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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.
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
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
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
Just a friendly reminder, you don't get the bonus karma unless you spell it 'pr0n'.
"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
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.
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?
.
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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.
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!
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.
Yes, we should all have stuck with Cinepak!
It doesn't cost money, but it's still using a patented algorithm and you can't legally use it without a license.
Do you have to make the the actors available to everyone you give the binary to?
Patience, that's the key :-)
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
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?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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?
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).
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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?"
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.
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