Libvpx

Last updated

libvpx
Original author(s) On2 Technologies / Google
Developer(s) Alliance for Open Media
Initial releaseMay 19, 2010;13 years ago (2010-05-19) [1] [2]
Stable release
1.13.1 [3]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 29 September 2023;6 days ago (29 September 2023)
Repository
Written in C, assembly
Operating system Unix-like (including Linux, FreeBSD and Mac OS X), Windows
Type Video encoder and decoder
License New BSD license
Website www.webmproject.org/tools/

libvpx is a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats, and for AV1 a special fork named libaom that was stripped of backwards compatibility.

Contents

As free software it is published also in source code under the terms of the revised BSD license. It ships with the commandline tools vpxenc/aomenc and vpxdec/aomdec that build on its functionality.

History

libvpx originates from the video codec company On2 Technologies that sold its first software codec in mid-90s.

libvpx was released as free software by Google on May 19, 2010, after the acquisition of On2 Technologies for an estimate of over 120 million US dollars. [2] [4]

In June 2010, Google amended the VP8 codec software license to the 3-clause BSD license [5] [6] [7] after some contention over whether the original license was actually open source. [8] [9] [10]

Google was criticised for dumping untidy code with bad documentation for the initial release of libvpx and developing behind closed doors without involving the community in the process. [11] The development process was opened after the release of VP9.

Preliminary support for VP9 was added to libvpx on June 17, 2013. It was officially introduced with the release of version 1.3 on December 2, which also supports lossless compression. [12]

In April 2015, Google released a significant update to its libvpx library, with version 1.4.0 adding support for encoding VP9 with 10-bit and 12-bit bit depth, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma subsampling (VP9 profiles 1, 2, and 3), and VP9 multithreaded decoding/encoding. [13]

Versions 1.5 (November 2015), 1.6 (July 2016), 1.7 [14] (January 2018), and 1.8 [15] (February 2019) delivered significant speedups, both for encoding and decoding.

Features

libvpx implements single-pass and two-pass encoding modes, with either bitrate or quality target settings.

libvpx offers an asymmetric codec – with encoding taking much longer than decoding – and options for configuring encoding expense independently from decoding complexity. A lookahead of up to 25 frames can be configured, which improves compression efficiency but introduces latency and thereby hurts real-time performance.

libvpx includes a mode where the maximum CPU resources possible will be used while still keeping the encoding speed almost exactly equivalent to the playback speed (realtime), keeping the quality as high as possible without lag.

libvpx supports Rec. 601, Rec. 709, Rec. 2020, SMPTE-170, SMPTE-240, and sRGB color spaces.

Performance

At high resolutions (e.g., UHD) VP9 encoded by libvpx for VOD applications provides a significant improvement over H.264 encoded by x264. [16] HEVC encoded by x265 may achieve even better quality, [16] but the royalty-free nature of VP9 makes it a compelling option for delivering high resolution video on supported platforms.

Decoding performance is relatively slow, partially in order to keep the code base easier to maintain. [17] Compared to the initial release of libvpx, ffvp8 from the FFmpeg project improved performance by 22 to over 66%. [11] In 2016, alternative VP9 decoders still achieved 25–50% faster decoding. [18] [19]

Technology

libvpx is written in C and assembly language. It does not have complete SIMD coverage as of 2015. [17]

Usage

libvpx is used by major OTT video services including YouTube, Netflix, Amazon, JW Player, Brightcove, and Telestream, among which are the biggest sources of internet traffic with Netflix alone accounting for nearly a third of all internet traffic in the United States as of 2017. [20] [21]

There are alternatives for decoding VP8 and VP9, both commercial and closed source as well as open source. For encoding there are only commercial alternatives and some unfinished experimental software for VP8 including xvp8 as of 2016.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FFmpeg</span> Multimedia framework

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects and standards compliance.

On2 TrueMotion VP3 is a (royalty-free) lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies.

On2 TrueMotion VP6 is a proprietary lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies. This codec is commonly used by Adobe Flash, Flash Video, and JavaFX media files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">On2 Technologies</span> American video technology company

On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company, founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. It created a series of video codecs called TrueMotion.

x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

The following is a list of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC products and implementations.

Asao is a proprietary single-channel (mono) codec and compression format optimized for low-bitrate transmission of audio, developed by Nellymoser Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP8</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2010

VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008.

Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is a royalty-free application programming interface (API) as well as its implementation as free and open-source library distributed under the MIT License. VDPAU is also supported by Nvidia.

