Xiph.Org press release about WebM

[xiphmont]

Hooray! The press release:

Xiph.Org announces support for the WebM open media project

The Xiph.Org Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the WebM open media project as a project launch partner. As announced earlier today at the Google I/O Developer Conference, the WebM format combines the VP8 video codec, the Matroska container, and the Vorbis audio codec developed by Xiph into a high-quality, open, unencumbered format for video delivery on the Web. Xiph will continue to contribute to WebM as a whole and collaborate in its further development and deployment.

Success within the Open Source community is vital to the larger success of WebM. Community adoption of a newly opened source base, such as VP8, is traditionally fraught with peril. Xiph was the primary organization to develop and promote the earlier VP3 codec when open sourced by On2, and we know that substantial work lies ahead of us to make WebM a success. Toward that goal, we look forward to working with the established community projects also contributing to WebM including Matroska, ffmpeg, GStreamer, and Mozilla, as well as open-source oriented business leaders such as Google, Opera, Red Hat and others.

Kudos to all for the progress we've made, now we've got to get back to work.

Monty
Xiph.Org

The Xiph.Org Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to open, unencumbered multimedia technology. Xiph's formats and software levels the playing field for digital media so that all producers and artists can distribute their work for minimal cost, without restriction, regardless of affiliation. May contain traces of nuts or poorly contained awesome.

Comments

Matroska Containter

[vinipsmaker.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I'm not a video specialist, but I don't think Matroska Container a good choice for video streaming.
Will the WebM project do some hacks to Matroska Container? Shouldn't Ogg be a better format for web video streaming after some work on it?

And, sorry by my poor english.

Re: Matroska Containter

[vinipsmaker.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

I only want to know one thing from Matroska.
Does Matroska support http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaving ?

And sorry again by my bad english.

Re: Matroska Containter

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

Yes. Only early revisions did not have interleaving. That was a long time ago.

Re: Matroska Containter

[vinipsmaker.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Thanks. Then, Matroska is a good format.
Just waiting for CELT and Dirac now.

Re: Matroska Containter

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

I think the Matroska format actually is good for streaming, even if that's most often not what it's being used for. Software implementations that only do local file playback will just have to catch up (It's not like every Ogg player deals with streaming properly either). I'm biased and I do think Ogg would have been a better technical choice for WebM, but that doesn't mean Matroska is wrong or bad. It's what Google chose, and as the maker of a competing container, I say it was a good choice.

There's one way in which Matroska is a much better choice than Ogg; in the current climate with one particularly outspoken open source group effectively at war with Ogg, choosing Matroska sidesteps that whole political issue. Everything else being equal, Matroska was a much better choice in this situation, and we're fully behind that. We'll not be dropping Ogg, and I'll be introducing the transOgg spec soon I hope, but we'll be using Matroska ourselves in WebM work. It meets all the necessary criteria with flying colors.

Re: Matroska Containter

[vinipsmaker.wordpress.com (from livejournal.com)]

Err ... What is transOgg? Is there any page at xiphwiki about this?