5 ms·

I'm confident VP9 has a much better chance of succeeding this time around. h264 was already widely supported before Apple decided to promote it against Flash. T

I'm confident VP9 has a much better chance of succeeding this time around. h264 was already widely supported before Apple decided to promote it against Flash. That's not the case with h.265 right now. It will have to start from scratch, which gives VP9 a much larger window of opportunity. This is from November, where they posted they are about 7% behind h.265/HVEC: https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-videocodec-4.pdf https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-videoco... I've also seen in another document I can't find right now them saying that work on h.265 started in 2005, while work on VP9 started in 2011...and they are already pretty close to matching it, and they are gaining 10% on it every quarter. If that's true it should be at least as efficient or more within a quarter or two, than h.265. Then it will be just a question of adoption. Software adoption should be much easier. Many have already implemented VP8 (which is also slightly better than h.264 at this point - [1]), and I'm sure Google will use VP9 for HD Hangouts, and for Youtube. This time I hope they go through with their promise and make it the default codec for Youtube, with fallback to Flash for browsers not supporting it (only about 20% of the users are not supporting VP8 right now, for reference [2]). That should encourage adoption by other video sites, and also chip makers. And that's I think the biggest hurdle - getting chip makers to support VP9. But now with Android's popularity and virtually every chip maker supporting Android, I think it will be much easier than it was to get support for VP8. The nice part about VP9 is that it will also come integrated with the Opus codec inside WebM, and that should be a big factor in the adoption of WebM, too. [1] http://pacoup.com/2012/12/20/vp8-webm-vs-h-264-mp4-december-2012/ http://pacoup.com/2012/12/20/vp8-webm-vs-h-264-mp4-december-... [2] http://downloads.webmproject.org/ngov2012/pdf/03-ngov-vp8-update.pdf http://downloads.webmproject.org/ngov2012/pdf/03-ngov-vp8-up...

doublec 14y ago
Integrating Opus and/or VP9 into WebM removes one of the selling points they used to promote the format. WebM wasn't supposed to be a generic container format holding different codecs. It was specifically tied to Vorbis/VP8 to ensure everyone advertising WebM support would be able to play the files. If they decide to add these additional codecs then there will be some players that can play some WebM files but not others. If that was the direction they wanted to head then they could have just stuck with Matroska for the container format.
- fosap 14y ago
  webm is a defined subset of mkv. And it stays that way. Only a small, finite number of codecs have to be implemented (so far vp8, vp9, vorbis, opus).
  - doublec 14y ago
    The defined subset included the particular codecs that would only be supported. Implementers who got on the WebM train agreed to VP8 and Vorbis. They may not be keen to do VP9 or Opus. There's no "have to be implemented" for these two formats. This means there will be fragmentation which WebM was supposed to avoid.
- wmf 14y ago
  Google can solve this by defining some interoperability profiles like WebM = only VP8+Vorbis and WebM2 = only VP9+Opus. Or they could give a completely different name to VP9+Opus since WebM is not a popular name anyway. The ITU/ISO camp has the same problem but worse, since MP4 may contain MPEG-4, H.264, or H.265.
newguysob 14y ago
> I'm confident VP9 has a much better chance of succeeding this time around. Yup Micro$oft and Apple (partners of MPEG LA) will totally let that happen.
- Cyranix 14y ago
  "Micro$oft" in this day and age? It's time to move on. (Or at least update to something equally obnoxious but more relevant like "Appl€".)
Hupo 14y ago
>VP8 (which is also slightly better than h.264 at this point) I'm sorry, but you have been mislead - VP8 is not better than H.264, and comparison you linked is bad for multiple reasons, like not telling the exact encoder settings used, not providing actual video for users to compare and only showing one frame (for all we know, it might be a keyframe on VP8 and it pumped the bitrate up for it and x264 didn't), not providing source for test replication and so on - just read these: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/458 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/458 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 I can do a proper comparison between H.264 and VP8 if you or anyone else is interested, though it'll take at least a few hours (I intend to use the park_joy test clip found in derf's test clip collection[1]). Also, On2 is famous for hyping up their products to heaven and have yet to match their claims, so I remain skeptical about VP9. There's also Xiph working on Daala, but right now it doesn't seem to be much beyond big words. While I would love an open format to provide better quality than H.264 and even H.265, I wouldn't hold my breath for such a thing. [1] http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/ http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/
- Hupo 14y ago
  Okay then, I'm done with the comparison. You can find it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122855 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122855

doublec 14y ago

Integrating Opus and/or VP9 into WebM removes one of the selling points they used to promote the format. WebM wasn't supposed to be a generic container format holding different codecs. It was specifically tied to Vorbis/VP8 to ensure everyone advertising WebM support would be able to play the files. If they decide to add these additional codecs then there will be some players that can play some WebM files but not others. If that was the direction they wanted to head then they could have just stuck with Matroska for the container format.

fosap 14y ago
webm is a defined subset of mkv. And it stays that way. Only a small, finite number of codecs have to be implemented (so far vp8, vp9, vorbis, opus).
- doublec 14y ago
  The defined subset included the particular codecs that would only be supported. Implementers who got on the WebM train agreed to VP8 and Vorbis. They may not be keen to do VP9 or Opus. There's no "have to be implemented" for these two formats. This means there will be fragmentation which WebM was supposed to avoid.
wmf 14y ago
Google can solve this by defining some interoperability profiles like WebM = only VP8+Vorbis and WebM2 = only VP9+Opus. Or they could give a completely different name to VP9+Opus since WebM is not a popular name anyway. The ITU/ISO camp has the same problem but worse, since MP4 may contain MPEG-4, H.264, or H.265.

newguysob 14y ago

> I'm confident VP9 has a much better chance of succeeding this time around. Yup Micro$oft and Apple (partners of MPEG LA) will totally let that happen.

Cyranix 14y ago
"Micro$oft" in this day and age? It's time to move on. (Or at least update to something equally obnoxious but more relevant like "Appl€".)

Hupo 14y ago

>VP8 (which is also slightly better than h.264 at this point) I'm sorry, but you have been mislead - VP8 is not better than H.264, and comparison you linked is bad for multiple reasons, like not telling the exact encoder settings used, not providing actual video for users to compare and only showing one frame (for all we know, it might be a keyframe on VP8 and it pumped the bitrate up for it and x264 didn't), not providing source for test replication and so on - just read these: http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/458 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/458 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/archives/472 I can do a proper comparison between H.264 and VP8 if you or anyone else is interested, though it'll take at least a few hours (I intend to use the park_joy test clip found in derf's test clip collection[1]). Also, On2 is famous for hyping up their products to heaven and have yet to match their claims, so I remain skeptical about VP9. There's also Xiph working on Daala, but right now it doesn't seem to be much beyond big words. While I would love an open format to provide better quality than H.264 and even H.265, I wouldn't hold my breath for such a thing. [1] http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/ http://media.xiph.org/video/derf/

Hupo 14y ago
Okay then, I'm done with the comparison. You can find it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122855 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5122855