WebM is an audiovisual media file format. It is primarily intended to offer a

royalty-free Royalty-free (RF) material subject to copyright or other intellectual property rights may be used without the need to pay royalties or license fees for each use, per each copy or volume sold or some time period of use or sales. Computer standards ...

alternative to use in the HTML video and the

HTML audio HTML audio is a subject of the HTML specification, incorporating audio, including speech to text, all in the browser. <audio> element The element represents a sound, or an audio stream. It is commonly used to play back a single audio fil ...

elements. It has a sister project,

WebP WebP is a raster graphics file format developed by Google intended as a replacement for JPEG, PNG, and GIF file formats. It supports both lossy and lossless compression, as well as animation and alpha transparency. Google announced the WebP ...

, for images. The development of the format is sponsored by

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

, and the corresponding software is distributed under a

BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lic ...

. The WebM

container A container is any receptacle or enclosure for holding a product used in storage, packaging, and transportation, including shipping. Things kept inside of a container are protected on several sides by being inside of its structure. The term ...

is based on a profile of

Matroska Matroska (styled Matroška) is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like ...

. WebM initially supported

VP8 VP8 is an open format, open and royalty-free Video coding format, video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a Proprietary software, proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released a ...

video and

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

audio streams. In 2013, it was updated to accommodate VP9 video and Opus audio. It also supports the AV1 codec.

Vendor support

Software

Native WebM support by

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements curren ...

Opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically ...

, and

Google Chrome Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google. It was first released in 2008 for Microsoft Windows, built with free software components from Apple WebKit and Mozilla Firefox. Versions were later released for Linux, macOS, iOS, iPadOS, an ...

was announced at the 2010

Google I/O Google I/O, or simply I/O, is an annual developer conference held by Google in Mountain View, California. The name "I/O" is taken from the number googol, with the "I" representing the first digit "1" in a googol and the "O" representing the s ...

conference. Internet Explorer 9 requires third-party WebM software. In 2021,

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

released

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

14.1 for macOS, which added native WebM support to the browser. , QuickTime does not natively support WebM, but does with a suitable third-party plug-in. In 2011, the Google WebM Project Team released plugins for Internet Explorer and Safari to allow playback of WebM files through the standard HTML5 tag. , Internet Explorer 9 and later supported the plugin for Windows Vista and later.

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...

MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...

, K-Multimedia Player and JRiver Media Center have native support for playing WebM files.

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

can encode and decode VP8 videos when built with support for

libvpx libvpx is a free software video codec library from Google and the Alliance for Open Media (AOMedia). It serves as the reference software implementation for the VP8 and VP9 video coding formats, and for AV1 a special fork named libaom that ...

, the VP8/VP9 codec library of the WebM project, as well as mux/ demux WebM-compliant files. On July 23, 2010 Fiona Glaser, Ronald Bultje, and David Conrad of the FFmpeg team announced the ffvp8 decoder. Their testing found that ffvp8 was faster than Google's own libvpx decoder. MKVToolNix, the popular

creation tools, implemented support for multiplexing/demultiplexing WebM-compliant files out of the box. Haali Media Splitter also announced support for muxing/demuxing of WebM. Since version 1.4.9, the

LiVES Lives may refer to: * The plural form of a ''life'' * Lives, Iran, a village in Khuzestan Province, Iran * The number of lives in a video game * ''Parallel Lives'', aka ''Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans'', a series of biographies of famous m ...

video editor has support for realtime decoding and for encoding to WebM format using ffmpeg libraries. MPC-HC since build SVN 2071 supports WebM playback with internal VP8 decoder based on

's code. The full decoding support for WebM is available in MPC-HC since version 1.4.2499.0. Android is WebM-enabled since version 2.3 Gingerbread, which was first made available via the Nexus S smartphone and streamable since Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. The Microsoft Edge browser supports WebM since April 2016. On July 30, 2019, Blender 2.80 was released with WebM support.

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

did not natively play WebM originally, but support for WebM was added in Safari 15 as part of iOS 15. The Sony

PlayStation 5 The PlayStation 5 (PS5) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was announced as the successor to the PlayStation 4 in April 2019, was launched on November 12, 2020, in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, North ...

supports capturing 1080p and 2160p footage in WebM format.

ChromeOS ChromeOS, sometimes styled as chromeOS and formerly styled as Chrome OS, is an operating system designed and developed by Google. It is derived from the open-source operating system and uses the Google Chrome web browser as its principal user ...

screen recordings are saved as WebM files.

Hardware

WebM Project licenses VP8 hardware accelerators ( RTL IP) to semiconductor companies for 1080p encoding and decoding at zero cost.

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

, ARM and

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

have announced support for

hardware acceleration Hardware acceleration is the use of computer hardware designed to perform specific functions more efficiently when compared to software running on a general-purpose central processing unit (CPU). Any transformation of data that can be calcula ...

of the WebM format.

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

is also considering hardware-based acceleration for WebM in its Atom-based TV chips if the format gains popularity.

