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H.264 and VP8 Compared
TheReal_sabret00the writes with a snippet from StreamingMedia.com: "VP8 is now free, but if the quality is substandard, who cares? Well, it turns out that the quality isn't substandard, so that's not an issue, but neither is it twice the quality of H.264 at half the bandwidth. See for yourself."
480x360 and some really old video, seriously? If you're going to compare then at least compare with HD resolution, and even then you should probably compare with all low, medium and high bitrates.
However, it looks like H.264 kicks VP8's butt with high motion video. Some of the VP8 pictures were quite blocky too.
MPEG LA, the group that formed a patent pool for H.264, does not protect their licensees against all patent infringement - but just against patent infringement suits by their licensors, and only then in the limited case of the specific case of patents included in the pool, and only then for limited times.
Q: Are all AVC essential patents included?
A: No assurance is or can be made that the License includes every essential patent. The purpose of the License is to offer a convenient licensing alternative to everyone on the same terms and to include as much essential intellectual property as possible for their convenience. Participation in the License is voluntary on the part of essential patent holders, however.
So you are in no way more protected by using the restricted H.264 license than you are by using the open VP8 license in the US. In most of the civilized world there's no such thing as software patents, so the only issue is which one of these is technically best.
And now MPEG LA is trying to form a patent pool for VP8. Will wonders never cease? Patents are broken. Let us hope that Monday SCOTUS rules that software patents are void in RE Bilski.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Once again someone is comparing a codec to H264 using some small as hell resolution.
Welcome to 2010, if it's not encoded at 1080p nobody cares.
Hmm.
Fairly inebriated, both encoding methods look 100% similar to me.
Let me check again with bloodshot, regretful eyes in the morning,.
The comparison seems to use sorenson squeeze (based on MainConcept if I am not mistaken).
I don't believe it can mach x264's capabilities and speed.
Using x264 for comparison would be much fairer.
The analysis over at Dark Shikari's blog was conclusive in saying that VP8 is basically a poor mans H.264, borrowing bits of H.264s specifications and ultimately not quite as smart, so the comparison points in the article aren't that surprising. The quality point is moot however anyway, since it's pretty obvious that VP8 uses so much from H.264 that it's very likely of falling victim to the patent pool.
Because the Mobile Phone Makers Marketing Departments decided that they are a MUST HAVE item for every phone.
That means you have one with you whenever you have your phone with you which for some people these days is every moment of the day.
I have one on my phone only because there were no other new phones available when my last bit of Nokia crap went belly up. This means that when ever I visit more than 90% of my customers, I have to leave it in my car or at security as Camera Phones (except those used by employees) are banned.
The image quality is poor at best especially when compared to the Pro Nikon DSLR Bodies & Lenses that I take with me into said Customers for the very purpose of taking pictures....Which just happens to be my business.
Sigh, there sure ain't nothing as queer as folk.
While you're doing that "see for yourself" stuff, take a close look at the data on how the files were encoded. I mean a really close look; put on your scientist hat and pay close attention. See for yourself that the test was staged to support the view that they're espousing.
Maybe VP8 is comparable to H.264 or maybe not - but it's very hard to tell when the comparisons are so biased. I suspect that the real truth is that they're both about equivalent; either one is equally good at encoding video.
In any event, the choice between these codecs will be made in many locations and often the consideration is going to be which is "legally solid" and which is "legally risky". With the continuing media campaign being waged to make VP8 seem to be infringing all kinds of patents, the outcome here isn't certain.
"but if the quality is substandard, who cares?" -- if VP8 is simpler than h.264 and as a result reduces the power consumption of your handheld device so that it can stream 20 hours playback of video, then you'd care.
Shit stinks, and these guys will get sued. Sad facts, you can flush them both but they still stink.
...is there an app for that?
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
I think we need not worry about this in the long term. In the short term people are accustomed to the fact that their 9 month old phone doesn't have the latest technology - it's a phone, and they got it for cheap on contract. When their contract is up they go for the hot new stuff, which next week will include VP8 compatibility on Android phones and iPhones, which are both of the platforms that drive tech today. RIM will come around to whatever's hot because they don't want to lose share. As for the desktop, who needs it? Desks are not comfortable and they're not mobile. We move about now. We go where the work is, or we work wherever we happen to be.
