[theora] Google to Open-source VP8 for HTML5 Video

[Silvia Pfeiffer]

On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Tom Sparks <tom_a_sparks at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> --- On Tue, 13/4/10, Basil Mohamed Gohar <abu_hurayrah at hidayahonline.org> wrote:
>> On 04/12/2010 08:17 PM, xiphmont at xiph.org
>> wrote:
>> > On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 9:12 PM, Daniel
>> Hendrycks<kondo8 at hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> "http://newteevee.com/2010/04/12/google-to-open-source-vp8-for-html5-video/"
>> >> Does this mean an end for Theora?
>> >>
>> > Maybe.  Unlikely.  We don't know yet what
>> Google is actually going to
>> > announce... or for sure they're actually announcing
>> it.  patience :-)
>> >
>> > Don't lose sight of the prize: an unencumbered modern
>> baseline for
>> > media on the net and especially the web.  If
>> true, this is fantastic
>> > news, no qualifications necessary.  Besides, I
>> wanna get my hands on
>> > the source ;-)
>> >
>> > Monty
> [snip]
>
> if vp8 becomes opensource,
> theora could be the base/web profile
> and vp8 could be main profile

There is a whole swag of things Google will have to solve before VP8
is actually usable on the Web. I doubt the announcement will be that
they have solved it all etc, but that the announcement will be that
they open source VP8 with an aim towards getting all the other issues
sorted.

I wrote an in-depth blog post about this earlier, see
http://blog.gingertech.net/2010/02/20/googles-challenges-of-freeing-vp8/
. They are now taking the first step along the list of things that I
mentioned are necessary.

It is great to see this, but unless we see Apple and Microsoft
committed to VP8, too, it is unlikely that VP8 will be in a better
position than Theora as an open codec (except for the potential of
higher quality, which still needs to be confirmed).

Cheers,
Silvia.