OpenH264 is an open-source H.264 video codec implementation released by Cisco in 2013. Cisco pays the MPEG-LA royalties on behalf of all users, making it effectively royalty-free for anyone who uses the pre-built binary modules.
OpenH264 and WebRTC
OpenH264 played a critical role in the WebRTC codec debate:
- H.264 is patent-encumbered, requiring royalty payments
- VP8 was Google’s royalty-free alternative
- Cisco’s release of OpenH264 broke the deadlock, enabling Firefox to support H.264 without patent concerns
- H.264 became mandatory to implement in WebRTC (alongside VP8)
OpenH264 provides a baseline profile implementation suitable for real-time communication. While it does not support the more advanced High Profile used in streaming, its constraint baseline profile is the most widely interoperable H.264 profile for WebRTC.
Firefox uses OpenH264 as its primary H.264 implementation, downloading the binary module from Cisco’s servers.
To this day, there are issues in having H.264 implementations for WebRTC on some Android devices via Chrome due to licensing issues. OpenH264 solved most of the problem for most devices, but not for everyone.
