Tech giants Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix have teamed up to enhance online video quality.
The new open-source project dubbed Alliance for Open Media is aimed at developing open and royalty-free digital formats for “next-generation ultra high definition media.”
As members of the alliance, the tech giants will share their technology and expertise to cope up with the growing demand for top-quality video, audio, imagery and streaming across smartphones, computers, streaming-media devices, video game consoles and TVs to serve users worldwide.
The alliance will create a new, open royalty-free video codec specification based on the contributions of members, along with binding specifications for media format, content encryption and adaptive streaming, thereby creating opportunities for next-generation media experiences.
“Customer expectations for media delivery continue to grow, and fulfilling their expectations requires the concerted energy of the entire ecosystem,” said Gabe Frost, the Alliance for Open Media’s Executive Director.
“The Alliance for Open Media brings together the leading experts in the entire video stack to work together in pursuit of open, royalty-free and interoperable solutions for the next generation of video delivery.”
In a statement released Tuesday, the Alliance has outlined its initial focus to deliver a next-generation video format that is open, interoperable, optimized for the web, scales well with different bandwidth conditions and device types, designed with a low computational footprint and optimised for hardware, capable of consistent, highest-quality and real-time video delivery . It must also be flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content.
The Alliance for Open Media also plans to provide their new video codec as a royalty-free specification, one for which companies won’t have to pay to use, as is the case with current video formats like MPEG.
The Alliance for Open Media is a project of the Joint Development Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that offers corporate and legal infrastructure to enable groups to establish and operate standards and source code development collaborations.
