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Google almost completes open-source VP9 codec standard

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 11 May 2013 6:24 User comments (4)

Google almost completes open-source VP9 codec standard

Google has said this week that it is finishing defining the open-source VP9 video codec standard, with a final date of June 17th.
The company will begin using the next-generation compression codec in Chrome and YouTube on that date.

"Last week, we hosted over 100 guests at a summit meeting for VP9, the WebM Project's next-generation open video codec. We were particularly happy to welcome our friends from YouTube, who spoke about their plans to support VP9 once support lands in Chrome," added Matt Frost, senior business product manager for the WebM Project.

WebM currently combines VP8 for video and Vorbis for audio but is much less used than the H.264 codec.



VP9 will transmit video much more efficiently than VP8 and H.264 and will also be completely royalty-free.

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4 user comments

111.5.2013 18:51

Hopefully their encoding process still doesn't suck. It took so long to encode and with quality still below h264...

211.5.2013 19:48

hope it works out well...

313.5.2013 01:39

Yet another codec...

Well, if YouTube uses it it will become a norm. You will see plenty of ads on YouTube promoting it.

I suppose we'll need a new addon now since it won't be written into HTML5. Still... royalty free hey!

I hope it works out well too. I'm sure the encoding and quality issues will be improved over time, they usually are.

418.5.2013 20:35

This whole codec thing is way out of control. Why does Google need VP9 - can't it pick from one of the other THOUSANDS of codecs that are already out there? And, since I'm complaining about codecs, the compressor that has become the standard for music - MP3 - is lossy. They didn't do very well with that whole thing, IMHO.

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