Since I'm posting I might as well throw in some gems I've gleaned from the news. The ringtone hopes of phone vendors of being media content providers is pretty much dead. In the 2009 numbers online distribution has surpassed physical distribution for the first time (and we're not going back). Most audio is now bought online. One in four tracks purchased is bought through iTunes now. Amazon MP3 at about 1% is still in the top 10, but it's not going to be the wunderkind of media distribution once hoped.
If iTunes gets serious traction on video sales we're on our way to an iTunes culture. From my POV that would be unfortunate.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Given their track record on other types of content I agree that having Apple drive the future of video distribution would be very unfortunate...
As far as H.264 vs VP8 support in the future, you do have a point that the cellular market will adapt more quickly than most. Though you have ot take into account that Apple now controls an impressively large percent of that in a few short years, and as of yet they have pretty much laughed at VP8...
By "desktops" I really meant "PCs" - in the loose sense of full featured computers, whether they are workstations or laptops, Windows, Mac or Linux. Cell phones and TVs aren't going to replace those just yet. Tablets may start to cut in to them, but Apple is already sitting pretty there, so see above as to that resistance to VP8...
For the other big non-desktop market, TVs/STBs - that's going to be the biggest resistance to anything non-H.264 (and I say this working in that industry...) The cable and satellite industry just spent a huge amount of money converting all of their broadcast systems and set-tops to H.264, and they don't like doing that very often. Additionally, the chips that go into all TVs and Blu-Ray players all support H.264 (and MPEG2, etc) but not much else - which means the current VOD services that run on them like Netflix, Vudu, CinemaNow, YouTube, etc are all H.264 based.
Anyway, it will be interesting to see the politics play out... after reading a whitepaper on VP8 they are doing a lot of cool things with it, and if anyone can make it succeed, it's Google.
The company had been around since the early 1990's. They were well aware of video patents, and monitored patent filings quite closely. Many of their features were adopted on the day that the statutory 1 year gap between publication of a method and possible patent filing expired. Much of the VP8 codec is actually prior art for the patents in the H.264 pool. On2 codecs have been used in Theora, Flash and Microsoft video products. If MPEG LA goes after them, it seems likely MPEG LA will lose more than they win - especially since all of us will be against them. Additionally, they'll be in court facing off with their patents against Google, and I hear Google has a few folks who know how to look stuff up like prior art. Heck, Google probably did this looking up before they decided to spend a hundred million dollars on buying the company just to give away its technology. It seems likely Google did look some stuff up before they decided to transcode their entire YouTube library to VP8. They're diligent like that.
And so having done the math, MPEG LA is investigating creating a patent pool to support VP8. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. It seems unlikely they'll find success in this, but they will try.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For the other big non-desktop market, TVs/STBs - that's going to be the biggest resistance to anything non-H.264 (and I say this working in that industry...) The cable and satellite industry just spent a huge amount of money converting all of their broadcast systems and set-tops to H.264, and they don't like doing that very often. Additionally, the chips that go into all TVs and Blu-Ray players all support H.264 (and MPEG2, etc) but not much else - which means the current VOD services that run on them like Netflix, Vudu, CinemaNow, YouTube, etc are all H.264 based.
All of the major video providers on the Web - even the porn ones - are now migrating to HTML5 and seem ready to offer their content on whatever Codec you have handy. They're not choosy. They don't have a dog in this fight. They're all about getting eyeballs on their content so they can sell ads against that, or sell access to their content. They really don't care. If you have flash, they'll give you flash. If you have VP8 or H.264, they'll give you that. They can afford to transcode and store three copies, or transcode on demand. We are after all paying them to serve us up the video we desire.
So have you heard about Google TV? It seems Google is about ready to offer TV over IP. That's going to hose up the business model for most cable TV providers. It's disruptive. If Google delivers TV well I'll be moving to IP only on my Comcast cable connection (right now I have the triple play), and I imagine I'm not alone there. I've got 50Mbps down, and that's more than fine both for my web surfing and to drive all of my TVs with video. It will probably put the brakes on the one hour a year of local programming I usually watch, but I won't miss it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
None of the comparisons are of exactly the same frame. 3 of the 6 images have different times in the corner.
I suspect the writer selected frames so H.264 won, but gave VP8 one win at the end to not seem biased.
Also his 'standard SD encoding test file that I've been using for years' would also be a source of suspicion. It is possible that his source file is already in a format that encodes better into H.264 than it does into VP8. And has already been mentioned here the resolution of the source is quite low for todays HD broadband world...
