Microsoft Announces VP9 Support For Edge 55
An anonymous reader writes: As noted by some a few days ago, Microsoft has started development on new multimedia container and codec support for Edge. Over on the Edge development blog, Microsoft has now officially announced that "WebM/VP9 support is now in development in Microsoft Edge. VP9 is an open source codec that offers efficient compression to stream HD content at lower bitrates, and is well suited to UHD streaming. Initial support for VP9 will be available in Windows Insider Preview builds soon. This is part of our continuing effort to expand codec offerings in Windows. We continue to evaluate other formats and look forward to receiving feedback as we work on implementing them."
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This time they're most likely being pressured by youtube and the demise of flash to support it, so will be more a case of "supporting the next jpeg" than embrace/extend/extinguish.
Of course, they still can put support to embedding it into word documents just the right way it breaks on open office etc.., so not a complete loss for the evil side.
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Even satan have to play nice sometimes to get his victims.
Re:Embrace - Enhance - Extinguish (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they're being pressured by the unreasonable financial demands of the h265 patent pool. Do you recall how MS was one of the partners in the effort to develop an alternative freely usable video codec [slashdot.org], along with a number of other big names - Google included? In light of this, Microsoft has every incentive to encourage the broad use of freely available codecs.
At the moment, VP9/WebM is available, so they'll start with this. As soon as their h265-competitive code is ready, they'll add support to that as well. MS is no longer in a position to screw around with standards.
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Add to this that Microsoft are probably not making any money or at the very least any significant amount of money on H.264 royalties then royalty free video and audio all of a sudden becomes a very attractive proposition.
I would however note at this particular point in time that there is very little time left on the MP3 patents (if any at all depending where you are could be as little as 14 days at this point or as much as 27 months), and that bandwidth and storage for even high bitrate MP3's are essentiall
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A go to free audio codec with near universal support if you ask me.
Opus [wikipedia.org], which is used in VP9, is a substantially superior codec. It's also open source and royalty-free. Any software or device would need to add support for this new video codec anyhow, so there's no good reason to saddle yourself with an older, inferior audio codec for compatibility reasons.
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Yawn!
Microsoft isn't the same powerhouse as it was a couple decades ago. Having their product lines eroded away over the past decade, leaving Windows and Office as their big ticket items, and still an ecosystem were previous bread and butter customers (the general consumer market) knowledgeable about alternatives and less afraid to switch. Failure in trying to get a strong foot hold in the mobile field, degrading use in desktop. Microsoft has more or less been switching to a B2B model, because the busin
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Another year, another video codec (Score:2)
Just stick with a standard please. An extra few percent compression or whatever for certain specific video types in one specific browser is an irrelevant waste of time. Use your programmers effort for something more productive please MS. Bug fixing would be a good start.
Re:Another year, another video codec (Score:4, Informative)
Just stick with a standard please.
Better, royalty-free video compression than H.264 can offer is needed. VP9 will deliver it today and the codec developed via NetVC [ietf.org] and the Alliance for Open Media [aomedia.org] (of which Microsoft is a member) will deliver it tomorrrow.
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I miss when Theora was cool too. :(
VP9 - good for static video, shit for realtime (Score:5, Interesting)
VP9's main difference to VP8 is that it had a massive tradeoff between better compression, and worse encoder performance. This makes VP9 good for static video sites like youtube, but very bad for realtime applications like video chats/conferencing where you encode only once.
VP9 with webrtc is pointless, microsoft knows that. And the war over HTML5 video formats is already lost to H.264. Nobody wants to store and provide videos in two formats, even though all browsers support one.
If they actually want to support open codecs, they should add VP8 to webrtc, or their custom generalized NIH of WebRTC.
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If they actually want to support open codecs
Microsoft supports Opus [opus-codec.org] because they have IP in it via their purchase of Skype. And Microsoft has joined the Alliance for Open Media [aomedia.org] to participate in the development of the video codec to follow VP9, which will be built from the best features of Thor [github.com], Daala [xiph.org], VP10 and whatever anyone else brings to the table.
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Microsoft has IP in linux as well, still they have no native support for ext4.
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That's what I mean.
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Microsoft has IP in linux as well, still they have no native support for ext4.
...and if they did support it, people would complain that it was a case of EEE.
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> Nobody wants to store and provide videos in two formats.
No, there is an opening for another format with significantly better compression. Youtube serves H.264 and VP9. Netflix serves H.264 and wants to support another format (hence they're in AOM).
VP9 is a video coding format, not a codec (Score:2, Informative)
> VP9 is an open source codec
No, VP9 is a video coding format [wikipedia.org]. A program which can decode data in VP9 format is a "codec".
Similar to how the C Programming Language is not a compiler.
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A program which can decode vp9 is a decoder
a codec is the set of encoder/decoder, either when we are talking about the algorithms used, an instance of them, the standard, etc
in common parlance the word 'codec' is used instead of 'decoder'
i would expect more strict use of terms on /.
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A Toyota is a type of car. A video codec is not a type of video coding format. Your bad example suggests that you have missed the point.
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A Toyota is a type of car.
A Toyota is not a type of car, it is a brand of car. They make several types of car, which are represented by specific models. Put the automotive analogy down, and back away.
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That kind of implies that there are specs available for VP9 that I could go and implement independently from the original implementation. However at the WebM [webmproject.org] website, I can only find a "bitstream guide" for VP8.
Since you made that claim, I am sure you will be able to point me at the specs or at least a "bitstream guide" for VP9?
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Oh, I found a draft [ietf.org]. It's still just a "bitstream overview", but it's something.
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Its just IE12. They changed the name in an attempt to ditch the stink of earlier versions of IE.
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It's a different fork, that's why Windows 10 can have both IE11 (for shitty legacy sites) and Edge (for everything else) installed.
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Edge is a very good browser [html5test.com] and I give MS kudos since IE 6 was left to rot.
Remember Firefox was once Netscape which was worse than IE 6 back in 2001!
Edge removed lots of crud which prevented IE from being agile to catch up to Chrome and Firefox. IE 11 FYI was ok. Not great but meh it worked with minimal work arounds if at all compared to the absolute nightmare of its early cousins.
Edge does lack plugins which in Threshold 2 will have a Chrome API to use adblockers and other plugings to be ported over. Give
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Good to see they are getting into the game....too bad the 'edge' browser is a piece of crap that I never use...part of the fairly lame windows 10 which I have only upgraded to on one of my 9 computers...and am now waiting for windows 11 before anything more happens.
Edge is is not a piece of crap [html5test.com]. It also is getting more HTML 5 support in Threshhold 2 aka update 1 coming out around Halloween for WIndows 10 and will have a Chrome API for extensions including adblock.
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