May 21, 2010 by Andre Jackson
Based on the VP8 technology that Google acquired in February of this year from On2 technologies, the WebM codec is formed from specialised video compression tools.
The VP8 codec has been blended with the open source Ogg Vorbis audio format in order to create a new and unique codec which is available for royalty- free use.
Several of the companies that make internet browsers, including Opera Software and Mozilla Foundation (which makes Firefox), have said that they will be supporting the new standard and Google will of course build it into its Chrome browser.
“We think video should be a free and open option for all,” Sundar Pichai, Google’s vice president of product marketing, said at the Google I/O conference in San Francisco. “It’s really important to have high quality and open video.”
Google has already begun encoding all videos uploaded to their video sharing site YouTube with the new codec, and they have also released a software development kit to the development community.
There are currently several competing video technologies in use online, some of them require the user to download and install plug-ins in order to view content which can be an annoyance.
Apple and Microsoft for instance, use the H.264 standard of encoding which is not royalty-free, whilst other websites favour Adobe Flash.
Adobe have actually confirmed that it will be adding support for the WebM codec to its software, meaning that computer users browsing the internet using Internet Explorer or Apple’s Safari browser will be able to view WebM videos thanks to a Flash plug in installed on their computers.
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