He used Sorenson Media to encode the files. In all probability they may be just better at setting some of the encoding parameters in the codec they have had longer...
And that was just a quick look. There are possibly other flaws that I haven't noticed yet.
[The Universe] has gone offline.
I hate the article for not stating whether those are key frames or P-frames.
Add India and Pakistan to China, and they're most of the civlized world. They're actually more than half of all the people in the world. None of them care about your list (Yes, I know Chinese patents are on your list - even the Chinese don't care about them - China has differring views on intellectual property that are difficult to describe here but can be summarized as: meh).
We forget sometimes in the US that our entire country is not as old as a decent British country house, nor a Taiwan temple, nor even a Chinese family land lease. Hell, the US is not even as old as most decent books. We are not most people and we're never going to be. Our inflated estimate of our importance is the cause of much misunderstanding in the wider world. The sooner we let it go the better.
We've got some decent insight on human interaction to share, but others may be rightfully suspicious of new ideas when they have a system that's similar that is proven to work over a span of 5,000 years. To those folk a quarter millenium is still just a "noble experiment", and frankly looking at what we're doing with it, we might not make it to a half millennium so who are we to say they're not civilized?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... but see for yourself.
http://imgur.com/4AFTe.png
x264 fanboys, get out!
YET ANOTHER lame as comparison between video formats using still images, the only way to watch a video in both comparing stills misses so much of the point for a good codec it's not even funny.
I really don't follow developments in the video scene that often, so I thought I'd ask. Is there really something about the specifications of the H.264 format that makes it better (or worse) than VP8?
Could it be that the difference in quality between the two codecs be due to the maturity of the encoders for H.264? Because if I read it right, it's been there for much longer than VP8 has...
When their contract is up they go for the hot new stuff, which next week will include VP8 compatibility on Android phones and iPhones, which are both of the platforms that drive tech today.
Would they inlcude hardware decoders for V8 too ? Why include new hardware if there is no clear quality advantage and vendors have already standardized on h264 ? Unless Google pulls a microsoft and starts aggressively pushing this tech on everyone at the exclusion of alternatives it isn't going anywhere.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
... but I couldn't really see much difference between the images.
I didn't even read it however I did look at the pictures, the differences and they aren't comparing the same frames some are but most of the times it differs a second or something, for all we know the next frame could look exactly the same on h.264 as it does on vp8 so .. but just looking at the pictures I could make up where this review is going.
Now if you write a review and are pointing out pixelated pictures, at least compare the same frames, ..
Govt: damned if they do, damned if they don't. You want governments to listen to you, the people. But the corporations wanting this are "the people" too. These corporations make false grass roots movements to increase patent coverage, maintain (falsely, but you try and get an economist to show them wrong without their ability being questioned by vested interests) that this is needed for small businesses (see how many people post how removing patents will kill the little guy, real people posting, ones you want your government to hear) and so the government implement.
It's YOUR problem for not fighting it, it's YOUR problem for allowing corporations to use mouthpieces (libertarian think tanks too) without YOU tearing off the veil.
You vote them in and keep voting them in. You think "my vote is wasted, because this is a solid seat for these bastards" and do not vote against the immovable incumbent, just bitch about how it's government's fault. Just like the libertarian mouthpieces who fight for patents want you to.
YOUR problem.
Fix it.
On2 would not be listed if they didn't join. If you're going to say "On2 isn't suing, so there's no case", then consider that On2 didn't sue MPEG/LA for the same reason that MPEG/LA hasn't sued Theora or VP8.
Individual users cannot be sued for patent infringement unless they make a business off it: you are allowed (in fact HAVE to. else how does an inventor see how to improve someone else's work: the reason patents are wanted?) to use a patented product for your own education. Open Source is educational: you can see the code and learn from it, and who wants the source code if all they're going to do is run the compiled binary?
You have to prove that someone is breeching patent protection. And that's almost impoassible with open source reference implementations used b individuals.
PS it costs lots of lawyer time and you're not going to get any money, so why sue?
Do you think that Google may have i dunno SEARCHED for prior art and such??
(Hey bob could you get nodes BYWQ1-1000 through BYQ1-5000 searching the index for anything we need to avoid in V8?)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Who in their right mind would compare codec quality by encoding screenshots in a lossy image format??? To add insult to injury, the GIF image files in the article have a .jpg extension.
