Google VP8 Video Codec 1.2.0

3 from 4 Reviews

After the On2 Company (well-known for its VP3, VP4, VP6 and VP7 video codecs) was purchased by Google, the successor of the VP codecs was released as the Google VP8 Video Codec (also called WebM).

Expected for a long time, this codec offers compression ratio and video quality superior to the well-known H.264 codec.

VP8 had a major influence in Google Hangouts and it has made lower bitrate videos look a lot better.

The Google VP8 Video Codec continues to use the Video for Windows driver framework, even if it has been released years ago, while other modern editing tools like VirtualDub continue to use it, too.

The main features of the VP8 codec are using several threads on multi-core processors, encoded files being decoded with FFmpeg and VLC, including color space conversions supported by the Xvid codec and being compiled with the optimized Google VP8 library.

The FOURCC used by the Google VP8 Video Codec is VP80.

The Google VP8 Video Codec is easy to install: you just have to right-click on the vp8vfw.inf file and choose the install option. VP8 runs on Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 7 64-bits.
Update: Google VP8 Video Codec 1.2 comes with installer. Just double-click on vp8vfw-setup-1.2.0.exe file and follow the instructions.

A limitation of this software is its library. The way it is designed requires more than one call in order to get the full statistics packets even after all the frames are processed. This means that 2-pass encoding won’t work in software that uses the Video Compression Manager without setting a valid framecount using the ICM_COMPRESS_FRAMES_INFO.

The Google VP8 Video Codec is a still modern and up-to-date video compression solution from Google. Its successor, VP9, has already been launched, but VP8 is still suitable for a wide category of users.
Reviews & Comments
Google VP8 Video Codec 1.2.0
PeterTosch
on 04 December 2012
Works only on 32 Bit Windows, but needs a powerful machine. Excellent quality for Youtube coding.
Google VP8 Video Codec 1.1.0
Jack
on 10 April 2011
Not really that excellent. DiVX 6.9.2 (Pro) encoding gives me an average of 30fps, XViD 1.3.1 23-25fps, VP8 barely 18fps on the same PC for the same film. Sometimes, while reading reviews, I feel like company employees write them.
Google VP8 Video Codec 1.1.0
dw817
on 10 April 2011
For EVERYTHING, live-action, cartoons, anime, and CGI, this video codec totally rocks. It beats the socks off XviD, DivX and WMV by far for small bitrate encodings (128kbps).

The quality is so good it doesn't need filters or video noise to "clean it up" afterwards like DivX and XviD do.

You owe it to yourself to look at this incredible video codec. It is a shame it does not play on my portable devices, compare and see for yourself the seriously improved quality at the same k/sec.

It also has a dirt simple user interface:
K/sec, quality-preset, and whether it's fixed, variable, or 1st/2nd pass.

My only complaint is I've encoded hundreds of videos in XviD now for the past several years and I seriously want to re-encode them all in GV now for the clearly marked improvement in the end video at the same k/sec. Augh ! ☺
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