Ogg Theora Alpha 2 Released

An anonymouse reader writes "After almost seven months, another alpha release of Ogg Theora is finally out. Still not production ready, but it's certainly showing some progress." The world needs a free video codec. Looking forward to seeing where this one goes.

Comments

release

[frieked]

Yeah, it was supposed to go beta 2-3 months ago...:
Ogg Theora was scheduled to go Beta (that means the bitstream is locked down, and all features are represented) in March of 2003. Obviously, that's slipped. Alpha 2 is going to be released shortly; but please remember that until Beta, there is no promise that files you encode will be supported in the final release.

But when will Theora be done you ask?

From the site: We nominally expect to be finished by the end of 2003. VP3 is a very mature video codec, so most of our effort is going into the Theora project.

OGG

[amembleton]

Hopefully this will be as good as their OGG audio codec. I think its great cos the file sizes are smaller than MP3 yet the quality is just as good!

Keep up the good work :)

Re:OGG

[frieked]

Well, with the amount of time they're taking I would certainly hope it would be as good ;)

But seriously though, they have this to say on the subject: As the Ogg Vorbis format has gained acceptance, components have become available to play Ogg files on practically all of the major media players. We expect a similar if not superior level of support for Ogg Theora.

Re:OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, how insightful! Keep up the high quality comments!

Re:OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

The audio codec is called Ogg Vorbis, not OGG.

Re:OGG

[SCHecklerX]

..but takes more processor to play (at least the last time I played with Ogg, and I admit my only testing was with the xmms plugin). Not great if you want to use on a portable device, where battery life is a concern.

Re:OGG

[Abcd1234]

Not great if you want to use on a portable device, where battery life is a concern.

Meh, this is becoming less and less of a concern. Your average PDA has a pretty damn powerful processor in it these days, while still having decent battery life. Heck, even cell-phones these days are pretty powerful. Enough so that decoding Vorbis shouldn't be a huge issue. And this ignores the possibility of hardware decoders, which make this whole point moot. Of course, a good question here is, how suitable is Vorbis for implementation in hardware?

Re: OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's the Vorbis audio codec. Both Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora use Ogg (not OGG, I might add) as their container format.

If that isn't complicated enough, FLAC is capable of being stuffed in an Ogg container, too. FLAC's native container, however, has better library support as of 1.1.0--so don't wait around for Ogg FLAC to become popular anytime soon.

Re:OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

By that logic, DNF will be the best game of all time... look out ID!

Re:OGG

[Sunnan]

It's been done at least once. I'm looking forward to more hardware-based players since I don't like the battery-eating of software+ARM players.

Re:OGG

[Abcd1234]

Hmm... not quite. It looks like they just implemented the MDCT in hardware (albeit the most computationally intensive part). Although, now that I think about it, this is probably a good approach... it allows for firmware upgrades of the actual decoder (since it runs in software), yet still optimizes the most difficult bits in hardware.

Re:OGG

[Trongy]

" ..but takes more processor to play (at least the last time I played with Ogg, and I admit my only testing was with the xmms plugin). Not great if you want to use on a portable device, where battery life is a concern."

There's an integer only branch of the Ogg Vorbis decoder called Tremor. It's mainly used for ARM processors. It uses much less processor time and is capable of decoding in realtime on a 75MHz ARM cpu.

Chris

Re:OGG

[Anonymous Coward]

CPU cycles *are* a concern if the codec is being run on a web server.
This is why the BBC chose not to go with Ogg Vorbis for their streaming media...

Re:OGG

[Abcd1234]

Uhhh... do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds? Vorbis *decoding* requires a large number of cycles. Decoding happens where? On the client side. The job of the web server is to stream the data out to the client... that's all. Now, encoding complexity could be an issue if they're encoding to their various media formats on the fly (which would require a ton of cycles no matter the format, BTW), but decoding complexity is completely irrelevant to a streaming media server.

In fact, the only reason a streaming media server might decode the media would be to transcode to another format. Again, if you're doing this, you better have a lot of horsepower to begin with. Although, interestingly, one of the primary purposes of doing this is to degrade the bitrate of a stream for low-bandwidth purposes. If Vorbis bitrate peeling works as promised, streaming Vorbis will require LESS cycles for this type of application, since there would be no decoding phase involved.

Theora?

[meringuoid]

So... who's Theora? I know Vorbis was head torturer of the Omnian Inquisition in Small Gods, but I don't know a Theora...

Re:Theora?

[meringuoid]

Oops, careless of me: I should RTFFAQ before posting silly questions :-)

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.

Re:Theora?

[lambadomy]

Congratulations on getting karma for answering your own question. Hopefully you won't get a karma boost for the question as well, I can just see it now, everyone asking and then answering themselves to get double the karma!

Re:Theora?

[Tumbleweed]

> She was played by Amanda Pays.

*drool* Mmmm, Amanda Payyyyyysss....

Colour me officially approving of Theora, then! :)

Re:Theora?

[meringuoid]

I was too quick. A proper karma whore would have posted the question, waited to score a couple of 'Interesting' mods, then posted the answer to collect on the 'Informative'.

Patience, that's the key :-)

Re:Theora?

[Anonymous Coward]

Theora Jones - "Carter's boss or 'controller' at Network 23, she is the liaison between the maverick reporter and the evil network, though she usually sides with Carter. An expert hacker and techy, she's instrumental in helping Carter find out the truth and keeping him out of trouble. Every once in awhile, sparks fly between Theora and Carter, hinting at an undercover romance."

source

Re:Theora?

[Soul-Burn666]

It's not suprising that your SECOND self reply got modded Redundant :)

Re:Theora?

[lambadomy]

Thank god. After my first self reply went up to funny, who knows how far it could have gone. course, now it's at -1

Re:Theora?

[Wolfrider]

--Ah, Theora... I immediately thought of her when I saw the name; interesting that the codec is actually *based* on who came to mind.

--Yeah, she was hot:
http://web.ukonline.co.uk/amanda.pays/scansp /pays/ amanda47.jpg

Re:Theora?

[SkewlD00d]

In my next book, "The Definitive Twelve-Step Program for Trolls that want to become Karma Whores: or So You've Decided to be a Karma Whore"

The outline would read something like this:

Chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Background
3. Picking a new whore nick
4. Troll yourself using a different alias
5. So... You want to be a karma whore?
6. The top 5 ways to get your first /. posting
7. How to be more than a OPW, a One-Post-Wonder
8. Making fun of the /. editors
9. Not going for the first post
10. Submit comments early
11. Instant Karma: Talk about random, chic geek crap
12. Know WTF you're talking about, or at least act like it, and defend your BS position vigorously

Will be available in the Universal eBook format known as PostScript; also available on dead, flat, pressed trees with oil-based pigment markings.

Re:Theora?

[anno1a]

"A proper karma whore would have posted the question, waited to score a couple of 'Interesting' mods, then posted the answer to collect on the 'Informative'."

Or perhaps post the question, answer the question, thus harvesting double fruit, and then later score another one by posting a witty remark. Then wait for someone to lure this devious trick, and make a witty comeback at that, thus getting a baffling four high scoring comments.

Open source porn

[rf0]

Woo now I can get all my porn encoded into an open source video

Rus

Re:Open source porn

[Herg]

Just a friendly reminder, you don't get the bonus karma unless you spell it 'pr0n'.

Re:Open source porn

[Citizen of Earth]

Woo now I can get all my porn encoded into an open source video

Actually, could that be the killer ap for an open-source/free codec? If you are producing a video product for $5,000 or even $500, do you want to pay licensing fees for commercial codec? (Do you need to pay codec fees if you are making a video product for sale?)

Re:Open source porn

[NotQuiteReal]

Does this mean you are looking for some open source actors and actresses for this project?

Re:Open source porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Open source actors and actresses are definitely better than those with open sores.

wider use of free codecs

[drunkahol]

I can't figure out whether or not it would be good for the Ogg codecs (Vorbis and Theora) to be supplied as standard on loads more media devices.

Part of me says "Yay - supply it on everything"

whilst another part (probably somewhere in the brain bit) says "if these things gain a wide use too fast, the RIAA will bully their way into making them illegal somehow" :(

I'm NOT schizophrenic BTW

Re:wider use of free codecs

[molarmass192]

the RIAA will bully their way into making them illegal

They haven't done that with MP3 ... let me suffix that with a "yet".

Re:wider use of free codecs

[Anonymous Coward]

They haven't done that with MP3 ... let me suffix that with a "yet".

FYI - you don't have to warn us about your impending use of various grammatical constructs. In the future you can just append the word "yet" as you see fit. Thanks.

Re:wider use of free codecs

[evilviper]

I think that MP3 is too profitable for RIAA to buy, and if they did, what's the point? They couldn't stop the illegial uses, which is the whole problem, and it would just help the push to something even better, such as Ogg.

Whats the chance.....

[Cackmobile]

of major companies picking this up. Are they really going to use this for movie trailers/previews. I don't think so. They'll stick with QT and WMP. Big business loves Big business. I guess we'll be stuck with
I hate QT, why don't they bring it out with something OSS

Re:Whats the chance.....

[salimma]

I hate QT, why don't they bring it out with something OSS

Mplayer can play Quicktime just fine on Linux/x86 - and with the newer QT being based on MPEG4, presumably it will be possible to use ffmpeg/xvid/insert favourite mpeg4 codec combined with libquicktime to read QT files on all platforms.

What this is useful, IMHO, is archiving. For all those DVDs that you have - it's quite nifty being able to burn 4 movies into a DVD-R. As for it catching on with businesses, well, not until long before Ogg Vorbis does. It might be nice to have in-house though - non-media companies can thus save money from being spent on Real/QT/WMP licenses.

Re:Whats the chance.....

[ShieldW0lf]

I would say that it's pretty much guaranteed that companies will pick this up if it works. Money saved is profit made...

Software companies in particular are likely to be early adopters... there is already substantial use of Vorbis for sound bites in games, I expect to see lots of cinematic cuts done in Theora.

Oh, and if big business loves big business, why do they they try and cut each others throats?

Re:Whats the chance.....

[Sloppy]

Big business loves Big business.

The question is: do you love big business? If not, then does it really matter to you, what codec they use for their ads?

Re:Whats the chance.....

[EnglishTim]

Mplayer can play Quicktime just fine on Linux/x86

I think that's pushing it a bit. Yes, you can play most quicktimes on Linux, but it has to jump through hoops to do it as (IIRC) it uses WINE to run the Windows quicktime codecs - hardly a robust solution.

Certianly, although I have managed to get quicktimes to work on Linux, I've not found it very stable.

Re:Whats the chance.....

[evilviper]

Big Businesses use whatever does the job best. If Theora can compete with Quicktime on size/quality/CPU, and is standard in major players, then you'll bet they will use it.

Just look at MP3. Big businesses were using MP3 before the patent issue became a problem... So they obviously aren't adverse to free and open codecs.

Re:Whats the chance.....

[kashis]

Big business should fear this stuff. By putting these tools in the hands of everyone, the cost to produce your works will be cheaper and thus, more accessible to the amatuer.

Basically, control is given back to the people and stripped away from big business.

Re:Whats the chance.....

[ae]

Mplayer can play Quicktime just fine on Linux/x86

I think that's pushing it a bit. Yes, you can play most quicktimes on Linux, but it has to jump through hoops to do it as (IIRC) it uses WINE to run the Windows quicktime codecs - hardly a robust solution.

