May 13 VideoLAN announced and made ready for download the release candidate of its VLC Media Player 1.0. The new version supports more codecs and provides numerous enhancements.

The Google Chrome developers have issued a developer channel (a.k.a. the Dev channel) release of Chrome that includes support for the latest open WebM / VP8 video format introduced as part of the WebM Project

The FFmpeg project has released version 0.6 of FFmpeg, improving HTML5 video and adding support for the latest open WebM / VP8 video format introduced by Google as part of the WebM Project

The Miro developers have released version 2.0 of their open source Miro Video Converter video transcoding utility, making it the first converter to support the new open WebM / VP8 video format introduced by Google with the WebM Project

The Xiph.Org Foundation is pleased to announce its support of the WebM open media project as a project launch partner. As announced earlier today at the Google I/O Developer Conference, the WebM format combines the VP8 video codec, the Matroska container, and the Vorbis audio codec developed by the Xiph into a high-quality, open, unencumbered format for video delivery on the Web.

The VideoLAN project is shipping version 1.1 of its open source VLC media player, adding hardware acceleration, WebM support, and faster HD decoding, but deleting Shoutcast support. Meanwhile, several industry reports suggest possible reasons for Adobe's temporary suspension of its beta 64-bit Linux version of Flash.

To that end, all new videos uploaded to YouTube are now transcoded into WebM. WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term.

The WebM Community Cross-License (CCL) initiative enables the web community to further support the WebM Project. Google, Matroska and the Xiph.Org Foundation make the various components of WebM openly available on royalty-free terms. By joining the CCL, member organizations likewise agree to license patents they may have that are essential to WebM technologies to other members of the CCL.

Though video is also now core to the web experience, there is unfortunately no open and free video format that is on par with the leading commercial choices. To that end, we are excited to introduce WebM, a broadly-backed community effort to develop a world-class media format for the open web.