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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.
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.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
-Xenocrates
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
"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
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.
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.
-- Bill "Houdini" Weiss
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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
Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
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.
It doesn't cost money, but it's still using a patented algorithm and you can't legally use it without a license.
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.
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.
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.
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 )
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.
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.
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...
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.
DivX is not a "new video" or whatever. In fact, DivX is not even open source!
;-) 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.
- 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
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).
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.
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.
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.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
An 'Ogg' is a tactical maneuver from the network game 'Netrek' that has entered common usage in a wider sense
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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.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?