Not any longer. Now there is reverse-engineered native code for the Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3) codecs.

Certianly, although I have managed to get quicktimes to work on Linux, I've not found it very stable.

Just give it some time to mature!

Re:Whats the chance.....

[Cuthalion]

it uses WINE to run the Windows quicktime codecs

Having worked with the QuickTime for Windows APIs I find this especially hilarious. When Apple ported QuickTime to Windows they basically just wrapped up the Windows objects in Mac objects. So you have to talk about PixMaps and GWorlds and UPP's and Events and Task functions. So now you're wrapping THAT up and sticking it on Linux.

How hideous.

Theora test results

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done some initial testing on this theora alpha. Er.. at least I tried. The encoder crashed midway...

XviD?

[Kopasape]

"The world needs a free video codec."!?

What about XviD?

"XviD is Free Software (licensed under the GNU GPL), open to all contributions, its only aim is to stick to standard compliance."

http://www.xvid.org

Re:XviD?

[TheRaven64]

What about XviD?

Because XviD, as an MPEG-4 implementation, uses patented algorithms. It doesn't matter how free the code is if you need a license to be allowed to compile and run it.

Re:XviD?

[fobbman]

Maybe Taco will make reference to that project in the repost.

Re:XviD?

[WWWWolf]

XviD is MPEG-4, which is, as usual, a patent minefield. The code may be open, but use is still restricted by the patents.

VP3 (on which Theora is based on) is likewise patented, but AFAIK they've gotten an unrevocable royalty-free license to the patents, or something equally non-threatening.

Re:XviD?

[pe1rxq]

xvid is not a mpeg4 codec, which means you are going to get sued over patent infrigment if you do anything big with it.
Theora is a standard on itself (not just an implementation) supposedly free of patents.

Jeroen

Re:XviD?

[pe1rxq]

ok, typo: xvid IS an mpeg4 codec.

Jeroen

Re:XviD?

[ironhide]

1) XviD is a open source implementation mpeg-4, which is *not* a free to use standard see the MPEGLA.
2) Ogg Theora is more efficient at very low bitrates then XviD is. Real9 beats Ogg Theora on the ultra low bandwidth though (200 Kb/s)

Re:XviD?

[powerlord]

Yes, the XviD software is freely available, however it is an implimentation of the MPEG-4 standard which may/may not be patent encumbered.

The true legal status of XviD is currently grey (not that this would currently stop me from using it).

Theora is specifically "Free" both in terms of code availability, AND in terms of not being Patent encumbered. A fine idea to have, although I'm not expecting any great shakes in immediate adoption.

Remember all the hubabaloo surrounding L.A.M.E. http://lame.sourceforge.net/ sepcifically #5 on the technical FAQ.

5. Does LAME use any MP3 patented technology?

LAME, as the name says, is *not* an encoder. LAME is a development
project which uses the open source model to improve MP3 technology.
Many people believe that compiling this code and distributing an
encoder which uses this code would violate some patents (in the US,
Europe and Japan). However, *only* a patent lawyer is qualified to
make this determination. The LAME project tries to avoid all these
legal issues by only releasing source code, much like the ISO
distributes MP3 "demonstration" source code. Source code is
considered as speech, which may contain descriptions of patented
technology. Descriptions of patents are in the public
domain.

Several companies plan on releasing encoders based on LAME, and
they intend to obtain all the appropriate patent licenses. At least
one company is now shipping a fully licensed version of LAME with
their portable MP3 player.

Note that under German Patent Law, Â11(1) a patent doesn't cover
private acts with non-industrial purposes. Probably interesting for
developers is that a patent doesn't cover acts with experimental
purposes, that aim at the object of the patented invention (Â11(2)).

They aren't sure and its legally grey. For the private individual to play nd tinker with it is probably okay, but not for corporations or other non-personal (or money making) projects. Its nice to have a non-patent encumbered alternative, wether we ever have to use it or not.

Re:XviD?

[evilviper]

2) You wanna wait until it's released before you start saying how much better XYZ is than Theora? It isn't even in Beta yet, let alone being final.

Re:XviD?

[Simonetta]

While I could not disagree with the statement that
'' The world needs a free video codec. "", I feel that what the world (the computer user - programmer - tech geek world, that is) really needs more is a codec that is:

- Well documented down to the most basic beginners level in clear, accurate, easy-to-understand grammaratically-correct language (English preferred but any machine translatable language to English is OK)

- Easy to load and unload into the most commonly available and widely used operating system environments (notice I didn't say Linux because I didn't mean Linux).

- Debugged and robust enough that it doesn't crash the PC in mysterious ways during normal usage.

- easy to interface with the most popular and widely used programs that are used by millions of people worldwide. (The legality of these programs is inconsequencial, it's the wide usage that's important). Whether the application is commercial, shareware, or open-sourced GPL is not important as long as the codec actually works flawlessly with the application.

Since none of the video codecs that I have had the dubious pleasure to come in contact with as yet have met all or even most of the above parameters, I would like to affirm that I would actually pay real money for any new video codec that meets the above requirements.

This is the first time that I have ever offered to actually pay for a piece of software. If it actually does get written (a big IF at that) then I will be happy to buy it at resonable cost (say $10 to $20 US for a video codec, which is not unreasonable when entire DVD/MP3 players are retailing at Fry's Electronics for $50 US)

Thank you,
Simonetta
http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/20 01/
virtuebeauty/fantasy.htm

Re:XviD?

[PolR]

I wonder if the Open Source movement could try to weaken the "patent standard" business model. It would go as follow:

1. Develop an open source version of the patent crippled standard.
2. Publish the source under some nearly free licence, that is a license that is equivalent to a free license when there is no patent but require the user of the software to acquire proper licinse otherwise.
3. Develop an publish a free specification that could serve as a reference for a "free de facto standard" to compete with the patent crippled standard. An open source project could serve as a "standard body" for that purpose.
4. Develop a free software according to the free specification.
5. Develop a common API for both the fre and patent crippled standard.
6. Distribute to whole thing to OEMs and other corporations at no cost.

That would achieve the following:

• The nearly free implementation of the patent crippled standard would be attractive to OEM because of its low cost. Therefore would likely become widely used.
• The OEM would get the free standard as well at no extra cost.
• Because of the common API, the OEM would incur almost no additional effort to support both standards, making the free standard widely used as well.
• The free standard would be the only one available on GPLed software.

Once the free standard become widely used, the usefullness of the patent crippled standard will decrease. As GPLed software become more prevalent on the marketplace, the crippled standard become less and less attractive. With a little chance the revenue stream of the patent holder will dry out. Will even more chance, the open specification will end-up approved by an official standard as an official standard.

If the Open Source movement does this systematically, standard bodies will think twice before approving patented standards.

XviD and Theora may be an opportunity to test that idea.

Re:XviD?

[arose]

That's good old MPEG you want.

Part of a live ISO PVR?

[timothy]

Not that the video codec is the only important part of this, but the fact that unlike most, Ogg Theora is completely free of patent / royalty issues.

Imagine (it's not a great stretch anymore, though it might have been a few years ago) being able to assemble a box with a hard drive, motherboard, memory, then popping in a CD ala Knoppix or Gentoo Live, and BOOM there's a DVR. Movix is one side of the instant multi-media computer, but does not offer capture / record functions.

Built-to-purpose, such a computer ought to have a TV-out (and the live ISO would have to support it ;) -- including well-designed menus like the ones for freevo and mythTV, suitable for low-res TV screens -- so it could be used without a conventional monitor attached).

timothy

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[brunes69]

You want real time encoding, live guide features, ability to pause live tv, automated recordings, a unified enironment for MAME, DivX, DVD, MP3, Slideshows, and web browsing? What about the ability to control and schedule recodings via a web interface? Or the ability to edit recorded programs on the fly to remove commercials etc? What about automated DVD / DivX description info from IMDB as soon as you load it up to play? Oh, plus picture in pucture, and the ability to distribute the encoding load across as many machines as you want..

Look no further than MythTV. It's only been in development for a year and it has all this and more. IMO this is the most under-celebrated open source project there is. Its amazing, makes Windows Media Center look like a hunk of garbage.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[powerlord]

WOW!

Okay, colour me impressed.

I finally have a reason to buy that Shuttle PC I always dreamed about. ... of course now if only I had the money (and the ability to convince my wife it was necessary :D)

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[MicroBerto]

Wow! Thank you - this is exactly what I need. I'll take the time to set this up for sure!

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[adolf]

Does MythTV have reliable support for hardware encode/decode? And do the scanlines match up from end to end, or are things de-interlaced, massaged, stretched, and re-interlaced until they have no semblence of their original being?

Not much point in another DVR system, if completely fucks up any video recorded with it, or crashes randomly due to bad drivers.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[brunes69]

It runs on linux, so it works with any hardware linux supports (including some hardware encoders / decoders, liek the DXR3 ). But it's native format is not MPEG-2, it is a modified NupperlVideo or MPEG-4, whichever you prefer to choose. And I believe it has built in deinterlacing for playing interlaced video.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[/dev/trash]

Good luck getting MythTV installed. And asking the developers for help is useless.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[Anonymous Coward]

that unlike most, Ogg Theora is completely free of patent / royalty issues.

Just because they make that claim doesn't mean it's the case. They could be, and probably are, infringing on a whole lot of patents. I'd wager it's virtually impossible to create a quality audio or video codec without trampling on some patent. The only way to legally do it is to have enough of your own patents that you can cross-license with everyone else. AFAIK, the Ogg folks don't have any of their own patents.

Wait until someone with enough cash starts using Ogg for something important. Then the lawsuits will start.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[adolf]

And I believe it has built in deinterlacing for playing interlaced video.

Right. Which is precisely not what I want when watching them on my interlaced American TV.

Thanks anyway. HAND.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[tsatter]

The irony is that the MS X-box would almost be a perfect platform for this. They have exactly what is needed in a moderately low cost platform - you have DVD support, ethernet support, 10 gig drive, NTSC out and it now runs Linux! It would be fun to get an X-box and get MythTV running on it.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[Anonymous Coward]

You, sir, are a wanker, a jerkoff, a tosspot, one who has enjoyed too much self pleasure, a pussy boy, a bakajat.

JKAHD HJSHD HADH. HAND.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[brunes69]

Sure if you are viewing it ON A TV de-interlacing is bad. That's why you can turn it off (not only in MyThTV, but any program. The fact that you seem to be unaware of this fact shows how little experience you have in PVR projects). But if you are viewing it on a monitor de-interlacing results in a picture orders of magnitude better, which is why it exists.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[brunes69]

The XBox has no PCI for a TV tuner card, and nowhere near the hardware needed for realtime DivX encoding. Not an ideal PVR platform.

Re:Part of a live ISO PVR?

[adolf]

I don't claim to know much about PVR "projects," hence the questions.

But I do know a fair bit about video. The MythTV screenshots on their page are fuzzy in all the wrong ways, lacking any clear delineation between scanlines, which was almost certainly not how the NTSC source material appeared.

On the other hand, my DirecTiVo does not suffer from these issues; scanlines are clear and precise. The fact that you seem to think that it's normal for things to appear blurry shows how little experience you have in video projects.

Benefits?

[gerf]

Isn't mpeg open source/standard? Sure, mpg is big, and not good quality. What about divx (;? Really, i'm not sure how much better this new video is supposed to be, other than being "open source." Can someone explain why this is going to be so much better? Mod me down, but mod up the replies!

