WebM - free high-quality, open video format for the web

WebM video files play directly in your web browser using a new technology called HTML5. No plug-ins are required, but you must install a web browser that supports WebM files.

The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors

What’s Great About WebM:

• Very high quality video
• 100% free and open to everyone
• Supported on popular video sites like YouTube
• Great video playback performance, even on older computers

What is WebM?

WebM is an open, royalty-free media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container.

What is the VP8 video codec?

VP8 is a highly efficient video compression technology that was developed by On2 Technologies. Google acquired On2 in February, 2010.

What is the Vorbis audio codec?

Vorbis is an open-source audio compression technology. It is an independent project of the Xiph Foundation.

A valid WebM file can only contain VP8 video and Vorbis audio in a .webm container. Why is WebM so narrowly?

WebM files were defined in this way to do what’s best for users. Users just want video to work, they don’t want to worry about supported codecs, file formats, and so on. After much discussion with browser makers, tool developers and others, a consensus was reached that a narrowly defined format would cause the least confusion for users. If a user has a .webm file, they can be confident that it will play in any browser or media player that supports WebM.

Why do I want WebM?

A key factor in the web’s success is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, and TCP/IP are open and freely implementable. Though video is also now core to the web experience, there is unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices. To that end, the WebM project was started. It is a broadly-backed community effort to develop an open web media format.

WebM was built for the web. By testing hundreds of thousands of videos with widely varying characteristics, the community has found that the VP8 video codec delivers high-quality video while efficiently adapting to varying processing and bandwidth conditions across a broad range of devices. VP8’s highly efficient bandwidth usage and lower storage requirements can help publishers recognize immediate cost savings. Also, the relative simplicity of VP8 makes it easy to integrate into existing environments and requires comparatively little manual tuning in the encoder to produce high-quality results.

How do I play WebM files?

To play WebM files, all you need is a supported web browser or media player.

Where can I watch WebM videos?

YouTube is supporting WebM in addition to its existing formats as part of its HTML5 experiment.

Is the WebM project owned by Google or is it independent? What if Google changes its mind?

WebM is an open-source project sponsored by Google. Google licenses its intellectual property that is covered by VP to VP8 users for free, under a BSD-style license. These licenses are revocable only if the licensee files a patent infringement lawsuit against the VP8 code that Google released.

Is WebM supported by Google only?
WebM is supported by many partners, not just Google. Content providers like Brightcove have signed up to support WebM as part of a full HTML5 video solution. Hardware companies, encoding providers and other parts of the video stack are all part of the list of companies backing WebM. Even Adobe will be supporting WebM in Flash. Firefox, with its market share and principled leadership and YouTube, with its video reach are the most important partners in this solution, but this is only a small part of the larger ecosystem of video.


See the official web-site for more:
http://www.webmproject.org/