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Theora I Bistream Format Frozen
p80 writes "The Xiph foundation announced today that the 'Theora I bistream format is now frozen,' even though Beta 1 is not out yet and encourage people to try it as 'there's no reason to delay adopting a free alternative any more!' Mplayer and Xine both support Theora. For Windows users, Directshow filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC are available here. You can get test cases here and transcode Quicktime movies to theora on that page." This freeze, as an anonymous reader puts it, "means that all future versions will support the format as it is now. It will be interesting to see if there is as much uptake for this as there was for the Vorbis sound format."
the format for audio is Vorbis. Ogg is just the name of everything, like Ogg Theora
I realise that free (as in speech) sound and video formats are a good thing but it seems that certain formats, particularly mp3 are now more or less ubiqoutous (sp??). I mean how many people pick up their 128meg solid state ogg player in the morning??
I have discovered a truly remarkable sig which this post is too small to contain.
It will be interesting to see if there is as much uptake for this as there was for the Ogg sound format.
That should read:
It will be interesting to see if there is as much uptake for this as there was for the Vorbis sound format.
Vorbis and Theora are both part of the Ogg project.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Do we really need yet another format? i know the mantra of "choice is good," but then having to track down all the little things i need to decode every random video or audio file i come across is sort of the opposite of good. it's bloody obnoxiouse, honestly. i still don't know what an asf is (mostly because i am too lazy to look it up).
Here's where to look for the FAQ.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Great... They've chosen to give the theora video files the same .ogg extension as their audio format?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Hi Slashdot... I know what Vorbis is... But what in god's name is all that other stuff???
You're still right though.
...I use Vorbis whenever I rip my audio CDs. If I did video, I'd certainly try Theora.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
While this is true, it's always possible that we'll come up with something a bit better in the file size/quality ratio. I mean, look at XviD vs DivX. But, that doesn't mean we all have to jump every time a new codec hits, but considering the success of the Vorbis codec for audio, it's a bit sad to see another ogg bite it.
I'm always right and I can prove it, because to the best of my knowledge, I've never been wrong.
Encode MPEG-4 at your peril. You probably won't get a bill in the post, but still.
Theora finally offers us a good patent-unencumbered encoder/decoder. It's a good thing.
I always thought Theora was kind of cool... But frozen? My God! They must really kick arse!
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Will Theora codecs ever be as good as MPEG-4 ones? Or we have to wait for wavelet based codecs to have a patent free good format?
IIRC the MPlayer lead developer (Alex) said that he reckons Theora will never get close to MPEG-4.
I think the OGG video stuff will have an easier go of it than OGG the music format.
OGG audio had a few problems - at the start, not as many people knew about it so it was slow to adopt to different players and rippers that people liked to use. The worse problem was that even now it's in almost no hardware, so it made little sense to encode to OGG if you might have wanted to use a portable.
But with video the whole field is still wide open. Getting a Quicktime or Windows media file to my TV is equally hard, so I might as well store my video in OGG as anything - and I am more likley to be able to build a box I am happy hooking to my TV for video than I would have been trying to construct an audio device I would like. And I have a lot more motivation with every consumer video device being generally locked down in very annoying ways.
The other thing that will help is that consumer device makers will have little reason not to adopt this video format since it can be another item on a checkbox and is free to implement. Also the processing power is going to be there in whatever device is created - with OGG audio, for a while there was no good example code for playing OGG files on devices without floating point support (as I remember it).
So, good luck Ogg Theora! I plan to start using it as soon as I can and see how it fares.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...and so the name of the container. Vorbis is the audio format, Theora is the name of the video format. Those .OGG files you've come across are audio/video interleaved files missing a video stream.
...so now we'll have 'xxx releases new xxx player' with a hundred responses of 'Does it do ogg' followed by another few hundred responses of 'Ogg is not the format, theora is the encoder'
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Just because you can, doesn't mean you shuold.
Yes, I did mean it just like that.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Someone's gonna mod me down for trolling because I don't echo the Slashdot groupspeak on this. Oh well.
