WebM

Last updated

WebM
WebM logo.svg
Filename extension
.webm
Internet media type
video/webm,
audio/webm
Developed byInitially On2, Xiph, and Matroska; later Google
Initial releaseMay 18, 2010(14 years ago) (2010-05-18) [1]
Latest release
v1.13.0 [2]
January 31, 2023(22 months ago) (2023-01-31)
Type of format Container format
Container for VP8/VP9/AV1 (video)
Vorbis/Opus (audio)
Extended fromLimited subset of Matroska
Open format?Yes [3]
Free format?Yes [4]
Website webmproject.org

WebM is an audiovisual media file format. [5] It is primarily intended to offer a royalty-free alternative to use in the HTML video and the HTML 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.

Contents

The WebM container is based on a profile of Matroska. [3] [6] [7] WebM initially supported VP8 video and Vorbis audio streams. In 2013, it was updated to accommodate VP9 video and Opus audio. [8] It also supports the new AV1 codec. [9]

An example of a WebM video

Vendor support

Software

Native WebM support by Mozilla Firefox, [10] [11] Opera, [12] [13] and Google Chrome [14] was announced at the 2010 Google I/O conference. Internet Explorer 9 requires third-party WebM software. [15] In 2021, Apple released Safari 14.1 for macOS, which added native WebM support to the browser. [16] As of 2019, QuickTime does not natively support WebM, [17] [18] but does with a suitable third-party plug-in. [19] In 2011, the Google WebM Project Team released plugins for Internet Explorer and Safari to allow playback of WebM files through the standard HTML5 <video> tag. [20] As of 9 June 2012, Internet Explorer 9 and later supported the plugin for Windows Vista and later. [21]

VLC media player, [22] MPlayer, K-Multimedia Player and JRiver Media Center have native support for playing WebM files. [23] FFmpeg can encode and decode VP8 videos when built with support for libvpx, the VP8/VP9 codec library of the WebM project, as well as mux/demux WebM-compliant files. [24] On July 23, 2010 Fiona Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad of the FFmpeg team announced the ffvp8 decoder. Their testing found that ffvp8 was faster than Google's own libvpx decoder. [25] [26] MKVToolNix, the popular Matroska creation tools, implemented support for multiplexing/demultiplexing WebM-compliant files out of the box. [27] Haali Media Splitter also announced support for muxing/demuxing of WebM. [27] Since version 1.4.9, the LiVES video editor has support for realtime decoding and for encoding to WebM format using ffmpeg libraries.

MPC-HC since build SVN 2071 supports WebM playback with internal VP8 decoder based on FFmpeg's code. [25] [28] The full decoding support for WebM is available in MPC-HC since version 1.4.2499.0. [29]

Android is WebM-enabled since version 2.3 Gingerbread, [30] which was first made available via the Nexus S smartphone and streamable since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. [31]

The Microsoft Edge browser supports WebM since April 2016. [32]

On July 30, 2019, Blender 2.80 was released with WebM support. [33]

iOS did not natively play WebM originally, [34] but support for WebM was added in Safari 15 as part of iOS 15. [35]

The Sony PlayStation 5 supports capturing 1080p and 2160p footage in WebM format. [36]

ChromeOS screen recordings are saved as WebM files. [37]

Hardware

WebM Project licenses VP8 hardware accelerators (RTL IP) to semiconductor companies for 1080p encoding and decoding at zero cost. [38] AMD, ARM and Broadcom have announced support for hardware acceleration of the WebM format. [39] [40] Intel is also considering hardware-based acceleration for WebM in its Atom-based TV chips if the format gains popularity. [41] Qualcomm and Texas Instruments have announced support, [42] [43] with native support coming to the TI OMAP processor. [44] Chips&Media have announced a fully hardware decoder for VP8 that can decode full HD resolution (1080p) VP8 streams at 60 frames per second. [45]

Nvidia is supporting VP8 and provides both hardware decoding and encoding in the Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i SoCs. [46] Nvidia announced 3D video support for WebM through HTML5 and their Nvidia 3D Vision technology. [47] [48] [49]

