There may be a lucky few of you who are seeing video chats in Hangouts a lot more clearly. That’s because Google has been quietly rolling out HD capabilities to Hangouts. While Google cranks up the quality of their revamped messenger it’s not just about that. In attempts to bring us video chat capabilities without the need for a plugin Google changed from the H.264 plugin to the open VP8.
Google’s Vice President of Engineering Chee Chew told the folks at Gigaom that this move will add, “cleaner, better video.” H.264 couldn’t handle HD video well as video in HD for up to 10 participants would require too much processing power. That’s not the case with VP8 as Google’s able to produce better quality video at lower bit rates. However, it’s not only about looks but a matter of convenience.
While you’ve been able to use various effects to video chats such as birthday hats or scuba glasses, WebRTC will eventually make this easier. The video becomes a native HTML element which that will allow an easier time for overlays and the like. As of now the rendering of such gags are on the client side of things and an easy way to do this with WebRTC is not available yet. But what does this mean for Google’s current video technology rendering vendor Vidyo?
According to Vidyo CEO Ofer Shapiro, "The need to install something is somewhat of a barrier." That being said Vidyo will announce that they will be adding support, as well as working on, the next generation of the technology, VP9. They’ll work to provide that tech in the enterprise world. However this upgrade won’t just happen seamlessly for everyone.
Microsoft is pushing in a different direction with CU-WebRTC and Apple hasn’t given a statement on whether or not it will use WebRTC or not. Microsoft’s idea is to let developers decide on what codec they’ll use. According to Chew, "Some browsers will have the plugin to fall back on.” However others will not need to have a plugin at all.
source: Gigaom
Come comment on this article: Hangouts Goes HD in a Move From Google to Go Plugin Free
No comments:
Post a Comment