YouTube, HTML5, and Comparing H.264 With Theora

David Gerard writes "Google Chrome includes Ogg support for the <video> element. It also includes support for the hideously encumbered H.264 format. Nice as an extra, but ... they're also testing HTML5 YouTube only for H.264 — meaning the largest video provider on the Net will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines. Mike Shaver from Mozilla has fairly unambiguously asked Chris DiBona from Google what the heck Google thinks it's doing." DiBona responded with concerns that switching to Theora while maintaining quality would take up an incredible amount of bandwidth for a site like YouTube, though he made clear his support for the continued improvement of the project. Greg Maxwell jumped into the debate by comparing the quality of Ogg/Theora+Vorbis with the current YouTube implementations using H.263+MP3 and H.264+AAC. At the lower bitrate, Theora seems to have the clear edge, while the higher bitrate may slightly favor H.264. He concludes that YouTube's adoption of "an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate."

Comments

Theora FAIL

[drinkypoo]

Understanding TFA linked from your "equally good" link to a slashdot story? YOU FAIL IT!!! From TFA:

Let me reiterate- and this is important- as folks have run way too far cherrypicking quotes from this update: Both before and after the correction, this graph shows only that Theora is improving. PSNR means very little when comparing Theora directly to x264. PSNR is an objective measure that does not represent perceived quality (though they correlate), and PSNR measurements have always been especially kind to Theora. None of these PSNR measurements, including clips where Thusnelda 'wins', mean that Thusnelda beats x264 in perceived quality, as it certainly does not (yet ;-), only that the gap is closing even before the task of detailed subjective tuning has begun in earnest.

So just to recap, you have suggested that Ogg Theora video provides quality comparable to H.264 based on a study using a specific development-version Ogg Theora video codec and a specific H.264 encoder (x264) which is NOT the best encoder around, when it in fact has inferior SnR (the only thing the study was meant to test) as compared to x264, which has inferior SnR as compared to other H.264 encoders?
I don't know who failed bigger, you, Soulskill, or the peoples of slashdot who actually use the firehose... but you have all failed miserably.

With all that said; is there any reason they can't add Theora support later?

Re:Theora FAIL

[Jurily]

With all that said; is there any reason they can't add Theora support later?

The codec Youtube uses will severely affect everything else on the net, if they come out first. You can't deny that.

How long will it take for IE to have support for another codec? They will have Youtube support in no time, I guarantee you that.

Re:Theora FAIL

[BikeHelmet]

But right now they're using H.263, so anything is an improvement! :D

I remember when I had a perfect quality 256kbit video. I uploaded it to youtube, and it got transcoded into a blurry ~512kbit mess with audio desynced.

Re:Theora FAIL

[IntlHarvester]

Windows 7 is apparently coming with a H.264 codec as part of windows media. Question is how long it will take them to implement HTML5 video.

Re:Theora FAIL

[mariushm]

IE will probably render any video tag through Silverlight, forcing you to install it. That's how you make market share for your products in Microsoft land.
On the good side, Silverlight 3 has support for both WMV and h264 and can decode them in hardware using the video card.

Re:Theora FAIL

[wgoodman]

If you're so irritated that this got posted, why not vote things down on the firehose instead of just talking shit about those that voted it up?

You're one of those people who bitches about whomever is the president, but doesn't bother to vote, aren't you?

Re:Theora FAIL

[IntlHarvester]

I don't see a problem with this approach. One of the silly things about HTML5 is that it looks like browser vendors are all going to run off and implement their own media stacks. Which just increases bloat and potential security issues. Why not just use WM, QT, or whatever comes with the OS?

Not to mention that if I'm RTFAing correctly, Firefox's <video> tag is already incompatible with Chrome's.

Re:Theora FAIL

[samkass]

The "high quality" YouTube videos are all h.264/AAC already, and have been for at least a year. Never having uploaded to YouTube, I don't know how to specify a video as high-quality, but I know there are many h.264 as those are the only YouTube videos viewable on the iPhone, for which there are many.

Re:Theora FAIL

[samkass]

YouTube may have some effect on the de-facto internet codecs, but Theora has been losing this battle for awhile now so this isn't an out-of-the-blue decision. Many desktop and embedded video chips can decode h.264 in hardware, it's the primary Blu-Ray codec, it's used in several video chat applications, and many cable and satellite providers are going from MPEG2 to h.264. In addition, YouTube has been using h.264/AAC for over a year for "high quality" videos and videos delivered to iPhones, so they already have an h.264 infrastructure.

And for consumers, it actually seems to work really well. The "encumbered" nature of the codec may affect some tiny number of people, but for most it appears to be a huge win.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Jurily]

I don't see a problem with this approach. One of the silly things about HTML5 is that it looks like browser vendors are all going to run off and implement their own media stacks. Which just increases bloat and potential security issues. Why not just use WM, QT, or whatever comes with the OS?

