Tag: webm

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Structure.io homepage refresh

So, we just launched an update to the [Structure Sensor homepage][link], and it features some neat HTML5 / CSS3 tech. I’m pretty happy with it. It required me to learn a few things, which I’ll hopefully have time to write about here soon.

It also marks the first time I’ve ever encoded video in [WebM][webm]! It was easy thanks to [Miro Video Converter][miro] and [FFMPEG][ffmpeg].

[link]: http://structure.io/ “The Structure Sensor is the first 3D sensor for mobile devices”
[webm]: http://www.webmproject.org “The WebM project”
[miro]: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com “Miro Video Converter”
[ffmpeg]: http://www.ffmpeg.org “FFMPEG”

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An Encoder Is Not A State Machine

Fellow Michigander [Chris Adamson does a good job of elaborating on the problems Google’s decision to drop H.264 from Chrome in favor of WebM][link] from the perspective of an implementor or creator. The short: It ain’t pretty.

via [@soypunk][via]

[link]: http://www.subfurther.com/blog/2011/01/13/an-encoder-is-not/ “An Encoder Is Not A State Machine”
[via]: http://twitter.com/soypunk “Soypunk on Twitter”

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H.264 To Remain Royalty-Free Indefinitely

[This is good news][link]. I can’t help but think WebM had something to do with it.

via [Lukas Mathis][lukas]

[link]: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en “MPEG LA’s AVC License Will Not Charge Royalties for Internet Video That Is Free to End Users Through Life of License | Business Wire”
[lukas]: http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2010/08/26/h_264_update/ “Ignore The Code: H.264 Update”

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WebM

[As some anticipated, Google has open-sourced the VP8 codec they acquired in their purchase of On2 Technologies on 17 February this year][link]. They’ve taken the VP8 video codec and combined it with Ogg audio, and a new container format to create the WebM project: “a broadly-backed community effort to develop a world-class media format for the open web.”

If you’ve been following the HTML5 `video` debate, this is very interesting news, indeed.

This is certainly the death knell for Theora, and depending on just how good VP8 is it may be a serious competitor to H.264. There are two big hurdles for WebM’s adoption:

* Getting browsers to support the format, so it makes sense for content producers to use it and

* Hardware decoders for mobile devices. Software decoding just isn’t going to cut it. Part of H.264’s strength is that it runs great on iPhone and iPod Touch and iPad. The reason: All of those devices have built-in hardware decoding for the codec. I highly doubt Apple will ever include hardware decoding for a directly competing tech like VP8.

Vorbis audio is still kind of a stinker compared to AAC, but WebM doesn’t need James Cameron to be on board with this for the project to be successful. They just need to start making some dents.

[link]: http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-web-media-project.html “Introducing WebM, an open web media project – The WebM project blog”