WebM Exciting New Video Standard with VP8, Vorbis, Matroska

[Emp3r0r]

WebM is a new open video standard announced by Google at Google IO (day 1 keynote) in May 2010:
http://www.youtube.com/GoogleDevelopers

Video Demo
WebM Demo with Leonardo Dicaprio - Shot with Red Camera (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLxQiI8c1Bs&p=4FFFFF981ECC3263&playnext=1&index=14&html5=True)


More information

WebM Blog (http://webmproject.blogspot.com/)

WebM Project Homepage (http://www.webmproject.org/)

webm-discuss (https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/group/webm-discuss) mailing list
Info

Alternate Reference Frame Explanation (http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/inside-webm-technology-vp8-alternate.html)


Tools

WebM DirectShow Playback Filters 32bit (http://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list) (and other downloads)

WebM DirectShow Playback Filters x64 (http://nic.dnsalias.com/WebMx64.zip)

Haali Media Splitter (http://haali.su/mkv/) now w/ WebM Support

VP8 Encoder that can take AVISynth script - ivfenc (http://nic.dnsalias.com/ivfenc.zip)

aoTuV B5.7 Vorbis Encoder that can take an AVISynth script - avsvorbis (http://nic.dnsalias.com/AVSVorbis.zip)

WebM+ffmpeg Win32 Build (http://micksam7.com/blog/2010/webm-ffmpeg-win32-build/)

Encoder Parameters (http://www.webmproject.org/tools/encoder-parameters/)

MKV Toolnix 4.0.0 w/ WebM Muxing (http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/win32/mkvtoolnix-unicode-4.0.0-setup.exe)


Nightly Builds

Chromium http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/

Firefox http://nightly.mozilla.org/webm/

Opera -stable (http://www.opera.com/download/) -announcement (http://labs.opera.com/news/2010/05/19/)

IE9 -platform preview (http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Default.html)

[Dark Shikari]

The first in-depth technical analysis of VP8 (http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377)

[Mosu]

mkvtoolnix already supports WebM files as they're basically Matroska: https://www.bunkus.org/blog/2010/05/google-open-sources-vp8-choses-matroska/

[Emp3r0r]

Snippet from article above:
Overall verdict on the VP8 video format

Overall, VP8 appears to be significantly weaker than H.264 compression-wise. The primary weaknesses mentioned above are the lack of proper adaptive quantization, lack of B-frames, lack of an 8×8 transform, and non-adaptive loop filter. With this in mind, I expect VP8 to be more comparable to VC-1 or H.264 Baseline Profile than with H.264. Of course, this is still significantly better than Theora, and in my tests it beats Dirac quite handily as well.

In terms of decoding speed I’m not quite sure; the current implementation appears to be about 16% slower than ffmpeg’s H.264 decoder (and thus probably about 25-35% slower than state-of-the-art decoders like CoreAVC). Of course, this doesn’t necessarily say too much about what a fully optimized implementation will reach, but the current one seems to be reasonably well-optimized and has SIMD assembly code for almost all major DSP functions, so I doubt it will get that much faster.

I would expect, with equally optimized implementations, VP8 and H.264 to be relatively comparable in terms of decoding speed. This, of course, is not really a plus for VP8: H.264 has a great deal of hardware support, while VP8 largely has to rely on software decoders, so being “just as fast” is in many ways not good enough. By comparison, Theora decodes almost 35% faster than H.264 using ffmpeg’s decoder.

They just mentioned in the live video that they will be pushing hardware support.

[the Mad Duke]

The hardware support will be there(hardware support list for WebM: AMD, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Broadcom... ) and Adobe just said that VP8 will be in Flash Player.

[Emp3r0r]

mkvtoolnix already supports WebM files as they're basically Matroska
I don't see any details yet on if WebM support speex (and gasp FLAC). Is it restricted to just vorbis? Any restrictions on bitdepth or samplerate?

[Mosu]

They're _basically_ Matroska but with certain intentional limiations. One of those limitations is that at the moment only Vorbis is supported. However, the project is open to other audio codecs as well -- probably as long as they're free as well (which would mean FLAC or WavPack).

[hajj_3]

No news if Apple will add support or not. Microsoft WILL (http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx) add WebM to IE9 so hopefully flash for streaming video is pretty much dead as firefox and IE combined have around 85-90% market share! I noticed Intel isn't in the list of companies that is involved in it :( I hope its added to Firefox 3.6.4 or 3.6.5 instead of us having to wait for Firefox 4.0 which will be months.

