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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."
Sure... "Ogg" is the actual format of the file, which is simply a container for the content encoded within.
I'd like to see ".ogv" start popping up to signify Ogg video.
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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
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.
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having all these codecs around might be annoying yes, however howmany open codecs do you have besides the ogg suite?
Some people prefer their pc's with all open software. Open standars, and even open src.
this is where ogg comes in. now we have video and audio for free. For some of us, including myself, this is great, as mp3 is isn't an open format, nor is divx (and it's brethern) or mpeg for that matter.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn't Theora the first OpenSource and non-'Patent-poisned' Codec that we have that is also (at least more or less) up to todays standard? Xvid and so are all fine and nice, but rather useless if I am not allowed to use them due to patents.
Actually, this was announced two weeks ago.
I mean how many people pick up their 128meg solid state ogg player in the morning??
More than there would have been had the ogg/vorbis/theora folks decided the task was just too daunting and given up.
Changing the world for the better happens a little at a time.
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.
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).
There's already an excellant open-source codec out there in xvid.
For which you may, alas, have to pay a licence fee to MPEG-LA (depending on you usage). I agree that xvid is excellent, but it comes with strings. Theora does not -- probably (nobody can be sure given the current state of the patent system in certain locales).
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Especially when the Vorbis download page for Windows doesn't have a link to the damn (unofficial) Directshow codec on it.
Hint to the Vorbis guys: People are more likely to adopt a format when they don't have to change their media player. Start giving people easy links to useful binaries god dammit.
Hell. If I was a webmaster for Vorbis there would be a big "DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS" button on the front page which is linked to a Directshow codec.
Yeah, but it's not the fault of the format, it's the fault of "Who the hell needs it?"
From the point of view of the general population, how does MP3 not fulfill their needs? They don't feel the need for anything more, so there's no need for OGG.
But.......my file manager (and sometimes my browser) is launching the player based on the file extension.
What the hell do you use?
MIME-types, baby.
Extensions are for suckers. I mean, even Windows gets it now.
I think I need a new sig here.
Actually, all of the file extensions people use are dumb. The file extension only really matters in any deep way to the user; the computer can determine trivially what's in it. The user never cares what container the file uses, and rarely cares what codec it uses. The user cares how the file behaves when played: Does it make noise? Does it look like anything? Does it have text? Does it change over time?
.png, .gif, and .jpg should be .img; .mng and some .mpg and .wmv should be .vid; .wav, .ogg, and .mp3 should be .aud; and most .mpg and .wmv and now some .ogg should be .av; given that the situation is already hopeless, it doesn't really matter that they're using .ogg for both.
In order to be sensible,
If the people who chose file extensions ran a supermarket, it would sell "cardboard boxes", "jars", "cans", and "plastic bags".
By the same token there was no need for AAC either. Yet somehow that one made it into a player. I'm not sure whether we can really blame the public, or whether the true blame should go to the device manufacturers for not making their devices upgradeable to support more formats.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
short-sighted moron.
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OGG isn't as good as AAC.
Actually, they are close enough that this is arguable. In any event, Ogg passes the "Good Enough" test. So does AAC, of course.
I don't know about this new thing, but I find it hard to believe that it's as good as MPEG-4 at high bit rates or Sorenson at low bit rates.
It's my understanding that Theora isn't as good as MPEG4 at equivalent bit rates. Not sure about Sorenson. Theora should actually be better than MPEG2, and for many applications MPEG2 passes the "Good Enough" test.
Of course, over time, as people come up with clever tricks, the encoders get better. It happened with MPEG and MPEG2, and Theora still has plenty of room to improve.
But if Theora isn't suitable for your application, you can always license MPEG4 or Sorenson or something. I'm certainly not saying that Theora is the all-purpose answer to everything.
It's a pain in the ass to use a nonstandard codec, so why bother?
Actually, because I am a Debian user, it's more of a pain for me to use IP-encumbered tools. So why should I bother?
And I'm not asking you to use Theora. I'm just telling you that you shouldn't say abusive rude things about the folks who are interested in it.
Fraunhofer's own business plan keeps them from "getting too greedy."
Can you count on that? How do you know that pointy-haired idiots won't make dumb decisions? It would be dumb to pick several of your customers and sue them, and drive away all possible future customers, but SCO did that.
Besides, the very fact that you'd consider a company's pursuit of profit through licensing of patented technology to be "getting too greedy" makes me laugh at you derisively. Ha-ha.
Go back and read what I wrote. I haven't argued that patent holders shouldn't be allowed to charge royalties; I pointed out that if you don't use IP-encumbered formats, no one can force you to pay royalties.
There's absolutely no interpretation of patent law that would result in that interpretation.
Um... how about the ability of patent owners to decide under what terms, and for what fees, they license the patent? If you are using patented technology, you have to comply with the terms of your patent license, don't you?
They can't tell you "AND by the way you also owe us big royalties for last year." They can't change the deal retroactively. But as long as they own the patent, they could set a license fee and license terms that you would need to honor in the future, unless you have some sort of signed agreement with them that took precedence.
Frauhofer let everyone use MP3 for free for a few years, then changed the deal and started charging. Are you saying that could never happen again?
[free software distributions like Debian...] are irrelevant to any serious discussion. We're talking about the real world here, not the lunatic fringe.
You really are a rude troll. No doubt you are laughing at me for taking the time to talk to you. Well, I won't make that mistake anymore.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
So, it would be fair to say then, that it is arguable whether AAC is really better than Ogg?
Stop reading in the middle and you end up drawing erroneous conclusions, putz.
That's funny, Ogg seems to be available for every computer platform I care about.
Yawn.
There are many portable music players that don't support it
End of discussion.
AAC doesn't meet my needs better than Ogg, so for me Ogg is better.
Yes, it does. You're just perversely misrepresenting your own needs, either out of sheer ignorance or wrongheadedness.
Hell, I wouldn't even trust you to be able to elaborate on what your needs are.
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You assume that I don't need Linux, which is wrong.
Nobody needs Linux. Linux doesn't do anything that another operating system doesn't do better. The only virtue Linux has is that it's cheap.
If you think you need Linux, you're deluding yourself.
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