Comments on: The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8

By: Quora

Quora — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 03:51:53 +0000

What are some of the reasons that people prefer H.264/AAC over WebM (VP8 and Ogg Vorbis) for web video and audio? Which are deal-breakers for those who won’t use WebM?…

Too-long version: H.264 and AAC are better than VP8 and Ogg Vorbis, respectively, in almost every way. Except one: You need a per-implementation patent license for H.264 and AAC. That’s not really a problem for proprietary software vendors (like Apple…

By: Angel Genchev

Angel Genchev — Sat, 11 Dec 2010 21:35:45 +0000

I`m sorry to read that VP8 is so inferior and patent endangered. I hope that the google`s millions bought the related patents and that On2 had enough of them. A year ago I did experimental rtp server and client for live video chat using x264 from ffdshow. Then I gave up, because of my employer ordered other things to do. Later begun looking to reimplement it @home without x264 to avoid patent issues. The theora, then VP8 codecs became one of my hopes when google changed the license.
I`m interested in comparisson of VP8 and x264 codecs for live streaming – what happens when one turns off the B slices, CABAC coding, Weighted prediction which is requrement of h.264 baseline profile and VP8 features (if required).
I think that if the patents are not an issue, VP9.x (why not xVP9 ) should be derived from vp8 to fix what is possible without patent infringement.

By: Chris Smith

Chris Smith — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 20:41:27 +0000

I love the practical and frank approach your review takes. The “summary for the lazy” notice was pretty funny too, though it should probably be an anchor link to that section. (Cause they would be too lazy to scroll, get it…) Any way, good read.

By: Quora

Quora — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:12:48 +0000

In layman’s terms, what are the key technical differences between the VP8 and H.264 coded video representations?…

Its hard to provide technical differences in layman’s terms here, because they are actually pretty similar and the differences are very nuanced. As a very rough summary, H.264 has better adaptive capabilities in a number of areas, i.e. it reacts bette…

By: Rocso

Rocso — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 03:18:04 +0000

To all those asking why Google is rushing to get WebM and VP8 out there before it’s really ready… to quote Mozilla: “net effects”.

Remember Microsoft’s years of vapourware announcements that were designed solely to stall “net effects” and uptake of anything new that they didn’t own or control? They’re still around but they killed, crippled and delayed a lot of great stuff in the process.

It only works if you are big enough, and Google are BIG ENOUGH.

By: Evan

Evan — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 17:06:01 +0000

Thanks for your first technical analysis of VP8. It is really helpful for basic understanding of VP8.

However, it should be another story regarding to patent analysis. In fact, MPEG-LA lists their essential patents of H.264 on the website. I believe it won’t take you too much time to go through them (especially US patents).

In my biased opinion, only “deblocking filter” and “DC intra prediction mode” of VP8 may have patent infringement problems.

More interestingly, there is a lawsuit now regarding to deblocking filter (http://dockets.justia.com/docket/georgia/gandce/1:2010cv00748/165453/). Video Enhancement Solutions accuses many companies (Sony, Samsung, Panasonic..) of patent infringement. The patents of deblocking filter are quite strong and assigned from LG Electronics. This tells us that even if you have paid H.264 license fee to MPEG-LA, you are still not 100% safe. So, it is not reasonable to ask Google to make sure VP8 is 100% patent-free. Maybe 95% is already high enough.

By: Mike Spooner

Mike Spooner — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 10:36:29 +0000

#183 Ben: see the official announcement from MPEG-LA dated 2nd February 2010:

http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf

It is quite clear that they *may* require license fees (on some yet to be determined basis: per-decoder, per-stream, per-decode, or whatever, including combinations thereof), but may not do so, depending on how they feel.

Note also that there is no legal commitment in
any of these announcements, MPEG-LA could
decide to require fees at *any* point in the
future (I’m no legal expert, but I strongly
suspect that they are not entitled to make
*retroactive* changes to patent licensing
terms, so your previously legal past
activities should not require (further) fees).

From the February announcement, we should
get a statement from MPEG-LA by the end of
2010 which will state their *current*
intentions of what they will require from
2015 onwards. As noted above, such a statement
would not guarantee anything.

By: Relgoshan

Relgoshan — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:58:31 +0000

YouTube’s AAC may not be a good as some other encoders, but VP8 LQ sounds MUCH worse than even the flash version.

By: Brown

Brown — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 06:28:39 +0000

How much improvement can Google milk if the apply serious psy optimizations to the encoder?

By: Andre

Andre — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 04:13:44 +0000

What I wonder is whether the take up of WebM by web browsers will be enough to cause the MPEG association to update their terms to something that doesn’t scare mosts web sites off? I hope so, but only time will tell.