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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 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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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Or rather, almost no uptake outside and very little inside of the Linux community... I see a lot of people talking about it, wishing for stuff and so on, but very few that actually use it even inside of said community.
And oh, whoever moderated the parent funny, that should have been "Insightful". =)
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).
ogg.dll
vorbis.dll
vorbisfile.dll and
xiph_license.txt
So even MS seems to be using vorbis.
(Note: my version of Halo is a warez version and someone may have just included those files themselves)
Well, the reason Microsoft includes codecs for download on their site is that the codec producer paid them to do so. They're not giving away bandwidth just because it's cool.
If you want to get DivX, Theora, Ogg or WHATEVER in WMP, you'd have to pay the same price Intel does. It's not impossible, and if it's important to the community to do so, have a project manager get in touch with Microsoft and we'll start a collection.
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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
But OGGs *are* that much smaller. I found that -q5 (~160kbs) were as good as 192kbs VBR MP3s. I ripped 80 CDs and found that the OGGs took 4.52GB vs 5.76GB for the MP3s. I have 20GB on my iHP-120, so to fill it with 20GB of MP3s will be only 15.7GB of OGGs... or alternatively, I can fit 70-80 more CDs encoded as OGG. Unfortunately it's not that simple as OGGs at this bitrate run the battery down in 11-12 hours, whereas MP3s last 16 or more.
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
Hey, I converted all 3,000 of my mp3s to ogg sometime in 2003.
Don't bother replying about the degradation in quality; I didn't notice it, and I prefer the oggs anyway for other reasons.
I recently ripped all my cd's and used vorbis instead of mp3. Admitedly the vast majority of my digital music collection is still mp3 but I think it is inaccuarate to say that no one is using vorbis.
What a load of rubbish. I switched to Ogg years ago, and I know I'm not the only one. Almost all rippers E.g gRip default to Ogg output and even the venerable cdrtools includes cdda2ogg. I'd personally say it's easier to rip to Ogg than it is MP3 these days.