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New VP8 Codec SDK Release Improves Performance
An anonymous reader writes "Google released a new version of the VP8 codec SDK on Thursday. They note a number of performance improvements over the launch release including 20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed, an over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in VP8 'best' quality encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still or slow moving source video. In other WebM news, Texas Instruments has a demo of 1080p WebM video playing on their new TI OMAP 4 processor, in both Android and Ubuntu."
I hope other hw manufacturers follow!
They may have managed to increase performance, but the real question is have they increased the actual output quality (without having to tweak the crap out of it):
http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/377
Also, I thought we've determined that PSNR is NOT a very good measure on the quality of a codec...
From the complete lack of comments am I right to think that - after H.264 became eternally free for streaming - no one cares about VP8 anymore?
Ok, so we have mkv files, mp4....and now this? Why would I want to use it when mp4 is totally free and is pretty much the best and the standard?
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
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When i read the stuff you wrote, i begin to ask myself... did he really not read the article?
You are owned by Teh Google.
That they didn't make the announcement on no royalties until AFTER WebM hit the scene. Before that, there weren't royalties, but it was a "grace period" thing that they could rethink the license terms every 5 years. They can still do that with regards to license costs for encoders and decoders.
That this happened after WebM came out is not a coincidence. They finally had some competition. The plan was likely to try and make AVC the one and only standard, then start charging more streaming royalties (there were streaming royalties when it first came out). However they realized if they kept that ambiguous, WebM might take over.
Also initially I think they figured they could brow beat Google in to playing along, because they are under the belief they have patents that cover all video compression. However you know Google did their homework both before they bought On2 and after they got the technology and before they released WebM. They checked, and Google is precisely the organization that is good at the data mining and searching needed to determine if any patents applied. They likely either found that none did, or that if any did they were subject to prior art, or that Google had patents that they could use against AVC.
Whatever the case, AVC is now free to stream forever, but not completely free. So now we have two choices and that isn't a bad thing. For commercial software/hardware, AVC is probably the better choice since it seems to be higher quality. You buy the license, life is good. For free software, WebM is the way to go as the license is explicit that you can do as you please, no royalties.
...did you really read the article?
MKV, MP4 = Container
and
ericdano = not well informed or a troll
I just kept it simple enough for you to understand.
But it doesn't need to. For one, all you have to do is be "good enough". This idea that every last bit has to be wrangled out of codecs is silly these days. Storage and bandwidth are cheap. So long as it is good enough, meaning performs like similar codecs (AVC, VC-1 and so on) it is fine. Remember that streaming Flash video was VP6 for a long time, and much of it still is.
However what it offers is a free option, truly free. Encoders, decoders, streaming, all have no royalties and never will. That is important. If you think AVC is free just because of x264 all that means is you aren't doing your homework. Go have a look, you have to pay to have encoders and decoders.
WebM is useful, if for no other reason than it puts pressure on MPEG-LA not to be dicks about patent licensing. However that aside, it may well be the smart choice for streaming out web based video (once it gets integrated in to browsers) since you don't have to worry about issues in the future.
So you'll notice that WebM is getting built in to hardware, just like AVC. Means soon portable/embedded devices will be able to decode it too. Ok so just another format right? Well sort of. You have to pay per decoder (up to a maximum) for AVC and VC-1 and so on. You don't for WebM. So a company is developing really cheap devices, they don't want to pay that royalty. It adds unit cost. Maybe they decide not to, and instead use WebM because it doesn't cost anything. Sure it saves only a few bucks per unit in licensing but that can add up to $5-10 when you are talking sale price and that can be a big deal in cheap devices. Maybe they sell streaming kiosk/info devices that are $40 where the best a competitor does with AVC is $50 or $60.
There is no doubt AVC is here to stay. It has good quality, never mind the massive installed base and standards behind it. Professional (and consumer) cameras are using it for shooting video in the form of AVCHD and AVC-Intra. Blu-Rays are by and large encoded in it these days (you have a choice of MPEG-2, VC-1 or AVC) and so on. It isn't going to die. However WebM may become preferable when cost is key. No encoder, decoder, format, stream, or any costs of any kind ever for any application. That's worth something.
If I ran a video website, I'd seriously think of looking at moving to it once browsers got support. It would ensure that I don't get fucked with fees at some point in the future.
Google follows a really interesting pattern. As far as I can tell, all their software is reactive, rather than proactive.
It is the result of saying "Everyone's using X, but it sucks. We can do it better." They then take a very methodical, PhD-oriented approach to solving the problem. A few parts innovation, many parts simple engineering.
Now they have 10000 employees, but the basic formula hasn't changed. Is there software that Google has made that hasn't been a direct response to an existing product?
That said, I think there's definitely a case to be made that Google is the software industry's first adult. Software's awkward adolescent foibles are on their way out. No more 90s, no millions and millions of VC dollars being spent on Pets.com, no more Netscape and Microsoft working furiously on really terrible codebases adding incompatible nonstandard crap to the internet. No more Myspace, no more Geocities. No more paperclips bouncing around asking me if I'm writing a letter; I'm using Google Docs now.