Who honestly cares about or uses Ogg? Really. I have yet to even contemplate it. Sure I have the codec on my machine, but I haven't used it. Nothing is out there in the format that I am interested in or have even ran across accidently. I like portability of my music so I use MP3. (I can't very well install the codec on my machine at work.) I have no intention of recording anything into the format, so it would be a poor choice for me to use it. How many people is it a good choice for? Why?
What about Theora? Probably the same thing, at least for me. Most people already are happy with using DivX, XviD, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, or whatever. Adding another into the mix, while giveing people more choices, probably won't sway one person over. Ogg just didn't do it for me. Theora may not, either.
The only place that I can envision Theora being used is by developers needing royalty free in-game movies.
Or am I completely off base here and it will take the world by storm by sheer ease of use, compatability, support, file size, file quality, consumer knowledge, and/or consumer acceptance?
Clue me up.
"Giving money and power to governments is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys." - P.J. O'Rourke
... there's no reason to delay adopting a free alternative any more!
...
Hmm. Thinking.... Thinking.... There must be SOME reason... This is tough. Oh, wait! I know! I've got one!!!
Beta 1 is not out yet
Yeah! There we go. See, I knew I could come up with something.
There will be umpteen posts to the effect, "So what? [Insert preferred video codec] is ubiquitous and gets the job done." It's the same broken record that gets played whenever there's an Ogg Vorbis/MP3 discussion.
And those folks are right. There is no reason to switch to or adopt Vorbis or Theora. Yet.
I hope someone releases some content in ONLY these formats that is truly killer. Something that pushes people to try these formats. Because I don't want to be locked in to proprietary formats that force me to use players and clients that plain suck. The announcement that WMV9 is being considered for HD-DVD sent chills up my spine.
Hooray for being an idealist...
tcp/ip and http seem to be the only standards that people actually adhere to anymore...
but wait!! i can't look at finegael.ie and see the news ticker unless i am using IE. BS! and that is just one example.
There's already an excellant open-source codec out there in xvid. Honestly, no one is even going to consider using this Theora codec. And Theora is based on VP3?? HELLO?! There is already a VP6!! And as far as containers go, theres Matroska, which is a far better open-source container than OGM (If you can really count OGM as a container, its really just a hack).
Reading the posts, it seems that people are missing a major use for Theora and even Vorbis.
You know all those games you have that use MP3 for music? They had to pay a fee to do so. You know all those games you have that use bink video for cutscenes? They had to pay a fee to do so.
Now they don't. If there is a free alternative of comperable quality, the developers will use it instead of paying a $25k technology licensing fee. And the companies that don't will end up priced out of the market.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Actually, this was announced two weeks ago.
A format that can be used by the free-as-in-speech porn community.
As I recalled, Bitstream only does fonts, not audio codecs.
Producing a better product isn't good enough. You need a SIGNIFICANTLY better product. For me, ripping even a small ~50 CD collection to ogg isn't worth the marginal benefit, even if it is free. Perhaps if oggs were particularly small, say 10-20% the size of the standard mp3, you would probably see more people flocking to it.
But in the age of $1/gig hard drives, space isn't such a huge issue.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
They've refered to it as "bistream" in the title of the post on theora.org, and in the body of that post. But elsewhere they call it "bitstream", and that makes more sense to me at least. The term "bistream" is also not in their FAQ.
Google returns Results 1 - 8 of about 17 for bistream theora for me, which is few enough for me to consider it a typo. Is it a typo, or does it mean a dual stream of some kind ?
--- There isn't any problem that can't be solved by a small, low yield nuclear device, is there??
The industry appears to have already 'settled' on :
:)
- MPEG 2 (DVD)
- MPEG 4 (official specs)
- DiVX
Though a few may offer other formats, AVI / Quicktime / Realplayer (hah.) are not among them, neither more obscure-ish fileformats (say, 3ivx, WMF)
So I'm not sure whether the industry will pick up on Ogg Theora any more than the industry picked up on Ogg Vorbis.
That said, I recently played the Breed b-1 demo, and it uses Ogg Vorbis for both music and sound effects for a good portion
Sadly, it was also my first and thusfar only encounter with Off Vorbis files, period.
Because it's better, it's free, and it's open.
It's not ubiquitous, so what? Do you have to commit to using just one format, and no other?
If you prefer better, free, and open, when you see an ogg in the list of downloads, choose it over the WMP/QuickTime/Real file. If you don't, then pick the one you prefer.
