VP9, the WebM Project's next-generation video codec, was recently enabled by default in Google Chrome Dev channel. A key goal of the WebM Project is to speed up the pace of video-compression innovation (i.e., to get better, faster), and the WebM team continues to work hard to achieve that goal. As always, WebM technology is 100% free, and open-sourced under a BSD-style license.
VP9 development began eighteen months ago. In the short time since, according to our internal tests, we've produced a codec that shows video quality that is slightly better than HEVC (H.265) and is 50% better than VP8 and the best implementations of H.264 high profile.
With the bitstream defined and VP9 deployed in Chrome, we'll begin work on refining the VP9 toolset for developers and content creators. VP9 is already available in the open-source libvpx reference encoder and decoder. We’ll now be working on optimizing libvpx for speed and performance, and working—with help from partners and the WebM community—to ensure that VP9 is positioned to integrate with the major encoding tools and consumer platforms, including mobile and embedded
Improved libvpx tools and documentation will roll out over the coming months. Monitor our progress on the VP9 summary page and our mailing lists.
Matt Frost is Senior Business Product Manager for the WebM Project
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