Google Enables VP9 Video Codec In Chromium

An anonymous reader writes "Last month, Google revealed that it was planning to finish defining its VP9 video codec on June 17 (today), after which it will start using the next-generation compression technology in Chrome and on YouTube. The company is wasting no time: it has already enabled the free video compression standard by default in the latest Chromium build."

Comments

Firefox support

[Eravnrekaree]

A very positive development, to be able to get away from flash and that nasty proprietary plugin. With Adobe basically thumbing their nose at Linux users, getting away from flash is something that ought to be encouraged. So When will Firefox add this for those who prefer that browser?

Re:Firefox support

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to the Mozilla IRC (have Chatzilla installed before clicking) and typed this:

firebot: vp9 bugs

and got this:

Bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=833023 , , nobody, NEW, Implement VP9 video decoder in Firefox

So it's not ASSIGNED to anybody yet, meaning "when" it'll be patched in isn't known.
And now you won't have to ask about a Firefox bug on slashdot ever again, because you know a more reliable place to ask.

Re: Firefox support

[gQuigs]

> but last I heard Firefox didn't support webm/vp8 only ogg

It's been available for years now. They added support for webm/vp8 around 2010*

For a better comparison see the chart a few lines down: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Browser_support

*https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2010/05/19/open-web-open-video-and-webm/

Re:Firefox support

[wvmarle]

This allows you as much to move away from Flash as the current built-in support for H264 and other codecs. So until the Flash-based player UI is replaced by an HTML-based player UI, nothing will change.

And you can for many years already watch YouTube videos without using Flash plugin in your browser.

Re: Firefox support

[hairyfeet]

That is fine if you are on Linux, if you are on Windows? Do NOT use Firefox. I'm sorry but its security is fricking terrible on Windows. I'd argue even worse than IE and I have seen many a bug like the "Yahoo Porn Bug" I wrote about in my journal that will ONLY work on FF, again not even IE lets it run but FF will happily let it rip.

So please if you are on Windows and want this use Chromium, or stick with one of the browsers based on it like Chrome, SWIron ,or Comodo Dragon who will all being getting it soon enough, because thanks to a lack of low rights mode (which Chromium had not 6 months after the feature came out, while after 6 years FF still doesn't have it) with FF you may as well just disable UAC and run as an admin like back in the old days with XP.

It's... OK.

[Guspaz]

It's not the disaster that VP8 was (which looked like a codec from 10+ years ago), but it seems to be at best in the same ballpark as x264. VP9 isn't really a viable replacement for h.265, but it might do better than their last attempt merely by not being a laughable joke like VP8.

Mind you, I'm not saying VP8 is bad in and of itself. I certainly couldn't do better. But Google promoted it as being superior to h.264, which was an absurd assertion, hence the derision.

Re:It's... OK.

[cheater512]

Got a citation for VP9 not being better or equal to h.265?

I'm genuinely curious why you think that way.

Re:It's... OK.

[Telvin_3d]

Most of the early results show that, while VP9 isn't better than h265, it's within a percentage point or two. That's not its problem.
Rather, there are two big issues towards VP9 adoption.

First, there is no hardware support for it at all so far, where as the next generation of mobile and desktop chips already have h265 support announced. And since both VP9 and h265 have order-of-magnitude higher processing power requirements then their predecessors. If you're software processing it will be noticeable even on a decent desktop. So a year from now all the latest phones will already support h265. And since any site serving to them will already encode for that, why would they double up for a codec that does not perform any better?

Second, Google may be selling this as a fully free and open codec, but that's what they said about VP8. And as soon as that was announced everyone yawned and bet that it walked all over h264 licensing. And a few months ago Google finally admitted it and paid out a big settlement to license h264 for their VP8 codec.

So when Google says 'you don't have to pay a license fee' what it has meant in the past is 'we haven't done our due diligence to see what licenses you need'. And anyone who cares about paying or avoiding licensing costs would rather pay up a small known fee than worry about massive liabilities from trusting Google's word. Again.