Re:Benefits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup mpg is big and sucky. I wouldn't exactly call it open... you have to pony up major $$$ to get a copy of the spec. You can't have any voice in the evolution of the standard unless your name is in the same pool as Sony, RCA(Thompson) etc.

Re:Benefits?

[dmaxwell]

The formats you mention are patent encumbered and full access to the official specs (MPEG4) are under fee and NDA. Yeah, you can use 'em and and even code implementations but those implementations exist under a shadow. Divx is basically MPEG4. Free implementations are legally gray at best.

The benefits are primarily legal. Ogg codecs are intended to be fully legal to implement and use freely.

Re:Benefits?

[pe1rxq]

mpeg is a patent minefield.

Jeroen

Re:Benefits?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup mpg is big and sucky. I wouldn't exactly call it open... you have to pony up major $$$ to get a copy of the spec.

Well, if you pay a lot of money you get the MPEG specification. But it is available.

I don't think the Theora specification will be available any time soon. The Vorbis specification is not yet published. There is just a reference implementation.

Re:Benefits?

[rillian]

I don't think the Theora specification will be available any time soon. The Vorbis specification is not yet published. There is just a reference implementation.

A spec for theora the main feature on the todo list for the first beta release. Dan Miller, one of the architects of the VP3 codec, is writing it.

The vorbis spec has been available since the 1.0 release.

Do try to keep up.

Re:Benefits?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, that does it.. The phrase "patent minefield" is officially on the slashdot cliche list, along with such other idiotically overused (and probably misunderstood) words/phrases such as:

zealot
enterprise
fucktard
deal with it
Ummm...
BZZT! WRONG!
beowulf cluster
real world
moderators on crack

With many more to come, I'm sure...

Re:Benefits?

[FooBarWidget]

DivX is not a "new video" or whatever. In fact, DivX is not even open source!

- MPEG is an open *standard* (not source! since it's not an implementation but a specification).

- There are several versions of DivX: the "original" DivX ;-) 3.11 (with the smiley), DivX 4 and DivX 5 (without the smiley). DivX 3.11 is as illegal as it can be: it's a hacked MSMPEG4v3 codec. DivX 4 and 5 are legal rewrites, but are commercial and closed source.
There's also OpenDivX, which has been dead for more than a year now. Basically Project Mayo stole all the code from OpenDivX and turned it into their closed source DivX 3/4 codec, and then killed off OpenDivX. Dispite it's name, OpenDivX is NOT open source! (read the license)

- XviD, DivX 4 and DivX 5 are implementations of the MPEG4 standard. Only XviD is open source (GPL), DivX 4 and 5 are not.

- Ogg Theora is something completely different. I don't know whether the quality has improved, but according to a codec comparison at Doom9.org (a site about video encoding), VP3 is one of the worst codecs (codecs compared: DivX 4, DivX 3.11 SBC, XviD, WMV, VP3, RealVideo).

Re:Benefits?

[usotsuki]

Don't forget "asshat", "insensitive clod", "In Soviet Russia", "all your base" and "goatse.cx"...

-uso.

Re:Benefits?

[pe1rxq]

Lets add 'Anonymous Coward' to the top shall we?

Jeroen

World needs it, but will they use it?

[Strike]

The world needed a free audio codec but ogg vorbis is still a fairly niche market in the compressed audio field these days. I use it and love it but I am still in the vast minority. I would use (and love) a free video codec from the Xiph people as well, but that doesn't mean that other people will. It's that damn market momentum holding good things back, but such is the plight of a lot of good technologies it seems.

Re:World needs it, but will they use it?

[MrNemesis]

It depends on the "they" part.

True, in the corporate universe, I can't see any of the big businesses jumping ten feet in the air every time a new rev of an open source codec comes out. IMO the big comms and content providers are always going to stick with WMV, Real, QT, etc.

On the personal level though, things are much different. Sounds trollish I know, but I think that an awful lot of codec takeup by end users is driven by P2P. This isn't so prevalent with ogg vorbis, but the amount of XviD's out there (some even in OGM format rather than AVI) is colossal. I use it for all of my DVD rips (and no, I don't share them, I just a) like to have them available on any box in the house and b) it's fun).

So I think if it's good enough, we'll see an awful lot of Theora in the horrible grey area of online movies, but I really can't see the corps jumping ship for it for quite some time. It's a shame, but a great many corps seem to be caught in the inertia of proprietary standards, as the parent noted.

Re:World needs it, but will they use it?

[MyHair]

I use it and love it but I am still in the vast minority.

Well, at least it's a vast minority. :-)

Re:World needs it, but will they use it?

[Trolling4Dollars]

I think that if Ogg Vorbis (and Theora for that matter) is to gain wide acceptance, these formats will need to be associated with something that "Joe User" can benefit from.

For example, if...
1. ...someone were to write a "Media System" layer to install over Windows 9x/2K/XP that would use those codecs to provide something similar to MythTV.
2. That system was as easy to install as Winamp.
3. The system provides a fullscreen mode that completely takes over the desktop.
4. The system would make it VERY easy to rip CDs and DVDs to any specified drive using Ogg Vorbis and Theora. (Default to those formats, but retain the ability to play back other non-free formats)
5. The system was easy to use.
6. The system does what it does very well.
7. The system was both free as in beer and speech.

It wouldn't take long for this project to gain momentum and make Ogg a houshold name. Especially if the program also analyzed the existing MP3s, MPEGS, DiVX files, etc... and pointed out how much less space the Ogg formats use. Just a thought.

What isn't inspired by Max Headroom these days...

[pir8garth]

"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."

Another one out there

[xagon7]

"The world needs a free video codec."

And what is xvid... swiss cheese?

www.xvid.org

Re:Another one out there

[TheRaven64]

"The world needs a free video codec."
And what is xvid... swiss cheese?

No, XviD is an implementation of MPEG-4, which is encumbered by patents. The code for XviD is free, but you can't compile and run it without a license since it uses patented algorithms, and you can't get licenses on an individual basis.

Re:Another one out there

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Free with a capital F. Messy licensing.

Re:Another one out there

[Anonymous Coward]

And how many people care about that? seriously. Divx 3.11 was a stolen codec, pure and simple. people still used it.

Re:Another one out there

[Anonymous Coward]

you can in Europe coulo!!!!

Re:Another one out there

[usotsuki]

It is open source EXCEPT in the US and Japan, where distribution is expressly forbidden in the license terms.

-uso.

Great line from the FAQ

[SuperCal]

I love it when a FAQ document doesn't take itself to seriously....

Q: Can I convert Ogg Theora files into VP3?

A: Why would you want to do something stupid like that?
Are you nuts?

.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is seriously? Also shouldn't it have a capital 'S'.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

You are taking yourself to seriously.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[/ASCII]

No he's not. He is taking himself too seriously.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I said. He is taking himself to seriously.

Can't you people spell right?

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Just in case you do not know there are two different words:

to
"The preposition to primarily indicates approach and arrival, motion made in the direction of a place or thing and attaining it, access; and also, motion or tendency without arrival; movement toward; -- opposed to from."

and

too
"Over; more than enough; -- noting excess; as, a thing is too long, too short, or too wide; too high; too many; too much."

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, I think you are taking yourself to seriously. You need to lighten up.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he needs too lighten up.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

You are far too serious about taking yourself to seriously. You don't even know how to get there.

Re:Great line from the FAQ

[Anonymous Coward]

He needs lighten up, too.

Excuse me?

[yoink!]

The world needs a free video codec.

Because XviD costs money and isn't Open Source right?

Re:Excuse me?

[spinkham]

The implementation is free, the codec algorithm is not.
To actually use it, you legally have to pay money to patent holders.
Theora is totally free and patent unencumbered(as far as we know so far anyway ;-)

Re:Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because XviD costs money and isn't Open Source right?

XviD code doesn't cost money, but MPEG-4 licensing fees make the package a little bit more expensive as a whole...

Re:Excuse me?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is very redundant, XviD is an implementation of MPEG4 which is encumbered by patents, ie: NO IT IS NOT FREE, you need a license to use it.

XvId rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Xvid is excellent quality, i have watched some films encoded in it and it has to be seen to be believed, great work

not knocking .OGG (except for the stupid name) but Xvid is already established and has wide acceptance throughout the encoding scene ,probably due to the fact it works out the box (it uses the .AVI extension which is a boon) (even WMP likes it ,unlike ogg's messy wrapper), and best of all its open source and GPL

props to the XVID gang, keep it up

Re:XvId rules

[Anonymous Coward]

Xvid is already established and has wide acceptance throughout the encoding scene ,probably due to the fact it works out the box (it uses the .AVI extension which is a boon) (even WMP likes it ,unlike ogg's messy wrapper)

The "messy wrapper" is, first of all, unnoficial (actually, technically, so's the ogm implementation). Second, it's only needed because the player doesn't support ogg/ogm (a company that sees open source as a virus supporting an open source format in their software...hah).

avi as a container is horrible for today's needs. It doesn't work well with vbr audio tracks, it's not made to support video tracks or extras such as subtitles...no chapter information, etc. All these things, ogm supports out of the box.

Re:XvId rules

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not made to support video tracks

I think you mean multiple video tracks

Ogg Superhighway

[Anonymous Coward]

"Looking forward to seeing where this one goes."

if(ereg(story,"video")){
post comment;
echo("Does it handle Theora? No? Why not?!");
}

Release notes, a warning, and a mirror

[cultobill]

First, allow me to whore a bit...

---start whoring---
[ June 9, 2003 - Theora alpha 2 release ]

The libtheora reference implementation has reached its 'alpha 2' milestone. A lot of bugs have been fixed and new features added, including all the planned changes to the bitsteams format.

This is more of an internal milestone than a public release, but we are making a source tarball available for convenience. Nevertheless we recommend using the cvs version if possible. This release also requires cvs libogg and libvorbis to compile; you might try the cvs nightly tarball if you don't already have these checked out. You will need to build and install the 'ogg' and 'vorbis' modules.
---end whoring---

Note that it's not a user release, but a developer release.

Finally, here is a mirror, to help out with their bandwidth costs.

Re:Release notes, a warning, and a mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

Note: this is slashdot - do you see any users around? ;)

mplayer

[Debian Troll's Dad]

this great news - wonder if mplayer has support for this already, or if there is a debian version available?

Re:mplayer

[msh104]

it's on their FRONTpage, but i'am in a good moed so i will anser. yes, cvs already has it. and they will release their next version very very soon. ( if i have to believe their mailing lists )

hopefully it will be used in commercial devices

[iM]

hopefully it will be used in commercial devices as well. given the fact that very few handhelds (or none at all) are supporting ogg vorbis, I really hope that this one will have better luck...

ps. i'm very disappointed with apple (yes i have an ipod)

Another Codec to Install

[WC as Kato]

It's hard enough to install the correct codec now between the different codecs and its various versions. Now we have another one. Argh!!!

There better be some value-added to this one.

Re:Another Codec to Install

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, we should all have stuck with Cinepak!

Re:Another Codec to Install

[Azathoth!EDC]

Value add? Just Say No to Gator!

XviD might be "free", but it's still unusable

[oxygene2k2]

.. and you still have to mess around with the mpeg patent pools - no thanks!

For use anywhere but USA & Japan

[Anonymous Coward]

from the license

Under section 8 of the GNU General Public License, the copyright
holders of XVID explicitly forbid distribution in the following
countries:

- Japan
- United States of America

xvid

[unclebulgaria]

"The world needs a free video codec" Xvid is free, and rather good.