This article, and the person who wrote it, are worse than useless.
The immediate problem with this article is that it uses the Sorenson encoder rather than the state-of-the-art x264 encoder for h.264. If x264 was used, the h.264 encodes would demonstrate higher quality and the quality conclusions would most likely be more in favor of h.264. Since x264 is both the best h.264 encoder, and FOSS, it is the ultimate benchmark for any new video codec implementations, and that should be used. The point of VP8 however is that it is now the best free video codec, replacing Theora in that category (which is still being improved and will probably remain relevant in some niche scenarios still). The quality of VP8 is likely not going to surpass h.264, even with open source tinkering, but it will still revolutionize the web through html5 video, it will achieve widespread software support in a matter of a few months, and your devices will pick up support in a year or so (the next generation hardware). VP8 is free, and good enough to be in the ballpark of h.264 even if it is not as good. And that is a huge win.
https://dalgamotor.wordpress.com/ - Elektronik beyinlere ozgurluk asisi (Turkish)
Why exactly? Apple's previous track record with content is not only getting the music industry to agree to sell content on the internet, but to (eventually) do it without DRM. Even if they weren't the very first to offer it, they made it a profitable and viable model that broke the industry's mindset that was firmly "why would people pay when they can just get it off a p2p service".
In their history they tend to go for (if patented) at least open codecs and formats (with the exception of Sorenson in Quicktime, but it didn't last long).
Here you can find some test results:
http://www.quavlive.com/video_codec_comparison
There is a little website out there, perhaps you've heard of it called Youtube. It has millions, probably billions of videos on it. People upload them all them time, share them with friends all the time, and so on. Most of them are just 480x360. It has the option, recently added, for higher resolution, but the vast majority are below SD.
Hate to break it to you but most people don't give a shit about HD. They just want to see a silly cat jump in a box and if that is at low rez, they are perfectly happy. In fact, on the web you often don't want high rez video. A high rez stream is not useful if the browser window isn't even big enough to display it, and it would take much longer to load. A low rez stream can be easily wrapped with text and can load almost immediately on broadband.
This isn't just true of web and mobile apps either, though those are huge markets and what VP8 is being targeted at (notice the standard Google is pushing is called WebM). People are happy with it elsewhere.
Finally, codec quality doesn't matter so much at high data rates. Through enough bits at something, and the differences disappear. So sure, H.264 looks great 40mbps @ 1080p, the Blu-ray maximum. Guess what? So does VC-1, so does even MPEG-2 (which some Blu-rays use). There isn't nearly as much difference when you toss tons of bits at the codecs. I suspect you'd find that VP8 is very hard to notice the difference at a similar rate.
The real question these days is at lower rates. If I want to encode something at 500k for playback on the web, how's it look? THAT is what matters, to the extent codec quality matters at all. Really though, people are plenty happy with things as they are. Some blocking and so on are acceptable, so long as they get to see their silly cat video.
Is it just me, or is it that the person selected the frames that were worse in VP8 and better in H.264. Look at the time codes. Why not pick the exact same time code for all comparisons? Flawed test to me!
They probably have all the material ready. After all, let's say you wanted to look at the claims of a couple thousand patents. You then wanted to look for prior art out there. What would you need? Well first you'd need access to a massive repository of information for all over the web going back years. You'd then need to be able to mine this information for specific pieces of data quickly and efficiently... Wait a sec, that is PRECISELY what Google does. They are the uncontested kings of data crawling and mining. They can search like nobody else, and are extremely good at pattern matching and so on.
As such it is reasonable to assume that they have done their homework, and that they could hit back hard with prior art and the like in the event of a suit. They've said as much as well. They say: "We have done a pretty thorough analysis of VP8 and On2 Technologies (VP8's developer) prior to the acquisition and since then, and we are very confident with the technology and that's why we're open sourcing."
Sounds to me like they've researched all this and said "Yep, we can win this one if it comes down to a fight."
This is pretty ridiculous. I read the Slashdot summary:
Then go to the article, and read this at the top of the page:
And then I go down to the article below that:
They released a new version in march, http://diracvideo.org/2010/03/schroedinger-1-0-9-released/, which is supposed to have great improvements at both quality and performance.
The issue here is not the quality of H.264. It's the fact that H.264 is owned by a congregation of patent trolls.