And it's an interesting fight for the 'free as in freedom' crowd, because while h264/5 are not 'free as in beer' they are entirely open specs and many of the best h264 tools have been open source right from the start. The professional tools don't care about the minor licensing costs and the hobbyist tools don't bother paying.

Re:It's... OK.

[wvmarle]

This is exactly what I was wondering. Why bother? Just for some minor patent issue? And yes it's minor as I've never had to touch the issue as an end user: it just works. Videos play, without me having to pay anyone anything.

On the one hand I am glad to see competition, different approaches to the same problem, let the best one win. More codecs, more attempts to find the perfect video compression, that's a good thing. However when it comes to standards, it's gettig trickier. How many standards to support? Which one is to be "the standard"? And with H264 as it is - for me as an end user completely free and doing the job well - I don't see much room for VP9, really.

Re:It's... OK.

[cheater512]

Erm Google paid the fee SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO.

They didn't pay just for themselves.

Re:It's... OK.

[Gaygirlie]

The good, ol' "It doesn't affect me, therefore it is irrelevant!" - argument. You do realize how silly and short-sighted an argument that is?

Re:It's... OK.

[VirtualVirtuality]

Ehh, what 'big settlement' did Google pay? Google and MPEG LA announced an agreement, there's been no disclosure of any big settlement, and I seriously doubt there was one.

MPEG LA was actively looking (as in advertising for) any patents which could be used as a patent pool against VP8, and had they actually managed to create a strong portfolio then I don't think we'd ever seen this agreement take place. Also, given how long On2 (the company Google bought for their codec technology) have been active in video compression aswell as the patents they hold, it's not as if Google is just entering the video compression arena from scratch, and they may very well hold patents on which h264 and h265 could be found infringing.

And as far as licencing costs, there's no indemnification from patent trolls with MPEG LA licencing either, and MPEG LA's saber rattling turned out to be just that, no 'massive liabilities' ended up facing anyone.

This notion you try to sell that you would somehow be 'safe' with MPEG LA licencing, while opening yourself up to 'massive liabilities' if you use VP8/VP9 is just typical scare tactics as I see it.

Now I don't think VP9 will be quite as good as h265, but that's not really important. The important thing is that MPEG LA won't be able to corner the entire online video compression market, and that there is an actual competitive alternative (and that this competition is also open source and royalty free is a huge bonus).

Because the day there isn't, the companies who make up MPEG LA will start to collect heavily on their investments, massive-greed style. Which in turn will affect us end users as the increased cost will inevitably be shifted unto us, one way or another.

Furthermore it will lead to stagnation, as in: 'we will bleed this technology dry before we introduce the next generation', all in an effort to maximize profit with less effort.

So yay for VP9, may it (and it's later incarnations) live long and prosper.

Re:It's... OK.

[wvmarle]

It may be silly and shortsighted - it is the argument any regular consumer will pose you.

How is VP9 better for me as end user than H264/H265? Because Google pays for the patent license instead of some consortium gives out free licenses? Both are totally opaque to me (and either license can be withdrawn at a whim), and both have to do with companies from the opposite side of the world (remember, the US has 5% of the world's population).

Re:It's... OK.

[JDG1980]

You speak of something you know nothing about. It's more complicated than that. Users who record home videos, publish them to Youtube, end up getting screwed because with huge financial burdens because once the number of views gets high enough there sent a HUGE destructive bill. You have to get a professional camera or be screwed if you publish ANYTHING. You can't just convert to another format either. Your still liable.

Citation for any of this?

Re:It's... OK.

[Nutria]

Chrome is the only browser that reliably plays all of the videos on Youtube.

Please point to YT videos not playable by Linux Firefox with the current (v11.2.202.291, released on 14-Jun-2013) Flash plugin.

Versus H264 advantages are what?