[the Mad Duke]

I hope its added to Firefox 3.6.4 or 3.6.5 instead of us having to wait for Firefox 4.0 which will be months.


http://www.webmproject.org/users/

[hajj_3]

thats a nightly, that doesn't say if it will be in 3.6.4 or 3.6.5 or not:(

[Keiyakusha]

http://www.webmproject.org/users/

As I understand Firefox builds by that link is an unstable pre-alpha with WebM support. Not something everyone wants to use on everyday basis.

[hajj_3]

correct and i assume its a nightly of 4.0 and not a 3.6.4 nightly. I just want to risk messing up my system by installing it to find out.

[Keiyakusha]

actually all is simple. I just clicked on download link and filename says this is development preview of the 3.7 alpha. I believe it will be installed as separate browser under some codename.
Never heard of 4.0 so far but current 3.7 maybe the same as 4.0 like it was when firefox 3.something was eventually renamed to 3.5.

[hajj_3]

3.7 has been scrapped as the main feature was seperating plugins like flash and silverlight from the browser so flash doesn't keep crashing firefox, this feature will be in firefox 3.6.4 which is out on June 1st (approximately). Firefox 4.0 will add lots of other cool stuff, i'm not sure why they have named this nightly 3.7 as it was decided it was scrapped weeks ago, strange.

[poisondeathray]

wow a bit of a let down, considering all the hype and head-to-head comparisons to h.264 on on2's marketing page

thanks to DS for the preview & in depth analysis

[Emp3r0r]

wow a bit of a let down, considering all the hype and head-to-head comparisons to h.264I disagree. This is huge! With such big partners and adoption, the rate at which the implementations improve will be much faster than theora.

Predictions
2010: Android and ChromeOS get WebM
2011: all major browsers fully support WebM
2011: WebM begins streaming into Android TVs
2011: WebM used in video conferencing
2012: most major content providers support WebM
2012: major political events stream live with WebM
2013: WebM streaming directly to Android electric cars
2014: New standard WebMx improve quality to near AVC levels

[ricardo.santos]

Does anyone have a ffmpeg vp8 patched version?

Sorenson has provided a free web only uploading/encoding page on their site

http://www.sorensonmedia.com/vp8/

[poisondeathray]

I disagree. This is huge! With such big partners and adoption, the rate at which the implementations improve will be much faster than theora.


I'm not disagreeing that it's big news.

I said it was a bit of a let down , because of all the hype - you know golden frames etc.... It was supposed to be significantly better than h.264 a year ago (in terms of quality), not what people are speculating it to be with improvements 5 years from now.

Well I hope it does improve, but DS's article said it's pretty much final spec, and that Google wasn't looking to change the spec . (no b-frames WTF ?!)

[AlekseiV]

I disagree. This is huge! With such big partners and adoption, the rate at which the implementations improve will be much faster than theora.But the "spec" itself is worse than H.264's, so it can never be as good. Also the spec is code.

[Midzuki]

I disagree. This is huge! With such big partners and adoption, the rate at which the implementations improve will be much faster than theora.

However, Dark Shikari has written:

Initially I was intending to go easy on On2 here; I assumed that this encoder was in fact new for VP8 and thus they wouldn’t necessarily have time to make the code high-quality and improve its algorithms. However, as I read through the encoder, it became clear that this was not at all true; there were comments describing bugfixes dating as far back as early 2004. That’s right: this software is even older than x264! I’m guessing that the current VP8 software simply evolved from the original VP7 software. Anyways, this means that I’m not going to go easy on On2; they’ve had (at least) 6 years to work on VP8, and a much larger dev team than x264’s to boot.


Predictions
2010: Android and ChromeOS get WebM
2011: all major browsers fully support WebM
2011: WebM begins streaming into Android TVs
2011: WebM used in video conferencing
2012: most major content providers support WebM
2012: major political events stream live with WebM
2013: WebM streaming directly to Android electric cars
2014: New standard WebMx improve quality to near AVC levels

Just out-of-curiosity,
where did you buy your newest crystal-ball? :)

Mr. DeathRay wrote:

(no b-frames WTF ?!)

VfW explains it all. :D

[colinhunt]

Reading Dark Shikari's technical analysis now, and I get a strong feeling that Google spent a s***load of money on a load of s***.

[sneaker_ger]

So, what do I have to do to play around with it? I downloaded the sample from Dark Shikari's blog and installed the DS filters from google's site but MPC won't play it. The new mmg build refuses it, too.

