On2 Launches 8th-Gen Compression Format

09.24.2008

At IBC2008, On2 Technologies announced its latest video compression format, On2 VP8. It's aimed at Web TV, IPTV and video conferencing companies seeking higher-quality video delivery using less data and requiring less system resources.

On2 VP8 boasts more than 40 technical innovations, according to On2, including advanced prediction through constructed reference frames, macroblock row level threading, improved small area referential encoding, and advanced contextual entropy coding without the added complexity of bit level adaptability.

The company said it set out to increase compression performance by 20 percent over On2 VP7 while reducing playback complexity by 40 percent. On2 said leading implementations of H.264 require twice the data as On2 VP8.

VP8 is designed to take full advantage of multi-core systems and can efficiently use up to 64 processor cores simultaneously, On2 said. It's also taking aim at mobile TV implementations.

Downloading and streaming movies and TV shows will continue to challenge bandwidth capacity, with video accounting for 90 percent of all consumer Internet traffic by 2012, according to Cisco.

On2 video is proprietary to On2 Technologies and is available with patent-pool free licensing.