Last modified: 2015-09-01
The Alliance for Open Media is an organization dedicated to the development of open-source multimedia technologies and administered under the Joint Development Foundation framework. Its founding members are Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix, and it anticipates a number of additional members. See the press release.
The group’s initial project is a next-generation open video codec.
Generally speaking, the WebM Project represents Google in the Alliance for Open Media. WebMProject.org will continue to be the site to go to for information about VP8 and VP9 and related technology.
Yes.
Yes, we expect to be significant contributors to that effort.
Project and working group charters are developed using the Joint Development Foundation’s governance guidelines.
Google and its partners have just formed the Alliance, so it’s too early to say how we’ll approach standardization. Projects will be developed collaboratively and in the open.
In fact, the Alliance upends the patent-pool concept. First, Alliance members are declaring their licensing commitments at the beginning of the process, rather than at the end. Second, members are making a royalty-free commitment by promising that any IP they own that is used in the final spec may be used on a license- and royalty-free basis.
WebM is an open media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 or VP9 video codec, audio streams compressed with the Vorbis or Opus audio codecs, and WebVTT text tracks. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container.
VP8 and VP9 are highly-efficient video compression technologies (video “codecs”) developed by the WebM Project. Anyone may use these codecs royalty-free.
Vorbis and Opus are open-source audio compression technologies (audio “codecs”) developed by the Xiph Foundation. Like VP8 and VP9, these technologies are free-to-use.
A key factor in the web’s success is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP are open and freely implementable. Though video is also now core to the web experience, there was unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices. To that end, we started the WebM project, a broadly-backed community effort to develop an open web media format.
WebM was built for the web. By testing hundreds of thousands of videos with widely varying characteristics, we found that VP8 and VP9 deliver high-quality video while efficiently adapting to varying processing and bandwidth conditions across a broad range of devices. High-efficiency bandwidth usage and reduced storage requirements can help publishers recognize immediate cost savings. Also, the relative simplicity of VP8/VP9 makes it easy to integrate into existing environments, and requires comparatively little manual tuning in the encoder to produce high-quality results.
We decided to define WebM files in this way because we wanted to do what’s best for users. Users just want video to work, they don’t want to worry about supported codecs, file formats, and so on. After much discussion with browser makers, tool developers and others, we reached a consensus that a narrowly defined format would cause the least confusion for users. If a user has a .webm file, he or she can be confident that it will play in any browser or media player that supports WebM.
Use a supported web browser or media player.
WebM is widely deployed by YouTube and other video websites. Most consumers, however, don’t need to be concerned with video formats. WebM media is of greater interest to video providers and publishers.
Use FFMpeg to encode some of your own videos, and play them back in Chrome.
Visit HTML5Rocks.com for a quick primer.
No. The WebM container format’s features may be extended, but not in a way that breaks backward-compatibility. The VP8 and VP9 bitstream formats are final. Future WebM Project video compression advancements would be released as new codecs.
See our Code page.
You only need to be a programmer if you want to build WebM support into a software application, or contribute code to the WebM Project.
WebM is an open-source project sponsored by Google.
VP8 and VP9 perform exceptionally well in realtime, low-latency environments such as videoconferencing, and there are companies using them independently for such applications. WebRTC also supports WebM.
Yes, the license gives you the freedom to use VP8/VP9 in virtually any way you like. It should be noted, however, that when used in a container other than WebM it may not play in browsers that support WebM.
VP8 uses 14 bits for width and height, for a maximum resolution of 16384x16384 pixels.
VP9 uses 16 bits for width and height, for a maximum resolution of 65536x65536 pixels.
Neither VP9 nor VP8 places any restriction on framerate or datarate.
On a desktop operating system, reading the file properties (for example, using Get Info on Mac OSX) will reveal a MIME type of video/webm. On YouTube, right-click a video and choose “Stats for Nerds.”
WebM isn’t something you install on its own. It’s deployed within application software such as web browsers, media players and media plug-ins.
Since WebM is a subset of Matroska, it has fewer allowed stream types and features than Matroska.
A distinct name gives us a way to easily refer to the subset, and gives users a way to associate a piece of content with a client having known-good support. Google Chrome, for example, may or may not be able to decode filename.mkv, but it will absolutely play filename.webm — provided filename.webm conforms to the WebM guidelines.
Some video codecs require content distributors and manufacturers to pay patent royalties to use the intellectual property within the codec. WebM and the codecs it supports (VP8/VP9 video and Vorbis/Opus audio) require no royalty payments of any kind. You can do whatever you want with the WebM code without owing money to anybody. For more information, see the License page.
Like most BSD licenses, this license allows you to use the VP8 and VP9 code with a minimum of restrictions on your use. You can use the code in proprietary software as well as open source software. We also offer a patent grant, whose details are discussed below.
The patent grant applies to both hardware and software implementations.
No, the license does not require you to release source if you make changes. However, we would love to see any changes you make and possibly incorporate them, so if you want to participate please visit the Code page and submit some patches.
The Apache license is very similar in effect to this license in that it offers a permissive copyright license and a patent grant. The Apache license is however deemed incompatible with a number of projects that might use VP8 and VP9.
One of the goals of having this code licensed as liberally as possible is to encourage adoption by as many users as possible. This includes both proprietary and free software. Using the GPL license would not be a good match for this goal.
No. As the copyright license is simply a BSD license, and the patent grant is fully separate from it, it is not a new license. When we first released VP8, we had a clause in the patent grant that called this into question. We’ve since fixed that by decoupling the patent grant from the copyright license.
Yes, you still have the right to redistribute and you still have a patent license for Google’s patents that cover the code that Google released.
You still have the right to redistribute but no patent license for the changes (if there are any patents covering it). We can’t give patent licenses for changes people make after we distribute the code, as we have no way to predict what those changes will be. Other common licenses take the same approach, including the Apache license.
Yes, you still have the right to redistribute and you still have a patent license for Google’s patents that cover the code that Google released.
Yes, he still has the right to redistribute and he still has a patent license for Google’s patents that cover the code that Google released.
