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Google Discontinues On2 Flix Engine Video Encoder
trawg writes "Google have recently discontinued sales of the Flix Engine, the last remnants of the purchase of On2 that they were selling directly to users. On2, developers of the VP8 video codec that formed the basis of their new WebM video format, was bought by Google early in 2010. The Flix Engine was a comprehensive API for Windows and Linux that allowed integration of On2 encoders directly into any software product. While you can still buy some On2 products from another company, it's not clear what effect this will have on Google's ultimate video strategy."
However large/successful/influential a company is, one must always take into account whether or not the product in question is actually necessary. Codecs are a flooded market.
Sales must have been really unexciting for them to do that.
It would be totally unsurprising(and seems to be standard industry practice in general) to put any products that you've acquired but have no strategic in more or less on ice, cutting engineering down to bare minimum critical bug fixes and selling on a more or less "only if you ask" basis, rather than actually marketing.
Actually killing a product, though, when all you need to do to keep selling it is maintain some minimal licensing and payment processing system, is pretty dramatic.
Borrowed a video camera from people in another department, but it's firewire output was borked. They then went to dump the tape for me. I got asked at least 4 times if ProRes was ok and said "no we aren't Mac, I edit in Vegas it reads native files, HDV format please." What did I get in the end? ProRes. Of course Vegas can't read that because, as you noted, Apple doesn't release it.
Uh, they bought On2 and open sourced its best codec. They didn't bought On2 just to kill it. They killed a small part of the On2 product line.
Oh, and I think you mean "cue", not "queue".
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Google sells very little, other than advertising. If they sold something for money, customers would insist on support. Almost the only thing Google sells directly to customers is the Google Search Appliance, which is available as a 1U or 4U rackmount server. The low-end version, the Google Mini, is sold with no support and a two-year replacement warranty. After two years, you're supposed to replace the entire unit. Google tried selling phones directly, and that lasted only for five months of 2010.
So it's not surprising that Google would drop a commercial software product. They don't sell any.
Uh, they bought On2 and open sourced its best codec. They didn't bought On2 just to kill it. They killed a small part of the On2 product line.
Oh, and I think you mean "cue", not "queue".
Well, to his credit he spelled "excoriate" correctly, even if he was otherwise off-base.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
it's not clear what effect this will have on Google's ultimate video strategy.
For that matter, Google's ultimate video strategy is unclear, quite possibly because they don't actually have one. Google is investing big money in lots of technologies, presumably hoping that one or more of them will become the "next big thing" when advertising is no longer the cash cow for them that it is now.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
You, my friend, are a moron. At the time digital video equipment was in a deciding moment. I personally suggested this format to a company, and it completely changed the game for them. Their storage space increased by over 10x, while resolution stayed the same. This was a vendor of security surveillance systems, and I was fired months later. The company blossomed due to my suggestion, even dropping an in-house developed MPEG codec.
VP6 was ahead of its time. It's deserved the money. Codecs involve more than web, and their development involves very specific knowledge in both high level math and computers. It's hard work that take loads of time. They deserved the money.
PS: My wife asked me to add an appendage about sucking a certain appendage.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
More like three little cries as I bitch slapped you around. Linking to your very own posts does NOT equal evidence or proof, otherwise I would simply link to the many instances I posted of me banging your mom and they would thus be "proof" that she owes me $500 for services rendered.
You know what you have to do trollie. Post your IP address as a first post on /. or show us the math proving your HOPES file can scale. Otherwise all you are doing is crying in the dark, hanging onto your your little woobie, hoping someone will listen to your pathetic theories based around tech nobody uses anymore. I find your pathetic little cries...rather amusing actually. Submit your proof trollie, we're waiting.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
The reasons behind buying On2 were obvious, it was to get out from under the thumb of MPEG-LA and it's constituents, many of whom are actively working against Google.
The payoff just from eliminating MPEG licensing would be huge for YouTube. Greater profit by lowering costs, raising revenue is not the only or necessarily best method of increasing profitability.
Apart from that their video strategy is clear, provide advertisement (which is revenue on planet Google) whilst not providing content.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
With the discontinuation of the Flix engine, this marks the end of support for a Flash 8 codec. I imagine a few Wii owners that use Flash 8 to serve their media library will be largely apathetic.
I also doubt Nintendo will contract Opera to support WebM (VP8/vorbis), but one can hope.
Google does a pretty good job at figuring out where the interest is. FFMPEG is where Joe User is getting his free encoder, so good support in what's preferred can get your standards into the other browsers. FCP is sufficiently advanced and the iP[a-z] has enough market penetration that Apple doesn't have to care.
Hi trollie! You know it is usually considered good form to at least make a sock puppet, posting AC to plug your own AC posts? Kinda sad. And for the 400th time Correlation != Causation. I can build an XP Sp2 machine with NO patches, NO AV, and change the desktop to a LOLCat. Now if I only use this machine to check my email and go to my bank I will NEVER get a bug, but I don't think it was my magical LOLCat protecting it, do you?
The simple fact is this: no matter how many times trollie says "1+1 = 3" the math simply proves him wrong. You have 190,000 to 340,000 infected websites at this very moment and that list will change by the thousands per minute as sites are cleaned, new sites are infected, new vulnerabilities found, etc. Now for his HOPES file to actually be a REAL protection and not just a woobie? It will have to dynamically scale and keep up with that ever changing list of infections. Now even if he had twenty fingers and subscribed to every security list on the planet his HOPES file will ALWAYS BE OUT OF DATE and behind the curve. Always.
Now if you have a mathematical proof that shows how a static .txt file dropped into system 32 can magically scale dynamically? Lets see it. Otherwise it is NOTHING much a magical LOLCat pic backed up by anecdotes. That is the nice thing about math, it doesn't lie or believe in anecdotes.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.