WebRTC workgroup mandates both h264 and VP8 support

The RTCWEB Working Group, part of the IETF, wants to make both the VP8 and h264 codec mandatory for browsers that support the WebRTC standard. There has been a long battle over which codec should become the standard, but that now seems to be coming to an end.

VP8 has the advantage for software makers that they do not have to worry about paying license fees. This codec, which comes from Google, is also supported by Chrome and Firefox, among others. H264 does require royalties, but the support for this codec is much broader than that for VP8. For example, almost any mobile device can hardware decode h264 videos.

For years, the standards setters behind WebRTC, a protocol that enables plug-in-less audio and video communication in browsers, have not been able to agree on which codec support should be mandatory. In the meantime a compromise has been found: the RTCWEB Working Group wants browsers and other software that supports the WebRTC standard to support both codecs. If all members agree to this proposal, the years of disagreement would seem to have come to an end.

WebRTC adoption is now progressing well. Chrome, Opera, and Firefox have supported the standard for some time, and Microsoft plans to embrace WebRTC in future versions of Internet Explorer as well. Mozilla, long opposed to integration of the h264 codec, eventually opted for OpenH264 for Firefox, with Cisco paying the license costs. Incidentally, a number of Mozilla developers within the Xiph.org Foundation are working on Daala, a video codec that should at least match the quality and compression factor of the new compression generation h265.