Day: April 12, 2010

This is big news: Google to open source VP8 for HTML vidoe http://bit.ly/90n9eA

Google acquired the On2 corporation largely for their codec expertise and got control over the VP8 codec (Flash 8-9 used the VP6 codec). They can open source it if they want, and they have. They are also pushing it for adoption as the video codec for the HTML5 <video> tag, which will allow video to play without using a plug-in like Flash, QT or any of the others.

However there is already contention between the Ogg Vorbis codec (also open source) and MPEG-4 (open and equitably licensed but not always free to publishers or software developers). The arguments usually go down the path of “Ogg is open source so it should be used” vs “Ogg quality is not great and MPEG-4/H.264 is much more widely deployed.

I would expect Chrome to gain support for the VP8 in the <video> tag but I’d expect Apple to fight VP8 as the only choice. Apple are very much behind MPEG-4/H.264.

The rumor went around last night and has been confirmed this morning: Blackmagic Design have indeed released a software-only version of daVinci Resolve for US$995 and a turnkey package for just under $30,000.

I never thought I’d stay in this indusry long enough to see a daVinci product under $10,000, let alone under $1000. daVinci color correction tools have traditionally been priced at over $300,000 (with hardware). High end color correction has never been more affordable, with Apple’s Color included in their Final Cut Studio package and Avid’s Symphony product also providing high end color correction capability.

There is no reason that your project shouldn’t look visually stunning.