but for the rest of the web this pushes HTML5 video even further out
on product timelines.

~~~
zimbatm
The MPEG-LA is for profit and they will be asking for more licensing fees once
their domination is complete. Trading freedom for convenience is probably not
a good thing on the longer term.

~~~
buster
This. The point is that a "standard" should not be ruled by licenses and
patents!

------
doctorpangloss
It's good that there is healthy competition again in end user video codecs.
H.264 is a nearly 10 year old video codec, and HEVC's complexity means
implementing it as a high-quality open source library will take a really long
time.

Google's different incentives will at least force HEVC development to
accelerate.

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ancarda
>Google and its partners in the WebM project want to establish the codec as a
royalty-free standard for HTML5 video and for web video calling using WebRTC.

They could also remove, as they promised, h.264 support from Chrome. You know,
that would help to push VP8/9 a lot.

~~~
dan1234
Or would it push people back to h.264 supportive browsers once they find
videos from xyz site don't play?

~~~
gtaylor
Yeah. I like and use Chrome, but Firefox is back to being pretty good as well.
If Google were to do something so drastic as yanking H.264 support from
Chrome, I would probably re-evaluate my choice. But that's the great thing
here: This is an individual choice.

I think Google has enough clout in Youtube to move us forward without pulling
a Steve Jobs anti-Flash stunt. At the time, there were very few alternatives
to iOS in quality, but at the present time we have plenty of good browsers. A
"pull-the-plug" approach would alienate a good number of users, who could just
pick up and go with Firefox, or Safari, or IE, or Opera.

I like that they're gradually rolling this stuff out, trying to get hardware
companies to add built-in decoding, etc. It won't happen overnight, they're
playing the long game.

