Xiph.org Releases Theora Alpha One

Pajama Crisis writes "Xiph.org, the crazy guys behind Ogg Vorbis, have released the first alpha version of Ogg Theora, an open video codec. Downloading, hacking and smashing into little pieces is cheerfully encouraged. Theora has been mentioned on Slashdot before. Also, Xiph has been working with a couple different companies to bring Vorbis to a portable near you; stay tuned."

Comments

vp3

[sootman]

...has been rolled into Theora, as is said at both sites.

from vp3.com:
NOTE TO ALL VP3 DEVELOPERS:
Monday, September 9, 2002 -- Starting today, all source code development and maintenance for the VP3 open source codec has moved to a new home: www.theora.org. Piloted by the open-source wunderkids at xiph.org who brought you Vorbis audio, Theora heralds a new era of open and license-free multimedia.

from theora.org:
What is Theora? Theora will be a video codec that builds upon On2's VP3 codec.

So, in case anyone was wondering (like I just was), there you go.

Where's the link?!?

[ryanvm]

Also, Xiph has been working with a couple different companies (iRiver, Frontier Labs) to bring Vorbis to a portable near you; stay tuned.

Oh come on! News like that and no link or credible source?!?

For those who don't know - iRiver is the company that makes Rio's Volt lineup of portable CD MP3 players. Top notch players, but up until now they only play MP3 and WMA.

The Rio Volt's lack of Vorbis support is the only reason I haven't switched to encoding all my music in Vorbis. I've got to believe that the lack of hardware supporting Vorbis is the number one reason for its modest adoption rate.

Re:Where's the link?!?

[m_chan]

I saw this post at the iRiver user forum:

Emmett
2002-09-24 15:51:43 (Xiph.org - Ogg Vorbis) Hey, folks, please read. Ladies and Gentlemen and other assorted interested parties:

This morning (2:28am, EDT), I received an E-mail from Y.H. Lee, the Chief Engineer of iRiver's products. He has informed me that they are currently porting the fixed-point Ogg Vorbis decoder (Tremor) to their product. We will endeavour to assist them in any way we can.

In addition to letting iRiver know that we stand behind them ready to assist with technical issues, I believe a huge thanks is in order to the people who have contacted iRiver asking them to support our format. We're indebted to all of you who have posted looking for Vorbis support on this thread, as well as all of you who have sent iRiver E-mails and called them on the telephone.

With any luck, it won't be long before iRiver starts releasing products with Ogg Vorbis support. When the day comes, I hope you'll all take a moment to congratulate yourselves, and celebrate with a portable full of music encoded in an open and free format. :)

If anyone has any questions, comments, or anything they want to talk about, please feel free to drop me an E-mail to emmett@xiph.org, or give me a call at 215-820-9583. We're an open source project, and we love hearing from people, talking about the codec, and discussing cool stuff. Please don't hesitate to contact us if you want to gripe, complain or compliment.

Thanks again for all your help, folks. We couldn't do it without you.

Emmett Plant
CEO, Xiph.org Foundation

Re:Ogg Theora?

[Spazholio]

Actually, if you check the FAQ, that's exactly where it came from.

Which?

[Grendel Drago]

Really? Do you mean DivX 3.11a with SBC? Or DivX 4 or 5? Maybe the new XviD codec, which is replacing (various versions of) DivX in the pirate scene.

Seriously. "DivX 0wnz". Put a little thought into what you write---unlike MP3, "DivX" comprises a wide variety of codecs and licensing schemes.

--grendel drago

About the name

[shut_up_man]

Q: Why the name 'Theora?'

A: Like other Xiph.org Foundation codec projects such as Vorbis or Tarkin, Theora is named after a fictional character. Theora Jones was the name of Edison Carter's 'controller' on the television series Max Headroom. She was played by Amanda Pays.

DAMN they have cool names for their stuff. I wish other people would follow their lead (bloody "Opteron").

Re:They never actually say...

[jonathan_ingram]

Theora is basically a cleaned up VP3, and is likely to remain so. Although some visual improvements may sneak in along the way, this is not the main focus of the project, which is to convert VP3 from being a Windows only mess into a portable cross-platform codec which plays well with the Ogg container format.

Previous tests by places such as Doom 9 have shown that VP3 is beaten by the various pseudo-MPEG4 encoders, although not embarassingly. I imagine that this situation will continue: DivX/XviD/etc. will continue to have marginally better quality.

Here's the link!

[XJoshX]

Here's the link!

We'll see if they're able to get it into an upgrade of their current firmware.. Even if they don't its still quite exciting news for the future.