[TrollstonButterbeans]

VP8 is really slow. Unknown if reason is lack of hardware support or if codec is actually poorly designed. What are reasons VP9 is good versus H264? Yes I know VPx is not "patent-encumbered" --- well except it is except Google made some sort of "deal" with someone to license applicable patents or something.

Why is VP9 any good and why should people care? Is it poor man's H264 or is it H264's peer? Thanks to wise person who knows and answers this.

Re:Versus H264 advantages are what?

[Telvin_3d]

Production level codecs like ProRes have always supported alpha channels (along with a bunch of other stuff). Besides, content publishing codecs like this are completely unsuitable for production work. After only a generation or two the artifacts would render an alpha channel effectively useless for production quality. Also, their massive processing overhead would be a complete deal-breaker all by itself. Pro codecs require lots and lots of RAM due to the bitrate, but they need ridiculously low processing power. That's a big deal when you are working on a composite that might have dozens (or hundreds) of layers.

Re:Versus H264 advantages are what?

[Telvin_3d]

Great, so it's the fault of the manufacturers. But seeing as VP9 takes several times more processing power to decode in software than VP8, which would you serve up to a mobile phone: h265 that has hardware decode or VP9 that provides the exact same video quality/size but will choke on playback even as the battery life drops by the second?

The difference isn't in quality of the codec, it's the quality of support. One has a massive group that has spent a decade making sure that it is supported by everyone everywhere. The other has been tossed out into the public by a single company without any cooperation or support by other parties.

Re:Versus H264 advantages are what?

[KonoWatakushi]

From a technical point of view it's basically h265's peer. That's partially because it's largely based on the same tech as h265, in the same way VP8 was largely similar to h264. And is speculated that it has the same licensing issues that VP8 had, for most of the same reasons.

And the speed issue is entirely due to an almost complete lack of hardware support. And while h265 already has announced and demonstrated support, I am not aware of any VP9 support so far.

And doing VP9 decode in software has order-of-magnitude higher requirements than VP8. If YouTube serves up a VP9 video to your phone, you'll wish for the good old days of Flash video.

From the q&a afterward, it is mentioned that average vp9 quality is within 1% of h.265, but it didn't sound like h.265 was anywhere near ready to roll out, with the only available option being a horrifically slow reference encoder. As for speed, they claim it is about 40% slower than vp8, which is twice as fast as h.264. As such, vp9 should handily outperform h.264 in software.

The open source and royalty free vp9/opus combination sounds like an very compelling option for the html5 video tag, and may become a de facto standard before h.265 is widely deployed. Hardware support for vp9 is also in the works, so if the codec lives up to the claims, there no longer appears to be any good reason to put up with the MPEG LA.

Re:Versus H264 advantages are what?

[MrMickS]

Now, neither AMD or NVIDIA provide VP8 decompression - support, so obviously H/W - accelerated H.264 will be faster, but that's not the fault of the codec, it's the fault of the manufacturers.

That's an interesting spin on the situation. It's not the fault of the manufacturers. Its that h264 was designed by an industry body that included the manufacturers with the intention of creating a single common codec to use across different applications and devices. VP8 was designed by a single entity to reduce its costs without giving a damn for end user experience as they could offload that to the bad manufacturers for not supporting it in hardware.

Re:is this an open product?

[slew]

VP9 will be completely open. Just remember that creating video codecs is very complex process on its own, so adding things like encryption schemes will likely require a bunch of professional engineers.

I'm not sure what to take away from that statement about "professional engineers".

It seem like you implying that since VP9 didn't want/need "the community" (of presuably unprofessional folk) in its development that somehow the current developers of VP9 don't feel that "the community" can develop an encryption schemes (being the unprofessional folk we are)?

I gather that the Cathederal mechanism of development might be deemed necessary (by google) to avoid IP contamination of VP9, but as someone that does stuff in this area (video compression and encryption) professionally, what you seem to be implying is a bit condecending to "the community" of open source developers (many of whom are professional engineers in our day-jobs)...

