vp8

MPEG LA, an organization that licenses digital video technology patents on behalf of their owners, has announced terms for using a 3D video encoding technology called MVC.

MVC (Multiview Video Coding) is used in Blu-ray disc players, personal computers, video cameras, software, and other situations calling for 3D video. It's what's known as a codec, a specification for encoding and decoding video so it can be stored more compactly or streamed more efficiently across networks.

MPEG LA debuted the MVC license agreement terms at the Asia-Pacific 3D Standards & IP (Intellectual Property) Forum in Seoul, South Korea, yesterday. … 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

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

The VP8 encoding technology at the heart of Google's effort to spread royalty-free video across the computing industry now has a home at the Internet Engineering Task Force--but not so Google can standardize it.

VP8 is a Google codec used to convert video into a more compact form for tasks such as streaming across the Internet, broadcast over the airwaves, or storage on a camera. VP8 and the Vorbis audio codec are the basis for WebM, an open-source and royalty-free technology that Google hopes will lower barriers for using video on the Net and elsewhere. Although WebM's open-source, royalty-free nature … Read more

Google has released the first significant update to its WebM video software, bringing better performance and adding a duck-related code name.

The new software, called Aylesbury after the domesticated duck breed, is better at both encoding and faster at decoding WebM videos, said John Luther, Google's WebM product manager, in a blog post last week. Luther plans to detail Aylesbury this week at the Streaming Media West conference, which will include a detailed status report and a discussion of how it fits into the new HTML5 standard for Web pages.

More specifically, Aylesbury is between 20 percent and 40 … Read more

Google is among the biggest proponents of a collection of Web technologies that reproduce many important features of Adobe Systems' Flash, but it's not yet time for regime change at YouTube.

One of the most important parts of the upcoming HTML5 standard is support for video that can be built directly into Web page without requiring a plug-in such as Flash Player. Other open standards such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for formatting, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and Web Open Font Format (WOFF) for typography can mimic Flash features, but Flash's ability to deliver streaming video to multiple … Read more