On2 Improves VP6 Video Quality for Adobe Flash Video by up to 40%

On2 Improves VP6 Video Quality for Adobe Flash Video by up to 40% On2 VP6 is used by many of the leading UGC sites, CDNs and content owners including: Facebook, Daum, Eurosport, Akamai and Brightcove; it is used to encode all genres of video targeted for web delivery in Flash format. Coupling high quality with low datarates and supporting cue points and alpha channel in Flash, VP6 is proprietary to On2 Technologies, and as such does not bear content royalties like those levied by MPEG-LA.

The On2 Flix product line are available as application software, plug-ins and software development kits for servers, desktops, and browsers. 'We have introduced some significant enhancements to VP6 through the encoder.' says Jim Bankoski, CTO of On2 Technologies 'We evolved our motion search strategy bringing notable improvements in fast movement sequences, sport for example. VP6 continues to be one of the most versatile codecs in the world delivering high quality over low datarates coupled with low complexity playback.' Nikolas Klein Internet IT Manager at Eurosport, Europe's leading sports multimedia platform, commented: 'These developments hit the sweet spot for Eurosport.

Our customers will save on bandwidth and enjoy even shorter buffering delays without any reduction of quality in our streamed sports video content.' 'In terms of internet bandwidth, video is undoubtedly one of the heaviest applications. By introducing these improvements to one of the primary codecs used to create Flash video, consumers will enjoy the benefits on a very wide scale.' says Bill Joll, President and CEO On2 Technologies The improvements follow the recent introduction of for the new VP6-S profile in Flash Player 9. Targeted for HD, encoded video in this profile requires up to 30% less CPU power to playback. For content owners planning to deliver HD to desktops, this means a much larger addressable market as even a 1.7GHz Pentium 4 can playback 720p HD video stutter-free.

With this announcement, all profiles of On2 VP6 will experience quality improvements. A second On2 VP6 improvement release is planned for later this year and will focus on dramatic speed improvements in the VP6 encoder.