Comments on: VP8: The Savior Codec

By: Ulke

Ulke — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:00:24 +0000

“First, all H.264 material on the web (as in HTML5), and all material viewable on mobile phones (with “hardware” support, whatever that means) is Baseline H.264. VP8 is better than that by most measures. Even the x264 people agree.”

QFT.
VP8, even in its current unoptimized state, beats the heck out of Baseline H.264, which is used by YouTube and all other video-enabled devices. Dark_Shikari’s FUD-filled article couldn’t change this fact (I’m surprised how he actually makes things sound worse than they actually are). Latest Theora development report (demo9) shows significant improvements due to psychovisual optimizations, and that’s already in the roadmap of VP8 developers.

By: Jonas B.

Jonas B. — Sun, 30 May 2010 19:05:05 +0000

You have to make a fair comparison:

First, all H.264 material on the web (as in HTML5), and all material viewable on mobile phones (with “hardware” support, whatever that means) is Baseline H.264. VP8 is better than that by most measures. Even the x264 people agree.

Second, the latest Theora 1.2 encoder has lots of demo material at their website. They are very impressive considering how Theora started out. It’s getting closer and closer to H.264 quality. Theora is based on VP3. Think what a modern encoder optimized for psychovisual quality can achieve with VP8!

The use case for patent free video on the web is enormous. Online video would explode.

So let’s focus on the fair criticism: That the patent situation is a bit opaque, to say the least. Google has not made the patent search they undertook public. And the x264 devs are right it’s a bit too close to H.264 considering what happened to VC-1.

By: RC

RC — Fri, 07 May 2010 21:30:08 +0000

Of course the hype is idiotic. However, I will say that VP7 compared quite favorably with H.264 and x264 in particular. In fact was the first codec to improve quality notably over VP3, IMHO. So, I don’t doubt VP8 may very well slightly surpass the best H.264 encoders, ALTHOUGH like all other On2 software, I’m sure it does so by using an order of magnitude more CPU time…

By: The Gospel according to Jobs: Thoughts on Flash | Thushan Fernando Uncut

The Gospel according to Jobs: Thoughts on Flash | Thushan Fernando Uncut — Mon, 03 May 2010 12:42:14 +0000

[...] Google having purchased On2 Technologies earlier this year, there’s a bit of excitement and worry about the future of VP8 and whether it will become open-source and what will happen to h264 or [...]

By: cnbeta啊。。。

cnbeta啊。。。 — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:29:01 +0000

[...] 其实HTML5 spec的draft里，video是不指定codec的。但是目前业界都比较倾向选择H.264。原因很简单，H.264是工业标准，很多DC, DV直接支持H.264录像，手持设备也有H.264的硬解码DSP模块。Mozilla因为是free software的旗帜，当然不会选择屈服在MPEG-LA的淫威之下，所以选了OGG Theora而杯葛了H.264。Google准备开源VP8。est觉得从技术上来说，不唯一定死codec，但是大家都支持一下H.264是有好处的。希望Firefox一些非官方编译版，学习chromium一样，官方二进制包不之际支持H.264，但是源码里弄一个ffmpeg的注释掉的flag，第三方编译版本可以开启H.264支持。这样大家都好过。从x264的评测来看，VP8从技术实力上来说超过了H.264。 [...]

By: Dan

Dan — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 19:32:48 +0000

Using out-of-loop postprocessing filters to cover up is a bad bad idea, it doesn’t help actual preservation and the only thing you get out of that is a blurry mess (see: WMV9 über postprocessing). It’s admitting “we look like crap and need to apply butter over the video to try to hide the artifacts”. (To On2′s credit, one idea they used in the past is apply an in-loop filter to motion-predicted data, giving some of the benefit.)

Combined with the fact that the only optimization criteria On2 has used for years has been PSNR, I’d expect a a very washed image (and that’s something you can already see in the released promo materials).

It’ll sure be a nicer base format than Theora, but only useful if it’s really patent-free (good luck with that!) and somebody bothers to write a decent encoder for it (difficult without money as it won’t ever be as good as h.264 -> less motivation from devs).

In any case if it lowers h.264 patent fees it’s good news.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:35:53 +0000

@George: What is your basis for claiming that VP8 is a very cool codec? Have you been able to test the production encoder and/or decoder? I’m very curious to know if VP8 has actually seen any use outside of On2′s walls yet.

By: George

George — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:19:10 +0000

VP8 is a very cool codec, though a lot of the magic happens with post processing filters. Cool for low power stuff because it can omit this step, but sure there is a ‘analog vs. digital’ style argument to follow with people saying h.264 just looks better or whatever.

Hope to see Matroska + VP8 + Vorbis pretty soon, good for the whole web.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 19:27:18 +0000

Aaron: I did some digging on FullVu HD. It seems to only support VP7. I don’t see any reference to VP8. But I might not be looking hard enough.

By: Multimedia Mike

Multimedia Mike — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:47:59 +0000

@Cyril: No, I mean “naive”. I.e., there are too many people who view Flash Player as software that does nothing but play back video, hence the apples/oranges comparisons to purpose-built, dedicated media players.

@Aaron: Thanks very much for confirming that VP8 is used outside of On2′s walls. Is that this company?

http://www1.vusion.com/index.html

AFAICT, Vusion offers an alternate plugin/media player called FullVu that incorporates VP8?