WebM

High-ranking Mozilla staff, believing they've lost a fight to keep patent-encumbered technology off the Web, have concluded it's time to change course and support H.264 video technology.

The H.264, a "codec" to encode and decode video for more efficient storage and streaming, is widely used in everything from video cameras to mobile-phone processors. However, it's encumbered by patent royalty payments that go against Mozilla's goal of fostering an open Web.

The patent issue led Mozilla to strongly endorse Google's alternative VP8 codec that's part of its royalty-free WebM project. But … Read more

Twelve organizations have concluded that Google's VP8 video encoding technology violates their patents, according to a group called MPEG LA that's considering offering a license to those patents.

"Patents owned by 12 different patent holders have already been found to be essential to VP8," MPEG LA said in a statement to CNET yesterday.

This is a concrete data point in a debate that's lasted more than a year so far about how safe Google's technology is to use without fear of infringement litigation. Previously, MPEG LA had only offered the more limited statement that … Read more

In an effort to bring its Web video technology to a browser that doesn't support it, Google has released an IE9 plug-in to play WebM video.

The move won't bring an end to the industry scuffle over the best way to build video into the Web, but it will mean that allies behind Google's preferred mechanism will be able to reach beyond the three browsers that support WebM today, Google's Chrome, Opera Software's Opera, and Mozilla's Firefox. Apple's Safari and Microsoft's brand-new IE9 support the rival H.264 video codec (though IE9 … Read more

Addressing a major weakness its plan to build its WebM video technology into the Web, Google yesterday released a version of its VP8 video encoder and decoder designed to be baked into hardware.

The hardware implementation of VP8 is called H1 and now Anthill, said Aki Kuusela, engineering manager of the WebM Project, in a blog post. It comes in the form of RTL, or Register Transfer Language, a very low-level description close to how processors actually perform their instructions, and it's available royalty free.

"The H1 hardware encoder can produce good quality with very low power consumption … Read more

The corporate wrangling over Web video standards, already a technically and legally complex matter, is getting a lot more complicated with the arrival of a Justice Department antitrust investigation.

Specifically, the DOJ is looking into whether the actions of patent licensing group MPEG LA are stifling a Google video encoding technology called VP8, The Wall Street Journal reported last night. The the California State Attorney General's office also is looking into the matter, the newspaper said, citing unnamed sources.

MPEG LA licenses patents for Web video encoding technology, including today's widely used H.264, on behalf of a … Read more

The debate between using Adobe Flash or HTML5 for online videos could be winding down, but the war among different video formats is heating up.

A whopping 63 percent of all videos on the Web are now HTML5-compatible, compared to only 10 percent just a year ago, according to video-sharing site Mefeedia. Instead of relying solely on Flash to display their videos, many more Web sites are adopting video formats that can run directly in HTML5-compatible browsers.

The majority of the sites uncovered by Mefeedia are using H.264, the most common video format since it's also compatible for … Read more

A serious complication has just emerged for Google's plan for high-quality, patent-free, open-source video on the Web--but Google also revealed plans today to try to counteract it.

MPEG LA, an organization that licenses video-related patents related to a variety of standards, has formally requested for patent owners to inform them of patents they believe Google's VP8 technology uses.

In "offer[ing] to facilitate development of a joint license to provide coverage under essential patents," MPEG LA is taking a major step toward actually offering such a license.

That might reassure some players who are interested in … Read more

Weeks after Google announced it would drop support for H.264-encoded video from Chrome, Microsoft announced it's adding support back in through a browser extension for Windows 7 users.

"Today, as part of the interoperability bridges work we do on this team, we are making available the Windows Media Player HTML5 Extension for Chrome, which is an extension for Google Chrome to enable Windows 7 customers who use Chrome to continue to play H.264 video," said Claudio Caldato, principal program manager on Microsoft's Interoperability Strategy Team, in a blog post. The software can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site. … Read more

The Xiph.Org Foundation, creator of the royalty-free Vorbis audio encoding technology made suddenly relevant by Google's WebM project, is nearing completion of a next-generation codec called CELT and has resumed development of one due after that called Ghost.

"Ghost research was postponed until recently to devote more resources to improving video," said Monty Montgomery, who worked on Vorbis and CELT, in a blog post last week. "Ghost development now resumes where it left off in 2007."

Vorbis, CELT (Constrained Energy Lapped Transform), and Ghost all are audio codecs, meaning that they're designed to … Read more