Best Practices – Digital Asset Guidelines – Rev 4 www.autocare.org | www.autocarevip.com | technology@autocare.org 21 Video Codecs Video players decode the video stream according to the video codec. The table below includes the 3 most important video codecs. Codec Description H.264 • H.264 (MPEG-4 AVC) is a standard for video compression, and is currently one of the most commonly used formats for the recording, compression, and distribution of high definition video. • H.264 is one of the codec standards for Blu-ray Discs all Blu-ray Disc players must be able to decode H.264. • Widely used by streaming internet sources, such as videos from Vimeo, YouTube, and the iTunes Store, web software such as the Adobe Flash Player and Microsoft Silverlight. • iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV play H.264. • In 2009, the HTML5 working group was split between supporters of Ogg Theora, a free video format whose developers believe is unencumbered by patents, and H.264 which contains patented technology. • January 2011, Google announced that they were pulling support for H.264 from their Chrome browser and supporting both Theora and WebM / VP8 to use only open formats. • Designed for low and high CPU devices. • Patent encumbered Theora • Theora evolved from the VP3 codec. It is royalty-free codec and not encumbered by patents other than the original VP3 patents, which have been licensed royalty- free. • Theora video is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container. • Theora video can be embedded in any container format, although it is most often seen in an Ogg container. • Theora is a free lossy video compression format. • All major Linux distributions support Theora out-of-the-box, and Mozilla Firefox 3.5 includes native support for Theora video in an Ogg container.