Google launches open source, royalty free WebM video
Although Google’s plans to release an open-source video codec was widely discussed in the tech community for some time, the big G has made it official. Google’s acquisition of On2 and their video codec has become WebM.
According to the announcement during Google I/O conference, WebM is a container based on the popular Matroska, with VP8 video and Ogg audio streams packaged inside. What makes WebM compelling is that Google has decided to make it both open source and royalty free, which could set it up to be the HTML5 video standard moving forward. This flies in the face of the push by both Apple and Microsoft for h.264, which is neither open source or 100% royalty fee. Before WebM was officially announced, the only other option was Ogg Theora, which is open source, but there were possible patent disputes brewing, if adopted. Ogg is also far less efficient than h.264, while WebM is supposedly efficient enough to be handled by lower end devices such as netbooks and handheld devices.
Certainly, having an open standard moving forward is the right way to go, and there’s a wide array of industry support for WebM out of the gate, including Adobe, which will support VP8 video in Flash, and Mozilla, which will support it in browser.
As for hardware partners, the only big name missing off the list is Intel. Every other major chip maker is on board, from AMD to Texas Instruments. It should be pointed out that although Intel may not be on the list, many Intel-based devices are coming with Broadcom’s Crystal HD for video decoding, and Broadcom IS on the hardware list.
I suspect that with the clout behind Google, and the open source nature of the project, that WebM may become the standard for HTML 5 once it’s finished baking.
