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Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3
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."
The #1 thing about open source compression standards is how unwilling most of the brand name players are to support them.
:-(
I've got a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 and Ogg Vorbis is still not supported and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will be.
If OV supported on the iPod?
The unwillingness by the major brands to support all standards really leaves the consumer in the bind. I've got OV encoded music tracks and just can't listen to them on my Jukebox 3.
OK, Developers got my attention, because I am one.
I understood the word "Releases".
And that's about it, from that title.
All I can think of is Gary Larson's comic strip where it has the "what you say" vs. "what they hear" when you speak to a dog...
Blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah GINGER...
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
I'm happy to announce at long last the release of theora alpha 3. This incorporates all the bitstream changes we wanted to make both for future encoder improvements and to permit lossless transcode of VP3 content. This is an important milestone for us on the road to a stable release.
As this is an alpha release we are again providing sources only. See the files section of downloads. This version requires libogg 1.1 or later and libvorbis 1.0.1 or later.
Also new in this release are a set of experimental tools in the win32 directory contributed by Mauricio Piacentini. This includes a transcoding tool for avi-encapsulated vp3 video which also works on linux.
We hope to not make any further incompatible bitstream changes, but this is still alpha code. Don't use this for content you're not ready to re-encode!
Thanks to everyone who contributed!
Why leading companies (eg. Creative, Apple, etc.) consistently fail to support, or even downright ignore the Ogg format - it's a good, clean, relatively non-lossy, and compact compression system. Why isn't it supported by the mainstream audio hardware manufacturers? With further enhancements, Ogg could be set to draw level with MP3 on a usability and listenability basis (is that a word? it is now!), only sadly not on a compatibility basis. We can only hope that Ogg will grow in popularity and so become a more prominent feature in the audio market.
While I'm sure this is a great codec, hasn't DivX pretty much sewn up the market on video codecs?
It's established, popular and gives tight compression. Can new codecs such as Theora break into this market to any significant degree?
Patriotism - the last resort of scoundrels.
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.
Great, sad, point. But remember that as these devices get more complex, the time when some smart fella or lady throws linux on it get more near. Eventually, it won't matter that The Man doesn't support OV. As technology improves, the open source community has more places to innovate and use the best compression music among other things. It's only because of open sourcers creating such things as OV that arent the most useful now that we will ever have hope of such things being useful ever. I'm just glad they are ironing out wrinkles before I need their stuff to work.
On Monday morning, before 3 mountain dews? Very dumbed down.
:)
"Company releases beta stuff" would suffice.
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"People wo write files containing instuctions telling a computer what to do: the Xiph.Org Foundation releases (that is, allows the world to see) the 3rd alpha ("this will crash") of their strange named video ("moving pictures") encoding and decoding format Ogg Theora"
That dumbed down enough do you think? I'm worried about "encoding and decoding"....
The VP3 codec has one major drawback in my opinion. It's designed to keep a constant quality without paying attention to the file size. You can do constant bitrate on it, but you can't use multiple pass encoding with variable bitrates to get that balance of quality while having strict file size control (as with xvid). Is this something that is being added to Theora, does anyone know?
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use.
Not only beta... but beta-1. And I assume that means there'll be a beta-2 and maybe a few more, before we get to RC1, and perhaps a few of those too. So, what decade is Release 1.0 planned for? And what exactly will happen with the "frozen, fully documented" codec between beta-1 and release?
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
My Rio Karma works just fine with Ogg. In fact, all I have on the thing is Ogg.
It works incredibly well, and with 20gigs for $250 shipped, and a Java-based interface program (which runs on FreeBSD and Linux), I'm very happy with it.
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.
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?
You are right that the 'brand names' don't support these formats very well. This is why you should probably look past the brand names and check out the little guys...
That's Creative Labs for you. I'm still waiting for them to make release quality (i.e. not beta ones a year after the fact) Windows 2000 drivers for my DXR3. It works great under NT4, but I haven't used that for years. This issue and their crappy drivers for the Soundblaster Live on SMP systems has convinced me never to buy their products again. They don't fix known problems with their existing products - your only hope is that splashing out more money for the next generation will resolve the problem. They're a very poor company.
