Last week, one of Google’s big announcements at the Google I/O conference, was the new VP8 codec as part of the WebM Project. In an effort to show just how agile they are, video streaming software company Flumotion turned around a demo site using exactly that codec in just 48 hours. Flumotion say is the worlds first live HTTP streaming in the WebM media file format based on the VP8 video codec.
A WebM/VP8 live stream is now available via the Flumotion Demo Site. You need to install a browser that already supports the WebM format, such as a Nightly Build of Mozilla to view the WebM stream in the Demo Site.
I tested the WebM stream with the Mozilla developer preview with varying results. Sometimes the stream would play fine, while other times it suffered from choppy playback. Whilst the demo site doesn’t specifically list it, I tried the latest build of Chromium which is supposed to support the new format. The video image appeared, but did not playback.
It’s very, very early days, so it’s important to remember that this is more proof of concept rather than an actual service you’d visit each day. That said it’s a good start, something keep an eye on.
You can try it yourself at Flumotion’s demo site. For more info check out Flumotion’s blog.
