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Theora 1.0 Released, Supported By Firefox
YA_Python_dev writes "The Xiph.Org Foundation announced Monday the release of Theora 1.0.
Theora is a free/open source video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties.
Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera will play natively Ogg/Theora videos with the new HTML5 element <video src="file.ogv"></video>, and ffmpeg2theora offers an easy way to create content.
Theora developers are already working on a 1.1 encoder that offers better quality/bitrate ratio, while producing streams backward-compatible with the current decoder." Adds reader logfish: "Since its bit-stream freeze in June of 2004 there have been numerous speed-ups and bug-fixes. Although Nokia claimed it to be proprietary almost a year ago, nothing has been proven. So now it's time to help it take over the internet, and finally push for video sites filled with Theora encoded vlogs, blurts and idle nonsense."
Just like MKV hardly anything will play it, but unlike MKV it doesn't actually add anything useful.
Mod me troll if you like, but I speak the truth.
The bitstream format was frozen, not the code.
On Linux, you have a hard time finding a player who doesn't support the Matroska format. On windows, VLC, which supports the MKV format, is a very popular video player, even for normal users.
There's certainly better quality codecs out there, compared to 1.0. Take a look at the work happening now on 1.1, though, it gets very competitive:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo5.html
Dirac (see http://diracvideo.org/) probably has much more potential to become the next generation open video codec. From what I understand it is more cutting edge and than Theora due to e.g. the use of wavelets.
Think of Theora as a successor to MPEG-1 on the web. It works everywhere, is easy to support, and doesn't need much CPU to play back (so you can use it for mobile sites), and the quality is 'good enough' but not great. At the other end there's Dirac (which also went 1.0 recently), which provides amazing quality but at the cost of much higher CPU loads. If you're streaming films or HDTV episodes, you'd want to consider something like Dirac. If you're just showing little clips and you want them to just work, you'd use Theora (well, at the moment you'd use MPEG-1, but hopefully in the future you can use Theora).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Flash doesn't just work. It requires a proprietary plugin that crashes my browser all the time, and is not 64-bit.
It's the only video format allowed on world #8 site Wikipedia.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
See:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo5.html
http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ffmpeg2theora-0.22-thusnelda.exe
And this is only the start. Just look at what the Lame encoder was able to do with the MP3 format in quality.
I believe that was the point the parent was trying to make. MPEG has a cost, so Matroska has that benefit of not having those kinds of costs.
AVI is not a codec, it's a container. The audio and video of an AVI file could be pretty much any format, with whatever feature sets of those codecs.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
People and companies likes flash players because it usually just works. The days of embedding video objects are dying because in practice this is what would happen:
1. WMV files would lock up or you would have to spend 20 minutes at windows update downloading the newest wmp or reinstalling the plug-in.
2. Mac users would complain that WMV files arent working.
3. Realplayer would do the same, except the install would crap up your computer and ruin all your file associations. You would also have to troubleshoot plugin issues.
4. Quicktime files would crash the browser and then you would have to install the newest version usually along with itunes in a 60+ meg download. Windows users would complain how crazppy quicktime is.
5. Someone would embed an avi and no one would be able to play it because end users have no idea what codecs are.
6. Some plugins would work in IE but not in Firefox.
What flash did is put all video in one cross-playform container and player. Turns out people like it this way.
So is MKV, just a container.
factor 966971: 966971
Use Gstreamer as-installed on your existing system. Put this in a simple bash script and have-at:
gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location="$1" ! decodebin name=decoder { oggmux name=muxer ! filesink location="$2" } { decoder. ! ffmpegcolorspace ! theoraenc ! queue ! muxer. } { decoder. ! queue ! audioconvert ! queue ! muxer. }
Add the Fluendo codecs, and you have a properly patent-licensed, legal way to transcode most popular media to no-patent-royalties media types.
Judging by google results, it sounds like "video microblogging", a la Twitter.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
Xiph had the Software Freedom Law Center help establish that Nokia's claims were untrue. Mozilla sought counseling from lawyers before supporting Theora. Is that enough?
The object tag is not a great way of doing anything. It requires too much knowledge of the plugin that will be used to render it to be at all nice to work with. The big difference between the audio and video tags in HTML 5 and the object tag in HTML 4 is that they have a set of well-defined parameters. If you want to use an object tag for video, you need a set of param tags inside it giving parameters to the player. Each player (WMV, Quicktime, VLC, etc.) understands a slightly different set, and the set a generic plugin for video should understand is not defined by the standard.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Oh, and to answer this question:
The answer is, yes, depending on the codec in question (for example, Microsoft would pay the MPEG-LA to distribute an MPEG2 video decoder). But keep in mind, a file format, in and of itself, isn't subject to patent. It's the methods used to create the file format that are the problem. So exporting to, say, DOC format is fine, since there's no magically algorithm necessary to do that. MPEG2, however, required implementation of patented algorithms, hence the licensing requirements.
