Submitted by Theora is a video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties. While the Theora bitstream format was standardized in 2004 and our beta releases have been used by millions, this 1.0 release is an important milestone reflecting the maturity and stability of the Theora codebase. A number of leading multimedia web groups already support Theora. Upcoming releases of Mozilla Firefox, the world’s most popular open source browser, will support Theora natively, as will releases of the multi-platform Opera browser. Top-10 website Wikipedia uses Theora for all of its video.
This is great news for open source enthusiasts. Several of us have long been fans of the Ogg Vorbis codec. Seeing a similar codec for video is certainly a boon for free software in general.
In addition, as HTML5 introduces support for a <video> element. Embedding video into browsers with Theora support, such as upcoming Firefox release, will be as simple as:
<video>
<source type="video/ogg" src="mymovie.ogg" />
</video>While there are several other video standards with a much broader install base — most notably Flash, Windows Media, and Quicktime — all of them have some sort of licensing penalty that make them non-free-as-in-beer. Time will tell if Theora is destined to be the next true video standard or remain a niche format.
open. Actually I prefer open codecs because they come in extensive documentation,sample code and I do not have to rely on companies. Vorbis + Theora can change the way things work. And I would like to listen to music and watch content with my Fedora9 desktops out of the box.
I would love the see an (output, not tools) comparison between theora (including the recent encoder work), Dirac and h.264.
From what I’ve heard Dirac would do better than either H.264 or Theora and H.264 would do better than Theora, which apparently performs at roughly the same level as XviD/DivX…
There was a comparison between Theora and h.264 that linked here aswell. Maybe a year ago or something. The final conclusion was that h.264 had much better quality/filesize ratio.
There is no real comparison, theora is several generations behind everyone else. The only conceivable reason to use it is the license.
It’s good, because OGG support will be baked into Firefox and Opera, there’ll be adequate incentive. I’ll certainly look to be supporting it. Now it’s just a shame that Safari’s <video> implementation doesn’t out of the box.
I really long for the day that Flash goes away.
comparison here : http://www.osnews.com/story/19019/Theora-vs.-h.264/
If theora made progress that would be delightfull.
And native support from firefox of Ogg formats would help a lot (+html 5 native controls ^^)
That comparison is not using the new encoding improvgements (http://xiphmont.livejournal.com/35363.html) – which to be far have not yet been incorporated back into the trunk yet.
Is there any comparison out there of how dirac compares to anything?
and one thing to note there is that the examples are taking a smaller area of a large image and sizing it up.
the question is how noticeable the “issue” will be unless one grab a stampsized web video and slap it onto a 50″ “wallpaper” screen.
And by this time Theora would be part of the HTML5 standar.
Thank you very much Nokia…. NOT!!!.
yeah, those people at nokia responsible for that really deserves to be painfully executed..
no hardware (standalone dvd player, ipod, ps3 etc etc) can play ogg/mkv/ogm and all that stuff. and i mean without dirty unsupported hacks.
while i would love to see a patent free codec (and so should the hw. manufacturers) it didn’t happen yet. unless this happens i see ogg or any other codec simply not practical for day to day usage.
just a note for the ogg developers, if you want to succeed, make an easy installer. and with easy i do mean easy. either have it build in the player, or make it a single click installer. as an experienced user i have trouble getting it to run, how can the masses adopt it?
and don’t offer source downloads, it only confuses people. nobody uses it besides package maintainers. those people will find the tars anyway if it’s a bit more hidden. all other developers use the svn tree.
good luck with polishing.
I’m very sure that MKV is very popular as a supported format.
given how MKV is just a can (similar to AVI) that could hold just about any combo of video and audio, im not surprised.
>no hardware (standalone dvd player, ipod, ps3 etc etc) can play ogg/mkv/ogm and all that stuff. and i mean without dirty unsupported hacks.
http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/hardware.html
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,2121760,00.htm
Says otherwise.
http://www.neurostechnology.com/
Nice.
>just a note for the ogg developers, if you want to succeed, make an easy installer. and with easy i do mean easy.
Ogg is installed by default on most Linux distributions, and where it is not it is included in the package management repository, which makes it dead simple to install.
Ogg comes as a part of freedom-software players such as VLC … it is installed painlessly with the media player.
AFAIK there is only one situation where ogg is difficult to get installed … and that is in places where freedom-software is not welcomed (at least, not welcomed by the authors of the closed source systems, the user doesn’t get a say here).
This means in effect that you might have a hard time installing ogg support on your Windows Media Player, on your Mac, or on your Nokia phone.
The fact that it might be difficult to install in situations like the latter sentence has absolutely NOTHING to do with Xiph.org.
Having said that … it doesn’t seem all that hard to do:
http://xiph.org/dshow/
Edited 2008-11-05 00:53 UTC
There are many media players supporting Ogg formats, but they are often not available at your nearest store. I was shopping for a media player supporting Ogg Vorbis last year and I had to order it from a store literally across the country. It might only be a slight annoyance for a technogeek, but the average Joe won’t bother with that. Not really Xiph’s fault, though.
Well, given these systems are making the vast majority of the market, this “lone” situation is quite a big deal! Many high-profile open-source applications like Firefox and OOo became popular when they ran well on Windows, so I don’t see Theora going anywhere until it’s properly supported on it. Being supported by Firefox won’t solve the problem, since people still want to watch videos offline or in another still-dominant browser.