I have a positive feeling about Ogg Theora. Three days ago I installed binary only DivX for linux (closed source), and I am not very happy about it. I want video codec at top performance, optimized for CPU and maybe even 64bit platform later this year, not a 32bit binary pentium-only crap with possible vulnerabilities.
There you are, staring at me again.
- Rio Karma is probably the most popular OGG portable.
- Roku Soundbridge is a great home player that supports both OGG and Itunes DRMed AAC.
There are a bunch of other devices that support OGG, but those two are my favorites.These things are not implemented yet, and will probobally not be useable on earlier Beta releases either, but as of Beta-1 the bitstream will not change in future-compatable ways. That is, while some optimisation fields won't be supported yet, no new fields will be added. Future players will always be able to play media encoded by the Beta releases. The same is not true for movies encoded with the Alpha libraries, so Beta-1 is really the first point where it should be used for distributed movies.
The 1.0 release will include support for atleast decoding these optional fields, it'll likely use them all too for encoding, and should be considerably higher quality than the VP3.2 codec from which it started with. It'll always, however, be able to upgrade VP3.2 media to Theora and, again, always be able to play media encoded with the Beta releases.
The Soundbridge does not support Apple's DRM, only unencumbered AAC files.
That thing looks pretty huge, so no thanks. And besides, if I wanted something with geek-appeal, I would buy Rio Karma
- Supports Ogg Vorbis
- Supports FLAC
- Has _Ethernet_ plug
- Has 20GB HDD
Neuros might have a Linux-version of it's software, but if the player appears as a regural HD to the OS, why would you need dedicated software?
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I was about to post the same thing, except I was going to add that this limitation can be easily overcome by a quick Google search for m4p2mp4.exe. Apart from that, the only formats I'd want supported that this doesn't handle are .ape (could just convert all my .apes to .flacs though) and .ac3 (for rips from music DVDs, I don't like to transcode them if I don't have to). I think I may have just found the digital-music-in-the-den solution for me, thank you (to the grandparent post)!
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Wow. Media on Linux has never been better. With minimal effort, in most cases, MPlayer and the codecs can be installed with a simple RPM package. Same goes for XINE and all of the players based upon it.
MPlayer and XINE work so well, that even Windows-native formats play back with just a fraction of the CPU load. I have yet to come across a typical, modern audio or video file on the web that doesn't play better on Linux than it does on Windows. MPlayer is just too kickass.
Audio on Linux is fantastic as well. The ALSA subsystem is professional-grade, allows for plugins and has nearly no latency in routing.
Multimedia is becoming one of Linux's high points. It's no longer limited like it was a few years ago. The problem is that there are so many patented and closed-source codecs out there that don't have legitimate Linux versions. That's where it gets questionable, when you are required to install a hacked Windows DLL to get a format to play on Linux. Things like Ogg Theora will help to end that ridiculous concept, as Vorbis is slowly doing.
In reality, the royalty requirements of these formats makes GPL'ed software undistributable by anyone but the copyright holder (since it's the copyright holder's responsibility to enforce the copyright they're not going to sue themselves).
For both commercial and non-commercial uses, royalty-free codecs (such as VP3/Theora) will always top proprietary formats such as DivX.
Virgin Radio has been broadcasting in 96k ogg vorbis for quite a while nowe n/ogg .html
;))
http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/list
The advantages for them are quite clear: no patent costs and more listeners who just want to support ogg (ok, maybe not many, but still
1) Some enterprising math/CS graduate student could probably try a drop-in replacement for some simple wavelet transformations instead of DCT. They might even create a block-level estimater that picks the correct wavelet/DCT kernel to use. I suspect you wouldn't have to touch too many other parts of it.
