Project Caviar
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Project Caviar: Google is promoting new royalty-free audio and video codecs
Project Caviar involves the already established Alliance for Open Media, a partnership between some of the most important technology and media companies (Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Netflix, Nvidia, Samsung) and Google itself, promoting the adoption of open source and royalty-free audio-video codecs like AV1.
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Why Google is pushing for open media formats
Project Caviar is based on HDR10+ for video and the Alliance for Open Media’s Immersive Audio Container format for 3D audio.
Google wants to strengthen both those efforts with a new umbrella brand that can better compete with Dolby’s branding.
The company is looking to establish a dedicated implementer’s forum to get streaming services and hardware makers to adopt the formats and brand.
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Google’s leaked “Project Caviar” may lead to royalty-free alternatives of Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision
Dolby charges manufacturers mere dollars for brands to pile on Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision onto consumer products and earns the bulk of its moolah via playbacks, which helps ensure that the Dolby formats are widely accepted.
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Report: Google wants open, royalty-free alternative to Dolby Atmos and Vision
This comes as spatial audio is marketed (see: Apple Music and Dolby Atmos) as the next big thing in music, while the video side of Google’s format push is aimed at letting end users “capture in these premium formats and get better-quality video.”
Today, Dolby charges a license fee to device makers that want to add Atmos and Vision support, which is increasingly advertised by streaming services as a premium feature. For example: [...]