Today Google announced that they will be dropping support for H.264 in for their Chrome browser in favor of open source codecs such as WebM and Theora.
From the Chromium Blog:
“To that end, we are changing Chrome’s HTML5 video support to make it consistent with the codecs already supported by the open Chromium project. Specifically, we are supporting the WebM (VP8) and Theora video codecs, and will consider adding support for other high-quality open codecs in the future. Though H.264 plays an important role in video, as our goal is to enable open innovation, support for the codec will be removed and our resources directed towards completely open codec technologies.
“These changes will occur in the next couple months but we are announcing them now to give content publishers and developers using HTML video an opportunity to make any necessary changes to their sites.”
So, if you are reading this you are most likely thinking: “How will this effect me?” Regardless of this announcement, you still need to deliver video to browsers, including Chrome. Which, by the way, is the default browser for many set top boxes, including GoogleTV. That means that you’ll need tools that can create any number of agnostic files side by side for delivery to any destination. Enter Sorenson Squeeze. Squeeze allows users to encode and deliver video in every popular format for playback on all devices. So, no matter what codec/format/standard emerges victorious Squeeze will be there to encode it in the highest quality possible.
