VP8

For other uses, see VP8 (disambiguation).
VP8
VP8 logo
Internet media typevideo/VP8
Developed byOn2 Technologies, Google
Initial releaseSeptember 13, 2008
Type of formatVideo coding format
Contained byWebM, Matroska
Extended fromVP7
Extended toVP9
StandardRFC 6386
Open format?Yes (specification under CC-by)[1]
Free format?See § History

VP8 is an open and royalty-free video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008.

Initially released as a proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released as an open and royalty-free format in May 2010 after Google acquired On2 Technologies. Google provided an irrevocable patent promise on its patents for implementing the VP8 format, and released a specification of the format under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.[1] That same year, Google also released libvpx, the reference implementation of VP8, under the revised BSD license.[2]

Opera, Firefox, Chrome, Pale Moon, and Chromium support playing VP8 video in HTML video tag.[3] Internet Explorer officially supports VP8 if the user has the DirectShow filter installed.[4][5] According to Google, VP8 is mainly used in connection with WebRTC and as a format for short looped animations, as a replacement for the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).[6]

VP8 can be multiplexed into the Matroska-based container format WebM along with Vorbis and Opus audio. The image format WebP is based on VP8's intra-frame coding. VP8's direct successor, VP9, and the royalty-free AV1 codec from the Alliance for Open Media are based on VP8.[7]

  1. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference specLicense was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference changes-to-webm-open-source-license was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference Nokia lines up patents against VP8 video codec. was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ kragil (2010-05-19). "Microsoft: Internet Explorer 9 To Support VP8 – OSnews". www.osnews.com. Retrieved 2022-10-22.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference IE9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference VP10 compression techniques was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Cite error: The named reference VP9 successor was invoked but never defined (see the help page).