We don't care if H.264 can compress a 2 hour movie in 720x576 to a 50KB file in a loss-less manner. We don't care if it bends space-time to deliver video FTL. Even if it did, I'd rather use MJPEG which is patent-free and supported by all browsers out of the box.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
As long as there's content available in VP8 format, phone makers will consider including VP8 support just as a way of distinguishing their phone from the others (especially if adding VP8 has little incremental cost). Once one manufacturer does it, by the next generation all manufacturers will do it.
Look how many audio formats are available for you portable music player.
*sigh* back to work...
So have you heard about Google TV? It seems Google is about ready to offer TV over IP. That's going to hose up the business model for most cable TV providers. It's disruptive. If Google delivers TV well I'll be moving to IP only on my Comcast cable connection (right now I have the triple play), and I imagine I'm not alone there. I've got 50Mbps down, and that's more than fine both for my web surfing and to drive all of my TVs with video. It will probably put the brakes on the one hour a year of local programming I usually watch, but I won't miss it.
I'm glad someone else sees the implications of this. Cable providers are done.
Track record of selling one format of media, wow that is impressive, and they weren't even the first to go DRM-free. Just maybe if the pushed to be first offering DRM-free music it might be a relevant indicator of what they do in the future, but as it stands my interpretation of how they handled it and how they handle the iPhone leads me to believe they are at least very comfortable offering DRM encumbered media and won't push to go DRM-free until the DRM starts looking to be detrimental to their market share.
The H.264 video on this comparison site is encoded using Baseline Profile, which is really only for low-power mobile devices, and is not representative of what H.264 is actually capable of. Switching to Main or High Profile gives us CABAC coder (10-20% improvement), bi-directional frames (20-40% improvement), adaptive 8x8 DCT (3-5% improvement). A MP or HP H.264 will blow VP8 out of the water every time. The fact that H.264 manages to look better in most cases despite being encoded using Baseline Profile (and Sorenson Squeeze, which doesn’t seem to have ever been compared to other H.264 encoders and probably is not as good as x264) is a pretty damning assessment of how good VP8 actually is—that is to say, not very.
[insert witty comment here]
They stated from the very beginning they wanted DRM-free, but the content providers would not go for it. It was not their choice, but it was the only way to get the content in the first place and open up the music industry to even consider selling music on the net in the first place (regardless of other online services).
Do you remember "Rip, Mix. Burn"? Do you remember the trivial method of defeating the DRM, that Apple strongly encouraged you to use (from within iTunes itself) whenever you downloaded a song? They never wanted it, and did the minimum required to implement a deliberately trivial scheme that could be broken from within the iTunes app itself!
I also offered only one example, so the sarcasm really isn't warranted. Well, perhaps it is but it is misplaced. Other examples would be using H.264 for iTunes video content (still not DRM free yet due to movie/tv studios, but being worked on), original choice in iTunes to rip your CDs as either AAC or mp3 (compared to Windows media player using .wma), settling on an open, documented XML format for their office apps (iWork, etc) rather than something closed like .doc or .docx), use of .mbox format for their Mail application, rather than a closed MS-only format as used in Outlook/OLE...
Any more examples?
Our intellectual property laws allow our economy to realize the value of intangibles, to the recipient of the intangible at the time that he realizes the value, and to the producer at the same time. That puts food on people's tables, clothes on their backs, roofs over their shoulders.
Indeed, one could argue that it was the European recognition of 'intellectual property' that ultimately resulted in the explosion of the machine age, followed by the information age. Before that you got all sorts of mechanical toys - but they were regarded as toys. The Romans, for example, had all the technology necessary for railroads, but they never developed them. Trade secrets were developed, lost, then developed again. It was inefficient.
Now, you don't want to lock stuff up for too long, and I do think that we need to go back to requiring an operational product for a patent, but on the whole, patents are a good thing.
I don't read AC A human right
You say "Tons of companies" think they have a patent claim against VP8? Says who?
Not even the MPEG LA goes that far. They've only said there's is "interest" from some parties in creating a licensing pool for VP8. As WebM is a direct threat to MPEG LA's existence, this stance shouldn't be surprising. I have evidence to suggest that the MPEG LA is VASTLY overstating this "interest" in creating a WebM patent pool. My guess is that the interested parties are comprised of MPEG LA themselves and perhaps one or two of the MPEG LA participants, at most.
As for your claim that there's nothing Google can do. You're wrong again. Against most of the H264 patent holders, there's quite a lot Google can do.