On January 7, 2011, Rockchip released the world's first chip to host a full hardware implementation of 1080p VP8 decoding. The video acceleration in the RK29xx chip is handled by the WebM Project's G-Series 1 hardware decoder IP. [50]

In June 2011, ZiiLABS demonstrated their 1080p VP8 decoder implementation running on the ZMS-20 processor. The chip's programmable media processing array is used to provide the VP8 acceleration. [51]

ST-Ericsson and Huawei also had hardware implementations in their computer chips. [52]

Licensing

The original WebM license terminated both patent grants and copyright redistribution terms if a patent infringement lawsuit was filed, causing concerns around GPL compatibility. In response to those concerns, the WebM Project decoupled the patent grant from the copyright grant, offering the code under a standard BSD license and patents under a separate grant. [53] The Free Software Foundation, which maintains The Free Software Definition, has given its endorsement for WebM and VP8 [54] and considers the software's license to be compatible with the GNU General Public License. [55] [56] On January 19, 2011, the Free Software Foundation announced its official support for the WebM project. [57] In February 2011, Microsoft's Vice President of Internet Explorer called upon Google to provide indemnification against patent suits. [58]

Although Google has irrevocably released all of its patents on VP8 as a royalty-free format, [59] the MPEG LA, licensors of the H.264 patent pool, have expressed interest in creating a patent pool for VP8. [60] [61] Conversely, other researchers cite evidence that On2 made a particular effort to avoid any MPEG LA patents. [62] As a result of the threat, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) started an investigation in March 2011 into the MPEG LA for its role in possibly attempting to stifle competition. [63] [64] In March 2013, MPEG LA announced that it had reached an agreement with Google to license patents that "may be essential" for the implementation of the VP8 codec, and give Google the right to sub-license these patents to any third-party user of VP8 or VP9. [65] [66]

In March 2013, Nokia filed an objection to the Internet Engineering Task Force concerning Google's proposal for the VP8 codec to be a core part of WebM, saying it holds essential patents to VP8's implementation. [67] Nokia listed 64 patents and 22 pending applications, adding it was not prepared to license any of them for VP8. [68] On August 5, 2013, a court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled that VP8 does not infringe a patent owned and asserted by Nokia. [69]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video codec</span> Digital video coder/decoder

A video codec is software or hardware that compresses and decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, codec is a portmanteau of encoder and decoder, while a device that only compresses is typically called an encoder, and one that only decompresses is a decoder.

A video file format is a type of file format for storing digital video data on a computer system. Video is almost always stored using lossy compression to reduce the file size.

Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container.

Dirac is an open and royalty-free video compression format, specification and software video codec developed by BBC Research & Development. Dirac aimed to provide high-quality video compression for Ultra HDTV and competed with existing formats such as H.264.

<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 video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects, and standards compliance.

Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanced Systems Format (ASF), but is an open standard.

SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, it was officially approved as a SMPTE standard on April 3, 2006. It was primarily marketed as a lower-complexity competitor to the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard. After its development, several companies other than Microsoft asserted that they held patents that applied to the technology, including Panasonic, LG Electronics and Samsung Electronics.

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libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data.

<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.

HTML video is a subject of the HTML specification as the standard way of playing video via the web. Introduced in HTML5, it is designed to partially replace the object element and 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, HTML video is the only widely supported video playback technology in modern browsers, with the Flash plugin being phased out.

libvpx Codec library implementing VP8 and VP9 encoders and decoders

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<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opus (audio format)</span> Lossy audio coding format

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end embedded processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

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<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AV1</span> Open and royalty-free video coding format developed by the Alliance for Open Media

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.

Versatile Video Coding (VVC), also known as H.266, ISO/IEC 23090-3, and MPEG-I Part 3, is a video compression standard finalized on 6 July 2020, by the Joint Video Experts Team (JVET) of the VCEG working group of ITU-T Study Group 16 and the MPEG working group of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29. It is the successor to High Efficiency Video Coding. It was developed with two primary goals – improved compression performance and support for a very broad range of applications.

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  3. 1 2 "WebM FAQ". May 19, 2010. Archived from the original on September 22, 2021. Retrieved August 13, 2016. WebM is an open media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container.
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