In a blog post, John Luther, the Project Manager of Google's WebM Project, has announced that Skype now supports the VP8 codec. The VP8 support is already available for Windows users who are using Skype 5.5. VP8 will be used to encode and decode the Skype video call if both the caller and receiver have clients that support the codec.
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Member since:
2009-06-20
So, right now we have a company that is being acquired by Microsoft supporting a video codec which Microsoft along with its other friends at the MPEG-LA is targeting with its patent pool. Interesting indeed.
...No comment.
Member since:2007-09-22
Member since:2006-07-14
Eh, there's more nuance to it than that. Microsoft may or may not be one of the companies that has claimed to hold a patent that is violated by VP8/webM. They are holders of other patents that are licensed by MPEG-LA.
Microsoft isn't the problem when it comes to software patents. If Microsoft disappeared over night. , we'd still have problems with them. They're intrinsicly bad and cause problems in the industry. They turn everyone into hypocrites. The only ones who aren't are the ones that can't violate any software patents: ie those that only hold them, ie patent trolls.
Member since:
2010-06-19
A proprietary and heavily obfuscated product uses VP8 - why, it's not clear.
So what, if anything, does this change? I'd assume Skype already has better compression algorithms and is still going to default to them, so I can't see this as a big push for mobile hardware decode. Skype is also a closed ecosystem, so it's not as if it's going to affect any other devs.
Member since:2008-11-19
Member since:2005-07-06
Though that would most likely make Google Talk / Gmail video less interesting overall, as a videoconf solution which is (now) probably the best choice on slow & unreliable (aka "normal" or "typical") connections.
Scalable Video Coding ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Video_Coding , apparently spearheaded by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidyo , there's a mention of them when downloading Gmail plugin),) H.264 extension seems to contribute to how nice Gmail video is.
Member since:
2005-11-01
Excellent call quality, only outdone by google talk, but the user interface is horrible. Super sized widgets with overblown fonts, looks like effing Gnome! And now i upgraded to 5.5 it's even worse.. and the chat scrolling stopped working .. how can companies release such crap? .. oh but it's free, you can't expect any quality fr .. stfu!!
Member since:2005-07-06
Member since:
2007-02-17
Relevant to applications like Skype:
http://blog.webmproject.org/2011/08/vp8-codec-sdk-cayuga-released.h...
The WebM project has announced the third upgrade release of the WebM codec, codenamed "Cayuga", targetting more areas for encoder speed improvements.
"detailed improvements made in the libvpx Cayuga encoder:
Improved the datarate control in one-pass realtime compression.
Improved one-pass variable bitrate (VBR) visual quality by average ~7% across a large collection of videos.
Improved video conferencing user experience through error concealment, a feature that produces high visual quality frames even under conditions of substantial packet loss.
Improved the ARM v6 and v7 encoders and decoders through greater use of SIMD features and strong use of cache prefetching. "