As for that evidence, below is the list of all the H264 patent holders that I'm aware of. See anything interesting?
Apple Inc. - AT&T - DAEWOO Electronics Corporation - Dolby Laboratories Licensing Corporation - Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute - France Télécom, société anonyme - Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Foerderung der angewandten Forschung e.V. - Fujitsu Limited - Hitachi, Ltd. - Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. - LG Electronics Inc. - Microsoft Corporation - Mitsubishi Electric Corporation - NTT DOCOMO, INC. - Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation - Panasonic Corporation - Robert Bosch GmbH - Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. - Scientific-Atlanta Vancouver Company - Sedna Patent Services, LLC - Sharp Corporation - Siemens AG - Sony Corporation - Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson - The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York - Toshiba Corporation - Victor Company of Japan, Limited -
The compelling take away is that there is only one patent troll on this list. The vast majority of the patent owners are organizations that are actively involved in the manufacture or development of technology products. For that reason, Google has tremendous power to dis-incentivize those companies from litigating against VP8. Most big companies don't file patents in order to collect licensing fees, they do it to be able to use patents they don't own without worrying about litigation and licensing fees.
The WebM license states that the instant any organization litigates against VP8/WebM, the litigating organization will lose any rights to use On2's (now Google's) video patents. One should also expect that any legal assault on WebM would also result in a speedy legal counter attack. The threat of such protracted and Pyrrhic litigation should prevent nearly all of the listed companies from litigating against WebM. The only flaw in this strategy is the existence of patent trolls. Trolls succeed because they don't make or develop anything, they have no fear of mutually assured patent destruction.
This means that with the exception of the single patent troll on the list, it's unlikely that anyone using WebM will have anything to fear. As for the single patent troll on the list, I fully expect Google has made doubly sure that WebM doesn't violate their patents, perhaps even having gone so far as to alter the WebM code base to specifically avoid the troll's patents.
Google's patent portfolio means that even if WebM violates H264 patents, most technology companies won't dare assault WebM or users of the technology If Google has done their homework, I believe WebM will very quickly become the world's standard video platform, speedily eclipsing H264. Unlike h264, WebM costs nothing to license. FREE is a tremendous incentive for adoption. I expect video cameras will start shipping with built in WebM encoding by the end of the year, and unless H264 drastically revises their licensing terms, the format will be a hazy memory in a few short years.
Those patents in GB are not enforceable, simple as that. What they CAN be is used to get patent protection for those same unprotectable ideas in, say, the US.
All of the major video providers on the Web - even the porn ones - are now migrating to HTML5 and seem ready to offer their content on whatever Codec you have handy. They're not choosy. They don't have a dog in this fight.
If only that were true... but the reality is that of those four I mentioned only YouTube is considering HTML5 right now, because there is currently no DRM solution for it. I could add in other large players like Hulu as well (who has stated "they are looking at it but it doesn't serve their needs right now"). Premium content will only be available via solutions that provide DRM (right now mostly Flash, Silverlight, Fairplay, or some other proprietary custom streaming solution).
People may not like it, but it doesn't matter. The content owners - ie, the studios - just are not going to allow their content to be streamed without DRM right now...
Look how many audio formats are available for you portable music player.
I, like the many (a vast plurality, and almost majority), have an iPod (or iPhone, in my case). How many open audio formats does it support? Ogg/Vorbis? Nope. FLAC? Nope. It supports AAC, MP3, WAV, and Apple Lossless. Wow, what a variety...
But it's not even really up to the phone manufacturers. It has to be implemented by the chip manufacturers (though of course the phone manufacturers do have input into the chip features, and a few of them like Samsung even make their own).
That said, Broadcom (more STBs than phones, but they dominate the STB and Blu-Ray market)was one of the companies stating they would support it. If it weren't for that, I'd say VP8 was stillborn. With their hardware support, it may just get in enough devices to have a chance in the embedded market...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBfYQOSSPqc
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I think it's pretty conclusive that medium or high profile settings with h264 are definitely going to be superior and therefore preferred by encoders wishing to retain detail and PQ over quick encoding speeds. And to be honest, if you have a decent processor, h264 is not all that slow considering the quality it can achieve.
24-bit PNG for the screen captures.
Given that VP8 officially has only one codec and H.264 has multiple codecs available all in varying stages of completion, and diverse quality levels, he should compare vp8 video to H.264 multiple videos each encoded by another H.264 encoder.