In fact, I might argue that encryption schemes are best done in the community (e.g., like the AES and the SHA-3 process) because an open competitive environment is the best way to assure the actual difficulty of cirvumenting the scheme is known (rather than assuming that some experts have it figured out).

But how practical is it for devices?

[Camembert]

It may be a technically good codec (I have no strong opinion on that either way). But I see issues with the many devices (tablets, bluray players with usb input, set top boxes, phones...) available whose graphical processors are totally geared towards implementations of mp4 and h264. For example, I understand that an iphone would do battery-efficient hardware decoding of such files. I assume that dfor this new codec the processor will need to do all the work, with likely a much bigger impact on the battery.

VP9 vs. H.264

[Camael]

VP9 is still a work in progress, so no hard numbers as yet. One of its goals is to achieve 50% better quality with the same bitrate compared to VP8. Another goal is to provide a better encoding efficiency than H.265 which has the same approach on achieving a better quality around 50% compared to H.264.

Google actually did a direct comparison between VP9 and H.264 on a sample file at its recent I/O event and showed off a 63% reduction in file size. As for the quality, see the pic for yourself.

As for the licensing issue, Google cut a deal with the MPEG-LA consortium that controls H.264 to licence their patents for VP8 and VP9. So there is low possibility of any user of VP9 of being bogged down by patent lawsuits.

Why should you care? Unlike H.265, VP9 is free for commercial use . If your use is non-profit, there is no difference between the two.

Maybe you could explain why VP9 is bad?

[Camael]

I don't disagree with you on the merits of the x264 encoder (open source, etc) but are you sure that x.264 is free? Because it seems from this webpage that you need to pay for a licence to use it.

Also, from the H.264 standard itself is not free. The party who makes the encoder and the party who distributes the encoded file to the end users for commercial use has to pay for licensing.

Although H.264 is an open standard, in that it was developed by a consortium of companies and anyone can make and sell an encoder or decoder, it's not free -- you've got to pay for a royalty fee to use it, and the rates are set by the MPEG-LA, which collects payments and distributes them to its members.

V8 and V9 are not the same. V8 itself may have a bad history and be a crap codec, performance wise. Is V9 a bad codec as well, performance wise? Has Google done anything that justifies the wholesale boycott of V9?

Re:As patent encumbered as H264...

[Gaygirlie]

x264, the open-source H264 encoder, is the best video encoder on the planet. x264 gives the best quality for filesize. x264 gives the best quality for encoding speed. x264 gives the best quality for low latency streaming. x264 does it all, and does it fantastically well.

x264 is free. x264 does NOT come from the NSA R+D division we know as Google.

Aaaand all that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if x264 is open-source, it's still patent-encumbered. In any country where the H.264 - patents are valid x264 is infringing on them.

Re:As patent encumbered as H264...

[SuricouRaven]

h264 would be ideal, if not for the patent issue. That's a real deal-breaker for many. It's why Firefox doesn't have support for h264 video - even if they applied for a license, they wouldn't then be able to sub-license to developers who want to fork the project, which is incompatible with the open-source development model.

Re:Just wait for the MPEG-2 patents to expire

[SuricouRaven]

You underestimate just how much crappier MPEG2 is. That technology is very primative compared to modern codecs. To match the quality of h264 takes around ten times the bitrate, based on some rather unscientific estimates from my watching DVDs (mpeg2, 6GB) vs dvd rips (About the same quality, 600MB). That high a bitrate just isn't cost-effective, even today.

Sounds pretty cool tho.

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

I was looking at the API. I couldn't figure out what this function did:

int streamCameraFeedToCIACommaNSACommaAndFBI();

The other 5%

[tepples]

Switch user agent to iPad, it works in 95% of the time.

And the other 5% of the time, it's either A. not a video but a vector animation (which Flash still does better than HTML5), B. available in H.264 (which the Free browsers don't support) and not VP8, or C. intentionally unavailable on iPad because the publisher is a...

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