2) Arithmetic encoding is patented by Samsung. (gak!) And it's not like it's hard or anything. Huffman coding was shown to approach arithmetic encoding efficiency as the number of symbols increases, which usually means that distinction is not something to cry about. So we can deal with huffman vs. arithmetic coding for now until the patents expire, at which point everyone (info-zip, IJG, bz2, xiph.org) will switch to it to gain that extra 1-2%.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Has anyone managed to configure and compile any version of FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) after having installed all the prerequisites like ogg* and theora*? I get the errors below despite having the recommended version of ogg devel installed and despite having tried various versions of FLAC from 2001 tarball thru to current CVS FLAC.
./configure /usr/bin6/ginstall -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes /usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld /usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld option to reload object files... -r /usr/bin6/nm -B /usr/bin6/sed checking whether ln -s works... yes /usr/bin6/nm -B output... ok .libs ./configure: line 8616: syntax error near unexpected token `have_ogg=yes,' ./configure: line 8616: `XIPH_PATH_OGG(have_ogg=yes, { echo "$as_me:$LINENO: WAR
cd flac
checking for a BSD-compatible install...
checking for gawk... gawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for style of include used by make... GNU checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking for ld used by GCC...
checking if the linker (/usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
checking for
checking for BSD-compatible nm...
checking for a sed that does not truncate output...
checking how to recognise dependent libraries... pass_all
checking command to parse
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking for egrep... grep -E
checking for ANSI C header files... yes
checking for sys/types.h... yes
checking for sys/stat.h... yes
checking for stdlib.h... yes
checking for string.h... yes
checking for memory.h... yes
checking for strings.h... yes
checking for inttypes.h... yes
checking for stdint.h... yes
checking for unistd.h... yes
checking dlfcn.h usability... yes
checking dlfcn.h presence... yes
checking for dlfcn.h... yes
checking for ranlib... ranlib
checking for strip... strip
checking for objdir...
checking for gcc option to produce PIC... -fPIC
checking if gcc PIC flag -fPIC works... yes
checking if gcc static flag -static works... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.o... yes
checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo... yes
checking if gcc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions... yes
checking whether the linker (/usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld) supports shared libraries... yes
checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate
checking whether stripping libraries is possible... yes
checking dynamic linker characteristics... GNU/Linux ld.so
checking if libtool supports shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build shared libraries... yes
checking whether to build static libraries... yes
checking whether -lc should be explicitly linked in... no
creating libtool checking for g++... g++
checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
checking dependency style of g++... gcc3
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... (cached) yes
checking for getopt_long... yes
NING: *** Ogg development enviroment not installed - Ogg support will not be bui
lt" >&5'
yes, it is
dnl check for ogg library
XIPH_PATH_OGG(have_ogg=yes, AC_MSG_WARN([*** Ogg development enviroment not inst
alled - Ogg support will not be built]))
AM_CONDITIONAL(FLaC__HAS_OGG, [test x$have_ogg = xyes])
if test x$have_ogg = xyes ; then
AC_DEFINE(FLAC__HAS_OGG)
fi
Scroogle
Subject pretty much says it all. It also works with linux via the rio music manager lite java program, and I've seen some free software ports but haven't tried them yet. The base has an ethernet port and the device is smaller than an ipod, 3x3. It's pretty nice.
microsoftword.mp3 - it doesn't care that they're not words...
Rob Lanphier
Developer Support Manager
RealNetworks
Neuros might have a Linux-version of it's software, but if the player appears as a regural HD to the OS, why would you need dedicated software?
You can put the files on the harddrive or ramdisk, but if you want them to show up in the UI, you have to build the appropriate databases. The DB schemas are documented and there are a few different implementations:
- The windows-only one included with the Neuros
- Positron, a command line utility in Python.
- A Multi-platform GUI in Java, whose name escapes me.
As for size, it's larger than an I-Pod, and probably too big for most people's shirt pockets, but it's not all that big, and is fine in a beltcase, purse, or in the car, etc. Depends on how you want use it, I suppose. I chose the Neuros over the Karma mostly because of apparent company support: Digital Innovations actually seems to care if it works with Linux or the Mac, while Rio's support is pretty haphazard.Samsung's patent
Each stakeholder has patented a method or slight spin on the basic technique, and so certain claims in each patent could possibly be applied to your arithmetic coder if they wanted to go after you.
