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Google Unveils 'Open' Video Alternative
38 companies and organizations throw their weight behind no royalty standard
With the goal of creating an open source video standard that competes with H.264 , Google today announced the creation of the WebM Project. The standard has the support of 38 companies and organizations, including Mozilla, Opera, Adobe, Qualcomm and many others (none of them named Microsoft or Apple). The standard won't involve charging royalties, and as Techcrunch notes, while the H.264 (owned by the MPEG-LA consortium) doesn't have royalties today, that's going to change by 2015. "Though video is also now core to the Web experience, there is unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices," says Google employees over at the project blog.
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baineschile
2600 ways to live
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Sterling Heights, MI

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baineschile

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Pbbt

As long as google has advertising rights along the stream, they will push for "open" anything.

Yay! I want to look at a 15 second advertisement whenever i open up mozilla! Yay! I want to listen to a 30 second had before I can make a call from my cell phone. Yay! I want to look at a commercial BEFORE i can turn my TV on!

Good in theory, but Google exists in a capitalistic economy...they are out for the dollar. Trading money for my free time isnt worth it, at least to me.

morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000

1 recommendation

morbo

Member

Re: Pbbt

Google payed 125 million to buy the company and release the codec to the public. A simple "thank you" is in order.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Pbbt

Just like they bought Picasa (now free, though you pay for Picasa Web Albums if you want to store a lot on there), Keyhole (now Google Earth; premium versions are available but most folks get it for free) and other companies that I've now forgotten about...

Koil
Premium Member
join:2002-09-10
Irmo, SC

Koil

Premium Member

Re: Pbbt

said by iansltx:

Just like they bought Picasa (now free, though you pay for Picasa Web Albums if you want to store a lot on there), Keyhole (now Google Earth; premium versions are available but most folks get it for free) and other companies that I've now forgotten about...
They also provide a ton of other apps for free as well.

I've just got one question: Why don't you do your job for free?

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK

KrK

Premium Member

Re: Pbbt

They provide it for free to us, but they make money from advertising and our hits, so they make money and we're happy.

It works for me.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx to Koil

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to Koil
I do. It's called college field session

Google gets plenty of money, through advertising and now various for-pay cloud services.

Gbcue
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join:2001-09-30
Santa Rosa, CA

Gbcue to iansltx

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to iansltx
said by iansltx:

Just like they bought Picasa (now free, though you pay for Picasa Web Albums if you want to store a lot on there), Keyhole (now Google Earth; premium versions are available but most folks get it for free) and other companies that I've now forgotten about...
Keyhole originally had pay versions to start with.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: Pbbt

That was my point; only limited versions of Keyhold (some bundled with nVidia gfx cards as a promo) were free. For-pay service was the norm. Google changed that, though personally I liked the Keyhold black motif rather than the light Google Earth one.

Robert
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join:2001-08-25
Miami, FL

Robert to morbo

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to morbo
said by morbo:

Google payed 125 million to buy the company and release the codec to the public. A simple "thank you" is in order.
Yep. I'm still waiting for them to thank me.

cork1958
Cork
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join:2000-02-26

cork1958

Premium Member

Re: Pbbt

said by Robert:
said by morbo:

Google payed 125 million to buy the company and release the codec to the public. A simple "thank you" is in order.
Yep. I'm still waiting for them to thank me.
+1

BillRoland
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join:2001-01-21
Ocala, FL

BillRoland to morbo

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to morbo
What am I supposed to be thanking them for?
Angrychair
join:2000-09-20
Jacksonville, FL

1 recommendation

Angrychair

Member

Re: Pbbt

said by BillRoland:

What am I supposed to be thanking them for?
Letting you keep your nuts.

Subaru
1-3-2-4
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join:2001-05-31
Greenwich, CT

Subaru to BillRoland

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to BillRoland
said by BillRoland:

What am I supposed to be thanking them for?
I'm with you on this too.. I don't get it.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
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Tulsa, OK
Netgear WNDR3700v2
Zoom 5341J

KrK to BillRoland

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to BillRoland
You can use the codec royalty free now. So if you find that useful, you should thank them.

I like the idea of a high quality open source and free and more importantly --- standard --- (ie, widely adopted) video codec.

There's been quality free codecs. That hardly anybody uses! This coalition aims to fix that.

morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000

morbo to BillRoland

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to BillRoland
Read up on it if you are interested. The goal of this 100million gift to the world is to fix a looming problem with internet video and royalty payments. What is expected to happen in 2015 is a change that would hold producers and distribution channels hostage.
dan991199
join:2007-10-01
St Catharines, ON

1 recommendation

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to baineschile
said by baineschile:

As long as google has advertising rights along the stream, they will push for "open" anything.

