Group items tagged

The next-generation VP9 and HEVC codecs are the latest incremental refinements of a basic codec design that dates back 25 years to h.261. This conservative, linear development strategy evolving a proven design has yielded reliable improvement with relatively low risk, but the law of diminishing returns is setting in. Recent performance increases are coming at exponentially increasing computational cost. Daala tries for a larger leap forward- by first leaping sideways- to a new codec design and numerous novel coding techniques. In addition to the technical freedom of starting fresh, this new design consciously avoids most of the patent thicket surrounding mainstream block-DCT-based codecs. At its very core, for example, Daala is based on lapped transforms, not the traditional DCT.

Really interesting article about the latest codec war for WebRTC (and the Cisco move on open sourcing their h.264 codec (and paying the licensing fees !). The HTML5 war may seem finished, but it's just continuing on the WebRTC front. Too bad that the HTML5 spec did'nt enforce a mandatory to implement (MTI) codec...

To enable HD, and prepare for this plugin-free future, Google quietly started to transition Hangouts from the H.264 video codec to VP8, an open and royalty-free video codec the company released back in 2010. One of the more immediate consequences of the switch-over to VP8 is that Google is phasing out the use of third-party code provided by the video conferencing technology vendor Vidyo. Google started licensing technology from Vidyo back in 2008 when it first brought video chat to Google Talk, and the companies continued to cooperate when Google launched Hangouts and eventually absorbed Talk and other messaging clients in that platform.

Google pousse activement les acteurs du Web à adopter un nouveau standard vidéo, le VP9. Successeur logique du VP8, qui a entraîné quelques conflits de droits et licences, le VP9 permettrait « d'économiser 50% de la bande passante requise » pour lire une vidéo en streaming en comparaison des besoins observés avec VP8 ou H.264, déclarait Ronald Bultje, ingénieur de Google lors de la Google I/O.

Wikimedia is considering support for H.264 video codec to boost video on Wikipedia

"Intel, NVIDIA, ARM, Broadcom, LG, Philips, Samsung, and Realtek are among the many companies that have agreed to incorporate VP9 codec support. Hardware support will be very beneficial as Google begins pushing 4K / Ultra HD resolutions via YouTube. At the moment there aren't any desktop GPUs with drivers offering VP9 (or VP8) hardware-based video playback. "

Google sticks with VP8, opposes Cisco's push to make H.264 the default codec for WebRTC

Sony, LG and Sharp are all getting ready to ship 4K TVs that support VP9.

Comparing the current AVC/h264 vs HEVC/h265, quality study states "For the synthetic content considered in this study, a 75% bit rate reduction can be achieved based on subjective results". This number is huge, but in all cases looks promising for higher quality and more accessible video content streaming in the future.

Skype have added support for one-to-one VP8 video calling in Skype 5.5 for Windows. If both users in a Skype video call are using Skype 5.5, the call will use VP8 to encode the video streams for optimum transmission across the Internet. Skype also uses VP8 for group video calling.