Re:xvid

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't cost money, but it's still using a patented algorithm and you can't legally use it without a license.

Re:xvid

[Anonymous Coward]

What was that? Oh, sorry, I couldn't hear you because all my pirated Xvid movies were playing too loudly.

So you were saying something about "legally using" Xvid? What's this now?

MythTV is great but more complicated ...

[timothy]

I agree, one of the most underrated projects out there :)

However, no, I'm just imagining something much simpler. MythTV is complicated to set up (which makes sense, considering it's a complex, full-featured thing ...) -- what I think would be better (for many people, not all) is a simple schedule / record / pause / playback system. Maybe something which, if these things were all beers, could be called "MythTV Lite."

timothy

Re:MythTV is great but more complicated ...

[brunes69]

I'd like to see a MythTV version of FreeVix. FreeVix is a 25 MB mini distro that runs FreeVo, which is a MythTV competitor. FreeVo has the same goals as MythTV but is nowhere near as full featured at present. The only difficult part of the idea is that Myth needs MySQL currently, but I wonder if that could be patched to use Berkley DB instead.

Re:One problem solved

[Fiveeight]

Do you have to make the the actors available to everyone you give the binary to?

And?

[Schezar]

It doesn't cost money, but it's still using a patented algorithm and you can't legally use it without a license.

And when has that stopped us before?

I'm serious. For every user of "patent-issue-free" software, there are 50 who could(n't) care less. Ideology and legality mean very little to most casual users, and casual users are the ones who determine what standards gain wide acceptance.

Re:And?

[ShieldW0lf]

If patent encumbered tech becomes standard, electronics become more expensive. If patent-issue-free tech becomes standard, electronics become cheaper.

Go sell a set-top-box that uses XviD. Then you can tell us all how insignificant the difference is... from your cell.

Re:And?

[Schezar]

Your point is valid, but it doesn't address the fact that most people don't know or care. They'll use their patent-encumbered product, and then they'll bitch about lack of hardware support or the cost of devices.

They won't, however, put 2 and 2 together on the issue ;^)

Re:And?

[RPoet]

Most people don't care about most things (except shiny objects). Seriously, people don't give a flying poop even about things that are directly related to their life situation. Which is why it takes so little to be labelled an extremist of sorts. I wouldn't use the "what most people care about" as a meter for "what matters".

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

50 who could(n't) care less

Well, you know, it's either one or the other. There's no choice. You can't have both. They mean opposite things.

Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

The world needs a free video codec.

Why? Can someone explain to me why "the world" needs this? Isn't it more accurate to say "some people want this, but the vast majority of the world literally couldn't care less?"

Re:Not a troll

[ShieldW0lf]

If patent encumbered tech becomes standard, electronics become more expensive. If patent-issue-free tech becomes standard, electronics become cheaper.

If patent-issue-free tech becomes standard, legally distributing media can become absolutely free.

If patents are too expensive, some cool tech just never comes to light.

Besides all this, which people like paying more for their electronics, movies and music?

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

If patent encumbered tech becomes standard, electronics become more expensive.

That's a nice sentiment, but it's not really true. Prices for commodity goods aren't set by the cost of manufacturing those goods. Prices for commodity goods are set by what the market will bear. If the cost of manufacturing (say) a car were to drop by 50% tomorrow, cars would not generally become less expensive. Car makers' profit margins would skyrocket, however.

If patent-issue-free tech becomes standard, legally distributing media can become absolutely free.

It's free now. You need a license only to make and distribute an encoding or decoding device. You don't need a license to distribute encoded media, unless you're broadcasting. And broadcasting requires a license for its own reasons, so that point is moot.

If patents are too expensive, some cool tech just never comes to light.

Nope, sorry. That doom-and-gloom prediction just doesn't hold in the real world. Where a profit is available to be made, somebody will go out and make it.

Besides all this, which people like paying more for their electronics, movies and music?

Prices for these things are completely disconnected from video format patents. Sorry, but none of your reasons holds water. It's just (I'm sorry to say, and I mean no offense) typical Slashdot groupthink.

The contrarian argument wins. When codecs and formats are patented, the profit motive ensures that those formats and codecs will continue to be supported and improved. There will always be an MPEG n+1 as long as somebody can make money selling it, and this is good for everybody. Take away the profit motive, and the incentive to innovate disappears. You're left with hobbyists and amateurs, a group not exactly famous for creating good products.

Can't anybody come up with a GOOD reason to justify the rampant Slashdot calls for free this and open that? You know, one that trumps the profit motive argument?

Re:Not a troll

[ShieldW0lf]

Prices for commodity goods aren't set by the cost of manufacturing those goods. Prices for commodity goods are set by what the market will bear.

Sorry, but you're wrong. In a great many cases, competition drives the price down to cost+1, or even below cost, if there's another means to recoup losses... for example, phones are a loss leader, and it's easier to add features to a loss leader if the loss is less. If the cost of adding the feature is too high, it just doesn't happen at all.

It's free now. You need a license only to make and distribute an encoding or decoding device.

Wrong again. MP4 is NOT free. You pay to encode, you pay to decode, you pay for devices, you pay to distribute content. Read the docs over at MPEG-LA.

Where a profit is available to be made, somebody will go out and make it.

Exactly. Requiring payment of licenses to outside parties raises costs, and reduces profit. The profit line hit's zero, the device is never made.

Prices for these things are completely disconnected from video format patents.

So, you're saying that increasing the cost of the product for the manufacturer does not increase the cost of the product for the consumer. Care to substantiate that?

You've typed a great deal, but you don't seem to have any intelligent arguments (no offense). Perhaps you should think of some before you reply next time?

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Besides all this, which people like paying more for their electronics, movies and music?

Americans. We love paying high prices for DRMed electronics. If we didn't we would dissolve organizations like the RIAA and MPAA, but its obvious that we love this sort of treatment by our electronics and entertainment industries. Masochisticly we ask for more.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

In a great many cases, competition drives the price down to cost+1, or even below cost, if there's another means to recoup losses

Right. But that has nothing at all to do with the cost of goods, as you so succinctly pointed out. It has to do with selling a product for the price that the market will bear.

Look at CD's. CD's cost pennies to produce, yet their price hasn't fallen a bit in years. That's because CD's are selling for the price that the market will bear.

You pay to encode, you pay to decode, you pay for devices, you pay to distribute content.

And the harm from this is what, exactly? I mean, apart from offending your "I want it for free" sensibilities? Seriously, why is it bad that you should be expected to pay for things?

Let's bring this back around to the point. The statement was "the world needs a free something-or-other." I argue that is is patently untrue for two reasons: first, because the world doesn't give a damn about the something-or-other in question, and second: because the status quo works better than the proposed modification to the status quo would. That is to say, the alleged negative aspects of the status quo are non-existent, and the alleged positive aspects of the proposed free whatever would not come to pass, and the ignored negative aspects of the proposed free whatever would be significant.

Requiring payment of licenses to outside parties raises costs, and reduces profit. The profit line hit's zero, the device is never made.

You're leaving out the part where the situation self-rectifies. If my objective is to sell licenses to use my patent, and nobody buys them because there's no way for them to turn a profit using my patent, then I lower my price. That's the way the economy works.

So, you're saying that increasing the cost of the product for the manufacturer does not increase the cost of the product for the consumer. Care to substantiate that?

Where did we talking about INCREASING the cost of goods? Nowhere, that's where. We're talking about the status quo (patented technologies developed for profit and licensed for a fee) versus this "world needs free stuff" idea. I'm arguing that the "world needs free stuff" idea is bogus because (1) the negative consequences of licensed technology simply don't happen, because of the way economies work, and (2) the postive effects of the "free stuff" idea won't come to pass because the motive for working on and with free technologies would be gone.

You've typed a great deal, but you don't seem to have any intelligent arguments (no offense).

Sorry, but it sounds to me like you lack the basic knowledge of economics and understanding of the way the world works necessary to understand my points.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

If we didn't we would dissolve organizations like the RIAA and MPAA

What makes you think that Americans as a group have the right to dissolve private organizations like these?

Masochisticly

Oh, boy.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent post is modded too high. The AC responded with valid points. Either this post needs to be modded down, or the AC's post needs to be modded up to match.

Re:Not a troll

[ShieldW0lf]

You aren't interested in reality here, you're interested in justifying your position.

Anyone can clearly see that when a customers money is split between more middle men, the customer pays more. There may be more layers of misdirection for you to play out bullshit with, but the money comes from somewhere, and that somewhere is the pocket of the person that pays.

And if you're a manufacturer, licensing fees are part of your manufacturing costs. If you can make a good and useful product and make a profit at the $1 price point, but not at the $1.20 price point, and the licensing body charges .20 a unit, the public doesn't see the product, even though it may have been useful and successful at the $1 price point. THAT's where you see increasing costs of goods and decreasing availability of innovation.

And that bullshit about self-rectifying is just that: bullshit. If the licensing is extremely expensive, the owner of the IP doesn't drop it through the floor, they drop it just enough to maximise profit. This means the loss of low-margin high-volume product innovations that might have been brought to market. The only rectifying that occurs is in the profit of the owner of the standard.

Now, if there is something created that is truly remarkable and deserving of profit, that's all well and good. But if, as in the case of currently existing codecs, some organization is scraping money off the top when there are equal or superior options available, that is damn well not in the interests of anyone except the entity cashing the cheques. Anyone can plainly see that. If you have some vested interest and want to protect your piece of the pie, by all means do so... but lets not pretend that it's in our collective interests help you.

Re:Not a troll

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone can clearly see that when a customers money is split between more middle men, the customer pays more.

Sorry, but what you think "anyone can clearly see" simply isn't true. Customer pay exactly what they're willing to pay, and no more. We're not talking about food or shelter here; we're talking about entertainment products. These are discretionary purchases. If the price is too high, people will simply choose not to make the purchases. So the producers try to keep prices as high as possible without negatively impacting their sales figures. The system naturally reaches an equilibrium.

If you can make a good and useful product and make a profit at the $1 price point, but not at the $1.20 price point, and the licensing body charges .20 a unit, the public doesn't see the product, even though it may have been useful and successful at the $1 price point.

IF it worked that way, then yes, that would be true. But, again, you're missing the whole nature of microeconomics. Let's go with your numbers and assume that the cost to license a given technology is $0.20 per unit. The market will not bear a price of $1.20 per unit, but it will bear a price of $1.00 per unit. If manufacturer X can't make a profit selling units for $1.00 each and paying the licensor $0.20 per unit, then that company will stop trying to sell that product. All true.

One of two things will happen at that poing. (Well, three, really, but I'll get to that in a minute.) If manufacturer X can't make a profit at $1.00 per unit but manufacturer Y can, then manufacturer Y will get the lion's share of the market. So no harm to the customers there; they're getting the product they want at the price they want to pay for it.

On the other hand, if no manufacturer can make a profit at $1.00, then no one will pay the licensor's $0.20 per unit fee, and the licensor will lower the fee to generate more business. Why? Because the licensor would rather get $0.10 per unit on a million units a year than $0.20 per unit on no units. In that case, the net result is the same: the consumer gets the product they want at the price they want to pay.

This has happened time and time again. It happened with MPEG-4, if you'll recall.

Now, the third option is that nobody can make a profit selling at $1.00 a unit and the licensor either can't or won't lower the licensing fee. In that case, the product fails. This is as it should be. If the product were really that big a deal, then there would have been a market for it at $1.20 per unit. Since there wasn't, it's reasonable to conclude that the product was not one that many people wanted very badly.

