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WebRTC Scalable Video Coding extensions

Category

WebRTC

Type

New or changed feature

Status

Enabled by default (Chrome 111)

Intent stage

Prepare to ship

• Breaking change: No
• Enterprise impact: None
• Chromium flag: RTCSvcScalabilityMode
• Spec maturity: Incubation
• Web Platform Tests: Yes

WPT details: Test will be developed as part of implementation.

Summary

This extension defines a standard method for picking between possible Scalable Video Coding (SVC) configurations on an outgoing WebRTC video track.

Motivation

Many video codecs (VP8, VP9, AV1, H264-SVC) have modes that allow an encoder to send out video data in such a format that it's possible to strip out certain packets from the stream and reconstruct a lower quality video stream from the result. This makes providing video at differing qualities to multiple destinations for the same video stream easier.

Standards & signals

• Specification: https://w3c.github.io/webrtc-svc/
• Firefox: No signal
• Safari: No signal
• Web developers: No signals
• Tracking bug: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=986069

Ecosystem

• Web Platform Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/?q=webrtc-scalable-video-coding-extensions
• Chrome Platform Showcase: https://chrome-platform-showcase.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
• GenDN reference: https://gendn.paulkinlan-ea.deno.net/features
• chrome.dev demos search: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Achrome.dev+WebRTC%20Scalable%20Video%20Coding%20extensions
• MDN Web Docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=WebRTC%20Scalable%20Video%20Coding%20extensions
• Baseline status: https://webstatus.dev/?q=WebRTC%20Scalable%20Video%20Coding%20extensions

Docs: https://w3c.github.io/webrtc-svc/

Explainers: https://w3c.github.io/webrtc-svc/

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