Here it is

[Malc]

It's funny, I was just reading this two hours ago: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/hardware.html

Wow, this is like watching mainland Chinese news.

[xiphmont]

Forgive the tone of this reply, but this guy is smoking so much crack that it's simply impossible to take seriously. There's nothing I hate more than self styled 'experts' who just make it all up.

Sir (and I use the word loosely), if you're a plant for the competition, try a bit more subtlety and you'll blend in better. I've also found that borrowing buzzwords liberally from 'Star Trek' will help your gobbledygook sound more convincing to both low level nerds and the common man.

Off we go...

I've been studying psychoacoustics in my spare time,

Oh boy, a *real* expert... Give me a second to contain my excitement.

It sacrifices a lot to "sound better" than MP3, and while some of their tradeoffs do manage to improve sound quality

A terrible, terrible thing it is to sound better... there must be something wrong

First off, Vorbis concentrates its encoding in the more audible midrange

...as does every psychoacoustic compression, because your ears have the greatest perceivable signal depth and resolution in the midrange. This is page one of most psychoacoustics textbooks (and it also happens to be true). Go study some more.

completely cutting out higher overtones. While MP3 works similarly, it manages to keep enough of the high range to maintain the "feel" of the original music.

Bzzt. False statement number one. Go study in your spare time a little harder, do some ABX testing then come back and tell us what you learned. However this one is almost forgivable compared to the nonsense below.

Vorbis claims to support more than two channel audio, but this is misleading.

Bzzt, no it's not. 255 channel support, all of which may be totally independent and un-coupled. You need not use 'joint stereo' (our method is more general and we call it 'channel coupling') at all.

MP3 encodes stereo using a "joint-stereo" method, which couples both tracks together into a mono track, giving each frame a different balance to simulate stereo on a mono track. This is equivalent to playing a mono tape and turning the balance knob!

No, idiot, that's 'intensity stereo', not 'joint stereo'. Vorbis does not use intensity stereo.

Obviously, this is less than optimal

It certainly would be, unfortunately--- *GASP* ---it's not true!

While Vorbis supports true stereo encoding, it fakes 5.1-channel audio using a "joint-joint-stereo" method, where the left-back/left-front and right-back/right-front channels and joined together into the two stereo tracks in a similar fashion. Not very good at all.

Bzzzt. Go read the spec again Bucky. You could do what's described above, yes, but that's not 'the way Vorbis does it'.

The way that Vorbis compresses its audio accelerates speaker degradation

Actually using the speakers accellerates degredation too. They last alot longer when you leave them in the box they came in and don't plug them in.

It breaks sound up into an evenly-spaced array of harmonics which approximate the original waveform

Those are not 'harmonics', and Vorbis's compression pays no particualr attention to sinusoidal harmonics. Perhaps you'd like to wait until college and get some signal processing lectures under your belt before coming back.

"Big deal", you say, "that's how all lossy encoding schemes work!"

[sigh] No, no it's not.

But if we assume, for a second, that you said, 'Vorbis is a transform-domain codec', which is what you meant, no, not all lossy audio compression formats are transform based.

But the way that Vorbis does it causes a noticeable amount of harmonic resonance in speaker systems, stressing their driver system and accelerating the rate at which they decay.

The problem Sir is that you have a surplus of Zackthorp particles coming from your warp core, a well known source of wear and tear on cheap speakers. Make sure your speakers are rated for greater than warp 4 before trying to use them so close to a Gammagorp Modulator and your worries are over!

I listened to the result, and believe me, it's true! Because I said so.

If you know the story of the first Tacoma Narrows bridge [carleton.ca], this is the same principle, working at a smaller and more gradual pace.

...which has *nothing whatsoever* to do with what we're talking about. But hey, I loved that TNG episode where Data gets his dick caught in the food synthesizer, so that goes to show Vorbis is Bad. Vorbis made him do it. Really. I heard the voices whispering all through that episode.

Given Xiph's poor track record with Vorbis

OK, let's stop here. Everyone gather around, point and laugh!

Monty
[sheesh]

Ogg petition for Ipod

[huper]

Attn: All ./'ers

There is a petition in the applecare forums to bring ogg support to the Ipod. It would make a good product even better.
Take a look and sign it if you can.

Re:File Extensions

[lunatik17]

Ogg is merely the container format that both Vorbis and Theora use. Just like Mov is a quicktime container that can be any number of different codecs, as well as avi, asf and wmv. Calling a Theora file .ogg is perfectly valid and calling a vorbis file .ogg is just as valid.