I don't think having it come from Nokia would make it more optimal, it would just take longer.

Perhaps Matthew Gregan would be interested in giving it a go...

http://blog.mjg.im/2010/04/16/theora-on-n900.html

Well, I never said those were mutually exclusive, just that having vp8 support on everyone's device would be nice, just like it would've been nice to have built in theora support.

Ah of course - I get you. So if it were part of the monolithic firmware install then anyone targetting WebM could be assured that it would work on n900. And of course in microB, which I imagine is your point - I was only thinking about having the codec available on the n900 but to use it in a web setting, microB would need to know about it, and if firefox is anything to go by, this means baking it in. Or a plugin perhaps.

Ah well. Perhaps one day!

It seems pretty likely that vp8 / webM will gain momentum pretty quickly. I for one am already impatient.

What does this mean for h.264? That Google will only use it to keep iApple users happy? That Google will use it, but use VP8 as well as leverage against h.264 patent holders from charging high (extortion-like) license fees? I'm kind of confused. I guess if you're developing a web site with HTML5 video, and you're concerned about h.264 patent holders asking you to pay up, you choose VP8.

Practically speaking, it seems like it means that rather than waiting for Adobe to release your new in-browser video player, that you have to wait for the browser creator(s) to release support for your new in-browser video creator.

Neither Intel or Nokia have stepped forward to voice an opinion on VP8/WebM - they are both conspicuous by their absence thus far. Nokia were in cahoots with Apple to ensure there was no default codec chosen by the W3C for HTML5, so I get the impression that Nokia won't be championing VP8/WebM any time soon. Fortunately they're not really needed, and it should be possible for the community to step in and provide the necessary codec updates.

http://zaheer.merali.org/articles/20...m-live-stream/

I got vp8 and webm playback (and encoding) working today on my N900.

What is the performance like? Presumably this is cpu only, not dsp?

it played back a 512x288 at 25fps live stream without breaking much sweat. yes it is cpu only but it has been compiled for cortex a 8 and has some neon optimisations.

If I search for vp8 in apt-cache I get:

Along with the dev and doc packages.

I guess the gstreamer plugin hasn't made it to devel yet - but is this part of your package?

gstreamer0.10-vp8 and the latest gstreamer0.10-mkv should be in extras-devel. Those are the ones you need.