Google approaches software the way a civil engineering firm would approach a skyscraper: they are actual engineers. They collaborate with academia. They write papers. They sit on the W3C and help create standards. They have architects, PMs, devs, testers, and even lawyers to support their projects.
In a way, this is a sad thing. It was a magical time, when a university student in Finland could just sit down, write a simple OS for x86, and watch half the internet run on it a few years later. When a kid from Texas could create a whole new genre of games in a few thousand lines of C. Sometimes I worry that I was born a couple years too late.
Halfway through my CS degree, I hope that the era of cowboy coders isn't entirely done. It would be a terrible shame if CS became just another engineering specialization. At the same time, Google's professionalism is a breath of fresh air.
If it is, wow. If it isn't, what's the point?
Where are my mod points when I need 'em? D:
"The body may heal, but the mind is not always so resilient." -- Deus Ex: Human Revolution
The OMAP4 platform looks really interesting. A couple of day ago a system on a chip, based on OMAP4 became available on pandaboard.org. It can be seen as the successor of the (OMAP3 based) beagle board. The pandaboard has a dual core ARM proc, 1 GB ram, WiFi and Ethernet. I ordered one and planning to use it as a media thing and multi purpose server (web, file, dns, ...) .
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with pandaboard in any way, just want want to let you know these things are available.
Google instant sucks and serves no useful purpose.
Google jumped the shark with this annoying feature that is enabled by default.
You may have noticed, that the auto completion censors 'sucks', and other words.
For that, I say:
'google instant annoying'
At one point in the video he says "TI has long been a supporter of the open source community".
Just append ", unless of course you are hacking our devices".
I hope that the era of cowboy coders isn't entirely done
Judging from the world *outside* Google, it's cowboys all the way down.
Or, you've already made a start on the path to working *inside* Google, with your degree. Good luck!
you had me at #!
The outcome of patent trials isn't 100% dependent on pesky facts, people can win and get injunctions because the other guy's lawyer was having a bad hair day or because the judge was too busy playing with his penis pump or any number of "human factors".
No sig today...
Or at least ... not yet. Not until there's a billion users and the whole web depends on it.
No sig today...
Google Search was not simply a re-invention of AltaVista. It is a vast improvement.
GMail was not simply a re-invention of Hotmail. It was a vast improvement.
etc etc. The term "re-invent the wheel" implies you are doing something identical via a new method. That is not what Google does. They make bigger, better wheels.
If you think about how the 'incumbents' in the software industry work - their business models are not about technology or product quality, but about first capturing a monopoly (by any means available), then trying to hang on to it for as long as possible (by any means available).
Like a skyscraper shadowing a garden, this has the effect of making it almost impossible for small players to sprout or survive very long. The resources - sunlight, nutrition in the metaphor - just aren't enough.
However if an upstart can somehow beat that, growing sufficiently large while not being crushed, then they can occupy a viable niche, having resources to fight off the attacks of the other larger players (which include, as somebody commented above, doing due diligence upfront and being able to afford legal defences).
I agree that the jury is still out on whether this is long-run good for the end user. Will Google become just another complacent, evil monopolist?
you had me at #!
I'd like to add that watching H.264 content is free for end-users at the moment as long as they are using a licensed decoder.
If you purchased (say) Final Cut Studio from Apple to make a movie, television show, ad, or other "commercial" video, you have to buy—on top of what you paid for the software—a licence from the MPEG to legally make that video:
15. H.264/AVC Notice. To the extent that the Apple Software contains AVC encoding and/or decoding functionality, commercial use of H.264/AVC requires additional licensing and the following provision applies: THE AVC FUNCTIONALITY IN THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED HEREIN ONLY FOR THE PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL ACTIVITY AND/OR AVC VIDEO THAT WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. INFORMATION REGARDING OTHER USES AND LICENSES MAY BE OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM.
http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf
Ditto for iMovie in the iLife suite: http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/ilife09.pdf
So yes, if you're just making a movie of the kid for the grand-parents, you're fine. If you want to do anything more and make some cash, be prepared to fork over some cash.
To the OP: How is that "free"?
From TFA, "TI has long been a supporter of the open source community ........." My ass!
ffmpeg was already a lot's of faster than the original sdk : http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/499
Couldn't this post have started "Google releases improved video codec ..." or whatever a PNSR improved VP8 is? Really, just a hint at the topic in the first sentence would improve slashdot 'readability'.
Nuff said.
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Firefox can use it. They can decode it using the codec framework of the OS
What OS? Windows XP and Ubuntu don't come with MPEG-4 AVC and AAC decoders. I seem to remember that Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business, and Windows 7 Starter don't either. Mozilla doesn't want to encourage webmasters to use "To play this video, upgrade to Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium operating system" as the fallback content for a <video> element.
If MPEG-LA members sit on their infringement claim until the user base nears a billion, then sure, they can get an injunction. But any claims of back damages would be estopped by laches if the alleged infringers can show that MPEG-LA members intended to cause harm by delaying suit.