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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the eyes-exploding-with-delight dept.

According to Google, YouTube users have now watched a combined 25 billion hours of VP9-encoded video. The VP9 codec, Google's alternative to MPEG LA's H.265/HEVC, can deliver video of the same quality at around half the bitrate of H.264. Google claims that VP9 has allowed users in countries such as Turkey, Mexico, Indonesia, and Brazil to "upgrade" their YouTube viewing from "low definition" resolutions (144p and 240p) to "standard definition" (360p and above).

Now, Google is using VP9 as its main codec for YouTube videos. According to the company, a significant portion of those 25 billion hours of videos played in the last year couldn't have been watched in HD quality without the VP9 codec. "This new format bumps everybody one notch closer to our goal of instant, high-quality, buffer-free videos. That means that if your Internet connection used to only play up to 480p without buffering on YouTube, it can now play silky smooth 720p with VP9," said Google in a blog post.

Google has previously committed to an accelerated 18-month development schedule for successors to VP9. Meanwhile, the Xiph.Org Foundation, Mozilla, and the Internet Engineering Task Force are working on a patent-unencumbered codec named NETVC (formerly Daala). The proponents are aiming to optimize NETVC beyond both VP9 and H.265.

Finally, BBC News and others are reporting on a new contender, a codec called "Perseus" from the company V-Nova. It is being marketed as enabling 4K/2160p streaming for mainstream users.

The company said Perseus is more efficient than industry-standard codecs, claiming that testing shows compression gains of two to three times compared to H.264/AVC, H.265/HEVC and JPEG2000 and substantially less power use compared to H.264 and H.265. The codec scales through "all bitrates," the company said, offering both lossless and lossy quality. V-Nova said SD video can be delivered to mobile devices at bitrates as low as 125 Kbps, and that HD video can be live-encoded at 500 Kbps or less, but also notes that the codec's benefits increase as resolution and frame rates increase. "Good quality" HD can be broadcast at 2 Mbps and UHD at 4 Mbps using existing hardware and infrastructure, the company said.

 
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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:50PM

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Tuesday April 07 2015, @08:50PM (#167589) Journal

    It only takes one to ruin the other for everybody.

    Of course without copyright there would be no enforceable GPL.

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:44PM

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:44PM (#167604) Journal

    I'm not arguing against Copyright. I'm arguing against the Continuous Copyright Scheme that Companies like Disney perpetuate. The problem is that a lot of Software will be lost due to stupid Copyright Legislation. There wasn't any Real possibility of saving Any Games Legally, before Gold Old Games. They didn't start legal like either, but mostly just morphed into a legal way to obtain old games. Though with places like the Internet Archive fighting the good fight, there is some glimmer of hope.

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    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:58PM

      by Freeman (732) on Tuesday April 07 2015, @09:58PM (#167614) Journal

      I take back that comment about how GoG started..., apparently I was talking out my badonkadonk.

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      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 1) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:49PM

    by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:49PM (#167624)

    Of course without copyright there would be no enforceable GPL.

    Without software copyright there would be no need for an enforceable GPL.

    I say this as a fan of the GPL.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @01:40AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 08 2015, @01:40AM (#167671)

      > Without software copyright there would be no need for an enforceable GPL.

      In theory. Since its never happened, all we can do is guess. RMS has a reasonable argument for why that would be the case. But knowing human nature, I think we might end up with the equivalent of BSD-style "what's yours is mine and what's mine is mine" if copyright ever were abolished.