Slashdot Mirror
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.
the RIAA will bully their way into making them illegal
... let me suffix that with a "yet".
They haven't done that with MP3
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
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.
;) -- 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).
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
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
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.
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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".
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?
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?
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
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.
My video compression blog