[Mosu]

So, what do I have to do to play around with it? I downloaded the sample from Dark Shikari's blog and installed the DS filters from google's site but MPC won't play it. The new mmg build refuses it, too.

That's because the vp8.mkv sample is not a Matroska/WebM file despite its file extension (it doesn't start with an EBML signature etc). Maybe it's a raw bitstream. Those are not supported yet by mkvtoolnix, mostly because the official tools only output into Matroska/WebM anyway.

[Keiyakusha]

Works nice for me. However I tried DS encoder. Not sure how to tweak settings in it and on defaults it looks like mpeg1

[colinhunt]

I'd love to hear DS or someone else equally knowledgeable comment on the x264/VP8 comparison video on On2's website, http://www.on2.com/index.php?599.

Oops, I guess this was already covered in the other VP8 thread. My bad.

[Dark Shikari]

That's because the vp8.mkv sample is not a Matroska/WebM file despite its file extension (it doesn't start with an EBML signature etc). Maybe it's a raw bitstream. Those are not supported yet by mkvtoolnix, mostly because the official tools only output into Matroska/WebM anyway.Oops, you're right, it's a raw bitstream, not MKV.

[clsid]

Here is a sample file from Opera:
http://lachy.id.au/lib/media/elephantsdream/Elephants_Dream-720p-Stereo.webm

Unfortunately the audio does not decode properly with CoreVorbis or ffdshow.

Edit: audio works properly with Haali's splitter (new version released today)

[Blue_MiSfit]

I think we may be missing a crucial piece by comparing VP8 to x264. The latter is clearly superior. What if we compare it to Mainconcept SDK or Ateme?

~MiSfit

[STaRGaZeR]

Here is a sample file from Opera:
http://lachy.id.au/lib/media/elephantsdream/Elephants_Dream-720p-Stereo.webm

Unfortunately the audio does not decode properly with CoreVorbis or ffdshow.

Edit: audio works properly with Haali's splitter (new version released today)

What video decoder are you using?

[iwod]

1. WebM is about the worst name you could ever get, Both as a Name and an Extension.

2. VP8 doesn't have a Spec........ ( A Reference Encoder is not a Spec )

3. Vobris and MK is about as good as it gets for Audio and Container.

What we need now is Google to publish / revise / clean the spec. So the communities can implement a decent encoder. As history teaches us, Most of the best Audio Video Decoder comes from Open Source / Community work.....

[CruNcher]

Did somebody allready tested what happens in a low bitrate short gop situation visualy :) i mean that's what they advertised the most with that it stays stable no i-frame pulse effect ?
iwod we gonna see encoder optimizations the implementation of some psy mostly but no big changes to the current bitstream for this stage, but the base for VP9 is here and VP9 will be the first one where much more improvements will go into, the time is to short hardware is being produced for the current spec (code) so no go it is like it is but it's no bad start @ all.

[stax76]

Great news for MKV, I have doubts however in this whole HTML5 thing, appear to be a titanic mess like C++.

[BDX]

http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2010-May/047795.html

Any comments?

[MfA]

I've often found near identical algorithms in papers published a decade apart by people who did both obviously do a fair bit of literature research ... there's just so much literature out there and even the mighty google can miss some things. Also corporations, even big ones, do prior art themselves occasionally.

Any way, the big example of patented tech was directional intra prediction right? AFAICS that came from Nokia's MVC coder, when was that first disclosed and what patent number exactly covers it?

I can find Q15-J-19 as disclosure, published in 2000 ... and patent 7289674 with priority dates in 2002. So it does seem Nokia prior arted itself.

I think anyone who wants to make an argument about infringement on the part of VP8 at least has to present patent numbers. Assuming that the patent office looked for prior art is one thing (a very bad assumption, but meh) but just saying "hmm, that's probably patented" is a bit too lazy.

[wiak]

They're _basically_ Matroska but with certain intentional limiations. One of those limitations is that at the moment only Vorbis is supported. However, the project is open to other audio codecs as well -- probably as long as they're free as well (which would mean FLAC or WavPack).
there is a reason for some restrictions, why? webm is made for the web, so it should play regardless of browser, so why add flac when its not needed atm, it will make everything alot more confusing for the average user, if you want flac, use matroska with video or better .flac without video :p

You can call webm container Matroska Web Lite :)

atm, webm is the best bet when it comes to open video, it has a good video codec, a great audio codec compared to mp3 and a open container that is based on matroska, and most matroska splitters and muxers include webm support

Haali just released a updated splitter
mkvtoolnix includes webm muxing
there is also a reference splitter & muxer at webmproject.org

so atm when you put a video online, like on you took in a zoo or something, and you want the best viewers, what do you do?