If the licensing is extremely expensive, the owner of the IP doesn't drop it through the floor, they drop it just enough to maximise profit.

Of course! That's exactly what they should do.

This means the loss of low-margin high-volume product innovations that might have been brought to market.

Ah. So now we're getting to the heart of the matter. You're waving your arms a bit and saying that if the licensing fee for some unspecified technology X were lower, there might have been products brought to market that were never brought to market because the licensing fee was too high. You then point to this and say that this is a net harm to the consumer.

But that's not how it works at all. Let's say I have an idea for product X. I think X would be a neat product, but I can't afford to make it because the initial costs (technology licensing, in this case) are too great in proportion to the expected sales of my product. Okay. So? This happens every day. Let's say we're not talking about technology licensing. Let's say we're talking about steel. I think shoes made out of steel that sold for $1 each would be a really cool thing. Only trouble is, it would cost more to buy the steel to make the shoes than I could make by selling the shoes. Does that mean I should get my steel for free?

Of cour

Just wondering

[Anonymous Coward]

Free video codec. I'm all for that.

I'm just wondering how large percentage of its users will be using the codec to watch illegally copied copyrighted material (=movies, for example).

Really, how many LEGAL divx recordings does an average geek own? I am NOT trolling!

And yes, this IS a bit off-topic.

wasn't that an old song?

[sootman]

"What the world... needs now... is a... freevideocodec..."

Re:wasn't that an old song?

[zebs]

Nah, wasn't that 'love, sweet love'?

You'll get plenty of that in your porn ;-)

Re:wasn't that an old song?

[EvilBuu]

Actually, I think it was "another folk singer..."

Tools vs. content

[msobkow]

The RIAA cannot make tools like codec's illegal. It would be like outlawing screwdrivers because they might get used to hotwire a car. While technically true, there are far too many legitimate uses for the tool.

Ogg Vorbis is used in mainstream games like Unreal. There is no reason to expect the game industry wouldn't go with Ogg Theora for video as well. As long as it's stable and performs well, why would game developers opt for non-portable proprietary solutions?

Re:Tools vs. content

[the_consumer]

It's "codecs" not "codec's". Plural, not possessive.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Mac Degger]

You'd like to think that, wouldn't you? But what about that tool which allows you to watch dvd's on linux? If I recal correctly, they managed to outlaw that 'screwdriver'.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

Posession of lockpicks is illegal unless you're a licensed locksmith, regardless of circumstance.

Re:Tools vs. content

[paganizer]

Yeah, or like make the tools for hunting illegal!
Or
Yeah, like making the tools for smoking weed illegal!
or
Yeah, like making the tools for decoding DVD's illegal!

Notice a trend?

Re:Tools vs. content

[molarmass192]

I was half-joking in my post, but if the RIAA can make congress table a law forbidding non-secured computer peripherals, why not a law forbidding non-secured codecs? I would HOPE it would fail to pass but it's not inconcievable that they would try.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Wumpus]

Your recollection is impressive. The legality of Linux DVD players hadn't been determined yet. I'm not convinced the courts will rule that Xine+libdvdcss is illegal because of the DMCA.

Mplayer is a different story - mencoder might be seen as a tool designed primarily for piracy.

Re:Tools vs. content

[schon]

if the RIAA can make congress table a law forbidding non-secured computer peripherals, why not a law forbidding non-secured codecs?

That's part III of the plan (and not just the RIAA)

Part I stops you from figuring out how "encrypted" stuff works (this is the DMCA.)

Part II (in progress) forces all component manufacturers to put DRM into thier products (this is the CBDTPA, "Super" DMCA, etc.)

Part III will forbid disabling DRM hardware/software. The reasoning behind this will be simple: Since DRM is pervasive in all equipment, no sane "content provider" would distribute content without DRM. Since all the "content distributors" distribute everything with DRM, the only reason someone would need non-DRM is if they're using "pirated" content.

Once part III is complete, the media companies will have complete control of everything you see and hear - they will have effectively legislated the independant artist out of existance.

We've started down a slippery slope, the fact that the fight against part II is so strong (relative to the fight against the DMCA) gives me hope that the plan may yet be stopped.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

Completely different. This is a codec that does not use the DVD Consortium's code and does not break any encryption. BIG difference between this and DeCSS.

Re:Tools vs. content

[AvitarX]

What hunting tools are illegal?

Armor/Kevlar piercing bullets and Assult rifles are not tools for hunting.

One is for killing people wearing protection, the other for assulting places.

Of course weapons for these purposes are what the second ammendment was for, so if you want them legal take a real "I want to rebel soon because government is so fucked up" stance and not a "I can't pump enough lead into a dear because I am a shitty hunter, please legalize the assult rifle" stance.

Also I hardly would even call a pistol a hunting weapon, yet they remain perfectly legal.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. This has one immediate purpose upon 1.0 - this is a Bink Video killer.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Crazy Eight]

Why has this post been labeled a troll?

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

Because this is a discussion about video codecs, not a discussion of grammar.

Re:Tools vs. content

[the_consumer]

Who the hell knows? I'm sure the moderator has neither the courage nor the sense to explain herself. Pointing out the misuse of apostrophes(I mean, please! Why would anyone want to waste a keystroke to write something incorrectly) is hardly likely to start a flame war, and I certainly do believe in what I posted. It's one of my pet peeves, in fact. I cringe every time I see an unneeded apostrophe.

Then again, the moderation could have been an error. If you use a scrollwheel to navigate in your browser and the focus is on the the moderation list, you can change what you've previously selected by accident before yousubmit the form. I doubt it, though.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you insane or just ignornant?

Every phreak is laughing at you. Possession of mod crystals have been illegal in some areas for decades now. Do you know how many telecom tools are outlawed?

How many states have laws against possession of lock picking tools? It's not based on use, I assure you.

Certain gun clips are illegal. So are silencers. This point is admittably debatable (for some, *cough*, yeah), but it's gotten to this point because people let erosion of rights (it IS a right; whether it SHOULD be a right is debatable to some) override HOW they are used.

Did you know riding lawnmowers were/are regulated so you could not go near immediately backwards if you had been going forward. It's got a clutch like device or wire built in so it pauses. Supposedly to make sure you don't run over a kid without looking. What the hell.

Dynamite? Oh, that sounds like it should be. Maybe to you. See, some people used explosives to do metal shaping. Dig a hole to the shape you want, metal on top, explode it, metal conforms to some custom and difficult shapes that turning and spinning metal or hammering and slapping just doesn't make easily feasible. Not to mention tree stumps are far happier. It wasn't use they outlawed or reasonable guidelines (e.g. caps, industrial areas only of certain acreage, etc.); it was explosives near entirely.

Gee, maybe you haven't heard of the super-DMCA. My state reps (Pennsylvania/PA) technically made my goddamn phone illegal. By the letter of the law. Not that a prosecutor would do this or even the provider generally, but the room for corruption is a big possiblity.

btw, do you really believe if you went and bought a bunch of fertilizer and diesel fuel and someone saw, someone wouldn't drag you in for questioning? Throw in some pipe. Or bought boxes of rat poison and some hardware, like nails? Nails are SO illegal you know. Or they will be.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

assault.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would any sicko want to pump lead into a dear?

Re:Tools vs. content

[damiam]

Ogg Vorbis is used in mainstream games like Unreal. There is no reason to expect the game industry wouldn't go with Ogg Theora for video as well.

The difference is that Vorbis is quite possibly superior to all other current audio codecs. Theora, OTOH, is based off VP3, which is decent but not anywhere near MPEG4 or WMP9. When Ogg Tarkin is released, it may be the best video codec (just in tiem for Duke Nukem Forever), but Theora doesn't have as much going for it as Vorbis.

Re:Tools vs. content

[lunatik17]

While what you say is true, lets put this in perspective. Computer games do not use Mpeg4 or WM9 for their video, they use Bink. In case you haven't played a computer game in the past five years, Bink looks like ASS. You can always recognize a cutscene has been encoded with Bink from all the blocky artifacts.

So why don't they just use Mpeg4 or something better? Waaay too expensive. Bink is a flat license fee, and then you can press as many copies of the game as you want. For this reason, I think there is a very good chance computer game companies will jump on a decent, free video codec.

Re:Tools vs. content

[paganizer]

What hunting tools are illegal? well, lets see...
Black powder hunting; this year the BATFE decided that anyone who was going to transport explosives (including model rocket engines) would require extremely expensive permits and lengthy licensing procedures; most dealers in Black Powder hunting supplies have stated this will force them out of the business. Several of the finer medium game hunting rifles, such as the Ruger mini-14, have been illegalized due to the Assault weapon ban because they LOOK scary, and for no other reason aside from a apparent government agenda to end private firearm ownership.

Armor/Kevlar piercing bullets are not for hunting. good job. Weapons are not just for hunting either; they are also for defense. Until such time as home intruders (or deer, I suppose) standardly wear Kevlar armor, they should remain out of public hands.

Now, them darn assult rifles you are so worried about... you DO know they are just semi-automatic weapons just like the ones which are now fully legal, aside from in appearance, right? Like I said, they just look scary, not necessarily by design.

Pistols ARE usable as hunting weapons; when I was younger and used to hunt quite a bit I used a pistol for rabbits, and a larger caliber pistol for Boar; I still carry one for snakes or grace shots. However, the primary reason to own a pistol is usually for self- or family- defense.

Re:Tools vs. content

[the_consumer]

Then it should have been modded offtopic.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

I, for one, saw a deer with Kevlar armor in the woods the other day. Turns out that my cousin Duane-Bob put it on 'im as a jocularity.

Re:Tools vs. content

[AvitarX]

Thank you for your informative link.

I do not own a gun, and I do not feel the need to. But I do whole hardily believe that people should be able to own guns if they like. I thought what made something an assult rifle was that it had a burst mode, which I do not think is needed for huntimg. Obviously I was wrong.

I personaly do not see a reason why any non-automatic weapon should be banned.

I also believe that there should be a legal way to store more powerful weapons in large stockpiles. These stockpiles shouls be monitored and it should be a crime to access them, but in the case of armed revolution (A constitutional right) they should be available (Obviously the criminal offense does not really matter at that point.

I'm sorry to have made my grandparent post so inflamatory, I was in a bad mood, and I did not realise that there was a push to eliminate semi-automatic weapons, I think that is just plain old retarded.

Re:Tools vs. content

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that your idea for a large stockpile of weapons is impracticable. Any stockpile of powerful weapons, which I take to include both automatic weapons and powerful explosives, would not only need to be monitored, but also guarded. If the weapons are not guarded, terrorists who have no interest in our country except to harm it could get to them. If they are guarded, they would have to be guarded by the government. When the time came to lead an armed revolution, the government could just use the weapons against the revolutionaries.

If revolutionaries want weapons in the event of a real revolution, all they have to do is be clever enough to knock over a military weapons depot or base with their non-automatic weapons.

Free, how?

[evilviper]

The world needs a free video codec.

Well, VP3.2 is already out there, and has been for some time.

Also, if I'm not mistaken, MPEG-1 is now patent-free as well...

Any reason why people don't use either more often?

Re:Free, how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the size to quality ratio is not very good. Sure you can get decenty quality, but your 30 minutes of video is going to on the order of 400 or 500 megs. Using an mpeg-4 based codec, you can get 30 minutes of even higher quality video for around 200 meg.

