The document summarizes presentations from the IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum in Porto, Portugal. It discusses how the web is evolving rapidly through technologies like HTML5, WebRTC, and evergreen browsers. It focuses on video delivery standards including VP8 and the next-generation VP9 codec, which offers improved quality and performance over VP8. VP9 is now used by YouTube but still needs optimizations before it can be implemented in real-time communications through WebRTC.

1. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Today and tomorrow of visual communications,
building on 20 years of technology breakthroughs
October 8 – 10
Porto, Portugal
International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium

2. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, PortugalIMTC 20th
Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Video delivery in WebRTC –
VP8, VP9 and beyond
Jan Linden

3. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
The web is evolving at a furious pace
www.EvolutionOfTheWeb.com

4. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Evergreen browsers innovate quickly
Auto-updates every 6 weeks
Auto-updates every 6 weeks
Auto-updates regularly
64.3 %
of users on evergreen browsers
July 2013 data from Statcounter

5. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
● Always up-to-date and evolving
○ Browser and apps
● Discoverability and search
● Cloud services
● Develop for one platform only
● Security and interoperability
● Free!
The Web is a better place to be

6. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Powering the modern web
HTML5 ~= HTML + CSS + JS

7. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Mobile support on the rise
● HTML5 browsers gaining momentum
○ iOS: Safari, Chrome
○ Android: Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Android browser
○ mobilehtml5.org
● Mobile devices are the natural home for
WebRTC applications
○ Full support for WebRTC APIs in Chrome for
Android
○ Web Audio API too
○ Opera WebRTC support planned

8. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
The browser becomes a communications hub
WebRTC

9. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Why WebRTC is so important for the Web
● A key piece of the puzzle missing from the
drive by web
● Without WebRTC a big gap between native
and Web apps
● RTC should be easy to add to any web page
or app
● The demand is clear

10. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Why WebRTC is so important for the Web
● WebRTC is not just about replacing native
apps
● WebRTC is so much more
○ Easy to use
○ Fast
○ Secure
○ Freely available
● Easy integration with other HTML5
○ MediaStream => <video> - done!

11. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Powerful, standardized, and interoperable
HTML5 Media
Fit nicely together and form a complete media solution
Web MIDI
Web Audio
Web Speech
WebRTC
EME
MSE

12. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
WebRTC Video Codecs
● Key requirements
○ High quality
○ Optimized for real-time communications
○ Sufficiently low complexity (CPU)
○ Hardware availability
○ Reasonable cost and implementable by all browsers
■ Open source
■ Free
● Today only VP8
○ Chrome, Firefox, soon Opera
● No Mandatory to Implement (MTI) codec
decision in the IETF yet

13. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Why VPx Codecs?
● High quality, free and open alternative for
web video
● The web is built on free standards
○ We all benefit from an expanding web
■ Video is key to that expansion
○ We need technologies that evolve at the
speed of the web

14. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
VP8
● Open source launch May 2010
● Only one profile!
○ All implementations interoperate
● Implementation available for free
○ Software AND hardware
○ 50+ SoC have VP8 h/w in production with real time
capable implementations
● Widely deployed
○ WebRTC in Chrome and Firefox, ooVoo, QQ, others
○ Google Hangouts HD launched recently uses VP8

15. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
VP8 for WebRTC
Key requirements
● High quality
● Optimized for real-time communications
● Sufficiently low complexity (CPU)
● Hardware availability
● Reasonable cost and implementable by all
browsers
○ Open source
○ Free
● Widely deployed

16. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
IPR Licenses for VP8
● Google has core IPR for VP8
○ Google has licensed that IPR on a royalty free basis
● MPEG-LA "VP8 Pool" is discontinued
● Google has an MPEG-LA agreement for
VP8
○ Allows royalty free usage of all relevant patents in
VP8
○ Including sub-licensing rights

17. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
What’s next?

18. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
● Need for a next-generation codec
○ Phenomenal growth of online video consumption
over the last few years: Netflix, YouTube, ...
■ Majority consumer Internet traffic today is video
Projections indicate the growth will accelerate
■ Bandwidth is the major cost for providers
○ Consumer expectations of video quality growing:
■ HD is the new default - Ultra HD coming soon
○ Usage of power-constrained devices rapidly
increasing
● Need a next generation bit-stream that is:
○ more compact, easy to decode, and open (free)
From VP8 to VP9

19. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
VP9 development
● VP9 is the latest open video codec released
as part of the WebM project
● Development process:
○ An experimental branch at WebM project launch
○ VP9 development started in earnest late in 2011
○ Started with re-use of basic building blocks of VP8,
but everything was up for change
○ All development was in the open public experimental
branch since middle of 2012
● Released in June 2013
○ [subject to bug-fixes]

20. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
VP9 Bit-stream Overview
● Better quality for larger resolutions:
○ HD is the new default
○ High Definition and Ultra High-definition content
■ Larger scale blocks/transforms and prediction modes become
increasingly important
○ Should not neglect small resolutions and low
bandwidth use cases
● Decoding Complexity should be reasonable
for constrained devices
● Need to cater to different content types
○ Extended quality range - lossless to lossy

21. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
● VP9 bitstream frozen (in Chrome 29)
○ Quality as good or better than HEVC
○ Complexity significantly lower than HEVC
● VP9 in WebRTC?
○ Not yet
■ Needs more RTC optimizations
■ First hardware next year
■ VP8 is available now
● YouTube support: youtube.com/webmvp9
VP9 status

22. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
● Optimizations to increase encode/decode
speed, support multiple platforms, etc.
● Currently only a 2-pass encoder exists
○ To come:
■ Better one-pass encoder
■ Better real-time, low-delay encoder
■ Encoders that can exploit bit-stream features -
such as segmentation, hierarchical Altref frames
■ Improved SVC support
● Experimental branch is still alive
● Contributions welcome!
What’s next for VP9?

23. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
VP9 demo

24. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Conclusions
● WebRTC is revolutionizing RTC
● VP8 is ready for WebRTC and already in
heavy use
● VP9 is released and used by YouTube
● VP9 offer great performance advantages
○ Not yet ready for WebRTC
● Experimental work on next generation
already started

25. IMTC 20th Anniversary Forum – Porto, PortugalIMTC 20th
Anniversary Forum – Porto, Portugal
Thank You!
Questions?
jtlinden@google.com