Every major company has been looking into how to best encode/decode high quality video for the web, but attracting special mention is that seven of the leading software companies — Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Ciso, Intel and Mozilla have banded together to form The Alliance for Open Media (AOM) to develop a universal video format optimized for the web.
Key to AOM’s mission statement is the development of a next-gen video format software that will be optimized for the transmission of ultra-high definition video through the web in real time. Though each of the participating companies have been working on their own proprietary means for delivering such videos online, they are now working together on a new video codec that will not require any licensing fees and be usable by both individuals as well as organizations for both commercial and non-commercial content — including that which is user-generated.
Open Source umbrella organizer/creator of the Firefox web browser Mozilla will provide the Dala video compressor technology to the AOM project for merging with CiscoÂ’s Thor and GoogleÂ’s VP10 codecs. The resulting codec will be open, interoperable and scalable for any modern device at any bandwidth. It will also be optimized for hardware acceleration.
Those participating in the project will agree to waive royalties and patents for the codec implementation, with AOM operating under the World Wide Web Consortium patent rules and release software under the Apache 2.0 license.
AOM in a statement said, “The alliance brings together technology and expertise to meet growing Internet demand for the highest-quality video, audio, imagery and streaming across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.”
The time-frame for when the video format is to be made available is within the next two years, according to AOM.
