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YouTube video codec to remain free MPEG LA decides to continue to offer H.264 codec royalty-free.
The video-encoding technology used to stream video productions by sites such as YouTube is to remain free, it has been announced.
MPEG LA, the group that licences patents to the H.264 codec, has decided to extend its policy of not charging for royalties until December 31st 2015.
The licensing policy, which had been due to expire at the end of the year, applies only to websites that stream their videos to users free of charge.
A codec is technology that encodes and decodes digital data, allowing the information to be compressed for storage or transmission and then expanded again for viewing.
Last month, YouTube announced it was adding support for the HTML5 codec to its site.
HTML5 allows users to play hosted videos in their browser rather than through Adobe's Flash player.
The service is opt-in only and users will need to have a browser that supports the format, namely Google Chrome, Apple Safari (version 4+) and Microsoft Internet Explorer with Chrome Frame installed.
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