To my experience, these filters are quite flakey and outdated. Same thing for the XiphQT component on the Mac, although it does work better. Again, it won’t become a real alternative if they just manage to get okay support on the major platforms, especially when they already have to compete with different commercially-backed and/or standardized codecs and deal with the fact that most people don’t really give a damn about the “freedom” of their codecs, as long as they work with minimal fuss (just like Flash).
Don’t get me wrong: I support your point. However, I believe I’m a tad more realistic, just like another recent thread.
Electronics:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=8300
http://edageek.com/2006/10/31/ogg-vorbis-decoder-xtensa-hifi-2/
http://www.tensilica.com/products/ogg.htm
http://www.2k1.co.uk/components/VLSI_audio.asp
Warning: PDF’s ==>
http://linux.gda.pl/pub/finearch.com/OggVorbisProductSummaryE.pdf
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ml/sprp525/sprp525.pdf
Portable Players:
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers
Edited 2008-11-05 02:50 UTC
“no hardware (standalone dvd player, ipod, ps3 etc etc) can play ogg/mkv/ogm and all that stuff. and i mean without dirty unsupported hacks.”
If that is the case, please inform the manufacturers of the equipment listed on this link. They may want to know that the product they mass produce and sell does not do what they say it does.
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/PortablePlayers#iDREAM_Jukebox_2.2_G…
EDIT: Forgot the link!
Edited 2008-11-05 05:40 UTC
So is this going to be offered as a plug-in for IE and Safari? This should be simple to add to them.
What would be better is if a download was offered that added full Ogg Vorbis and Theora support into Windows Media Player and IE with one download.
Perhaps Apple will add support for this in Quicktime? I really doubt but who knows? What would be the best way to package this simply for general Mac use and use with Safari-specifically through a plug-in?
Also will Google Chrome support this?
Why are these things not packaged like this already on their website? If they want the actual usage of these standards to increase then they need to make them as dead simple to install as possible.
Theora seems largely irrelevant. I’d never had to use it and I see no reason to in the future either as there are formats that are both more well known / supported and have better quality / size ratio. Does it have any reason to exist?
It’s free to implement, and that makes all the difference.
If Mozilla wanted to use H.264 they’d have to pay a licence for each user of Firefox, and it could only be included in official builds from Mozilla – which would rule out H.264 support for Mozilla’s unofficially supported platforms such as anything x64, BeOS, OS/2, Solaris &c.
Ogg is going to become relevant by it’s inclusion into browsers.
and scares the big boys silly that have hedged their bets.
now the big tech equalizer, the web, wants to use something else pr default (never mind that one can stack media files using these tags so that the user or the system can pick the “better” one), one thats not part of said hedged bet.
no wonder they are fighting, there is billions in hardware and software, direct and thru IP agreements, that can basically have been wasted.
…why the MPEG standards comittees have been so gutless vis a vis pushing for the free implementabilty of their standards. Other major standards bodies OASIS, JPEG, W3C, etc have always operated under the principle that they needed to be producing standards that could be implemented (legally) by anybody from a 14 year old hobbyist to a multi-billion dollar international company and that doing so would incur no patent liabilities or liscensing fees. Even greedy, propreitary companies like Microsoft and Adobe allow for free access to and royalty-free implementation of a whole host of their standards and file formats. Nobody seems to have suffered from this, so why have the MPEG comittees continued to operate counter to general industry practice?
because it costs money to develop good codecs, not just average or mediocre ones, good ones. there’s a reason xiph/theora is free, because it lost. they tried very hard to win and get that money.
in the end lost because it was inferior and remains inferior.
to the consumer and myself, nobody cares about patents, every player supports mp4/h264 decoding, is free and also already has hardware h264 decoders.
And you’re saying it didn’t cost money to develop ODF or JPEG or PDF or any of the many freely-implementable file formats out there? I just don’t see the huge difference.
That argument doesn’t work in the case of FLAC and Vorbis. It doesn’t even work for speex. Each of those xiph codecs is superior, but they are not widely used merely because big corporate media interests do not want them to be used, and actively suppress them.
The reason for the supression is pure and simple … big corporate media interests wish to retain control over what consumers can and cannot do, in order to be able to rip them off.
The “way out” here is to support FLAC & Vorbis (because they are no way inferior) and Dirac. Theora can be kept as well … why not? It may be able to be improved with development.
Dirac is a different story. It is good enough to be comparable with the likes of H.264.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_codec
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/11153/35811/0…
I’m not therefore sure of the Ogg container format … can it suport Dirac as well or is it limited only to xiph codecs? If the former, then we either need to support Matroska over Ogg, or we need to encourage Xiph to accomodate Dirac in addition to Theora.
PS: Correcting myself … it would appear as though Xiph has indeed taken on board the task to get Ogg to accomodate the Dirac codec.
http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/OggDirac
Edited 2008-11-05 23:04 UTC
MPEG-1 is close to being royalty free. MPEG-1 audio layer II is close enough to MASCAM which was described in detail in August of 1988. MPEG-1 video is fairly close to H.261 which came out in 1990. It would almost certainly be possible to make a royalty free profile of MPEG-1 that could be played with existing players, yet could also be implemented for free. I have been putting information as I find it up at http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/MPEG_patent_status
…is that there’s a native Java applet implementation of it:
http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/
It’s GPL too. Not a bad alternative to Flash and FLVs, methinks…
Plus in the future there’s a good chance it’ll be integrated into the JVM itself.
http://developers.sun.com/learning/javaoneonline/2008/pdf/TS-6509.p…
(Java Media Components)