Introducing WebM

                                                                    -Ganesh Gadde

Introducing WebM, an open web media project:

A key factor in the web’s success is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, TCP/IP, etc. are open and freely implementable. Though video is also now core to the web experience, there is unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices. To that end, we are excited to introduce WebM, a broadly-backed community effort to develop a world-class media format for the open web.

The WebM Project is a Google-sponsored project dedicated to create an open and royalty free video format that provides high quality video compression for use with HTML5 video.
The project open source releases WebM related software under a BSD-style license with patent clause. The WebM format consists of the VP8 video codec developed by On2 and the Vorbis audio codec, in a container format based on a profile of Matroska
WebM includes:

• VP8, a high-quality video codec we are releasing today under a BSD-style, royalty-free license
• Vorbis, an already open source and broadly implemented audio codec
• A container format based on a subset of the Matroska media container.

The team that created VP8 have been pioneers in video codec development for over a decade. VP8 delivers high quality video while efficiently adapting to the varying processing and bandwidth conditions found on today’s broad range of web-connected devices. VP8's efficient bandwidth usage will mean lower serving costs for content publishers and high quality video for end-users. The codec's relative simplicity makes it easy to integrate into existing environments and requires less manual tuning to produce high quality results. These existing attributes and the rapid innovation we expect through the open-development process make VP8 well suited for the unique requirements of video on the web.

There are free and commercial tools available for creating and publishing content in the WebM format.

• Free and Open Source Tools
  
  
  • FFmpeg Patches
  • DirectShow Filters
  • VP8 SDK
    
    
    • Encoding Parameters
  • GStreamer Plug-ins

Playing WebM video:

WebM video files play directly in your web browser using a new technology called HTML5. No plug-ins are required, but you must install a web browser that supports WebM files.

What’s great about WebM

• Very high quality video
• Great video playback performance, even on older computers
• 100% free and open to everyone
• Supported on popular video sites like YouTube

How to Play WebM Video

Playing on YouTube

1. Download and install a supported browser (listed below).
2. Start the newly installed browser.
3. Go to www.youtube.com/html5 and enroll in the YouTube HTML5 experiment.
4. Search for a video by keyword. For example, trailers.
5. In the browser’s address bar, add &webm=1 to the end of the URL. For example, http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=trailers&aq=f&webm=1.
6. Press Enter.
7. In the list of videos that appears, click any of the links.
8. The video will play in your browser and display HTML5 webm in the toolbar of the video player.

Supported Web Browsers

• Mozilla Firefox nightly WebM build
• Opera Labs
• Google Chrome Early Access Release Channel
• Chromium tip/nightly trunk build

Other Media Players

• VLC
• Moovida Core