Digital Video and HD, 2nd Edition

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VP8 compression

In 2010, Google acquired a company called On2 that had, over a decade or more, developed a series of proprietary software-based codecs for video distribution. Google made the VP8 codec open-source and used it as the basis for a proposal called WebM for web (IP-based) distribution of video to consumers. WebM comprises video encoded by the VP8 codec and audio encoded by the Vorbis codec, both wrapped in the Matroska file wrapper.

VP3, a distant predecessor to VP8,was made available by On2 as open source. VP3 subsequently developed into Theora. On2 licensed VP6 and VP7 to Adobe as the basis for Flash 8 video; subsequently, H.264 was incorporated into Flash 9. On2 licensed VP7 to Skype.

The VP8 codec is broadly based upon the principles ...