H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#1

Post by arnaudbud » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 4:48 PM UTC

H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50
rtc.news

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#2

Post by leeoniya » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:26 PM UTC

interesting that there's an encoder built in as well.

wonder if they will start offloading youtube video compression onto client machines pre-upload.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#3

Post by ZeroGravitas » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:31 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #2

interesting that there's an encoder built in as well. wonder if they will start offloading youtube video compression onto client machines pre-upload.

The browser makers all agreed to support both VP8 and H.264 encode and decode as part of a big compromise in the IETF standards body. It means non-browser clients can implement one or the other (depending on if they're hippies or corporate) and still be able to talk to any browser (except Safari, which I think is still quiet on what it's WebRTC approach will be.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#4

Post by VuWall-Matt » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:32 PM UTC

Would this mean that you can encode the Chrome windows itself and send it off over the network to be decoded by, well, anything that decodes H.264, possibly another Chrome window's decoder?

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#5

Post by rdtsc » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:34 PM UTC

leeoniya wrote: post #2

interesting that there's an encoder built in as well. wonder if they will start offloading youtube video compression onto client machines pre-upload.

Well 2-way video conferencing is a major use case for WebRTC. It wouldn't make sense to skip the encoder.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#6

Post by jordache » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 5:35 PM UTC

I'm surprised I have not come across OpenH264. Why is Cisco eager to pony up the license fees for users of their H264 codec?

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#7

Post by atopal » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:02 PM UTC

jordache wrote: post #6

I'm surprised I have not come across OpenH264. Why is Cisco eager to pony up the license fees for users of their H264 codec?

AFAIK they don't. There is a cap on licensing for H264. Cisco is already hitting that limit with their commercial offerings, so they can essentially offer OpenH264 at zero (licensing) cost.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#8

Post by ossreality » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:04 PM UTC

VuWall-Matt wrote: post #4

Would this mean that you can encode the Chrome windows itself and send it off over the network to be decoded by, well, anything that decodes H.264, possibly another Chrome window's decoder?

WebRTC in Chrome has already supported screen sharing for years.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#9

Post by jallmann » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:05 PM UTC

VuWall-Matt wrote: post #4

Would this mean that you can encode the Chrome windows itself and send it off over the network to be decoded by, well, anything that decodes H.264, possibly another Chrome window's decoder?

Yes, with the mediaSource constraint you can do screen sharing in WebRTC, but that's not anything specific to H.264.

Re: H.264 is supported in WebRTC from Chrome 50

#10

Post by cpeterso » Fri, Mar 04, 2016, 6:22 PM UTC

jordache wrote: post #6

I'm surprised I have not come across OpenH264. Why is Cisco eager to pony up the license fees for users of their H264 codec?

Cisco has a lot of hardware VoIP clients that use H.264 and they want to make sure that browsers can talk to them.

Google already ships an H.264 software decoder in Chrome, so I'm surprised they would (also) ship OpenH264. Maybe they don't want to pay extra for H.264 encoding licenses or to increase compatibility with other WebRTC clients using OpenH264?