On2 VP6

• FOURCCs: VP60, VP61, VP62
• Company: On2
• Whitepaper: http://www.on2.com/cms-data/pdf/1125607149174329.pdf (mirrored)
• Specification: http://multimedia.cx/mirror/vp6_format.pdf
• Samples: http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/VP6/
• Nice article form author of the codec (Paul Wilkins): http://www.dspdesignline.com/211100053?printableArticle=true

Implementations

An early open source implementation could be found at http://libvp62.sourceforge.net/, but was driven underground by On2 on copyright infringement claims.

This specification is said to be incomplete with regard to the On2 VP6 specification.

A decoder implementation may be found in the FFMPEG source file vp6.c

Format

The aim here is to open this standard with a full description of the bitstream format and decoding process. Contributors from On2 especially encouraged here, but it is anticipated that this section will be completed through reverse engineering and by people who saw libvp62 source code before it was censored.

Please do not submit any copyrighted text or code here.

Introduction

VP6 uses unidirectional ("P-frame") and intra-frame (within the current frame) prediction. Entropy coding is performed using arithmetic (range?) coding and an 8x8 iDCT is used. The format supports dynamic adjustment of encoded video resolution. There are three variants of the VP6 codec, VP60 (Simple Profile), VP62 (Advanced Profile) and VP62 (Heightened Sharpness Profile).

Macroblocks

Each video frame is composed of an array of 16x16 macroblocks, just like MPEG-2, MPEG-4 parts 2 and 10. Each MB (macroblock) takes one of the following modes ("MV" means "motion vector"):

• Intra MB
• Inter MB, null MV, previous frame reference
• Inter MB, differential MV, previous frame reference
• Inter MB, four MVs, previous frame reference
• Inter MB, MV 1, previous frame reference
• Inter MB, MV 2, previous frame reference
• Inter MB, null MV, bookmarked frame reference
• Inter MB, differential MV, bookmarked frame reference
• Inter MB, MV 1, bookmarked frame reference
• Inter MB, MV 2, bookmarked frame reference

Frame Header

The frame header commences with a section that is encoded using conventional big-endian bit packing.

Syntax	Number of bits	Type	Semantics
frame_mode	1	Enum	0x0 signifies an intra frame
qp	6	Unsigned	Quantization parameter valid range 0..63
marker	1	Constant	0=VP61/62, 1=VP60
if (frame_mode == 0) {			0 equals to INTRA_FRAME
version	5	Constant	6=VP60/61, 7=VP60(Electronic Arts), 8=VP62
version2	2	Constant	0=VP60, 3=VP61/62
interlace	1	Boolean	true (1) means interlace will be used
if (marker==1 or version2==0) {
offset	16	Unsigned	secondary buffer offset (bytes releative to start of buffer)
}
dim_y	8	Unsigned	Macroblock height of video
dim_x	8	Unsigned	Macroblock width of video
render_y	8	Unsigned	Display height of video
render_x	8	Unsigned	Display width of video
}else{
if (marker==1 or version2==0) {
offset	16	Unsigned	secondary buffer offset (bytes releative to start of buffer)
}
}

If dim_x or dim_y have values different from the previous intra frame, then the resolution of the encoded image has changed.

Arithmetic coding commences at the next bit (which should be on a byte boundary):

Syntax	Type	Semantics
if (frame_mode == 0) {
marker1	Equiprobable 2-bit	Ignored
} else {
bookmark	Equiprobable 1-bit	bookmark == 0x1 means this frame will be the next bookmark frame
filter1	Equiprobable 1-bit
if (filter1 == 0x1) {
filter2	Equiprobable 1-bit
}
filter_info	Equiprobable 1-bit
}
if (frame_mode == 0 || filter_info == 0x1) {
filter_mode1	Equiprobable 1-bit
if (filter_mode1 == 0x1) {
filter_threshold1	Equiprobable 5-bit
filter_motion_param	Equiprobable 3-bit
} else {
filter_mode2	Equiprobable 1-bit
}
filter_mode3	Equiprobable 4-bit
}
marker2	Equiprobable 1-bit	Secondary buffer encoding algorithm. 0=Range coding, 1=Huffman coding.

If the secondary buffer is present, coeffient symbols are read from the secondary buffer using the algorithm indicated by marker2. VP60 has "the ability to switch to a faster entropy encoding strategy to ensure smooth playback" and "the ability to decode different parts of the bitstream on different sub-processors (for instance the vlx and the core), to ensure better overall system utilization" [1].

Entropy Coding

Described here is the decoding process for the arithmetically-coded (AC) parts of the bitstream. VP6 uses a 16-bit range coding scheme to code binary symbols.

The AC decoder maintains three state variables: code, mask and high.

Initialization

At initialization, the first two bytes of the AC bitstream are shifted into code. The variable high is set to 0xff00. The variable mask is set to 0xffff.

Decoding a Binary Value

Each binary symbol has an associated probability p in the range 0 to 0xff.

A threshold, t, is computed thus:

t = 0x100 + ( 0xff00 & ( ( (high-0x100) * p ) >> 8 ) )

Equiprobable binary symbols are treated somewhat differently:

t = 0xff00 & ( (high+0x100) >> 1 )

The binary value may then be decoded by comparing code and t. If code is less than t, the binary value is decoded as 0. If code is equal to or greater than t, the binary value is decoded as 1.

If a 1 was decoded, then

high = high - t

code = code - t

If a 0 was decoded, then

high = t

The following renormalization is now repeated while (high & 0x8000) is non-zero.

high = 2 * high

code = 2 * code

mask = 2 * mask

if ((mask & 0xff) == 0x00) {

code = code | next byte from bitstream

mask = mask | 0xff

}

Decoding an Equiprobable n-bit Integer Value

Integer values are coded as a big-endian sequence of equiprobable binary values. To decode an n-bit equiprobable integer value, n equiprobable binary values should be decoded using the sequence above and left-shifted into an integral result variable.

Inverse DCT

Inverse DCT is performed on 8x8 blocks of pixels. The algorithm used is the same (or a small variation) of the one used for the VP3 decoder in FFmpeg [2], the original vp3 iDCT code is here [3].