Tag: CODEC

It's full speed ahead for Google's VP8 video codec. Now that the bulk of YouTube's video library has been converted, it's on to the next task -- which looks to be hardware decoding. To that end, Google has unveiled Anthill, a hardware VP8 decoding solution that is substantially faster and more efficient than current software solutions. Google's Aki Kuusela said, "The H1 (Anthill) hardware ...

Not too long ago, Microsoft released an extension for Google Chrome which enabled H.264 HTML5 video playback. Now Google has returned the favor by offering a WebM plug-in for Internet Explorer 9 users. In a move which we can only describe as oozing with self-confidence, Google points out that there are some known issues -- visit this page, and revel in its blankness. If you plan on using IE9 ...

Google has just dropped a bomb shell: Chrome will no longer support H.264 HTML5 video playback. The open-sourced WebM (VP8) and Ogg Theora video codecs will be the only options for HTML5 video. H.264 will not be dropped immediately, but probably with the next stable build of Chrome. Google cites plenty of damning reasons for the exiling of H.264. Open codecs are improving faster, thanks to the ...

Some people say that Flash video playback can be a tad crappy at times. This is a pretty obvious business oppurtunity for competing video products, and indeed, DivX tries to one-up Adobe with its DivX HiQ Beta 2. It's a whole (free) bundle of applications, but the interesting one is the DivX Web Player. It's basically a player that latches onto the YouTube player and a bunch of other common video ...

The list of supporters for Google's open WebM video container continues to expand at a rapid pace -- and while most of the news you've probably read has been centered around web browsers and HTML5 video, desktop media apps are starting to add support. Apps like AOL's own Winamp, which just announced support for WebM in an official blog post. It may not seem like a very big deal, but Winamp is ...

Now that the VP8 video codec has been open sourced and we've been told numerous apps (including four of the top-5 web browsers) will support Google's WebM, maybe you'd like to test it out? You're in luck: Google, Mozilla, and Opera have preview builds ready to go! Bear in mind that this is the first cut at implementing WebM, and it's not perfect. While the standard-def trailers I watched on ...

I'd love for fifteen or twenty minutes to go by without my Google Reader barfing out yet another piece of software patent or "HTML5 video codec war" news, but that's how it is. At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if the video tag didn't become standardized until HTML6 or 7. One serious downside to the lack of consensus is the fact that your browser may very well not have built-in support ...

Rumors are swirling about Google's plans to release VP8, the video codec that powers YouTube, as open source. That could put an end to the HTML5 video wars between open codec Ogg Theora (backed by Mozilla, and backed by Google on mobile devices) and H.264, the proprietary codec favored by Apple and Microsoft (in IE9, anyway). VP8 arguably offers better quality than Theora, and it wouldn't ...

Smartphones are taking over! We certainly all knew that by now. Vimeo has decided to hop on board and start making their service a little mobile-friendly. A while back, Vimeo announced that their site was compatible with both the iPhone and even Android phones. Yesterday, they took it a step further and announced that users can now quickly and easily create a "mobile version" of their video ...

Everyone knows Flash is a massive resource hog, especially on Mac or Linux. If you're sick of totally bogging down your system whenever you want to watch a YouTube video, the new video specifications in HTML5 might be the answer. By using HTML and plugging into the Mp4 streams on YouTube, the folks at NeoSmart have created an HTML5 YouTube Viewer. It doesn't quite work perfectly, and not every ...

Voice over IP company Skype is known for a couple things. One of them is annoying the #@&! out of telephone companies by offering cheap or free voice and video calls over the internet. But another thing that Skype does well is offer users the ability to communicate across long distances with excellent sound quality (assuming you've got an excellent microphone plugged into your computer). ...

DivX 7, the latest version of the popular video format, is out. DivX 7 includes support HD H.264 videos in the MKV file format. It also supports AAC audio. The company has also created a new DivX Plus certification program, which means that hardware products like DVD players and other set top boxes or portable media players that bear the DivX Plus label will be able to handle DivX 7 playback. ...

FFmpeg is a powerful utility for converting practically any audio or video file to another codec. Want to compress your WAV audio to MP3, OGG, or WMA? FFmpeg can handle it. Want to convert your Windows Media Video to MPEG? No problem. But FFmpeg is a command line utility, which can make it a bit cumbersome if you don't know the ins and outs. There are several graphical front ends for FFmpeg for ...

MediaInfo Mac is a Mac utility for displaying information about audio and video files. Similar to GSpot for Windows, MediaInfo can provide codec information, bit rate, resolution, frame rate, and aspect ratio. The program displays a URL to the codec used (in case you don't have a capable player), and you can export all of the information to a text file. If you open a file in VLC and press Apple+I ...

Late last week, Intego Security released a press release detailing a new Trojan web variant, aimed at Mac users. A Trojan, known as OSX.RSPlug.A (or OSX/Puper), is installed on the system by the user, under the guise that it is a video codec, required for playing a free video file. The installer, under the clever name MacCodec, requires administrative access to install (meaning the user has to ...