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Theora Ahead of H.264 In Objective PSNR Quality
bigmammoth writes "Xiph hackers have been hard at work improving the Theora codec over the past year, with the latest versions gaining on and passing h.264 in objective PSNR quality measurements. From the update: 'Amusingly, it also shows test versions of Thusnelda pulling ahead of h.264 in terms of objective quality as bitrate increases. It's important to note that PSNR is an objective measure that does not exactly represent perceived quality, and PSNR measurements have always been especially kind to Theora. This is also data from a single clip. That said, it's clear that the gap in the fundamental infrastructure has closed substantially before the task of detailed subjective tuning has begun in earnest.'
Momentum is building with a major Open Video Conference in June, the impending launch of Firefox 3.5 and excitement about wider adoption in a top-4 web site. It's looking like free video codecs may pose a serious threat to the h.264 bait-and-switch plan to start charging millions for internet streaming of h.264 in 2010."
If they pretend it is going to be free until people get locked in, then pull the pay me or get sued stunt.... then yes.
This might not pose that much of a threat to H264, sounds like another OGG or FLAC.
Theora sounds like another OGG, huh? Imagine that.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
What software agreement? I think that they are licensing patents. They have merely said that you don't have to pay to use the patents before 2010, but if you use the patents after that, you may need to pay (depending on volume). Yes, products that have shipped will be safe, but most companies want to continue shipping products, which will be affected by the royalty demands.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
No royalties were levied on mp3 implementations until MPEG changed their minds in 1998, ironically not long after the format really took off, and delivered Cease-and-Desists to every free encoder project and a bunch of companies too.
"Thanks, boys, for promoting our format for us. We thought it was only good for hold music over ISDN! Since you did such a fabulous job, we're gonna have to ask you to hand everything over right fucking now or we sue you into oblivion. Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out."
Don't you remember that was the whole reason Ogg and Vorbis got started? We just had Unisys/GIF threaten to sue everyone, then we had MPEG threatening to sue everyone and someone finally had the guts to say no fucking more. MPEG can't even keep its own members from suing each other, and you plan to trust them for the basis of your own smaller business?
But one thing is funny, MPEG has mostly (mostly) behaved since then. Maybe MPEG is only playing fair now *because* of Ogg? Ogg is pretty much the only viable non-MPEG codec effort left.
I'm less worried about benchmarks, more worried about, you know, seeing an actual production, ready for end-user codec released. This only finally happened end of 2008 to all of no fanfare (I didn't see it on /. or anywhere). That is a loooong time they've been messing with it (2001 was when VP3 with open).
The problem is, if you take forever to make it "perfect" you miss the boat. The reason MP3 got so popular is not because it was the first compressed music standard capable of near CD quality. It was also not because it is the best lossy compression standard. It is because it was good enough, at the right time. It's compression level was small enough that people found it usable (as opposed to things like ADPCM which do knock the size down, but not enough) on the technology of the day, and it did it while giving quality good enough people liked it.
So in my opinion it really is to late, they needed to release a couple years ago. As it stands, I think they've missed the boat. Blu-ray is done and uses VC-1, MPEG-4, and MPEG-2, ATSC is done, uses MPEG-2, Flash Video uses H.263 and VP6 (and also H.264), mobile stuff uses MPEG-4 (part 2 and 10). They have just missed the boat. So they release a codec in a year or two or five that's maybe a little better than MPEG-4 part 10... Ok so what? Nobody will really care. Net connections only get faster, harddrives get larger, so even if you offer 20% better compression it doesn't matter, people will stick with the standard.
Vorbis had more of a chance since it actually did get released around the time that there was interest in upgrading from MP3 to something better for some things. However they largely lost out (it does have some use, in game engines for example) in part because of their silly naming and in part because of their poor surround support. However Theora is too little too late as far as I can tell. The world is already settling in to their HD codecs and once the standards get entrenched, they'll stay there until there's a compelling reason to switch.
Timing is important. If your product isn't ready when it is needed, it isn't going to get used no matter how awesome it is in the end.
"Ogg" is actually a term from an early internet game.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogging
Theora is named after Theora Jones, a secondary heroine character from the movie 'Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future' about a dystopian future where video media is overwhelming, centralized, oppressive, dangerous, and an off switch on a television is illegal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora_Jones#Theora_Jones
"Xiph" is actually from the Greek ξÎÏÎÏ (sword) by way of 'Xiphophorus' (sword-bearing, pseudolatin?) from the genus name of a fish (Xiphophorus helleri). Which is where I picked it up in middle school. I'd been using it for my software projects since I was 14 or so and by the time Xiph.Org was a real thing [many many years later] I wanted to change the name to something less silly and my co-founders voted me down. They liked Xiph. It became the precedent-setting silly name.
Vorbis is from Terry Pratchett's _Small Gods_ and I dearly hope Mr. Pratchett considers it a compliment. It was meant as tribute to my favorite fictional villain, Archdeacon Vorbis. "A mind like a steel marble"