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WebM Files
The new and open video format

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 * How to Play WebM Files


WEBM – THE NEW VIDEO FILE FORMAT

WebM is a new open standard for compressed Video Content. It shall offer an
alternative to commercial Formats such as h264, MPEG4 and MPEG2, that are
patented and require a commercial licence. WebM is based on two open codecs for
compressing the video and audio component of the content.

VP8 for Video

The video content of a WebM file is compressed with VP8, a technology developed
by ON2, which was recently acquired by Google, who then went on to make VP8 an
open and free technology. VP8 is considered to be one of the few standards that
can keep up with the modern MPEG4 compression standards both in quality and
filesize.

Vorbis for Audio

Of course also the Audio-Component of a Video-File needs to be compressed,
therefore another open technology is used: Vorbis (also known as Ogg Vorbis), a
free open source software for lossy audio-compression, and therefore an
alternative to MP3.

Test Files

Check out some test files in WebM Format here.

Impact of WebM

With the growth of Online Video and increasing Quality and Size of the Videos
there was also demand for a high quality codec that is capable of delivering HD
videos highly compressed but still in in high quality. So far, only the
proprietary h.264/MPEG4 Standard was regarded as capable of this – but since it
is patented and needs to be licensed, it is only suitable for commercial
applications.

Google was looking for an alternative that could be offered free of charge and
with open source, which led to the acquisition of ON2, the company that
developed VP8, and released their video compression software as open source.
Through Googles strong market position as owner of Online-Video Giant YouTube,
all major Browsers will support WebM. Also open Phone Operating Systems like
Googles Android have built in Support. This makes WebM a real alternative to
h.264, todays propietary de-facto standard of web-video.

It will be interesting to see how other online entertainment brands like hulu,
bwin or netflix will react to the availability of an open standard. After all it
would mean for them that they have to convert their huge archives, and store at
least two versions of their video content.

Another question is the hardware support. While all major browsers will support
the format, the operating systems themselves dont, and neither do mobile phones
or set-top boxes. Google has already announced WebM Support for the next release
of their Android Operating System, while Market-Leader Apple so far doesnt
support it on their iPhone, and given their rivalry with Google they probably
wont in the future.

PAGES

 * Demo Files
 * Encoding Tools
 * How to Play WebM Files
 * WebM – The new Video File Format