Chromium Blog

Celebrating 10 years of WebM and WebRTC

Wednesday, May 27, 2020

Ten years ago, Google planted the seeds for two foundational web media technologies, hoping they would provide the roots for a more vibrant internet. Two acquisitions, On2 Technologies and Global IP Solutions, led to a pair of open source projects: the WebM Project, a family of cutting edge video compression technologies (codecs) offered by Google royalty-free, and the WebRTC Project building APIs for real-time voice and video communication on the web.
These initiatives were major technical endeavors, essential infrastructure for enabling the promise of HTML5 with support for video conferencing and streaming. But this was also a philosophical evolution for media as Product Manager Mike Jazayeri noted in his blog post hailing the launch of the WebM Project:
“A key factor in the web’s success is that its core technologies such as HTML, HTTP, TCP/IP, etc. are open and freely implementable.”
As emerging first-class participants in the web experience, media and communication components also had to be free and open.
A decade later, these principles have ensured compression and communication technologies capable of keeping pace with a web ecosystem characterized by exponential growth of media consumption, devices, and demand. Starting from VP8 in 2010, the WebM Project has delivered up to 50% video bitrate savings with VP9 in 2013 and an additional 30% with AV1 in 2018 - with adoption by YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, Twitch, and more. Equally importantly, the WebM team co-founded the Alliance for Open Media which has freely licensed the IP of over 40 major tech companies in support of open and free codecs. With Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari supporting WebRTC, more than 85% of all installed browsers globally have become a client for real-time communications on the Internet. WebRTC has become a stable standard and it is now the default solution for video calling on the Web. These technologies have succeeded together, as today over 90% of encoded WebRTC video in Chrome uses VP8 or VP9.
The need for these technologies has been highlighted by COVID-19, as people across the globe have found new ways to work, educate, and connect with loved ones via video chat. The compression of open codecs has been essential to keeping services running on limited bandwidth, with over a billion hours of VP9 and AV1 content viewed every day. WebRTC has allowed for an ecosystem of interoperable communications apps to flourish: since the beginning of March 2020, we have seen in Chrome a 13X increase in received video streams via WebRTC.
These successes would not have been possible without all the supporters that make an open source community. Thank you to all the code contributors, testers, bug filers, and corporate partners who helped make this ecosystem a reality. A decade in, Google remains as committed as ever to open media on the web. We look forward to continuing that work with all of you in the next decade and beyond.
Posted by Matt Frost, Product Director Chrome Media and Niklas Blum, Senior Product Manager WebRTC

Chrome 76 Beta: dark mode, payments, new PWA features and more

Thursday, June 13, 2019

ChromeStatus.com Dark mode

prefers-color-scheme@media (prefers-color-scheme: dark) { body { color: white; background-color: black; } }Hello Darkness, My Old Friend Payments APIhasEnrolledInstrument()canMakePayment()languageCodedetailsPromisePaymentRequest.show()PaymentRequestEventchangePaymentMethod()PaymentRequestpaymentmethodchangePaymentRequest—ignore-certificate-errorsWeb Payments Updates Improvements for Progressive Web Apps Install Progressive Web Apps on the desktop with easeinstall button to the omnibox

installability criteria Control the Add to Home Screen mini-infobar

Progressive Web App installability criteriabeforeinstallpromptpreventDefault()promote installation of your PWA Updating WebAPKs more frequentlyWebAPKChrome will check the manifest more frequently Other features in this release Animation.updatePlaybackRateAdds Animation.updatePlaybackRate() Async clipboard: read and write imagesprogrammatic copying and pasting of imagesnavigator.clipboard.read()navigator.clipboard.write() Escape key is not a user activationno longer treated as a user activation Fetch Metadatanew HTTP request header<img>XSS leaks<img> form.requestSubmit()Adds the form.requestSubmit() functionsubmit ImageCapture support for focusDistance constraintprovides an interface Implement Animation.pendingthe pending attribute IndexedDB transaction explicit commit API calla commit() function to IDBTransactioncommit() JavaScriptDateTimeFormat dateStyle and timeStyle dateStyletimeStyleIntl.DateTimeFormatformatToParts()resolveOptions()Locale sensitive BigInt.prototype.toLocaleString and allow Intl.NumberFormat format/formatToParts to take BigInt.Changes BigInt.prototype.toLocaleString()Intl.NumberFormat.prototype.format()formatToParts()BigInt Media capabilities in workersEnables the Media Capabilities API in all types of workersMediaStream Promise.allSettledAdds Promise.allSettled() Simpler reading methods for Blob interfacethree new methods to the Blob interfacetext()arrayBuffer()stream() WebRTCRTCSctpTransportExposes information about the SCTP transportmax-message-sizemaxRTCRtpSender.setStreamschanging the association betweenRTCRtpSenderRTCRtpSender.replaceTrack()RTCRtpTransceiver.setCodecPreferences()setCodecPreferences() white-space: break-spaceswhite-space:break-spacesTrimming and Positioning rules Removals Remove feature policy: lazyloadlazyload feature policy<iframe><img>loading-frame-default-eagerloading<iframe> allow Remove outputs from MediaStreamAudioDestinationNodeMediaStreamAudioDestinationNodehas been removed Remove insecure usage of DeviceMotionEventnow restricts the API Remove insecure usage of DeviceOrientationEvent Chromium has been showing deprecation warnings since 2015 whenever the API is used in a non-secure browsing context. Chrome now restricts the API to secure browsing contexts. This change brings Chromium’s implementation in line with the privacy and security recommendations in the specification, and is aligned with the effort to deprecate powerful features on insecure origins.

Introducing “Find Your Way to Oz”, a new Chrome Experiment

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Find Your Way To Oz,Oz The Great and PowerfulUNIT9

Immersive Graphics: The experiment uses WebGL for the main 3D environment, CSS3 features such as CSS Transitions for various visual embellishments, and GLSL shaders for the tornado’s ominous look and feel.

Rich Audio: As the user explores the experiment, the 3D sound dynamically adapts thanks to the Web Audio API. The same API powers the experiment’s music composing section.

Camera-based interactions: Through WebRTC’s getUserMedia API, users can become circus characters or record their own mini-movies.

3D transformssprite sheetstechnical case studydeveloper toolsPosted by Max Heinritz, Product Magician (Manager)

Hello Firefox, this is Chrome calling!

Monday, February 4, 2013

WebRTCW3CIETFOpusVP8DTLSSRTPICEChrome 25 BetaFirefox Nightly for Desktopabout:configmedia.peerconnection.enabledtrueWebRTC demo sitesource codelibrarydocumentherePosted by Maire Reavy, Firefox Media Product Lead and Serge Lachapelle, Chrome Product Manager

Introducing getUserMedia and the Javascript Gamepad API

Monday, July 9, 2012

Chrome Beta releasegetUserMedia APIWebRTCrotate the video and add hipstery filtersplay a xylophone with motion detectiontry on glasses with face detectionstep into a photoboothFollow WebRTC on Google+AirMechTommy Widenflycht, Software Engineer and Real-Time Communicator

Chrome’s WebRTC roadmap

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

preview WebRTCWhat's in:JSEPJSEPJavascript libTopologiesICE / STUN / TURNICE and STUNDTLS-SRTP DTLS-SRTPVP8, iSAC, iLBC, G.711What’s next?

Data API. Implementation will start once the network stack is ready.

Screen sharing.

PeerConnection proxying. The ability to relay a stream to a third party will not make our first version.

Recording. MediaRecorder specification work has not been completed yet.

discussion listPosted by Serge Lachapelle, Product Manager