Yay! I want to look at a 15 second advertisement whenever i open up mozilla! Yay! I want to listen to a 30 second had before I can make a call from my cell phone. Yay! I want to look at a commercial BEFORE i can turn my TV on!

Good in theory, but Google exists in a capitalistic economy...they are out for the dollar. Trading money for my free time isnt worth it, at least to me.
i'm with ya on this one. if google didnt jump on this early something else would have came along. google isnt out to give away things. people need to stop sac riding them
chimera4
join:2009-06-09
Washington, DC

chimera4

Member

Re: Pbbt

Actually, that is what Google wants to do. Google wants to have a single codec and format that they can use for all of their media without having to pay any royalties, and to do that they need to make it open since they know no one else would accept it otherwise.

Currently the HTML5 codec that is getting pushed by Apple and Microsoft has a very questionable licensing agreement that allows royalties to start being charged in 2015 and may not even technically allow for commercial video distribution as it is currently written.

Google wants to sink this before it becomes a real standard and replace it with an open codec to avoid having to fight a war in five years. Plus if this standard gets put into place Google would be well positioned as a market leader which they could use to help push development tools while integrating everything to YouTube and Google's Video Search technologies. So yes, they do want to give it away, but expect them to make a profit by doing so in the long run from other technologies and internal cost savings.
jimbo21503
join:2004-05-10
Euclid, OH

jimbo21503 to baineschile

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to baineschile
said by baineschile:

Yay! I want to look at a 15 second advertisement whenever i open up mozilla! Yay! I want to listen to a 30 second had before I can make a call from my cell phone. Yay! I want to look at a commercial BEFORE i can turn my TV on!
Rant much? How many times have you seen an ad just for opening Chrome or Firefox? That is NOT going to change.

Wait, wait, wait.... let me restate that last sentence:

That is NOT going to change!

Loud enough for ya?

Sure they will have rights to putting all the ads they want on YouTube, but stop buttering up something that will not be an apocalypse!
said by baineschile:

Good in theory, but Google exists in a capitalistic economy...they are out for the dollar. Trading money for my free time isnt worth it, at least to me.
But it is in their interests, stop thinking so 1 dimensionally... and so negatively!
It is good in theory because with competing standards it will push for more innovation. But mostly it will provide a video codec that all browsers can support (in addition to some supporting H.264). But as long as all browsers support VP8 Google is free to rack up all the advertising revenue they want because they know it will work in ALL, not SOME, browsers.

You think their ad revenue on YouTube would continue to gain if Firefox, the second most used browser out there, suddenly could not play YouTube videos?

Mannus
Premium Member
join:2005-10-25
Fort Wayne, IN

Mannus

Premium Member

......

Isn't this what the Xiph.org Foundation is trying to do with Theora?

milnoc
join:2001-03-05
Ottawa

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milnoc

Member

Re: ......

While Theora may seem like a valid choice for today (I use it myself -- check the sig), it does have a few drawbacks such as low image quality and limited streaming capabilities.

If Google is interested in providing Videolan the necessary code for supporting a better streaming-friendly audio/video codec, I'm ready to give it a shot on my broadcast servers as long as I don't have to pay any exorbitant royalty fees, which is why I won't touch MPEG4/H.264.

El Quintron
Cancel Culture Ambassador
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join:2008-04-28
Tronna

El Quintron

Premium Member

Re: ......

said by milnoc:

If Google is interested in providing Videolan the necessary code for supporting a better streaming-friendly audio/video codec, I'm ready to give it a shot on my broadcast servers as long as I don't have to pay any exorbitant royalty fees, which is why I won't touch MPEG4/H.264.
See:

»Patent Challenge For Open-Source Codecs?

I think what google is doing here is putting a spoke in Mcrosoft and Apple's wheels by saying if you sue Ogg Theora on the MPEG4 issue we're gonna launch our own free codec.

It sounds awful political to me and its launch proximity to that potential lawsuit is a little too coincidental if ya know what I mean.
amungus
Premium Member
join:2004-11-26
America

amungus

Premium Member

couple things

First, flash was largely a huge backtrack for video. Clunky, too much trouble, and playback is miserable in many cases where a computer can otherwise play HD quality from ACTUAL VIDEO CODECS just fine! Audio usually suffers as well, needlessly...

I'm sorry, but 8-cores and SLI shouldn't be needed for video, let alone streaming video. At that point, such a computer could probably run a holodeck

Why on earth flash (video) is so prevalent, I do not know. Thought it was a terrible idea "back in the day" just as much as now.

