Nicholas from the nonprofit, open video player Miro sez, “The new open-video WebM format is a real chance to move us all out of the proprietary video format mess of the current web and device world. Miro Video Converter (free and open-source, of course) is the first video converter for the WebM and definitely the easiest way to make WebM videos. We want to do everything we can to make WebM easy to create and use so that it can blossom on a million websites! * “
Is video on the web going to be proprietary or open source? It’s complicated and the question has by no means been resolved, but Google just helped move the stakes towards an open source solution by freely licensing its VP8 compression technology.
The Open Video Alliance, which campaigns for the adoption of open standards, announced the move and explains how this will help move towards the eventual adoption of an open standard.
What is Open Video?
“As internet video matures, we face a crossroads: will technology and public policy support a more participatory culture—one that encourages and enables free expression and broader cultural engagement? Will video be woven into the fabric of the open web? Or will online video become a glorified TV-on-demand service?
Open Video is a movement to promote free expression and innovation in online video through open standards, open source, and sharing.”
There are three layers to getting video from the creator to the user: the file container or format in which the video is recorded, a compression engine that makes downloading and streaming through the sometimes narrow pipes easier, and the delivery system or browser interface, which may be open, such as HTML5 or closed like Adobe’s proprietary Flash. Any one of those levels may be weighed down by license fees and conditions of use, unless the source code is open.
HTML5, the open delivery standard, may be used with different compression engines and different file formats, as shown here.
With Google’s announcement that VP8 is now freely available, the WebM project is moving ahead as a third alternative to the two previous choices for HTML5 web video delivery, the proprietary (and some say costly) H264 on the one hand and the open but apparently somewhat inferior Theora.
Google stands to gain from adoption of an open standard. The alternative would be having to use H264 compression … and pay the H264 proprietary patent pool which, one of the commenters says, includes both Apple and Microsoft among the patent owners. So while Google’s move may not have been all altruistic, it certainly helps move video technology towards open standards.
There is more discussion and detail on the Open Video Alliance site, here: