Google’s very own video codec baby, WebM, came to Android along with NFC support in the 2.3.3 update last night, according to a multimedia support chart on the Android developer site. This update took a little bit longer to launch than expected, but I don’t think anyone was especially clamoring for support of this video format (though NFC might be another issue).
WebM uses Google’s VP8 compression format for video and the existing open standard Vorbis for audio, and is built to play nice with HTML5 – fitting nicely with Google’s overall “the world lives in a browser” vision. That’s nice and all, but whether or not that’s worth potentially ditching H.264, as Google did with their Chrome browser, is another question altogether. Firefox and Opera browsers are both really gung-ho about the standard, and ARM, AMD, and Broadcom have announced hardware acceleration for it, while Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Nvidia will support the compatible VP8 (if not WebM itself).
I’m not what you would call a video codec connoisseur (codoicsseur?), but from what I gather, most end-users couldn’t give two licks about WebM. Anyone getting really deep into developing their own custom video streaming solutions however, will really like WebM for being royalty-free, high-quality, and compatible with HTML5. On mobile specifically, an open web-based video standard that is conscious of limited bandwidth could bridge a lot of gaps between mobile OSes.
I won’t venture so far as to make any calls on how Flash video will last in the long run by comparison, but I’m certainly glad it’s still around while promising standards like WebM find their place on the internet and in mobile at large.
[via Engadget]