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."

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Re:Containers...

[rsmith-mac]

Matroska isn't an MPEG standard. It's patent and royalty free, and the standard itself is open for FOSS to implement (as many have).

Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking

[Anonymous Coward]

Theora quality is good enough. You may be able to see a difference under a microscope but not to the human eye.

To get a good quality video, from A to Z must be quality, not just one step.

Many convert a MPEG video into Theora and say Theora video is not good quality. MPEG means video is already compressed and data is dropped as part of the encoding process. You don't take a such a video and convert the format to Theora and drop data again as part of the Theora encoding process. Its of course not good quality then, because data is dropped twice.

To get real quality video in Theora, you should get a raw video and convert to Theora. I have converted a raw video footage shot by a RED camera (http://www.red.com/) into Theora, I don't see any quality issue. Its crisp clear.

In digital camcoders this is what is done inside, ie. it first shot in raw and then convert to MPEG. I have not come across a video camera that convert to Theora natively inside the camera. If it does, there should not be any quality difference compared to MPEG.

Sagara

Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking

[bigmammoth]

The fact that the quality improvements for theora 1.1 put it on par with a base mpeg4 implementation while not on par with the most recent h264 encoders is not really relevant in the larger sense.

Once a free codec becomes widely adopted the chance of some proprietary codec coming along afterwards is near zero. Its just like today we can't imagine someone coming out with a proprietary image format and expecting people to adopt it.

Its relatively easy to add in support for Dirac or some future free codec once there is support for a free codec ecosystem. No one will pay h264 licensing costs when quality free alternatives are vibrant. The entrenched proprietary systems are being pushed aside for free alternatives. This 1.0 release is a step towards that direction, not as big of a step once firefox 3.1 ships but an important step ;)

Re:Horray

[freddy_dreddy]

that's used on a site that gets over a million visitors each day

WP isn't a video server, a very small amount of their pages contain moving images. They can have as many visitors a day as you want, they all go there for text & images. Youtube is the #3, is 100% video and not a bit of theora there.