Seven of the most prominent Internet and tech firms unite to build a next generation of royalty-free video codec in an attempt to provide users around the world with new formats and advanced codecs for enhanced media experience on the Web across various devices.
The founding members of this alliance include Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Mozilla, Intel Corporation, Cisco, and Amazon. Some of these firms represent biggest names in the Internet world like YouTube and Netflix, who are running the Web’s most successful video-based business models.
Their collective involvement in this open-source video codec will overcome the demand of the Internet users for high-quality media including video, imagery, and audio as well as streaming of these media across a wide range of devices.
Open? Yes. Alliance for Open Media. http://t.co/9ZuiE4c6wU #openmedia4all
— AllianceForOpenMedia (@a4omedia) September 1, 2015
Excited to partner with Amazon, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix on the Alliance for Open Media, http://t.co/O3HWfradZj
— Sundar Pichai (@sundarpichai) September 1, 2015
Readers must be aware of the fact that Adobe Flash remained one of the most distinctive players for high-quality videos on the Web. “But the Web doesn’t stand still and neither do we. As resolutions and frame rates increase, the need for more advanced codecs with ever-better compression ratios will only grow,” said David Bryant, Vice President of Platform Engineering and CTO at Mozilla.
Furthermore, Adobe Flash plugin has become a serious security threat for the users in many cases, and numerous malware attacks and vulnerabilities within the plugin have forced the Web browsers to block the Flash plugin by default.
Many founding members of the Alliance for Open Media have already become technologically advanced in handling high-quality media formats by developing their own codes like Daala, VP8, VP9, VP10 and Cisco’s Thor. Combining all of these together will “form an excellent basis for a truly world-class royalty-free codec,” said Bryant.
Apart from producing high quality, ultra-high-definition media formats that aim towards users around the world, the core focus and goal of this alliance is to build video format that is:
- Interoperable and open;
- Optimized for the web;
- Scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth;
- Designed with a low computational footprint and optimized for hardware;
- Capable of consistent, highest-quality, real-time video delivery; and
- Flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content.
Gabe Frost, the Alliance for Open Media’s Executive Director said, “Customer expectations for media delivery continue to grow, and fulfilling their expectations requires the concerted energy of the entire ecosystem.” He further added, “The Alliance for Open Media brings together the leading experts in the entire video stack to work together in pursuit of open, royalty-free and interoperable solutions for the next generation of video delivery.”
The Alliance is agreed to operate under W3C patent rules, the codes will be released under an Apache 2.0 license, which is why the codecs, as well as the patent on the codecs, will be royalty-free, and anyone would be able to use them.
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