If you're worried about the web becoming more complex, don't. MS, Apple and Real will just have to work to make things easier than ogg--they have to in order to keep the money flowing in.
If you're bothered that there's some people out there whose idealism you find disconcerting, just remember, you made a pragmatic choice (you gave up a little money and control in exchange for ease-of-use), these ogg (vorbis, theora, flac, etc) people are working to make it so that you won't have to make that pragmatic choice. They're trying to make the world how you'd really like it to be if you had the choice (unless you are all about acquiring money by controlling access to technology, in which case they are your worst enemy, and you are right to fear them--they will ultimately win).
I pick up my 128mb solid state ogg player that I bought from Neuros Audio. It plays Ogg along with several other formats just fine. Once you tell people you can fit twice the number of songs on your "mp3" player without losing much quality by using Ogg Vorbis, they start listening.
The Neuros, Rio Karma, and iRiver all support Ogg Vorbis.
I used ogg audio to encode my music collection because I didn't have an mp3 encoder and I consider it a lucky break. It was easier to use krecord, audacity and abcde in Debian Woody than it was to get any kind of mp3 encoder. The files turned out to be smaller but of comparable quality to downloaded mp3's. I did it mostly so I would not have to worry about my dying phonograph player and saved out wav files before encoding. abcde worked great for my CDs and the collection, as you know, is much more convenient on a hard drive.
As for devices, having ogg forced me to get a Zaurus as a portable player. My handspring visor, though still useful, needed upgrading. Zaurus plays both ogg and mp3 from CF or MMC and does so without the annoying DRM problems most players have. So, my $250 investment in Zaurus served more than one function, though it might not be as nice and surely is not as rugged as dedicated players that now cater to ogg. Sharp promisses you can sync Zaurus to outlook as well as read Word Docs.
I'm not qualified to talk about video formats yet, but I have a feeling that I'm going to like theora.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It may be open source, but MPEG-4 is patented up to the hilt. You could, in fact, be prosecuted for using it. Not likely, but possible.
We're not talking OGM. OGG is a container itself. OGM was a hack to add extra functionality. Functionality which OggFile2 will supercede. Currently though, the OGG container is plenty powerful enough for the short-term.
VP3 is a base to work from. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are MPEG-1 with tweaks and improvements. VP6 and VP3's code are probably a lot closer than you think. Don't be too suprised when Theora II comes out and matches its rivals. You're right though, Theora isn't as good as VP6, but it is as good as MPEG-4 (which you deemed excellent yourself).
Yeah, one digital music player supporting it... yeah... that's widespread acceptance.
I would like to see Theora (or for that matter Dirac) used inside a matroska container, which to my untrained eye lookes more powerful. It should be possible, but has anyone done it?
badness 10000
I hadn't a clue the Theora project was as far along as this. The example payed without fault on totem (xine engine) on my Fedora Core 2 installation and looks (ans sounds) really good!
Keep up the great work!
...because I'm sure we can all blame the slow uptake on the format. That seems to be the status quo around here, anyway.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I predict that many other games will follow suit becuase vorbis is smaller in size while being comparable in quality to mp3, and with modern computers being extremely fast already, the additional overhead that decoding ogg vorbis creates would not be significant.
You say that there are problems with using XVID due to patents?
Is this true?
From the FAQ they say:
"XviD is Free Software (licensed under the GNU GPL), open to third-party contributions and aims for standard's compliance, portability and interoperability, high processing speed and superior quality."
and
" We believe that XviD is the best currently available MPEG-4 video codec solution and additionally XviD is free software!"
So, are there actual problems with using XVID or not?
I personally love XVID as a compression codec... I use the wonderful GordianKnot application which makes encoding video just SOOO easy. This makes it wonderful to take my DVDs and rip them to XVID for use on my media server for when I feel the need to do such things...
I noticed the other day that Chrome, an otherwise dull and unremarkable FPS, uses Ogg Vorbis for its music. I'm sure there are others.
Anyone know if Theora's reference decoder uses floating point math, or is it all fixed integer? I.e., can it run on Familiar Linux on PDAs?
