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WEBM - Web Media File

What is a WEBM file

WEBM file formats are intended for royalty-free use in HTML5 videos based on the Matroska file container. Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Google Chrome web browsers support the video playback of WEBM files but Internet Explorer 9 and Safari usually need third-party assistance (like QuickTime) for the playback of WEBM media. YouTube utilizes WEBM files as part of their HTML5 player experiment. Both, the web browser format and the Nintendo Wii YouTube app, use this file type for video playback as well as Wikimedia, Skype, 4chan, and Logitech. The file container was created by ON2, Xiph, and Matroska, but has been adopted and significantly altered by Google. Make the best of this video format by converting videos to WEBM.

Encoding and decoding WebM-compliant files are capable through programs such as the ffvp8 decoder as an alternative to Google’s libvpx decoder. Matroska’s mkvtoolnix can support multiplexing/demultiplexing. WEBM realtime decoding and encoding support is possible with version 1.4.9 of the LiVES video editor. MPC-HC (SVN 2071 and higher) support WEBM video playback with internal VP8 decoder utilizing the FFmpeg coding, with full decoding support starting at the MPC-HC version 1.4.2499.0. Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread) and above, allowing playback of WEBM videos as well. Full hardware implementation of 1080p VO8 encoding was made possible with Rockchip in 2001.

Here's a small, but not exhaustive list of programs that can open WEBM documents:

  • Mozilla Firefox
  • Google Chrome
  • Opera
  • QuickTime
  • YouTube
  • Adobe Flash
  • Skype
About
Extension WEBM
MIME type video/webm
Useful links
Example Files
example.webm
(3.21 MiB)
example_small.webm
(2.20 MiB)