Qualcomm Qualcomm Incorporated () is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Diego, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. It creates semiconductors, software and services related to wireless techn ...

and

Texas Instruments Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) is an American multinational semiconductor company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It is one of the top 10 semiconductor companies worldwide based on sales volume. The company's focus is on developing analog ...

have announced support, with native support coming to the TI OMAP processor. Chips&Media have announced a fully hardware decoder for VP8 that can decode

full HD 1080p (1920 × 1080 progressively displayed pixels; also known as Full HD or FHD, and BT.709) is a set of HDTV high-definition video modes characterized by 1,920 pixels displayed across the screen horizontally and 1,080 pixels down the scre ...

resolution (1080p) VP8 streams at 60 frames per second.

Nvidia Nvidia Corporation ( ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and incorporated in Delaware. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang (president and CEO), Chris Malachowsky, and Curti ...

is supporting VP8 and provides both hardware decoding and encoding in the Tegra 4 and Tegra 4i

SoCs SOCS (suppressor of cytokine signaling proteins) refers to a family of genes involved in inhibiting the JAK-STAT signaling pathway. Genes * CISH (gene), CISH * SOCS1 * SOCS2 * SOCS3 * SOCS4 * SOCS5 * SOCS6 * SOCS7 Structure All SOCS have certai ...

announced 3D video support for WebM through

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

and their Nvidia 3D Vision technology. On January 7, 2011,

Rockchip Rockchip (Fuzhou Rockchip Electronics Co., Ltd.) is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Fuzhou, Fujian province. It has offices in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Hong Kong. It designs system on a chip (SoC) products, usi ...

released the world's first chip to host a full hardware implementation of 1080p VP8 decoding. The video acceleration in the RK29xx chip is handled by the WebM Project's G-Series 1 hardware decoder IP. In June 2011, ZiiLABS demonstrated their 1080p VP8 decoder implementation running on the ZMS-20 processor. The chip's programmable media processing array is used to provide the VP8 acceleration. ST-Ericsson and

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

also had hardware implementations in their computer chips.

Streaming capabilities

Since 2017,

Icecast Icecast is a streaming media project released as free software maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. It also refers specifically to the Server (computing), server program which is part of the project. Icecast was created in December 1998/Janua ...

— a streaming media server traditionally used for audio streaming — has supported live video streaming using the WebM format (VP8/VP9 video codecs with Vorbis/Opus audio codecs). This enables broadcasting of high-quality, royalty-free, open-standard video streams that can be played directly in browsers without requiring proprietary plugins or players. Archived streams and server listings demonstrate WebM's viability for live streaming over Icecast, including examples of 1080p VP9 streams. Current implementations include live streams accessible a
https://rdst.win:59000/dos.webm
with server status visible a
https://rdst.win:59000

Streaming examples and resources

Archived Icecast directory with WebM streams (June 2017)

Archived WebM stream example (2017)

Licensing

The original WebM license terminated both patent grants and copyright redistribution terms if a patent infringement lawsuit was filed, causing concerns around GPL compatibility. In response to those concerns, the WebM Project decoupled the patent grant from the copyright grant, offering the code under a standard

and patents under a separate grant. The

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985. The organisation supports the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

, which maintains The Free Software Definition, has given its endorsement for WebM and VP8 and considers the software's license to be compatible with the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. On January 19, 2011, the Free Software Foundation announced its official support for the WebM project. In February 2011,

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

's Vice President of Internet Explorer called upon Google to provide indemnification against patent suits. Although Google has irrevocably released all of its patents on VP8 as a royalty-free format, the

MPEG LA MPEG LA was an American company based in Denver, Colorado that licensed patent pools covering essential patents required for use of the MPEG-2, MPEG-4, IEEE 1394, VC-1, ATSC, MVC, MPEG-2 Systems, AVC/H.264 and HEVC standards. Via Licensin ...

, licensors of the H.264 patent pool, have expressed interest in creating a

patent pool In patent law, a patent pool is a consortium of two or more companies agreeing to cross-license patents relating to a particular technology. The creation of a patent pool can save patentees and licensees time and money, and, in case of blocking pa ...

for VP8. Conversely, other researchers cite evidence that

On2 On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. ...

made a particular effort to avoid any MPEG LA patents. As a result of the threat, the

United States Department of Justice The United States Department of Justice (DOJ), also known as the Justice Department, is a United States federal executive departments, federal executive department of the U.S. government that oversees the domestic enforcement of Law of the Unite ...

(DOJ) started an investigation in March 2011 into the MPEG LA for its role in possibly attempting to stifle competition. In March 2013, MPEG LA announced that it had reached an agreement with Google to license patents that "may be essential" for the implementation of the VP8 codec, and give Google the right to sub-license these patents to any third-party user of VP8 or VP9. In March 2013,

Nokia Nokia Corporation is a Finnish multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications industry, telecommunications, technology company, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, originally established as a pulp mill in 1 ...

filed an objection to the

Internet Engineering Task Force The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is a standards organization for the Internet standard, Internet and is responsible for the technical standards that make up the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP). It has no formal membership roster ...

concerning Google's proposal for the VP8 codec to be a core part of WebM, saying it holds essential patents to VP8's implementation. Nokia listed 64 patents and 22 pending applications, adding it was not prepared to license any of them for VP8. On August 5, 2013, a court in Mannheim, Germany, ruled that VP8 does not infringe a patent owned and asserted by Nokia.

References

External links

*
WebM Container Guidelines

HTML5.org * {{Compression formats Articles containing video clips Free digital container formats Google Open formats Videotelephony Computer-related introductions in 2010