VP8 scalable hardware encoder

WebM project released the fifth generation of the hardware encoder for VP8, internally known as “Evergreen”. In this release they focused on improving the real-time communication features and on optimizing the encoding speed and visual quality.

In particular, they have now enabled temporal and spatial scalability for VP8 video coding, a valuable feature for live streaming, multi-way video conferencing and security applications.

Reportedly, there are no companies offering ITU-T/MPEG SVC (scalable video coding) hardware encoders for chipset manufacturers at the moment. With this release, VP8 now offers scalable coding at the hardware level.

MPEG LA found essential WebM patents

MPEG LA says 12 parties hold patents that its evaluators consider essential to the VP8 video codec by Google's WebM project. The disclosure came in a recent interview with StreamingMedia.com. MPEG LA says that, in response to their call for essential patents in February, a number of parties submitted patents for evaluation and twelve of those parties' patents have been examined and found to be essential to VP8.

Quoting MPEG LA from streamingmedia.com:

Thus far, 12 parties have been found to have patents essential to the VP8 standard. Generally, parties may submit patents for evaluation of essentiality to VP8 at any time during the process of facilitating a patent pool, and may continue to do so after the pool launches, assuming one is formed.

Once a pool license is created, it typically remains open for the inclusion of additional essential patents, and patent holders with essential patents are welcome to join the license as Licensors. MPEG LA met with VP8 essential patent holders in late June to facilitate a discussion among them whether and on what terms they may want to create a VP8 patent pool license and is continuing to facilitate that discussion.

Mozilla against WebP

In a bugzilla entry asking for the incorporation of WebP, Mozilla developer Joe Drew said in a comment "As the WebP image format exists currently, I won't accept a patch for it". Readers were directed to a blog posting by Jeff Muizelaar for the rationale for the rejection. He explained that Mozilla is unhappy with the quality versus size claims made by Google for WebP and questioned the methodology used to test: this converted existing JPEG images into WebP images and then compared quality using PSNR (Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and file size.

A month after Muizelaar made these comments, Google released a new study which used PNG images as source and compared quality using SSIM (Structural Similarity). This new study showed WebP images to be on average 25%-34% smaller than similar quality JPEGs, but the quality value is calculated and there is some discussion over whether WebP imagery is perceived by the untrained eye to be of the same quality.

Source: H online.

A closer look to H.264/AVC costs

« I read license agreements so that you don’t have to. In an update on its decision to remove H.264 support from its Chrome browser, Google cites “significant royalties” as a contributing factor. Just how much are those fees, and who pays? I’ve got the answers. »

Continue reading on ZDNet.

Google removes H.264/AVC from Chrome

In a few days, Google's Chrome browser will not support natively H.264/AVC video decoding anymore.  

Mike Jazayeri, Product Manager of the Chromium project, wrote yesterday that "Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies".

VP8 hardware IP availability

The WebM hardware development team, formerly part of On2 Technologies, announces:

• VP8 (the video codec used in WebM) hardware decoder IP is available from Google for semiconductor companies who want to support high-quality WebM playback in their chipsets.

• The Oulu team will release the first VP8 video hardware encoder IP in the first quarter of 2011. The IP is running in an FPGA environment, and rigorous testing is underway. Once all features have been tested and implemented, the encoder will be launched as well. 

World of Warcraft coming to Google TV

Cloud gaming on your Internet connected TV just got a step closer with Blizzard's popular World of Warcraft coming to Google TV.

GameString Adrenalin offers what it calls "Personal Cloud Gaming", letting you stream the output from seemingly any game on your PC to a browser, where it can be played on a number of devices.

Adrenalin is optimized to let users remotely play the 3D games installed on their home PC through a web browser. Users can webcast games to others and can allow remote users to play by giving them control of the game.





Sources: App Market, Engadget, The Inquirer.

VP8 Aylesbury

WebM project just released the new Aylesbury version of the libvpx VP8 codec, which reportedly provides the following advantages with respect to the previous release:

• 20-40% (average 28%) improvement in libvpx decoder speed
• Over 7% overall PSNR improvement (6.3% SSIM) in VP8 "best" quality encoding mode, and up to 60% improvement on very noisy, still or slow moving source video.

The next release, called Bali, is scheduled for Q1 2011.

WebP image compression

Google's WebP is a method of lossy compression that can be used on photographic images. WebP offers compression that reportedly has shown 39.8% more byte-size efficiency than JPEG for the same quality in a large scale study of 900,000 images on the Web. The degree of compression is adjustable so a user can choose the trade-off between file size and image quality. A WebP file consists of VP8 image data, and a container based on RIFF.

More information on the WebP website. A performance comparison between H.264 and VP8 for still image coding can be found here on the blog "Diary of an x264 developer".

Google TV this autumn

Google Inc. will launch its Android-based Google TV service to bring the Web to TV screens in the United States this autumn and worldwide next year, its chief executive said, as it extends its reach from the desktop to the living room. CEO Eric Schmidt said the service, which will allow full Internet browsing via the television, would be free, and Google would work with a variety of programme makers and electronics manufacturers to bring it to consumers.

Sony said last week it had agreed to have Google TV on its television sets, and Samsung has said it was looking into using the service.

Looking at VP9

Jim Bankoski, Codec Engineering Manager at Google, wrote on the WebM official blog that they have added an experimental branch to the VP8 source tree.

The WebM community can use this unstable branch to propose changes to VP8 that will produce the best video codec possible, but without the constraints of a frozen bitstream.

At some point in the future, when the experimental branch proves significantly better than the stable branch, they will create a new version of the codec.

WebM Project

As announced, Google opened the VP8 codec to the open source community as the WebM Project.

WebM defines the file container structure, video and audio formats. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska container. The full source code is freely donwloadable.

Just yesterday the x264 community released his personal technical opinion on the VP8 codec in this blog post.

Google to open VP8

According to a report at NewTeeVee, inside sources have confirmed that Google will be open-sourcing the On2 VP8 video codec next month at the Google I/O conference. Mozilla and Google will also reportedly announce plans to implement support for VP8 in their respective browsers at that time. The move could have profound ramifications on the viability of standards-based video playback and the future of rich media on the Internet.

Real-Time Ads in Street Views And Maps

In the recently granted patent “Claiming Real Estate in Panoramic or 3D Mapping Environments for Advertising”, Google outlines its plans to identify posters, billboards and buildings in its online mapping applications and give advertisers the chance to replace these images with more up-to-date adverts.

Google is planning on using software which recognises the posters on a theatre – for instance – and can replace them with a new advert or information. This will allow the theatre to promote its current plays, in spite of a Google Street View image being old.

Google to acquire On2 Technologies

On2 Technologies, Inc. and Google Inc. jointly announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Google will acquire On2, a leading developer of the VP video compression technology.

VP6 has established itself as the de facto Internet video standard through its inclusion in Adobe Flash Player and JavaFX. Hundreds of web video portals, user generated content, and social networking sites use VP6-based Flash for hundreds of millions of users worldwide. VP8 is reportedly able to outperform the industry-leading H.264/AVC video compresison standard.

Under the terms of the agreement, each outstanding share of On2 common stock will be converted into $0.60 worth of Google class A common stock in a stock-for-stock transaction. The transaction is valued at approximately $106.5 million. The transaction, which is subject to On2 stockholder approval, regulatory clearances and other closing conditions, is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2009.