You may need to wait 5-10 years before bundling an implementation in a package with high-visibility that isn't designed for educational or experimental use.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
What you describe is Trademark law, which is probably the sanest branch of north american IP at this point. You cannot trademark common words or phrases (modulo certain exceptions) so an effort is generally made to prevent brand names from becoming same by prosecuting uses of the trademark that don't refer specifically to the actual product.
Copyrights belong to the author (or sponsor) automatically and can only be given up voluntarily or lost when the rights period expires, which is now some significant time after the author dies.
Patents are granted on a first come, first served basis to whoever applies for one and provides a monopoly on the implementation of a particular method for a fixed term.
Neither copyright nor patent rights are contingent on enforcement the way trademarks are. Holders of these two rights can and do choose which infringements to pursue.
This is the problem with MPEG-4. We can avoid the copyright issue by writing an open source version from scratch, since the standard is at least published. We don't have to call it MPEG-4 so there are no trademark issues, although while the MPEG logo is trademarked in the US, one can refer to the specification because that itself is not a trademark and because there is no attempt at confusion.
But there is no way around patents because they grant a monopoly on implementation rights. Just because you wrote your own doesn't mean you don't have to buy a license, or that you won't be forced to buy one sometime in the next 20 years. If you live in a jurisdiction that doesn't enforce patents, you're fine for now. If you just want to trade movies underground, you're probably fine because there's safety in numbers. But if you're like me, and want digital media to be as easy and ubiquitous as webpages; something anyone can do, something you don't need permission for, you need a something that's Free as in Freedom and Free as in Beer. Something like Theora.
My brain refused to continue parsing the patent text approximately here:
Once again, I'll restate that *it can* do proper mixing. You are dealing with is a limitation of your hardware, not Linux. It just goes with the territory. It's almost like the people that say: "Linux doesn't do 3D because my obscure video chip isn't supported. X sucks!"
DMIX is a mess. Unfortunately, that's the price you pay. It's not that Linux can't do the mixing that you ask. Maybe, given time, DMIX will improve. It's a relatively new component for ALSA though. You may want to consider paying for 4-Front's drivers that do it if DMIX doesn't float your boat.
http://opensound.com/
These drivers support softmixing reasonably well, but aren't free. They are not a proper alternative to hardware mixing, but they will work. They apparently have an ALSA emulation system, but it's just a "play project." I don't know if I would want an ALSA wrapper sitting on top of a sofware mixer though (their Virtual Mixer).
Your sound chip is essentially like a Winmodem, built specifically for Windows. Even some chips that do hardware mixing on Windows don't mix on Linux because of lack of proper programming documentation. What can the programmers do about that? Again, Linux's multimedia capabilities are not to blame for a driver issue. A good amount of other users don't have the same problem that you do because they have well-supported hardware.
It's not something that will change unless hardware developers take a different design approach, and a different approach to releasing their programming docs.
I must tell you that I understand how you feel though. Really - I am sympathetic to the problems you are having. It's a very frustrating situation to have to deal with this sound issue. I've been through it before, as well. This was before the CS46xx drivers were as mature as they are today. I used the 4-Front drivers to hold me over until my hardware got better ALSA support, and it paid off. If the sound issue is giving you that much of a headache, the $20 may be money well spent. That isn't to say that the 4-Front drivers are without problems though, but it is worth testing them before you fork out $20 for a version that doesn't expire after a period of time.
I've got a bit of a surprise for y'all... have you tried the incredible 'Internet TV' (real-time video streaming) available in the Media Library feature in winamp? The quality is really good; the streams are relatively low bitrate, and they stream beautifully. Well, Nullsoft's NSV format is really just MP3 + VP3. So that's what VP3 looks like, and I think it's pretty damn good -- this is by far the best streaming video I have ever experienced. If Theora is an improvement on this, looks like they're heading in the right direction for streaming video.