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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."
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
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.
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).
Audio is often used in a portable sense and the market was saturated by MP3 files way before Vorbis came along - it didn't just have to be good, it had to be so much better that it could kill the competitor and motivate hardware purchases of compatible players, and to be fair it is good but not _that_ good. It is comforting to know that there is a high quality, open and unencumbered format there - trusting a market where there is no incentive to keep your patented codecs free (as in beer) is dangerous but a free (as in speech) codec deters patent issues since people can make the switch if using MP3 is made too inconvenient. In that capacity the existance of vorbis comforts me, but I won't use it until it runs on my iPod. Having said that, most games seem to use vorbis audio for their in-game sounds so it's got more marketshare than many people think.
In terms of video there is not a real portable market (meaning no hardware replacement needed) nor is there a codec to which there is 'no competition' in terms of uptake like MP3 for audio. This gives theora a much better chance of taking off - all it needs is a little download, no selling on your iPod for an ogg compatible hardware player. The video market is a much more level playing field giving theora a chance to stand up on its merits rather than desparately clawing at the heels of an established standard, and even if it does not gain dominance what I said about providing an incentive to stay free and a possibility to switch is comforting - if DRM becomes too bad or divx goes paid there will always be something I can switch to.
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.
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