The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previous de facto standard of using the proprietary Adobe Flash plugin, though early adoption was hampered by lack of agreement as to which video coding formats and audio coding formats should be supported in web browsers. As of 2020, HTML5 video is the only widely supported video playback technology in modern browsers, with the Flash plugin being phased out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebM</span> Audiovisual media file format

WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML5 video and the HTML5 audio elements. It has a sister project, WebP, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by Google, and the corresponding software is distributed under a BSD license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WebP</span> Image file format

WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency.

x265 HEVC/H.265 encoder

x265 is a encoder for creating digital video streams in the High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) video compression format developed by the Joint Collaborative Team on Video Coding (JCT-VC). It is available as a command-line app or a software library, under the terms of GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2 or later; however, customers may request a commercial license.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Libav</span> Multimedia framework

Libav is an abandoned free software project, forked from FFmpeg in 2011, that contains libraries and programs for handling multimedia data.

Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VP9</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format released by Google in 2013

VP9 is an open and royalty-free video coding format developed by Google.

AOMedia Video 1 (AV1) is an open, royalty-free video coding format initially designed for video transmissions over the Internet. It was developed as a successor to VP9 by the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia), a consortium founded in 2015 that includes semiconductor firms, video on demand providers, video content producers, software development companies and web browser vendors. The AV1 bitstream specification includes a reference video codec. In 2018, Facebook conducted testing that approximated real-world conditions, and the AV1 reference encoder achieved 34%, 46.2% and 50.3% higher data compression than libvpx-vp9, x264 High profile, and x264 Main profile respectively.

Nvidia NVDEC is a feature in its graphics cards that performs video decoding, offloading this compute-intensive task from the CPU.

References

  1. ↑ "CHANGELOG - webm/libvpx - Git at Google". chromium.googlesource.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2016. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Introducing WebM, an open web media project". blog.webmproject.org. May 19, 2010. Archived from the original on March 21, 2019. Retrieved March 14, 2019.
  3. ↑ "Tag 1.13.1".
  4. ↑ "Google Closes On2 Technologies Acquisition". investor.google.com. Archived from the original on June 5, 2010. Retrieved July 24, 2017.
  5. ↑ "Changes to the WebM Open Source License". Archived from the original on October 4, 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
  6. ↑ "Software License". Archived from the original on June 11, 2010. Retrieved June 4, 2010.
  7. ↑ Koleszar, John (June 4, 2010). "LICENSE: update with latest text". WebM VCS repository. Archived from the original on June 29, 2012. Retrieved October 1, 2020.
  8. ↑ Kerner, Sean Michael (May 25, 2010), Is VP8 open source?, InternetNews, archived from the original on May 28, 2010, retrieved August 11, 2016
  9. ↑ Metz, Cade (May 24, 2010), Google open codec 'not open,' says OSI man, The Register, archived from the original on July 7, 2017, retrieved August 10, 2017
  10. ↑ Phipps, Simon (May 24, 2010), WebM: Missing The Assurances Open Source Needs?, ComputerworldUK[ permanent dead link ]
  11. 1 2 Fiona Glaser, July 23, 2010: Announcing the world's fastest VP8 decoder: ffvp8
  12. ↑ Michael Larabel (Phoronix), 28. November 2013: Libvpx 1.3.0 "Forest" Supports VP9. New Enhancements
  13. ↑ Michael Larabel (April 3, 2015). "libvpx 1.4.0 Brings Faster VP9 Encode/Decode". Phoronix. Archived from the original on April 7, 2015. Retrieved April 3, 2015.
  14. ↑ "V1.7.0 - webm/Libvpx - Git at Google". Archived from the original on June 29, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
  15. ↑ "Refs/Tags/V1.8.0 - webm/Libvpx - Git at Google". Archived from the original on June 30, 2020. Retrieved June 29, 2020.
  16. 1 2 Cock, Jan De; Mavlankar, Aditya; Moorthy, Anush; Aaron, Anne (September 27, 2016). Tescher, Andrew G (ed.). "A large-scale video codec comparison of x264, x265 and libvpx for practical VOD applications". Applications of Digital Image Processing XXXIX. 9971. International Society for Optics and Photonics: 997116. Bibcode:2016SPIE.9971E..16D. doi:10.1117/12.2238495. S2CID   63431190. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2017.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  17. 1 2 Ronald Bultje (FFmpeg): VP9 encoding/decoding performance vs. H.264/HEVC Archived June 7, 2016, at the Wayback Machine , presentation from the VideoLAN Dev Days 2015 in Paris, France
  18. ↑ Jan Ozer, Juni 2016: VP9 Finally Comes of Age, But Is it Right for Everyone? Archived August 11, 2016, at the Wayback Machine
  19. ↑ "The world's fastest VP9 decoder: ffvp9 - Ronald S. Bultje". blogs.gnome.org. Archived from the original on October 26, 2016. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  20. ↑ Jan Ozer (May 24, 2016): Netflix Discusses VP9-Related Development Efforts Archived October 1, 2020, at the Wayback Machine
  21. ↑ Spangler, Todd (June 22, 2016). "Netflix Chews Up Less Bandwidth, as Amazon Video Streaming Surges". Variety. Archived from the original on December 22, 2017. Retrieved December 20, 2017.
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