Let the next-gen online video compression wars begin. H.265, the codec that was approved earlier this year as an ITU-T standard and claims to be 50% more efficient than its predecessor H.264, now looks to have some competition in the Google-partnered WebM open-source V9 format, a step up from the highly adopted V8. Read on to watch some side by side comparisons and find out what this codec might do for you.
Thanks to xooyoozoo Smith for these tests:
While many will argue the point of viewing side-by-side comparisons on YouTube, where it's getting re-encoded anyways, my eyes can see the difference in sharpness. I think. Here's a still from the lossless file, downloadable here. (Thanks to Luke)
According to Cisco, video data will be 55 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2016. With that much data traversing networks, efficient video compression will be more important than ever, especially on mobile networks. We are very excited about the new VP9 codec, which delivers better video quality at lower data rates than competing technologies. Furthermore, VP9 was developed entirely in the open as a royalty-free technology. In this session you will learn how VP9 performs against H.264 and other codecs in quality and decoding speed, how to create WebM videos with VP9 and the new Opus audio codec, and how to deploy VP9 content to Chrome users in HTML5 video.
Here's the aforementioned hour-long demonstration straight from Google, and yes, if you watch this whole thing, you're a true video nerd. Welcome to the club:
So what does this all mean? Moving video on the internet is something that is here to stay, and the desire to increase efficiency to keep up with increasing file sizes is very much alive. The VP9 codec should start to roll out in the next few months.
Thoughts? Join the discussion in the comments below.