Bring on something else, I'm cool with that. VP8 (and some earlier versions) were pretty good. Basically a video codec that streamed quite well with reasonable bandwidth and compute requirements. If Flash can "use" this codec instead of its own, by all means, please.... sooner the better...

x.264 is good and all too, but I agree w/the need for being done with licensing messes.
Good for Jobs and all, for sticking to his guns and saying that Flash support would be wasteful, they just went with the best (VIDEO codec... which Flash is NOT! That they argue this baffles me...) they could at the time (x.264) and will hopefully support this new codec coming along...

Go Google. Please help the 'net move past this backtrack that was flash video.
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: couple things

FWIW, I'm guessing that you're actually talking about VP6, not VP8, as "were pretty good." Also FWIW, VP6 is the default codec for older versions of Flash, though now it's transitioning to H.264 (and now VP8).

As far as Flash goes, the player integrates codes...that's not *all* it does but codecs in Flash mean that if your browser is compatible with Flash then it's compatible with those video formats within Flash. Also FP 10.1 isn't all that bad...I have integrated graphics on my MacBook and it'll play HD with FP 10.1.

But if you've got a web browser that can do HTML5 video straight up with VP8 (Chrome, FF, Opera) then that's what will get used. VP8 is a full-on codec and NOT tied to Flash by any stretch!

Another FWIW: there are rumblings that Microsoft is in with the WebM bunch as well...I mean, why not? WMV really has never caught on.

As for Apple, they might be idiots and insist on supporting H.264, and H.264 only, on their iPhone/iPad platforms, out of spite against Google. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if Safari (desktop and mobile editions) took six to twelve months to get VP8 support, even though FF and Chrome will have it by the end of the month in release builds, and already have it in nightlies today. Heck, Opera wil have VP8 in short order, even!

Betcha Apple will hold off until IE gets VP8 (a year from now), then whine about how Google's open standard is either

a) Not open
b) Substandard

and as such they shouldn't be required by the masses to support it. Though Flash in desktop Safari will gladly do the whole VP8 thing if that happens...it's just that iPad/iPhone users will be SOL unless they jailbreak and add the inevitable codec.

unother
join:2005-03-23
Brooklyn, NY

unother

Member

Re: couple things

People are forgetting that this move on Google's part may be strategic.

Apple has already standardized on H.264. Their entire push is in that direction.

If we agree that the "future is mobile", one can see why with a competing platform to the iPhone (Android), Google may be willing to tweak Apple and its attempt to standardize otherwise.

As a plus, they get to look like an "open standards hero"--while being nothing of the sort...
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Austin, TX

iansltx

Member

Re: couple things

Meh, pretty sure that spending a hundred million on buying a company, then open-sourcing the tech that they bought, is not bad for OSS.

unother
join:2005-03-23
Brooklyn, NY

unother

Member

Re: couple things

Q.E.D.

FLATLINE
join:2007-02-27
Buffalo, NY

FLATLINE to amungus

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to amungus
said by amungus:

I'm sorry, but 8-cores and SLI shouldn't be needed for video, let alone streaming video. At that point, such a computer could probably run a holodeck
Really? Exaggerate much? I have a basic Compaq laptop with a dual core AMD chip and Nvidia integrated graphics that will run flash full screen without stutter. I find it amazing you need 8 cores and SLI.

Yes Google is in business to make money but how anyone can say they dont have good intentions as well is beyond me. Some facts. Google Navigate saves me money buy replacing my paid NAV system. They put together a smartphone OS that allows me to finally customize it the way I want and need. They made a search engine that delivers the results I need. They work harder than most companie in dealing with environmental issues buy buying carbon credits and building solar power plants of the roofs of data centers and soo much more. yeah real evil!!!

ArrayList
DevOps
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join:2005-03-19
Mullica Hill, NJ

ArrayList to amungus

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FWIW I have never had a problem with Flash video. and I don't think flash needs your 8core sli rig to shine.
zed2608
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Cleveland, TN

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simple flash is so common today that its hard to displace its marketshare

same things happened with the us dollor for instance once it became so common and liquad that it can be used to echange for anything it is hard to replace without a crisis

theyesman
@optonline.net

theyesman

Anon

Re: couple things

Well no royalties for now.
hottboiinnc4
ME
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Cleveland, OH

hottboiinnc4

Member

Re: couple things

yah that was the key line of Karl's post.

KoolMoe
Aw Man
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KoolMoe to amungus

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to amungus
Flash is not just video. Flash video is not a codec.
Flash FLV/F4V is a container, like MPEG, AVI, MOV, etc.
The video within can contain one of a few codecs; Sorenson Spark, VP6 to VP8, or H.264.
KM