Since nobody seems to have had a problem when this was done in .asf, I don't suppose there will be a problem now. It's not like the 'file' command can't tell what is inside the file.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I was thinking about that issue - isn't it more the case that a Theora codec will be developed for the central system (say a Quicktime plugin or a Windows Media Equivilent) and other players will make use of the built in codec? I know there are a few players like mPlayer that just build in all the codecs but a lot of players just make use of the system codec, I think.
Sorry to sound so unsure I just have never written a media player by hand and unsure what the standard way to go about it is nowadays, or how many third party players rely on system codecs. It sure seemed like DiVX was like that though, that managed to gain adoption pretty quickly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Ogg.s .
Vorbis.
Theora.
Meaningless.
Dumb.
Name
Just a though/question. Why don't the Xiph.org guys help out with the development of BBC's Dirac codec instead of trying to re-invent the wheel? It will have much greater acceptance with the BBC behind it as opposed to trying to sell Theora. We really need a free video codec for the future and competing ones doesn't help. Michael
Now I don't wanna hear another fewl asking about it
Having the same 'ogg' file extension for both audio and video may match the modular format well, but will confuse users and impair the usability of ogg media in file shells and media-management apps.
Highly recommend: alternate extensions for audio and vide.
Wondering: What MIME type(s) are used for ogg theora video?
We put up some sample video torrents including the three winning Creative Commons videos and a full length independent film called "Honey". All of them are made available under Creative Commons licenses. Free videos in a free format, fancy that? Share and enjoy!
Especially since Microsoft will not allow the codec to be included in installs ever.
Well, you never know. If they lose the appeal on the EU antitrust case, they may a least be forced to ship RealPlayer in that jurisdiction.
And RealPlayer plays Theora. :-)
That's the nice thing about being the right choice.
what the dominant audio format is when I'm encoding things for my own personal use? More to the point, why do you care what I use? Oh, it's too much trouble to leech files from me, and all those codecs... it's just so confusing.
Damn, it's attitudes like this that make me almost glad the RIAA is cracking down on file traders. Anybody who gets something for nothing from somebody and then whinges about the format is one ungrateful SOB.
you want to spread Theora? encode a bunch of pr0n in it and spread it out on the net.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
If you know Perl and want to assist with this, please contact me via the website.
Salsaman.
I care. Some media activists care. All artists definitely should care. And, most importantly, some great hackers care as well.
Seriously, as much as I constantly feel insulted by the bloody ignorance of profanum vulgus, or unwashed masses, if you will--please don't mind if I take offence to you outrageously ignorant remark--I don't really care who cares about the software I use--be it Debian, OpenBSD, EROS, PostgreSQL, Perl 6 or Ogg Vorbis--as long as the developers care. We don't need large user base to break even, now do we?
Music is very important to me, almost as important as the freedom I have. And it's not about the price, mind you. I write it listening to another version of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor, Op. 23, I couldn't resist to buy today on a new and expensive CD with all the money I had. I don't care about the proce of free software. For me it's all about freedom. I do believe quite a few people think that way.
Actually, the reason is quite simple.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
so... you're saying that vorbis users are lesser? Do you mean they are, on average, shorter than Linux users? Oh, you must mean they weigh less, on average. No, that doesn't make sense, either. Did you mean to use the word "fewer" instead?
The Vorbis people are pretty aweful in that department. Why are they hiding the freaking acm version of the codec? When 1.0 or whatever came out I thought for sure they would change their crappy policy of hiding the directshow codec. But alas no. They for some reason don't want to reach 90% of the computing public.
From the readme for the acm version which your likely to find several places with the exception of vorbis.com
"Vorbis Sucks, but I found the stupid goddamned folder on some site in Mexico.
Right-Click on the vorbisacm.inf file, and choose install.
Make sure you've got this dumb-ass vorbis.acm file in the same directory when you're installing.
Why this was difficult to find and why there were dead links to this crappy codec all over the place I have no idea.
Don't like me making this easy for you? Blow me."
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Will Theora work with AVI's, and thus Virtualdub?
If it doesn't work with VirtualDub, then it's not as useful to me.
Also will Windows Media Player player play it? Or does it need it's own special player like Quicktime?
Is there a tool to convert from Theora back to AVI? I don't like being locked into a format, which is why I don't use quicktime or real media or WMV.
