A couple weeks ago, Google, along with a number of other groups, famously advanced the WebM codec as a supported video format for HTML5-enabled browsers, in an attempt to finally put forward a standard that all parties involved can agree on.  How far has the Linux community come since then in implementing support for the new codec?  Here’s a look.

WebM is good for Internet users as a whole, since it’s poised to put an end to the prolonged bickering about codecs that has stalled progress towards better embedded video on the Web.  But it’s especially beneficial for those of us who run Linux, since WebM, unlike some of its competitors, is an open codec that remains unencumbered by patenting issues–and patents never bode well for the Linux community.

WebM-Friendly Applications

So given WebM’s appeal to the Linux community, how much progress have Linux developers made in implementing support for it thus far?  Quite a bit, actually, considering that until two weeks ago, most of us had never heard of the codec.

In particular, support is currently available through the following channels:

  1. Not surprisingly, Google’s browser, Chrome, implemented support for the new codec the night of Google’s endorsement.
  2. Moovida, the media player from Fluendo, became one of the first third-party applications to support WebM, the day after Google’s announcement.
  3. Custom builds of Firefox are available with WebM support, but for the time being it seems that the codec will not be included by default until Firefox 4′s stable release.
  4. ffmpeg can be compiled with WebM support, meaning that a broad range of ffmpeg-compatible applications should theoretically be able to decode the format.  However, custom-compiling ffmpeg is not for the faint-of-heart, and we’ll have to wait for support to be added to standard Ubuntu packages.

For the KDE-lovers out there: I couldn’t find success stories of anyone playing WebM videos in Konqueror, Kubuntu’s browser of choice, but many have tried and failed.  It appears that Konqueror users are out of luck, at least for now.

All in all, the Linux community has made a lot of progress implementing support for WebM in two short weeks.  Given that few content providers are supporting the codec yet (Google-owned YouTube being the major exception), free-software users are ahead of the curve on this issue.  And that’s definitely the right side of the curve to be on.

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10 Comments on “Who's Supporting WebM on Linux?”

  1. Såda Says:
    June 4th, 2010 at 1:29 am

    Add:

    5. Opera
    6. Epiphany
    7. Gstreamer
    8. Miro video converter
    9. Telepathy

  2. Alvaro Lopez Ortega Says:
    June 4th, 2010 at 1:52 am

    The Cherokee Web Server did support WebM less than 24h after it was released:

    http://www.alobbs.com/1386/Streaming_WebM_VP8_One_Day_Later.html

  3. John Selden Says:
    June 4th, 2010 at 10:39 pm

    What makes you say that WebM is unencumbered by patent issues? That remains to be seen. Steve Jobs already alluded to the fact that WebM may become a target. “Open source” is not the same thing as “unpatented.”

  4. Christopher Tozzi Says:
    June 5th, 2010 at 8:45 am

    John: true, but WebM is at least less problematic patent-wise than H.264. And although it makes sense for companies like Apple to favor H.264, since its licensing costs pose problems for Firefox and other browsers that compete with Safari, it will be harder for those critics to pick on WebM with Google supporting it.

  5. aikiwolfie Says:
    June 5th, 2010 at 5:26 pm

    The key here seems to be Google support. Which didn’t stop Apple suing HTC over it’s use of multi-touch with Android based phones. But then again if Apple decides to play the bad guy here it will seriously harm any credibility it has left in it’s fight against Adobe and flash. Which will in turn hurt it’s iPhone and iPad product lines.

    I think Apple would do well to keep it’s hypocritical mouth shut and let this one pass.

  6. Jordan Says:
    June 5th, 2010 at 6:32 pm

    Don’t forget that assertion isn’t the same as fact. Apple is most likely blowing steam so it can make things go the way they want. I’d like to see what happens if h.264 requires a fee in 2016, though.

  7. Tsiolkovsky Says:
    June 7th, 2010 at 9:00 am

    Most KDE applications use Phonon framework for multimedia. Phonon is a common programming interface to various backends. Currently Xine and GStreamer are supported, VLC is comming. So if these backends support VP8 then any KDE application that uses Phonon immidiately gains support for VP8.

  8. Mark Says:
    June 7th, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    Gstreamer supports WebM.

    http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/
    “The GStreamer team is excited to announce new releases of the gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-ugly and gst-plugins-bad modules for the 0.10 GStreamer stable release series. These versions introduce support for WebM/VP8.”

    Gstreamer is used in GNOME, and it can also be used as the backend for KDE’s Phonon. Therefore, both GNOME and KDE infrastructure will support WebM. Therefore, all GNOME and KDE applications will support WebM.

  9. aikiwolfie Says:
    June 8th, 2010 at 11:32 am

    Considering the head of steam WebM seems to be gaining in the Linux world, Linux users at the very least will be using WebM.

  10. salsaman Says:
    June 8th, 2010 at 5:56 pm

    LiVES supports webm

    http://lives.sourceforge.net

    Experimental webm encoding support has been added to the development version, and will be available in the next release.

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