WebM, an Open Video Format for the Web

Google is about to launch WebM, an open video format that will use VP8, the flagship video codec of On2. As you probably remember, On2 has been recently acquired by Google.

"The WebM project is dedicated to developing a high-quality, open video format for the web that is freely available to everyone. The WebM launch is supported by Mozilla, Opera, Google and more than forty other publishers, software and hardware vendors."

"WebM is an open, royalty-free media file format designed for the web. WebM files consist of video streams compressed with the VP8 video codec and audio streams compressed with the Vorbis audio codec. The WebM file structure is based on the Matroska media container," explains Google.

WebM's site says that the new codec will be supported in Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera and you'll be able to play YouTube videos by enabling YouTube's HTML5 experiment.

Google is expected to launch WebM at the Google I/O event, which is about to start in a few minutes (9:00am PDT). Don't miss the opening keynote, which is streamed live on YouTube.

{ via CNet }