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Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3

Posted by Hemos on from the frozen-for-usage dept.

ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."

3 of 196 comments (clear)

  1. DivX problems by ArcRiley · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Patents. DivX is just a series of alpha-releases for MPEG-4 and is covered by the same set of patents (from dozens of different companies). They're only being nice about DivX until MPEG-4 comes out, then they're going to "crack down".

    Remember when MP3 was gaining popularity, Frauhofer just let everyone do whatever they wanted with players, encoders, etc... but once they realised they had something worth charging for they cracked down and their lawyers started sending everyone ceise and desist orders.

    Ogg Theora is not encumbered by patents. It is, and will always be, royalty-free. To my knowledge it is the first video codec that can be implemented in truly Free Software.

  2. Theora for streaming by ArcRiley · · Score: 5, Interesting
    It's ironic to think of Theora as a "Real-killer", while it does compete on the same field as Real's proprietary video streaming codecs, Real is adopting Theora for the video format in their Helix suite (and throwing money at Xiph to help get Theora out faster).

    I've seen Theora be streamed with Icecast (check out the last Ogg Traffic), I've seen decent quality Theora video at 80kbps (320x240@30 even), and I've seen how well it works in an Ogg container, vs Quicktime/AVI which (unlike Ogg) were not designed for streaming.

    But don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself! That's one of the reasons the Alpha releases are available to the general public. See what it can do, and prehaps, drop us a donation through Paypal or Affero to help the Theora hackers spend more time hacking.

  3. Whatever happened to Tarkin? by cozziewozzie · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Slashdot used to report on Ogg Tarkin (next-generation, wavelet-based video codec) a lot in the past, but since Theora showed up as a stop-gap solution, nobody's mentioning Tarkin. Is this project still alive?