Bye Bye H.264!

[Conrad Knauer]

On Thu, May 20, 2010 at 3:25 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:

> The x264 project doesn't think very much of VP8 at present:
> http://x264dev.multimedia.cx/?p=377

I think it's safe to predict that anyone who loves H.264 (so also
MPEG, Apple, etc.) is going to *hate* VP8 O:)

> Though Greg Maxwell of Wikimedia/Xiph is more sanguine:
> http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2010-May/047795.html
>
> "You should have seen what VP3 was like when it was handed over to
> Xiph.Org.  The software was horribly buggy, slow, and the quality was
> fairly poor (at least compared to the current status)."
>
> In any case: interesting times :-D

Indeed; Google's real triumph here is not technical, it's the fact
that they built a coalition of supporting companies that ogg never
had:
http://webmproject.blogspot.com/2010/05/introducing-webm-open-web-media-project.html

On the browser front, Firefox, Opera and Chrome are going to have WebM
support *very* quickly.  YouTube will begin to use it, creating a HUGE
pool of compatible video.  Flash will support it soon too.  Even
Microsoft (to quote the headline on
http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20005410-264.html) is 'not opposed'
to this...

Google has basically cornered Apple.

CK