Google has released the VP-8 codec and WebM format for use royalty-free. This has the potential to trigger a major change in the online video world. The VP-8 codec is significantly better than the best previous free codec Ogg Theora, and is competitive with, and in at least some cases better than h.264 for web content. If the encoders for VP-8 support the full option set that VP8 is capable of (which is a superset of the VP6 flash options available with Sorenson Squeeze and Rhozet Carbon Coder), VP8 has the potential of improving video quality on the web.
Here are some things that may help VP8 adoption:
h.264 has known patents that may in the future require royalties for playback.VP8 can look better at current web video playback rates.HTML5 video has just begun being used. It is relatively easy to add another supported codec now.HTML5 video support is currently split between browsers that support h.264 for quality reasons, and browsers that only support Ogg Theora due to justified worries about known patents on h.264 - no guarantees have been given that playback software will not need to pay royalties in 6 years. Since VP8 is of similar quality as h.264 and similar royalty-free status as Ogg Theora, it might become the only codec supported by all browsers
Here are some things that may hinder VP8 adoption:
h.264 currently has hardware acceleration on a lot of mobile devices.h.264 already looks pretty good on the web (the good is the enemy of the best).Much of the video on the web just transitioned from Flash Video to h.264. The video providers may decide against another transition this soon.Many of the compression tools out there, including high-end ones, never offered the full range of VP6 options, limiting the quality of Flash video produced by those tools. If they similarly limit the VP8 options, VP8 may be perceived as being of lower quality due to the low quality produced by those tools.The average available bandwidth for video playback on the web keeps going up. At higher bandwidths, VP8 may not have the same quality advantages.
Google has released patches that add VP8 encoding into ffmpeg - this makes encoding VP8 possible at low cost.
We are living in interesting times in the online video world - in the past 5 years, online video has gone from postage-stamp size video to high-definition content, the costs of delivering the video have gone from exorbitant to affordable, the amount of content has skyrocketed, and in the past 2 years most content has moved from Flash to h.264.
Now we must ask ourselves, will online video stop at h.264 or move to VP8? If it stops at h.264 now, will the patent holders ask for playback royalties in 5-6 years (remember the GIF Patent)? If they ask for playback royalties in the future, will online video switch over to VP8 then or will browsers and users pay the royalties?