Where can I find screenshots comparing Theora's video quality to other sources? I am most interested in comparisons of animated video as those are hardest to compress without visible blocks.
look up all the horror stories they had getting installing and video to work on linux! Mostly because the people they licensed the codex from blew them off and wouldn't support them...I bet their next projects will all be Ogg!
Theora has patents! They have been offically signed over by the owners to the open source project...all legal like. It's actually a Big Deal & the point of the whole OGG excercize!
Why not just do it the way people do with avi, ie, codec.container?
For the same reason people don't use .avi for sound-only media files. Also, Windows Explorer can't distinguish between two file types that have the same extension following the final dot; .tar.gz and .dmg.gz look exactly the same.
This can bring performance problems. Unless the file system caches the media type of each file, searching or sorting files by media type will be slow, with at least an open(), a read(), and a close() on each file. Does there even exist a guaranteed maximum length in bytes for media types?
isn't it more the case that a Theora codec will be developed for the central system (say a Quicktime plugin or a Windows Media Equivilent) and other players will make use of the built in codec?
For most media systems on virtual computers such as PC or Macintosh, that's correct; you'll need an Ogg demuxer, a Vorbis audio decoder, and a Theora video decoder, all possibly shipped as separate plug-ins.
But typically, the first versions of the codecs run in real time only on comparatively fast machines with large memory and an FPU. However, pocket-size players typically have any of several low-current 32-bit microprocessors without FPUs, and developers tend to ship version 1.0 codecs before ports to such platforms appear. You can't just "install Theora" onto a pocket A/V player, even if it does support Ogg container and Vorbis audio.
Theora has patents! They have been offically signed over by the owners to the open source project
The difference is that unlike On2, which now licenses its VP3-related patents at no royalty, MPEG-LA charges big buck$$$ to license essential patents related to MPEG standards.
We really need a free video codec for the future and competing ones doesn't help.
Competing codecs do help, as without competition, development tends to stagnate.
Besides, unlike the BSD-licensed Theora, the BBC's Dirac is under the Mozilla tri-license (MPL + GPL + LGPL). Xiph.org switched Ogg Project code from LGPL to BSD to better fit a pocket-size player that compiles all codecs into a single monolithic executable image. Would the MPL fit as well?
GBA currently can't decode MP3 in real time, but it can decode another compressed format based on the codec used in GSM mobile phones. You can fit 150 minutes of jogging-quality music on your 256 Mbit GBA flash cart with a GSM player that I ported.
In my case I personally think that pocket video players will never be widespread in use or acceptance, which is why I did not account for them. This will not be a problem like MP3 players as very few people have uses for portable video and the short battery life that portable video brings to the table.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People seem quite pessimistic about this codec (they might say realistic). The situation is however not the same as with Ogg Vorbis. Let's face it, the main use of video codecs like DivX etc are in pirated movies. While thousands of people might rip a CD or two into the most handy format (read: MP3 or in some cases AAC) movies are ripped by only a few people. Here it is not ease of use or availability that matters, it is simply technical performance. If Theora has a higher quality/size ratio than for example XviD then these people will use it, clear and simple. If you don't have the codec then too bad, you better get it.
:)
Ripping movies is an endless quest for higher quality and smaller files sizes. A great example is the increasing number of videos encoded with OGG for sound instead of MP3 since that squeezes out a few megs from the final file size.
PS: I of course have never downloaded any of the aforementioned files
Woohoo, Xiph ! Anyways, we have a Theora live webcam stream for you guys to test out. AFAIK we're the first doing this. http://mirror.fluendo.com:8801/ With MPlayer, for example, you'd do mplayer -cache 40 http://mirror.fluendo.com:8801 to watch it. If you're lucky you can catch Rupert coding. Not a lot goes on in this stream, we're fairly boring (Read: our boss is watching too) We'll be adding Vorbis sound sometime this week too. The server will be Coming Soon to a Repository Near You.
just cos nobody does it doesn't mean you don't have to.
... atleast we should try. lousy programmers who don't adhere to standard, hopefully get canned sooner or later?
If I write software, I adhere to all standards. I'm one of those -Wall -Werror -pendatic etc : )
you gotta start somewhere, sure they should be used
xvid is still MPEG-2 (which is patent-encumbered).
