Introducing WebM: High Quality, Royalty-Free, Open Source Video

With the introduction of WebM video, high quality, royalty-free, open-source video is finally a reality. Already natively integrated into the majority of HTML5 web browsers, WebM’s VP8 video codec is drawing tremendous support from content owners, video encoding tool producers, and hardware vendors, and has been discussed as an open video alternative for the HTML5 specification. YouTube is already producing over 24 hours of new VP8 content every minute.

A truly revolutionary moment in the history of online video is upon us, and it’s all happening under a BSD-style license and patent grant.

This talk will introduce just a few of the advantages that make VP8 and the WebM Project exciting for open-source developers:

• Simple interface, making it easy to get high quality output without knowing a lot about video compression.

• Optimized for x86 and ARM platforms, so it can be used on phones and tablets in addition to desktop and browser-based applications.

• Features unlike any other codec, making it ripe for research in the academic community.

WebM is a young and small (but growing!) project, with lots of opportunities for people of all backgrounds to get involved. We want your help!