Yay for open standards. Nay for wasting time where there are other more pressing problems.

Even with the new encoding to WebM, they are still screwing up 1080p by effectively turning it into 1080i and then remove the lower field.

[url=

The black bar on the right side should have been black/while alternating lines.

Of course they fix the problem if you use their HTML5 trial mode, kinda. Here they max out the player at 720p.

Edit: Link to the source for the test above: [url=http://www.grandt.com/Vegas/RenderStressTest.zip]
Size: 321 KB.
The link contains .veg files for both VP9 and VP10.
The Belle-nuit test chart was downloaded from [url=http://belle-nuit.com/testchart.html]

Hmmm... I read that and don't understand it. Does this mean that IE & Safari folks will not be able to view new YouTube videos? I can view the "Render Stress Test" video just fine in IE9. If I right-click I see it plays in Flash. Afaik, impossible with WebM videos.

Here's the browser chart from http://diveintohtml5.org



I guess we'll hear more about this.

...Jerry

I have no idea what they use for playback on systems that don't support it. So far I guess we only actually get to see the WebM if you enable the HTML5 Trial setting at [url=http://www.youtube.com/html5]

how does one go about producing webm from INSIDE vegas?

"how does one go about producing webm from INSIDE vegas?"Good Question! WebM combines the VP8 video codec & the Vorbis audio codec. You can render to the Vorbis audio codec natively in Vegas. Apparently there is a VP8 encoder available that will work in Vegas, but I haven't been able to find it. Combine the two to a WebM media file - not available yet (that I know of).

There is the Miro Video Converter which will transcode to WebM: http://www.mirovideoconverter.com/

...Jerry

hi jerry,

i found the vp8 encoder - http://www.webmproject.org/tools/

however, the one's i've looked at were all 32bit.

and, if i have to use vorbis (which i do), i would need to combine (mux) two files?

this seems like a step backwards for content producers?

just dl'd miro - works fine (and pretty quickly). good looking results too.... (23mb file dowm to 2.1mb)

"this seems like a step backwards for content producers?"I think this confustion is all about licensing. See: [link=]http://www.diveintohtml5.org/video.html[/link] "VP8 is a royalty-free, modern codec and is not encumbered by any known patents, other than the patents that On2 (now Google) has already licensed royalty-free."

Also, here's an interesting read in this forum: HTML5

...Jerry

I'm way with A. Grandt on this. I'm not a fan of VP8; it is not ready for prime time. Youtube (I know, it's Google) could better spend their time on the 1080 resolution issues, block-free fades, worm-free compression, and better audio. There is nothing inherent in HTML5 or their chosen delivery codecs that will make any of this better afaik.

Many are asking where to get the VP8 codec. Although I'm sure mine came from the developer pages at Google, I did find this link to an apparently updated version for vfw:
http://www.free-codecs.com/download/VP8.htm

I'm not really feeling anything for VP8, and really wasn't impressed with the older On2 stuff either. I'm willing to bet that if WebM really catches on, Sony will include it in a future release. VP8 isn't really going to do a whole lot of good by itself, work-flow wise, if there isn't support to encode it to a matroska container file. AFAIK, that has to be done by SCS. AVI's wont cut it.

"I'm willing to bet that if WebM really catches on,"

It has nothing to do with "catching on", it's being rammed down our throats by the bully Google, who plans to limit all their online video to WebM in the foreseeable future.

When VP8 was first mentioned here I read through an analysis of it by one of the X.264 developers. In short, it is pretty sad compared to H.264 or X.264.
The whole licensing thing is a bit of a joke. Google have not been asked to pay a dime in licensing so why they getting so evangelical about this is an interesting question. If both M$ and Apple agree Google are nuts there has got to be something else to this. My gut feeling is it's simply cost. Both H.264 and X.264 are very CPU intensive codecs. VP8 seems to scorn quality for less CPU load so maybe it was just to save YouTube's biggest operating cost, energy.

Bob.

"The whole licensing thing is a bit of a joke. Google have not been asked to pay a dime in licensing so why they getting so evangelical about this is an interesting question"Agreed! I posted the licensing quote as a point of fact - not suggesting that it made any sense whatsoever.

The other point that should be made is that MPEG-LA has extended its Royalty free use of h.264 past the original 2015-12-31 expiration. Furthermore, MPEG-LA has issued a "Call for Patents Essential to VP8 Video Codec MPEG LA Offers to Facilitate Development of a Joint License to Provide Coverage Under Essential Patents" Read all about it here: MPEG-LA Media / Licensing Programs

What does all this mean? And what does the future hold? I dunno. It sure seems like a mess to me (and I didn't even mention "Steve Jobs" once!!).

...Jerry

The MPEG-LA "Call for Patents Essential to VP8" is being criticised, as it has only one purpose, to encumber the VP8 codec with patents under MPEG-LA's control. The h.264 license extension only came about after Google started pushing VP8 as hard as it did, and that the WebM codec became the de-facto standard in HTML5.

MPEG-LA have no interest in improving VP8 with this move, it is merely an attempt to squash the competition.
Whether you like VP8 or not, it is currently free of potentially costly patent licensing fees.