19 September 2008

On2 Technologies Rolls Out VP8 Video Compression Format

On2 Technologies, Inc., a member of the ARM Connected Community, has rolled out its VP8, the eighth generation of its video compression format, working with ARM to ensure porting suitability to current and future ARM processors.

VP8 has been designed for web TV, IPTV and video conferencing companies looking to differentiate their offerings by delivering higher quality video using less data and requiring less system resource for playback.

"With On2 VP8, we set out to increase compression performance over On2 VP7 and leading H.264 implementations by 20% while reducing playback complexity by 40%," said Paul Wilkins, Chief Technology Officer at On2. "“In the end we exceeded these goals and even back-ported some of what we learned to our On2 VP6 for Adobe Flash encoders."

On2 has worked closely with ARM to ensure suitability for porting to current and future ARM single and multi-core processors in mobile devices. "We have been working with On2 to ensure that their compression schemes work as optimally as possible with our NEON 64/128-bit SIMD technology which enables high definition video in software. NEON technology is a key feature in our current Cortex-A8 and Cortex-A9 MPCore processors and will be included in all future ARM application processors," said Laurence Bryant, Mobile Segment Marketing Manager, ARM. 

"The high compression performance of this latest generation of On2 Video suggests that it will be ideal for wireless internet applications where available data bandwidth is a premium, and complements our recent work with Adobe on the Open Screen Project to drive consistent internet experiences across multiple screens, including TVs, PCs, mobile devices and consumer electronics,” added Bryant.

Multicore processing is one of the most significant developments in computer technology. On2 VP8 is designed to take full advantage of multi-core systems and can efficiently use up to 64 processor cores simultaneously.

"As new multi core processors come to market, On2 Video will be able to make maximum use of the additional computing power available," added Wilkins. "Our innovative encoder can seamlessly use additional cores to either increase compression speed or to improve compression quality in real-time applications."

"Next generation video must transcend platforms while remaining fast and affordable,”" explained Eero Kaikkonen, Chief Marketing Officer at On2. "We design On2 video formats to achieve those goals. On2 VP8 achieves significant improvements over leading standards-based implementations and is less compute-intensive to encode and play back. Furthermore, we have used our years of experience developing embedded video IP to ensure the design is entirely suited for optimization to current and future desktop and mobile processor cores”.

On2’s VP6 format became the de facto standard for web video following its integration in Adobe Flash Player in 2005. On2 expects VP8 to complement its existing formats and, in particular, is fully committed to continuing the development of VP6 to further improve encoding and playback performance.

On2 video is proprietary to On2 Technologies and is available with patent-pool free licensing, avoiding the burdensome royalties associated with standards-based formats.