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Looks like Apple finally gave in and started to support VP8, though only in WebRTC. They are heavily vested in h264. Maybe the world will see free codecs on on

Looks like Apple finally gave in and started to support VP8, though only in WebRTC. They are heavily vested in h264. Maybe the world will see free codecs on one day.

e1ven 8y ago
They don't have HW support for VP8 - This makes a big difference in battery life, so I can understand why they don't support it. From https://webkit.org/blog/8672/on-the-road-to-webrtc-1-0-including-vp8/ https://webkit.org/blog/8672/on-the-road-to-webrtc-1-0-inclu... "We found that, on an iPhone 7 Plus in laboratory conditions, the use of H.264 on a 720p video call increases the battery life by up to an hour compared to VP8." That said, they make their own chips. They could certainly add it to the iPhone n+1 if they were so inclined.
- gcb0 8y ago
  and while they don't update chips, they could just allow the user to give their batteries to see the content if they choose to. So condescending to limit user agency like that.
  - RandallBrown 8y ago
    99.9% of users wouldn't know why their phone battery is dying more quickly. They'd just complain that the latest update (or whatever) made their phone worse. I guess they could have some sort of pop up saying "The website you're visiting is using a technology that uses more power on your phone" but that seems like a pretty crappy compromise.
    - gcb0 8y ago
      everyone feels their phone getting hot when the battery has a high drain for long and will quickly associate to a site. thinking users are dumb is just gate keeping by oh-so-clever-engineers
- tpush 8y ago
  Intel CPUs have hardware decoding support for VP8 since Broadwell, but Apple's Macs don't take advantage of that. So it seems Apple has more reasons not to support the (Google backed) codec apart from hardware decoding support.
ksec 8y ago
>Maybe the world will see free codecs on one day. Of course we will, Supporting H.264 long enough it will also become a free codec. Which is ~2027. Considering x264 is still one of the best if not the best in Medium to High Bitrate encode, this is something worth looking forward to. And MPEG are already working on new codec based on H.264 that will be completely royalty free.
- mgamache 8y ago
  If you are referring to AV1, it's still a year or two away (probably) from being supported in hardware and it's too complex for CPU encoding in real-time. H.265 is supported in Apple hardware, but not part of the WebRTC spec or supported by browsers.
  - clouddrover 8y ago
    > it's too complex for CPU encoding in real-time It depends on the encoder though. The AOM encoder is still quite slow, but Intel's SVT-AV1 encoder (https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1) is achieving 20 frames a second: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SVT-AV1-Platinum-1080p-60-FPS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SVT-AV1-... Xiph's rav1e encoder (https://github.com/xiph/rav1e https://github.com/xiph/rav1e) can do realtime encoding on a laptop at low resolutions: https://youtu.be/qubPzBcYCTw?t=2076 https://youtu.be/qubPzBcYCTw?t=2076 You always have to consider encode time versus image quality versus bandwidth. Twitch is using NGCodec's FPGA based VP9 encoders to live stream with the same image quality at a lower bitrate than H.264 can achieve: https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitchs-esports-live-streaming-35db26f6322f https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitch...

Looks like Apple finally gave in and started to support VP8, though only in WebRTC. They are heavily vested in h264. Maybe the world will see free codecs on one day.

e1ven 8y ago

They don't have HW support for VP8 - This makes a big difference in battery life, so I can understand why they don't support it. From https://webkit.org/blog/8672/on-the-road-to-webrtc-1-0-including-vp8/ https://webkit.org/blog/8672/on-the-road-to-webrtc-1-0-inclu... "We found that, on an iPhone 7 Plus in laboratory conditions, the use of H.264 on a 720p video call increases the battery life by up to an hour compared to VP8." That said, they make their own chips. They could certainly add it to the iPhone n+1 if they were so inclined.

gcb0 8y ago
and while they don't update chips, they could just allow the user to give their batteries to see the content if they choose to. So condescending to limit user agency like that.
- RandallBrown 8y ago
  99.9% of users wouldn't know why their phone battery is dying more quickly. They'd just complain that the latest update (or whatever) made their phone worse. I guess they could have some sort of pop up saying "The website you're visiting is using a technology that uses more power on your phone" but that seems like a pretty crappy compromise.
  - gcb0 8y ago
    everyone feels their phone getting hot when the battery has a high drain for long and will quickly associate to a site. thinking users are dumb is just gate keeping by oh-so-clever-engineers
tpush 8y ago
Intel CPUs have hardware decoding support for VP8 since Broadwell, but Apple's Macs don't take advantage of that. So it seems Apple has more reasons not to support the (Google backed) codec apart from hardware decoding support.

ksec 8y ago

>Maybe the world will see free codecs on one day. Of course we will, Supporting H.264 long enough it will also become a free codec. Which is ~2027. Considering x264 is still one of the best if not the best in Medium to High Bitrate encode, this is something worth looking forward to. And MPEG are already working on new codec based on H.264 that will be completely royalty free.

mgamache 8y ago
If you are referring to AV1, it's still a year or two away (probably) from being supported in hardware and it's too complex for CPU encoding in real-time. H.265 is supported in Apple hardware, but not part of the WebRTC spec or supported by browsers.
- clouddrover 8y ago
  > it's too complex for CPU encoding in real-time It depends on the encoder though. The AOM encoder is still quite slow, but Intel's SVT-AV1 encoder (https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1 https://github.com/OpenVisualCloud/SVT-AV1) is achieving 20 frames a second: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SVT-AV1-Platinum-1080p-60-FPS https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=SVT-AV1-... Xiph's rav1e encoder (https://github.com/xiph/rav1e https://github.com/xiph/rav1e) can do realtime encoding on a laptop at low resolutions: https://youtu.be/qubPzBcYCTw?t=2076 https://youtu.be/qubPzBcYCTw?t=2076 You always have to consider encode time versus image quality versus bandwidth. Twitch is using NGCodec's FPGA based VP9 encoders to live stream with the same image quality at a lower bitrate than H.264 can achieve: https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitchs-esports-live-streaming-35db26f6322f https://blog.twitch.tv/how-does-vp9-deliver-value-for-twitch...