...and I'm neither an audiophile nor particularly bothered about formats as long as I can burn to CD. That suggests (to me, at least) that the format is gaining some ground. =)
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Okay, with any luck, everyone will go out, get their video players working with Theora, and start encoding content. So, I think I should throw-out some quick tips before people start complaining and/or getting frustrated...
First, to get Theora playback for any players on Linux, you need to compile and install the alpha3 snapshot first, and to do that you need the CVS version of all the "vorbis-tools" as they are called. Once you've done that, you just have to re-compile your video playing programs (like MPlayer) with something like "--enable-theora" passed to configure...
As for encoding, you're probably going to have sync problems... I don't want to waste my time getting in-to details, but suffice it to say you need a version of MPlayer newer than 1.0pre4 (CVS right now), and you need to use the "-vf softdup" option when you are dumping the video to the fifo (from which the Theora encoder is fetching the source video).
Also, trying to have mplayer dump to video and audio fifos at the same time is guaranteed not to work... You need to either dump the audio to a real file (wastes space), or launch two instances of MPlayer, one dumping audio from the source file, one dumping video from the source file.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't started encoding video with Theora, so just keep these tips at the back of your mind, because you'll need them when you do start.
The only other tip I've got, is to wait until a better encoding program is written. The libraries are fine, but the wimpy example programs leaves a lot to be desired. When other media programs (mplayer, or transcode) start doing encoding via the Theora/Vorbis libs, we'll be a lot better off.
Just hope that Theora/Vorbis encoding support finds it's way into MPlayer (or transcode I suppose), then you won't need to worry about all of these issues ('softdup' will likely still be needed though).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Check some of the latest games, for sometime they switched from mp3 to ogg for their soundfiles.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
As per your request, I won't reply about the degradation in quality, but I do hoped you marked the files as converted from mp3. (Maybe with a 'filename.mp3.ogg'-style suffix, as well as a comment.)
Actually, my player does OGG and FLAC just fine, thank you.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Ogg is the AVI equivelent, being a transport and encapsulation layer.
Theora is video codec at the same level as DivX/XVid, more or less. And when you talked about Ogg sound tracks, you ment Vorbis, which is the audio codec.
Spot on with the direct show filters though
But, for example, we've chosen to use it (Ogg Vorbis) as the audio format in Magicosm. We have to encode and decode files, and ogg is a free, well-tested way to do that. I suspect a lot of other content producers have made the same choice.
I switched to Vorbis when Fraunhoffer (the people that hold patent rights to mp3) where making a stink about enforcing their patents (which they did...they just didn't go after decoders...yet). This wasn't long after the GIF patent debacle. So, yes, there is a very good reason to use something other than mp3 and that something else, right now, is Ogg Vorbis.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Moderators,
This poster, Twitter is an obnoxious Linux Zelot who rants about anything even remotely commercial, and posts off topic rants (at +2) on a regular basis. While this post isn't one of his classic rants, by moderating it up you give him Karma bonus points that always uses, especially for his more inflamatory posts. Most people with decent Karma don't use the bonus unless they think that their post is especially insightful, and would like it to be noticed. By contrast, Mr. Twidder arrogantly believes that all of his posts are all-important. This particular post isn't remotely interesting or insightful, and it started at +2 already, so why not just leave it be? Certainly we don't need anymore delusional posters on slashdot, we have enough already.
Please, Please, Don't feed the troll.
Actually, I just went to the site to see when the new Theora would be in VLC and it says it's already supported. Impressively short time to incorporate new formats isn't it?
In my case I personally think that pocket video players will never be widespread in use or acceptance
There will always be a market for pocket video players, even with an S-video output instead of an LCD so that the user can watch video on a TV. Heck, even pocket video recorders are in use. Or do you want to have to lug a heavy laptop when shooting digital video footage?
The market for portable video players will always be niche and essentially non-existant compared to music players.
Camcorders are a special case, but really digital cameras will take over that function in the near term - and they will not be used to load video onto, just to take new video.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It ain't software if it doesn't come with source code. How am I supposed to compile it? I'm not going to rely on something that in turn relies on proprietary platforms.