Re:Free, how?

[Abcd1234]

Simple: MPEG-1 provides poor compressions ratios and VP3.2 has poor(er) quality. I think what people are really meaning when they say "we need a free video codec" is "we need a video codec that reaches the size and quality levels of MPEG-4, but isn't patent encumbered".

Re:Free, how?

[m1a1]

Any reason why people don't use either more often?

I don't now about VP3.2, but MPEG-1 is garbage. Unless you are looking for something in the area of VHS quality, you can toss it. MPEG-1 demands high bitrate, but doesn't give you much in return. Compare that to MPEG-2, which demands high bitrate, but pays you back with beautiful video, the experimental features of mpeg4 codecs such as DivX 5.05 or the open source XviD which allow a low bitrate stream to (nearly?) match the appearance of a high bitrate encode. It is easy to see that mpeg-1 is on its way out. The only use it has is so 1337-k1dz can make (S)VCDs.

Re:Free, how?

[halfelven]

The only use it has is so 1337-k1dz can make (S)VCDs.

Nope, MPEG1 is only for VCD.
SVCD uses MPEG2, which has a better quality. That's why VCD is so crappy, and SVCD is actually watchable.
MPEG2 is also used by DVD, but at a much higher bitrate.

Re:Free, how?

[evilviper]

SVCD uses MPEG2, which has a better quality. That's why VCD is so crappy, and SVCD is actually watchable.

No, actually, the reason SVCD is higher quality is because the SVCD spec calls for higher resolutions than VCD, in exchange for each SVCD disc holding much less. Double the res for VCD, hence halve the run time, and you'll get quality similar to SVCD.

MPEG-1 has the same problem that VP3.2 is accused of... MPEG-1, at high bitrates works quite well, and I consider it better than MPEG2/4 in that it's artifacts are blur instead of blockiness like MPEG2/4. However, MPEG-1 just doesn't allow for quite as sharp of a picture as MPEG2/4 can produce. That still should make it a sttrong contender for internet streams, and anything else lower quality than DVDs.

However, I must say that I think claims of VP3.2's poor quality are more urband legend than fact. I've watch numerous VP3 videos (with MPlayer), and found them to be better quality than MPEG-4 at idential filesizes. As an added bonus, VP3.2 seems to be the only codec that doesn't show the same irritating artifacts that almost all other video codecs do, such as blockiness.

"+5 Funny?"

[Overly Critical Guy]

Quote an item from the FAQ. Instant modding into the stratosphere thanks to the trigger-happy crackheads.

Re:"+5 Funny?"

[Anonymous Coward]

What does it matter?

Nobody gets Karma for a "Funny" mod anyway.

Score:2, Redundant
Replies:1 Score:2 Score:1
Replies:1 Score:2
Replies:3 Score:2, Troll
Replies:2 Score:2, Insightful
Score:3
Score:2
Replies:1 Score:2
Replies:1 Score:1, Flamebait
Replies:2 Score:1, Interesting
Score:1, Flamebait Replies:4
Score:2, Flamebait
Score:0, Troll
Replies:4 Score:-1, Flamebait

Looks like you could learn some posting technique from somebody. The +2 troll is impressive however considering it was a weak Windows-Linux attempt.

AC

Re:"+5 Funny?"

[Overly Critical Guy]

Read my journal sometime.

Which free codec will be ready first...

[Wesley Felter]

...Theora or H.264?

The world needs better video codecs...

[ceswiedler]

The world needs better video codecs... ...and free software needs better names.

Ogg Theora?

Meaning of 'Free'

[bitterrob]

What is 'free' these days ?? Free to one person might be 'Heck, I downloaded my copy of X, so its free' This however, could be in breach of some copyright/patent on the software, and the owner has lost money from this. In an increasing climate of software 'piracy', a completely new user could start downloading whatever 'free' software they wanted to get. Just a random thought.... it's ok I don't do it often.

OT: Moderation.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got mod points, but I'm all out of crack. Seems like some of the other moderators got too much of it, though, because I find absolutely nothing funny in the above post (except the spelling mistakes, and the fact that it's moderated 'funny' -- we need a metamod for funny moderations).

So, /.-gods, can you please hand out the crack fairly and evenly among us hard working moderators. I need it (why the hell would I moderate if it wasn't for the crack?). (Posting anonymously to preserve karma so I can get more crack sooner.)

Re:OT: Moderation.

[damiam]

Evidently you do have some crack. Funny moderations are metamodded just like everything else (except Under/Over-rated, but that's a whole separate can of worms).

Not to mention home video's & blender animatio

[FreeUser]

The RIAA cannot make tools like codec's illegal. It would be like outlawing screwdrivers because they might get used to hotwire a car. While technically true, there are far too many legitimate uses for the tool.

While quite true, the discount with which cartels like the RIAA and MPAA can purchase our ostensibly "elected" officials is appalling. The bottom line, the could outlaw just about anything they like, as they have already done so with security reporting and many forms of reverse engineering through the DMCA, which the aforementioned cartels are now trying to encode into international law, thereby making any legislative reform impossible.

As for legitimate uses, the most interesting one for me, personally, is the ability to create and distribute my own videos in a free and unencumbered format, using free software, to anyone anywhere. Blender animations, shorts, even home made feature length films are an exciting possibility, not to mention of course the ubiquitous home videos of mom, pop, and the kids.

The MPAA fears the loss of the cartel by independent artists. In a few short years we'll be able to generate LOTR quality movies on our home computers, and likely there will be free software available (e.g. blender plugins like 'Make Human' and other enhancements, povray, etc.) that will be available as well. Any talented write with a good script will be able to get together with a few friends and make a movie to shame anything from Hollywood and potentially market it direct via the internet.

Goodbye media cartel.

Which of course is the real reason the MPAA (and the RIAA, within their context vis-a-vis mp3) are so hysterical. It isn't about the illegal copying, which has been going on since the days of the cassette tape, it is about controlling artists' access to their marketplace, and our political "leadership" (I use the term very, very loosely) is complicit and likely quite knowledgable in this. Why else would the FCC be so eager to allow further consolidation of an already oligopolistic media? Because it is easier to apply pressure and suppress dissent with only a few players than it is with a few thousand (as was the case 20 years ago) or a few million (as will be the case if the Internet and independent media are ever permitted to realize their potential).

Open Source Codec

[m1a1]

The world needs a free video codec.

There already is one. XviD is an open source (gpl) mpeg4 codec. Although there is no 1.0 release yet it is completely useable and can achieve better quality than DivX 5.05 (although encode times are longer). XviD currently supports B frames, chroma searching, VHQ, and host of other compressability improvers and motion tracking aids. I don't develop for it, but I am an avid fan. Check it out if you want to support open source video.

Re:Open Source Codec

[motown]

There is one problem with xvid, however.

Since it's based on mpeg4, it's software patent encumbered. Perhaps no problem at all in Europe (and I sure hope it will stay that way, have you signed the petition yet, folks?), but a major problem in the US as well as other countries where these patents apply.

Don't take me wrong, I really appreciate and respect the amazing work the people of the xvid-project have produced so far, but to be honest: that's all the more reason for me to be disappointed in the fact that so many talented people are basically wasting their efforts on the xvid-project, in stead of putting their skills to use within the Theora-project. Theora is also covered by software patents, but all of these are owned by On2, and On2 has signed an agreement with Xiph.org, which has effectively renders all of these patents powerless. I commend the On2-people on that!

But returning to xvid: Again, why don't more xvid-developers turn their attention to the (IMO more worthwhile) Theora project? I understand that if they would, they would have to be VERY careful to keep any mpeg4 patents (as well as any other patents not donated by On2) out of the Theora-project. But I'm sure they already put a lot of non-patented optimizations in xvid already, which they could also have implemented in Theora, without any legal issues. Or am I wrong?

Would any xvid-developer care to comment on this?

Re:Open Source Codec

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay...You say _open source_, Vorbis team says _patent free_.
open source doesn't mean patent free, and xvid is not patent free, as it is based on mpeg4.

Re:Open Source Codec

[NotAnotherReboot]

This seems like the perfect opportunity to copy and paste one of the many responses about it being patent encumbered, because asking this question 12 times is not enough!

Let's drive home the point a little more!

Re:Open Source Codec

[m1a1]

First of all the post stated nothing about patents, just that the world needs an open source video codec. I simply pointed out that damn good one already exists.

Secondly, work on XviD is not wasted at all. I would say 99% of the encoding done on PC's are dvd rips, tv show rips, and home movies. These aren't for resale and don't really see mpeg-4 patents becoming a problem. It clearly hasn't shut XviD down. XviD is high quality and capable of producing completely mpeg-4 compliant video streams. There are currently mpeg-4 hardware decoder chips on the market. That means that is plausible in the next few years I could buy a stand alone player to play my XviD encodes. There is really no chance at all of this happening with Theora.

All that said, I don't want to bash Theora. I will certainly try it when it's released and I applaud the patent free nature. However, I wouldn't expect a lot from it. By that time XviD should have discrete wavelet transform based encoding. DCT simply can't compete. The only real hope will be Tarkin.

First hand experience?

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone SEEN Theora yet? How does it compare to, say, QT, RM, DivX, XviD, ;-), viXD, ^_^ and whatnot?

Ha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Businesses use whatever does the job best.

What world do you live in?

alternatives

[gohai]

Nullsoft's NSV, an encapsulation format currently using MP3 and VP3, and it is of course being supported by Winamp

Nullsoft's own channels, e.g. Radiohead Videos (500kbps) are using VP5 for video, so I guess this will be the future...

Another Naming Questions

[weston]

What I want to know is why the extension on the audio files is .ogg?

There's a few problems with this. The chief one being that now that there are two ogg formats, how will you know which file is which (OK, metadata is the *correct* answer, but I mean in the world in which we live)? Why aren't they called .VRB and .THR files?

Not to mention that just about anything is cooler than .ogg. I favor .xpa and .xpv (Xiph Audio and Xiph Video), but I'm not the namer...

Re:Another Naming Questions

[br0ck]

The names come from the Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Vorbis was a corrupt religious ruler hell-bent on world domination in Small Gods and Nanny Ogg is a funny, old, hard-liquor drinking, foul-mouthed witch featured in many of the books.

Re:Another Naming Questions

[lunatik17]

From Xiph.org:

An 'Ogg' is a tactical maneuver from the network game 'Netrek' that has entered common usage in a wider sense
...
Ogg is a larger multimedia project that does not only concern compression; Squish became the name of one of the Ogg codecs. For that reason, we usually just refer to it as Ogg when there's no Netrek context nearby. The Ogg project has nothing to do with the common surname 'Ogg'. Nor is it named after 'Nanny Ogg' from the Terry Pratchett book _Wyrd Sisters_.
...
Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book _Small Gods_. The name holds some significance, but it's an indirect, uninteresting story.

Re:Another Naming Questions

[br0ck]

I stand corrected about Ogg. Actually, I found how it got the name within Netrek from this hacker dictionary entry.

In the multi-player space combat game Netrek, to execute kamikaze attacks against enemy ships which are carrying armies or occupying strategic positions. Named during a game in which one of the players repeatedly used the tactic while playing Orion ship G, showing up in the player list as "Og".

can't outlaw tools?

[Shadestalker]

Go and buy some large amounts of diesel fuel and fertilizer and let us know how that goes.

How does this save money?