Many posters here are confusing two things here: codecs and containers. Theora is the videocodec, OGG the container (which has the extension .ogv). OGG (as per .ogv) is also the standard container for Theora, which Firefox supports. But, MKV being really a superior container on pretty much all fronts, could contain Theora equally well as any containerformat (actually, better IMHO).
Just making sure everyone is talking about the same thing.
And anyone who watches anime in quality higher than "youtube" already knows about CCPC. Among those groups, MKV is incredibly popular due to its smooth handling of styled subtitles and multiple audio tracks.
The question is, can free-as-in-beer, inferior open source compete against free-as-in-beer, superior closed source?
x264 is open source and gives way better quality than Theora - but it is also a patent minefield and you will need to get in contact with MPEG-LA if you plan on doing commercial stuff etc.
Easy. On Windows, create a shortcut to it on the Desktop, or just have the executable on the Desktop. User can just drag a video file onto it, a Window pops up telling them the time left, and when it's done an Ogg Theora video file is dropped in the same directory as the original video, and with the same name (but with .ogv). No need to break out the command line.
Commons:File types - this is what is permitted by the WMF MediaWiki installation.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
Sure, you can consider it to be free, but boy is that ever not what free means.
And a publically available spec means little or nothing. Patents are publically available, but try implementing those and see if you manage to escape the long arm of the litigator.
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Here's a link that compares last years Theora with xvid and divx:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo.html
Note that this is before the major changes made this summer and the major changes still coming (in the encoder). The VP3 technology actually puts it between MPEG-4 ASP (xvid/divx) and H264 in theoretically achievable quality, it's just that the encoder has been extremely badly tuned up until this summer, because of lack of interest. If Theora can catch up to MPEG-4 ASP codecs and perhaps even close in on H264, it would make for an excellent patentfree codec.
Thank you for retarding the progress of Good Technology like MPEG-4 H.264/AVC and MPEG-4 AAC.
If their creators hadn't made those codecs prohibitively expensive to license, W3C would probably be advocating them. You're getting mad at the wrong people.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
That "nothing has been proven" comment is pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek, just like the "take over the Internet" part.
The video encoding field is crowded with patents, so it's probably impossible to do something like Theora without needing a patent license. But Theora is based on some patented technology (VP3) whose patents have been donated for free use, irrevocably forever. And Theora is free, open source software with a BSD license. If you use the Ogg container format, Theora video, and Vorbis audio, you have a completely free media format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora
So, you can use Theora for any purpose, without needing to pay royalties, without needing to get permission. That's why it's so funny that Nokia claimed Theora is "proprietary"... I do not think that word means what they think it does.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
This then gets rewritten to java cortado for IE clients. Or if you don't like cortado and would prefer flash fallback:
Or if you want to make the video accessible with multiple downloadable video formats and multiple timed text tracks (annotations, multiple subtitle languages and what have you) all pulled from xml via JSON request (to support remote embedding) all auto-scrolled/updated with javascript based on whatever underlining playback system your browser supports:
(uses ROE for the xml format) presently in use in blogs such as this one
ASP is not obsolete in any kind of sense.
Apple didn't support Mpeg-4 ASP, they jumped from mpeg-4 SP to h264 directly. So that is probably why your iPhone can display h264 but not mpeg-4 ASP. People think Apple does the best mpeg4/h264 apps on planet, it is not true. They support them, they help them take off but it doesn't mean Quicktime or devices based on it (iPhone) is some benchmark/test devices to help you choose what is obsolete or not.
There are major 2 profiles in mpeg-4 (except h264/part 10). One is SP and other is ASP. If you target Quicktime people or low speed CPU devices, you stay away from using ASP forcing features. If you target Sony PSP people or anyone with a decent smart phone, you use ASP features. On 3G, you better stay away from anything having "advanced" in its name :)
BTW mpeg4 isn't proprietary, it is open. It is just patented by lots and lots of vendors/organisations.
It sounds like you don't understand the issue. Proving that a piece of code does not contain patented things is basically impossible.
Firefox would have to pay the maximum fee as would every derived product. Thats not so cheap (4Million+ freking dollars better spent *anywhere* else). And if you think it so cheap, will you donate that money please.
You are also forgetting the fees for producing content in H264 that come into effect later.
They are also leaving out a *lot* of fine print. In order to get a license you don't just have to pay, but you must agree to the license terms (aka hardware players must use zone flags, DRM etc). There is more than they tell you without NDAs. Not to mention all the lawyer fees in between.
They are not even going to let you pay a blanket fee for a product that others can use "free" in there own products. No matter what you pay. Because then there is no one else that needs a license and hence no one to tie into these extra terms.
Also what makes you think the fees won't increase at a latter date?
Encumbered means just that. Encumbered.
ps I have talked to them about a license......
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
'Its just like today we can't imagine someone coming out with a proprietary image format and expecting people to adopt it. ' ... you do realize that the most popular image formats are proprietary right?
Here you go then. Xvid and Theora 1.1 on the same page. It's catching up in terms of quality.
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo.html