1. put it out as webm so everyone with Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE with VP8 dshow filter on both Windows, Linux, OS X can play it natively
2. put it out in h264+aac, and only play it on chrome, safari and internet explorer, and later on pay royalty when MPEG LA changes their mind...
3. wait what?

anyway, webm is a win-win for everyone
h264 will still be the biggest offline codec anyway due to blu-ray/itunes other online stores etc, and good current hardware support

to last, if you want open online video, go webm, if you want offline, just use h264 ;)

[clsid]

What video decoder are you using?The VP8 decoder from the WEBM site. You can find a DirectShow filter set there. Only the decoder is needed.

[Daiz]

Maybe it's a raw bitstream. Those are not supported yet by mkvtoolnix, mostly because the official tools only output into Matroska/WebM anyway.

I'd say ivfenc is an official tool (they use it in the encoding examples on the webm project site!) and that only outputs raw .ivf streams. Getting support for IVF input in mkvtoolnix would in my opinion be a pretty high priority. Right now I can't mux these ivfs into anything so I have to use ivfdec to make raw YUV out of the encoded streams before I can compare them :/

[Mosu]

Getting support for IVF input in mkvtoolnix would in my opinion be a pretty high priority.

I agree, and that's the next feature I'm going to implement. This will have to wait until the weekend or early next week though due to other real life issues.

[Turnpike]

The VP8 decoder from the WEBM site. You can find a DirectShow filter set there. Only the decoder is needed.
The official decoder+latest Haali splitter+MPC work fine on XP.But it seems that I couldn't get the decoder registered on 64bit Win7?

[Keiyakusha]

is there somewhere compiled ivfenc?

[STaRGaZeR]

The VP8 decoder from the WEBM site. You can find a DirectShow filter set there. Only the decoder is needed.

Thanks, I missed the DS filters.

It's only me or everything encoded with this encoder looks like crap?

[NerdWithNoLife]

These patent wars are dissapointing. The people on this forum most certainly can design a codec that outperforms even the hype of the commercial products. Apple, Sorenson, Adobe, etc. win in marketing and legal muscle. x264 wins in actually having a great product.

[clsid]

The official decoder+latest Haali splitter+MPC work fine on XP.But it seems that I couldn't get the decoder registered on 64bit Win7?
You must explicitly run the command prompt as administrator when using regsvr32 on Vista/7.

[weaver4]

I see the comments on how it compares to X264 but I was wondering on how it compares to XviD. I am not really an expert in video but to me XviD@Q=3 is approx equal the quality of X264@Q=22 (single pass of course); but the XviD video filesize is appox 25-35% larger.

So if VP8 video quality equals X264@Q=22 for 10-20% larger filesize I could live with that.

I guess all the decoder boxes out there (Popcornhour, WD TV Live, Seagate Theater, etc) will never play VP8; right?

[Boolsheet]

is there somewhere compiled ivfenc?
There's a "libvpx 0.9.0 visual studio build" here (http://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list) with Windows binaries.
Example encoding parameters are on their website (http://www.webmproject.org/tools/encoder-parameters/).

I think VP8 is not all too bad on medium and high bitrates. The crew_4cif test sample on low bitrates shows some problems after the flashes, quality drops really down, but that should be fixable with some encoder improvements I hope.

[Turnpike]

You must explicitly run the command prompt as administrator when using regsvr32 on Vista/7.
Done,thx!But it seems that MPC can't call VP8 decoder in Win7?WMP is ok though.

[stax76]

@Emp3r0r

A thread title starting with 'WebM' might be better.

[Keiyakusha]

There's a "libvpx 0.9.0 visual studio build" here (http://code.google.com/p/webm/downloads/list) with Windows binaries.
Example encoding parameters are on their website (http://www.webmproject.org/tools/encoder-parameters/).

I think VP8 is not all too bad on medium and high bitrates. The crew_4cif test sample on low bitrates shows some problems after the flashes, quality drops really down, but that should be fixable with some encoder improvements I hope.
Ohh thanks! Somehow I overlooked it...

Done,thx!But it seems that MPC can't call VP8 decoder in Win7?WMP is ok though.

Works for me on Win7 32bit

[Turnpike]

Works for me on Win7 32bit
The VP8 decoder doesn't work with MPC-hc x64 version on Win7,but both MPC-hc x86 version and WMP are ok.

[clsid]

The filter is 32-bit so it will obviously not work in MPC x64. It will also not work in Media Center on Vista/7 x64.