[benwaggoner]

What cost savings will content creators have by using Theora? It's not like you have to pay a license fee to distribute digital video files in the propritary formats. There are some cases where you have to pay content fees with MPEG-4, but they don't apply to most users (like you get the first 50,000 users a year free, and don't have to pay for marketing content, just content that gives you revenue).

Re:How does this save money?

[Jussi K. Kojootti]

Well, if Theora files are smaller than MPEG-4 (like Vorbis files are compared to mp3), that would mean savings in bandwidth and/or CD space.
Anyone know whether this is the case?

Corporate world looking towards MPEG-4

[benwaggoner]

Actually, the corporate world, especially European companies, are looking to MPEG-4 as their future format of choice. The cable industry has already agreed to switch to MPEG-4 for digital cable (in the vague future). MPEG-4 is becoming the standard format for cell phones via 3GPP.

A lot of this has to do with maturity. You can actually buy interoperable, commerical MPEG-4 solutions from a variety of vendors today. Also, MPEG-4 supports real-time streaming over lossy networks. And it has profiles for everything from cell phones to HD. There's at least 100x more work into MPEG-4 than Theora.

Of course, Microsoft's Windows Media 9 is even farther along in maturity in many ways, and certainly has strong technical advantages over MPEG-4 if Windows 98 or higher is the exclusive playback platform. It has better compression efficinecy, and much better scalability over real-world consumer internet access.

It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish.

implementation in hardware

[halfelven]

There's something related to what kind of math operations are used by the codec. If the codec uses mostly math operations that are implemented in typical CPUs for PDA-like things and for portable MP3 players, then the codec is "fit for implementation in hardware".
I'm sorry, i don't remember though what are those operations...

this is a long and hard fought debate

[halfelven]

You won't imagine how much debate has been fought over these silly extensions. No matter which is the proposed solution, someone seems to believe it's not the most appropriate.
sigh...

YOU can help with that

[halfelven]

Take a good look at your portable MP3 player, your DVD/SVCD player, etc. Figure out what are their manufacturers. Start e-mailing those manufacturers asking them to support those formats.
If enough people start asking for support, it may just happen...

playing QuickTime on Linux

[halfelven]

Just install Xine. Download and install the Windows DLLs. Done. Now you can play QuickTime files, and even QuickTime webcasts (not to mention Windows Media, because those DLLs contain the required codecs). Heck, if you install RealPlayer9 for *NIX, you can also play Real Media in Xine.
If you install the gxine interface, not xine-ui (but you can install as many interfaces at the same time as you like) you even get a Mozilla plugin to play all those formats in your browser. ;-)
For the lazy, Red Hat RPM packages are here: freshrpms.net.
No emulation (Wine or otherwise) required.

Re:playing QuickTime on Linux

[damiam]

How do you think Xine reads the Windows DLLs? It uses code from Wine, just like mplayer does. These days, however, both of them can play most QT files without needing the DLLs.

Re:playing QuickTime on Linux

[halfelven]

I am not sure whether or not it uses code from Wine. However, emulation is one thing, and understanding a different API is another.
The former would happen if Xine would actually run in Wine, or would require Wine to run, somehow. That doesn't happen, hence it's not emulation.
The latter means an application written for an API (or for an OS) can "understand" a different kind of libraries (such as a Linux application can understand Windows libraries). This is what happens with Xine using Windows DLLs. This is not emulation.

Re:playing QuickTime on Linux

[damiam]

Well, WINE's not an emulator in the first place, so the whole point is moot.

Re:playing QuickTime on Linux

[EnglishTim]

Yes, I already have Xine, as well as mplayer. I was under the impression that both of them used Wine to run the Windows quicktime dlls.

It is fustrating that Apple refuses to support Quicktime on Linux. I work in Visual Effects, and we (like many VFX companies) have been moving our production over to Linux, and it's not been without its problems. One thing that was causing us a lot of hassle was generating Quicktimes that would work with other people's hardware quicktime decoders. Quicktime for Linux would generate apparently valid quicktimes, but there was something about the way they chose to format them that some of the decoding hardware didn't like. Eventually we moved over to OpenQuicktime instead, which fixed it, but all of this would be much less of a problem if Apple would do a Quicktime SDK for Linux. It would also be nice if they would add Quicktime output to the Linux version of Shake. Both the NT and Apple versions can output Quicktime.

What about Ogg Tarkin?

[ae]

Does anyone have any further information on what's happening to Ogg Tarkin? The Ogg Theora FAQ says the following:

Q: What about Tarkin?

A: Tarkin is essentially a proof-of-concept wavelet-based codec. Its experimental nature means it will not be ready for general use for some time. VP3 is a high-quality codec that can meet today's video needs now, so Xiph.org will be focusing its efforts on Theora for the near future.

Re:What about Ogg Tarkin?

[zurab]

I don't have any further info, other than you may look at mailing list archives; but I wished that they developed something from scratch like Tarkin, rather than take an outdated, and mature (read: stretched to its limits) VP3 and try to improve it and make it compatible with Vorbis.

But, hey, my knowledge is limited, and I cannot make that judgement.

We need something else

[gerardrj]

...The world needs a free video codec...

No, what the world needs is for storage and bandwidth to become prevalent enough that video and audio compression are no longer necessary, so that I can send a full length 2048x1200 40fps 2 hour video clip around the world in less than 5 minutes, and that I can store dozens of those files on my hard drive at one time.

On a completely different note, I'm trying to figure out what niche a free codec will fill. The major media houses won't use it, the major hardware manufacturers won't use it, and re-compressing my home DV footage to something else and back will just screw up the quality.
You certainly can't go back and retrofit all the set-top cable and satellite boxes in the world with the new codec, and HDTV's compression standard is already set.
The only fit I see for a free codec is video that is generated locally by computer and not meant to leave the production house. Ex: 3D test rendering, or analog video imported to a system. But even then, unless you are going to use the video in presentations, you'll need to transcode to something else most likely and would prefer to compress to that format initially.

Re:We need something else

[tempfile]

No, what the world needs is efficient use of resources (not just in computer technology, but everywhere). If a given amount of bandwidth can transmit more information using compression technology, what is the reason not to use it?

Re:We need something else

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you understand, even in MPEG2 you are talking about a 30 GByte file. Which means to accomplish your insane demand, you would need 100 MBytes/sec, or slightly greater than an OC 12, costing hundreds of thousands per month.

Now, to accede to the letter of your specification, the fully uncompressed video would be 2.6 TBytes, and copying it in the time alloted would require 8.7 GBytes/sec.

While you wait 40 years for that to come along, I will be happily using 1024*X files at 30 fps, compressed to 2 GBytes, and streamable on my meager cable connection.

Re:We need something else

[arkhan_jg]

No, what the world needs is for storage and bandwidth to become prevalent enough that video and audio compression are no longer necessary, so that I can send a full length 2048x1200 40fps 2 hour video clip around the world in less than 5 minutes, and that I can store dozens of those files on my hard drive at one time.

Compression will always be with us. By using compression, being ABLE to send a full length 2 hour video in 5 minutes will be here a lot quicker than if we wait for bandwidth alone.

On a completely different note, I'm trying to figure out what niche a free codec will fill.

Streaming media for one. How many people already download realplayer to listen to internet radio or other streaming audio? No harder to make those people download a vorbis enabled player, such as winamp, (or just ogg codecs for WMP). It has the advantage that Ogg sounds better for an equivalent bitrate than WMA, real, or MP3, and has the double bonus that the stream provider doesn't have to cough up for licence fees or expensive streaming software.

Theora theoretically will provide exactly the same benefits, except versus quicktime as its competition.

Another market? People who use linux. Just as apple are pushing AAC, linux pushes ogg, and linux desktop marketshare is rapidly approaching that of the mac.

Supporting them often means supporting ogg, and the linux customer base is only going to grow, if the server market is any indication. And if that doesn't turn out to be true, linux is making huge inroads into the settop box, along with DVR projects like freevo and mythtv. Theora would be the natural codec to use on those platforms.

Finally, there are the people who control the playback mechanism. Game writers not wanting to pay licence fees, and take advantage of the better compression? Natural customers. People wanting to cram more video an a support multimedia disc (just think non-ms encyclopedias). Natural customers.

OK, it's not going to replace Mpeg on DVD, or rewrite HDTV. But it will give some people more bang for less buck. And that's never a bad thing.

Re:We need something else

[UrGeek]

We need compression. Try this. Convert about 60 seconds of your favorite 720x480 24/fps MPEG-2 stream into an uncompressed AVI. Then try to watch it. On my modest, yet normally quite capable 1.1 Athlon machine with a 7200 rpm 60 gig HD, it WILL NOT KEEP UP! Not with the overhead of Windows 2000, not using PowerDVD.
We need compression and not just for saved space, but to space bandwidth on the older IDE pipes!

Re:We need something else

[Anonymous Coward]

>No, what the world needs is for storage and bandwidth to become prevalent enough that video and audio compression are no longer necessary,

Any other moronic comments?

it will help if...

[halfelven]

...some popular transcoding applications will start supporting it. One such as transcode (but any other popular transcoder will do).
I mean, it's like the Linux kernel, if there is no heavy testing from lots of users (such as during the "development" phase), not a lot of bugs get squashed out. Yet, soon after the first stable (the first "dot-zero") release is out, the bug reports start pouring in.
The same mechanism would probably help the Vorbis codec.

Nitpicker's P.S.: "transcoder" is the correct term for what's usually called "encoder". You're not just encoding when converting from, say, DVD to DivX, but you're actually trans-coding from one video format to another (decoding one format, encoding the other). That's what "trans-" means: "from one to another".

Re:it will help if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Nonsense.

encoder implies analog to digital conversion.

transcode implies digital to digital conversion (or filtering).

not quite so

[halfelven]

No, actually, the reason SVCD is higher quality is because the SVCD spec calls for higher resolutions than VCD, in exchange for each SVCD disc holding much less. Double the res for VCD, hence halve the run time, and you'll get quality similar to SVCD.

Nope. At the same resolution, at the same bitrate, MPEG2 will have a clearly better quality than MPEG1. The MPEG2 codec does more "clever" things to get more information into the same amount of bits.
I actually tried that, and the result was obvious.
I agree with you that the VCD standard specifies a ridiculously low bitrate and resolution, but in the same conditions MPEG2 (SVCD) still works better.

It's the same thing as with MP3 vs. MP2 vs. MP1. There are layers of processing that each codec builds upon the other. All these three codecs do the stuff MP1 does. Yet only MP2 and above do some "other" stuff. And MP3 alone does yet another, more "clever" processing. The result? Same bitrate, different quality, increasing from MP1 to MP3.

Re:not quite so

[evilviper]

At the same resolution, at the same bitrate, MPEG2 will have a clearly better quality than MPEG1.

Which is why in my post I also said:

MPEG-1 just doesn't allow for quite as sharp of a picture as MPEG2/4 can produce

Oh, you mean MPEG4

[pr0ntab]

Call it what it is, moron. Not much else is better than MPEG4 right now, but they (meaning lots of groups) are trying.

ogg vorbis file indexer

[www!!!1]

If you want a cool utility to index and search metadata from ogg vorbis files (and other files), try Scopeware Vision.

The world needs a free video codec.

[Anonymous Coward]

The world needs a free video codec.

Hope it will not be LGPL'ed before it gets interresting. Otherwise free is a strange concept.

I would like to compile this stuff verry optimized.

Oh wel,

Ogg rulezzzz..

