Google may have open sourced WebRTC, but that hasn’t stopped the company from doing its best to improve on its creation frequently. Its most recent endeavour to forward Web-based, plug-in-free video conferencing involves existing partner Vidyo, which has powered Google+ Hangouts with its technology for about a year now.
Specifically, Google and Vidyo are looking to align their technology roadmaps, which will allow Google to use Vidyo’s Scalable Video Coding (SVC) extensions as part of WebRTC. In other words, a scalable video extension is being developed specifically for Google’s free, open source VP9 codec.
"Vidyo has been a great partner, working with Google to provide a high quality video solution for Hangouts," said Chee Chew, VP of Engineering at Google. "By continuing our relationship, we will now combine the power of WebRTC with the benefits of Vidyo's technology to deliver the best possible experience for our users."
SVC is a technology pioneered by Vidyo that has received recognition by a number of industry leaders as the way to attain a solid video conferencing experience over the Internet. This is because SVC offers better error resilience than competing extensions, creating an optimized experience for multi-user video calls.
As such, it’s obvious how SVC will benefit WebRTC. By making WebRTC-based communications more resilient and stable, it can better perform in multi-party scenarios, which will likely lead to increased adoption.
With Google’s direct hand in this project, it’s not surprising that Chrome is expected to be the first browser to support the scalable version of WebRTC. Of course, Google and Vidyo will work together to promote this version with the appropriate standards bodies.
"Google is known for its ability to embrace and promote technological innovations,” said Ofer Shapiro, co-founder and CEO of Vidyo. “WebRTC provides a vision of new communications possibilities for video enabled web applications and by leveraging Vidyo's expertise in SVC, we will jointly create a path to accessible quality video."
Edited by
Ryan Sartor
