On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 1:15 PM, elbowsofdeath <st...@dvmachine.com> wrote:
> Meanwhile apparently someone that knows a bit about the tech of video codecs > had an initial look at VP8 and was quite concerned about some similarities in > certain functions to h.264. This leaves the door open for patent woes for > WebM, although it is far too early to tell if that will become an issue at > some point. At the very least we should not get too complacent about WebM, > its future is not completely assured, but hopefully it will all work out ok. > What I've heard from codec people is that that stuff is exactly what NOT to be worried about. The codec patents are really specific and the stuff in VP8 that's "like" H.264 is exactly where they did something different to avoid infringing their patent. Remember that most of the anti-WebM stuff so far is from people heavily invested (either in $ or time) in H.264. My suspicion is that Google didn't spend $120 million willy nilly. And remember, their plan is that they're going to use it for YouTube so they can save money. Oh and companies are working on hardware support. FWIW, if you didn't know, I now work for Mozilla and have been a supporter of open codecs for while now so of course I'm biased. I'd just caution you to take it all with a grain of salt. WebM was just announced 2 days ago. Give it time. The best way to know the future is to invent it. So if you'd like to WebM succeed, vote with attention. Start playing with stuff and talk to the people making it. You can grab a WebM capable beta of Firefox here: http://nightly.mozilla.org/webm/ Miro just put out there super easy video converter with webm support: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/ I just tried it out and posted something here: http://reports.graymattergravy.com/2010/05/21/webm/ - Verdi -- Training for a triathlon and raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. http://training.michaelverdi.com