Likely space savings

[benwaggoner]

Well, Theora isn't done yet, nor is its bitstream locked down, so it's impossible to say how small files will get.

By the time it is GM, I imagine MPEG-4 will be well along in its migration to the new AVC codec, which offers much better compression efficiency than the current Simple and Advanced Simple profiles used by Divx, Xvid, etcetera. So even though the final Theora might be somewhat better than MPEG-4 today, it almost certainly will be behind MPEG-4 by the time it is released.

Bear in mind that MP3 is ten years old now. Modern audio codecs like HE AAC are definitely better than Vorbis, technically.

If Theora gets market share, it'll be because of its openness, not because of any price or quality advantages. Windows Media 9 is free-as-in-beer for most uses, and is today a lot better than Theora could possibly be in a year.

No problem

[msobkow]

I grew up in the midwest. Any farmer has no problems buying fertilizer. Diesel is just an issue of finding a gas station. The fact that the two can combine to produce crude nitro explosives doesn't make either illegal.

Nor has that changed at all. Farmers already have corp paperwork, tax ids, etc. registered with their suppliers. The most they might have had to do is fill out one more form to provide legal confirmation that their farmers, just in case the people they've dealt with for the past 20 years forgot.

Re:the KDE philosophy

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, that's what Bill Gates said when they started on Longhorn; same thing the KDE boys said too. Who cares about efficiency! Computers are huge, hard drives are enormous, processors will reach 50GHz in a year or two - make it gold, RTM baby.

In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

Millions of dollars are going down the drain to fund missions to planets by way of virtual reality just like the Moon landing. But the majority still believe these missions are real. What a crock.

Gay crossdressing dragons tapdance their way down from the fifth dimension and click their red high heels together every time classical music is played. Their crooked teeth gnash together in perfect harmony generating 1.21 Gigawatts so Marty can visit Mars again.

Oops! We lost a robot, give us another billion. Har Har

Installing Theora in Linux

[Joe Tie.]

I have not tried this myself yet, but a while back I stumbled on a page describing how to install Theora in Linux. Here's google's cache of it.

Slashdotted?

[GameGod0]

I think you bastards Slashdotted the MythTV website. Poor Isaac. (Version 0.9.0 of MythTV came out yesterday.... and now I can't get to the site!)

There are a lot of free video codecs out there

[autopr0n]

Such as xvid. Oh well, can't expect slashdot editors to know anything. What happened to Ogg Tarkin?

Re:There are a lot of free video codecs out there

[comajelly]

xvid is patent encumbered (as a number of other posters have mentioned); Theora is not.

Tarkin has been placed on the back burner since the technologyâ"and the mathematics behind itâ"haven't quite been figured out yet.

Nathan Sharfi
Webmaster, Xiph.Org

Re:There are a lot of free video codecs out there

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you're just a fucking weenie, blind as hell, or stupid. I'd guess an even mixture of each since:

A) You put absolutely no thought into your statement. Of cource, I really shouldn't have expected you to.

B) You didn't read (this is /. so big suprise) the 5 million other people that said the EXACT SAME THING AS YOU. Yes I'm aware that other people responded to dumb fucks like you, but you're comment pissed me off.

C) You haven't figured out that Xvid is just ONE IMPLEMENTATION of MPEG-4 which, is riddled in patents that Xvid is probably infringing on. If the MPEG consortium wishes to, they could have the Xvid authors begging for mercy in court.
Secondly, you could have read that Tarkin is conciderd just a "proof of concept" thing for Xiph. Thirdly, you would have reasoned (yup hahaha) since Theora's codec is both a free (beer and speech) and so is the implementation that it is more free that Xvid.

My god man, dont be a /. conformist.

Re:Not to mention home video's & blender anima

[gurumeditationerror]

Damn man, I wish I had some mod points I could use on that post.

Theora for streaming media?

[benwaggoner]

Is there any explicit support for RTSP in the Theora project so far? Having a codec is less than half of the way to having a robust real-time streaming format. VP3 was a progressive download codec in all implementations I've ever seen of it.
Even though QuickTime supports RTSP, the VP3 implementation of it didn't support native hinting for reliable RTSP.

Re:Theora for streaming media?

[arkhan_jg]

Is there any explicit support for RTSP in the Theora project so far?

Ok, I'll post what I know, which ain't much in this case...

Xiph.org already have a server for vorbis streaming, icecast. I've no idea how robust it is, but BBC radio were running vorbis trials (as opposed to realplayer), and they seemed to work pretty good to me.

Browsing the dev mailing list, it also appears that icecast2 already supports theora streaming.

Given the inhouse work on a streaming media server, and that they are specifically aiming theora to take on divx/mpeg4 and windows media, it would make sense that they have to have RTSP support to do that.

In the end of the day though, I've not been able to find anything concrete with google, and I'm not involved in the project directly...

Re:Theora for streaming media?

[benwaggoner]

Well, Icecast is normally a http streaming system, right, not RTSP.

RTSP is important, since it provides infrastructure for much better loss recovery, and scalability. HTTP is fine for short content, but for anything much more than 10 minutes, it makes random access really icky, and real-time performance is very dicy unless the connection speed is a lot higher than the clip data rate.

These are problems that WM9 and to a lesser degree MPEG-4 have already solved and rolled out into mature, deployed implementations. Which is why I worry that Theora is too far behind to really make much of an impact on the general public web video space.

How is VP3 stretched?

[benwaggoner]

Do you have any more detail on how you think VP3 is streatched to its limits?

Also, making a ground-up, competitive codec that doesn't infringe on any patents is a risky and potentially overwhelming task. There is a LOT of patented stuff in this area, and codec development is intrinsically risky and difficult. Given it's taken them this long to productive VP3, I can't imagine they had anything like the resources neccessary to actually build a real codec that was that much better than VP3. And in fact, that's pretty much why they switched from Tarkin to Theora.

Good Enough?

[steveha]

Windows Media 9 is free-as-in-beer for most uses, and is today a lot better than Theora could possibly be in a year.

However, in a year, with Theora be Good Enough?

I don't need the absolute best. Will Theora be good enough in the important ways that companies might use it?

I'm hoping Theora can conquer the world, because it will always be more convenient to play Theora files than Windows Media files on Linux.

Also: for most purposes, MPEG2 is clearly Good Enough. Will Theora version 1.0 be comprable to or better than MPEG2?

steveha

it had to be said

[Anonymous Coward]

oggod

Theora v. MPEG-2

[benwaggoner]

Well, it really depends on what you want to do. The reason why MPEG-2 is "good enough" for DVD is that it is compatible with the DVD Video spec, which means it'll play back on set top boxes. It's not like we didn't have better codecs than MPEG-2 five years ago, but they aren't enough better that it'd make it worth ditching the installed base of DVD players!

Still, we'll certainly be moving away from MPEG-2 when we move to HD DVD, since backwards compatibility will be punted anyway.

There are lots of features that MPEG-2 has that are useful for video archiving and distribution, like support for interlaced video, support for non-square pixel files, and low per pixel-second CPU requirements. I don't see that Theora has any of these advantages.

Conversely, it costs $2.50 to license MPEG-2 decoder support for a product, and Theora will be free. And Theora will be able to provide better quality at low data rates.

It all depends on what you need to do.

Personally, I doubt Theora will get a lot of uptake by corporations. Its openness advantages are unlikely to overcome its disadvantages in maturity. Heck, Ogg Vorbis is quite mature, but no major media companies are using it as a distribution format. Apple picked AAC-LC instead, even though they have to pay a fee, as part of their general support of MPEG-4.

Re:Theora v. MPEG-2

[steveha]

we'll certainly be moving away from MPEG-2 when we move to HD DVD

Good point. I hope Theora 1.0 is finalized before HD DVD players become common, so there is some hope that all the HD DVD players will play Theora discs too.

Apple picked AAC-LC instead, even though they have to pay a fee, as part of their general support of MPEG-4.

Why, do you suppose? I'd guess two reasons:

0) They need to pay anyway, for QuickTime, and the added expense on top of that was considered small;

1) They liked the DRM options for AAC-LC.

Personally, I doubt Theora will get a lot of uptake by corporations. Its openness advantages are unlikely to overcome its disadvantages in maturity.

I'll be content if it just gets included onto lots of players. I don't feel a need to crush and destroy the other formats, but I would like to see a completely free format supported by all the popular players. If nothing else, it will keep the license terms reasonable among the non-free codecs. (I wonder if Apple threatened to use Vorbis for their music sales, to get a better licensing deal on AAC?)

steveha

Re:Theora v. MPEG-2

[benwaggoner]

The HD DVD development process has been underway for quite a long time, and will almost certainly be using MPEG-4 AVC for the video codec. Given that the Theora bitstream isn't even locked down, I'd say there's nil chance for Theora getting in as part of the official spec.

Also, AVC, which is already standardized, almost certainly is technically superior to whatever Theora 1.0 provides. It's a really, really good codec that uses a wide variety of patented techniques that Theora doesn't have access to.

As for Apple and AAC-LC, the DRM is file based, so they could have applied it to any codec. But AAC-LC is a great codec, and it's part of MPEG-4, which Apple has been pushing in a big way. I was mildly surprised they didn't go for HE AAC, but I suppose they didn't want to delay the launch to get that technology incorporated into QuickTime.

I don't anticipate Theora becoming popular in mainstream non-computer devices. MPEG-4 and Windows Media 9 are filling the ecological niches where Theora could potentially play. And unlike Vorbis v. MP3, Theora doesn't have any significant technical advantages over the market leaders.

Still, I wish it well. Having a fully open technology like this would be useful in certain niches. And I could see it used in places like games, where compression efficiency isn't as important as having no license fees and having easy implementation.

Dont call H264 MPEG-4

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay MPEG added some trivial improvements to H263 (and missed out on a whole lot of advanced shit in H263++) and called it MPEG-4 ... I have to live with that.

But MPEG contributions to H264 amount to very little ... hell their major accomplishment is taking out variable block size transforms, a step back.

If you really want to call it JVT, the J stands for joint, but calling it MPEG-4 gives credit where it isnt due.

Exactly

[msobkow]

Open source and open standards save a lot of money for implementors. Even at $0.25 per sales unit, a moderately successful game selling 100,000 units would have to pay out $25,000 in license fees. Multiply that by a few "cheap" technologies, and you are soon into serious money that could pay for an extra developer-year or more. That can make a significant difference in the quality of the shipped game.

except for the video capture part ...

[timothy]

the XBox does have the parts you mention, but it's missing one that would be necessary, which is some sort of video capture.

There *are* external capture devices (USB), which I don't own / use, never have, but I've never heard kind words about their quality. The Xbox, without a place for PCI cards, seems amenable only to such an external one.

The *next* gen Xbox, might be a different story ;)

timothy

Tech overview?

[DarkMan]

Anyone got an overview of how Theora/VP3 works?

Sepcifficaly, given the dearth of informatiuon so far, I'm assuming it's a block decomposition style, so what seperates it from all the other block based codecs?

MPEG-1 is fine in its domain

[benwaggoner]

You're inaccurately harsh on MPEG-1. It can provide quite good quality at adequate data rates, which a high-quality professional encoder. if you use something like Canopus's ProCoder, even a VCD should look fine. For CD-ROM stuff, a 2-pass VBR 320x240 at 2 Mbps should be free of visible artifacts for most sources.

MPEG-1 certainly requires more bits per pixel to provide high quality compared to other formats, but when that's an option, MPEG-1 can do great.