Cisco introduces the Thor video codec

[xiphmont]

I want to mention this on its own, because it's a big deal, and so that other news items don't steal its thunder: Cisco has begun blogging about their own FOSS video codec project, also being submitted as an initial input to the IETF NetVC video codec working group effort:

"World, Meet Thor – a Project to Hammer Out a Royalty Free Video Codec"

Heh. Even an appropriate almost-us-like nutty headline for the post. I approve :-)

In a bit, I'll write more about what's been going on in the video codec realm in general. Folks have especially been asking lots of questions about HEVCAdvance licensing recently. But it's not their moment right now. Bask in the glow of more open development goodness, we'll get to talking about the 'other side' in a bit.

Comments

Re: VP9 is proprietary

[(Anonymous)]

"This document describes the VP8 compressed video data format, together with a discussion of the decoding procedure for the format."

VP8 has had a specification released (IIRC though, it was still refering to the actual code in places, so it is a bit less authoritative and complete than would be desireable). The problem is with VP9 for which it was not published or made. No idea if there is some internal or NDAed one.