We've been through this a couple of times now. Prove Microsoft's implementation is as secure as the one in Firefox, and I'll listen to you.

To look on the bright side, IE6 will finally die.

Re:Theora FAIL

[hairyfeet]

Good point. My Radeon 4650 supports hardware decoding of Divx, WMV, and h264. Does Theora even have a hardware accelerated codec? With the rise of netbooks, green computing, and the Ion Netbook solution it is pretty obvious that hardware assisted video decoding is where the market is headed. So even if Theora gets "good enough" (which reading TFA may be awhile yet) if Theora doesn't come up with a good hardware assisted decoder and quick I'm guessing it will be a non starter.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Ralish]

Your argument subtly implies that Firefox's implementation is more secure, without providing any proof of your own assertion. Bluntly, Firefox's security record has been far from top-notch for quite some time now, and while their patch response times tend to be excellent, this doesn't change the fact that security vulnerabilities of varying severity are still frequently occuring; and we're all familiar with Microsoft's security record. I can't conclude which implementation is likely more secure.

Which is irrelevant anyway, as you've missed the point of the GP's post in the first place (did you listen?). His argument was that if the OS supports decoding the video format, which it will if it's a modern consumer OS, why should every browser then implement its own media stack to provide a service that the OS already provides? You just end up with a proliferation of software that all does exactly the same thing. Thus, you end up with more security issues (as each implementation will almost certainly have security flaws throughout its lifetime) and more bloat (code duplication, and increase in code size for each respective browser implementing its own media stack).

You can be surgical here and note that this doesn't necessarily translate to greater exploitation, just more security issues. Lots of different media stacks means different exploits, meaning different exploit code, and incompatibility is high. So, any given exploit might only be able to target a small subdomain of the overall browser market, but this is really just a security through obscurity argument, and good security practices (e.g. sandboxing) should mitigate such concerns, and all browsers should have either implemented such technologies or have it on their roadmap.

I understand the value in having a variety of different options, but implementing a solution for no express reason than to offer an alternative, is inherently pointless. It has to have an advantage (and no, being open-source isn't an advantage for most), so if the OS implementation is up to snuff, then the GP does have a valid point.

Re:Theora FAIL

[benwaggoner]

Prove Microsoft's implementation is as secure as the one in Firefox, and I'll listen to you.

And how does one "prove" security again :)?

Anyway, given the WMP OCX component has been in the market and supported code for many years with a good security track record, it seems validation would be more needed for Firefox's brand-new beta code.

Re:Theora FAIL

[iluvcapra]

Question is how long it will take them to implement HTML5 video.

They'll get to it, just after they've managed to properly implement HTML.

Re:Theora FAIL

[roca]

Where by "some tiny number of people" you mean "everyone broadcasting H.264 on the Internet, next year when the moratorium on H.264 Internet broadcast fees runs out".

Re:Theora FAIL

[IntlHarvester]

We've been through this a couple of times now. Prove Microsoft's implementation is as secure as the one in Firefox, and I'll listen to you.

To look on the bright side, IE6 will finally die.

Yes, we have been through this before, and the conclusion was that shared libraries beat a multitude of statically compiled versions.

I'm certainly not implying that any implementation is any more insecure - they have all had their problems.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Jurily]

They'll get to it, just after they've managed to properly implement HTML.

So I can view videos and play Duke Nukem Forever together?

Re:Theora FAIL

[segedunum]

You failed to grasp the point of TFA. The point here is that using an encumbered format when we already live in a heavily proprietary and encumbered world with regards to the web and multimedia already, be it Flash or Windows Media, when it goes against the spirit of what the video tag was supposed to promote is not a particularly great idea. The relative quality of H.264 and Ogg Theora is just a red herring next to that, especially with respect to the inferior video quality we have through Flash and YouTube today. I think Chris DiBona knows it's a red herring as well, but they have to try and explain away their use of an encumbered format in some way.

Even then though, you fail on understanding TFA completely anyway because the issue Chris raised was not about quality but about the increased bandwidth requirements. That definitely is a red herring and the linked article pointed that out. So the text of the Slashdot article is a bit off-base in what the article was trying to say? Tell me something new. It wouldn't hurt to just read it.

With all that said; is there any reason they can't add Theora support later?

They could, but the format they support first has implications. Picking a far less free and encumbered format is not a great start.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Shikaku]

Youtube flash player also support Closed captioning, Tag editor etc.
I am not sure if this can be replace by a HTML 5 browser + JavaScript

You obviously have never coded dynamic web pages. Yes you can.

Re:Theora FAIL

[master5o1]

I am in partial agreement: The browser venders should be implementing HOOKS to the operating system's native multimedia libraries. In Windows, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera should all be hooking into DirectShow, QuickTime if installed, ffmpeg if installed, VLC's libraries, if VLC is installed.

In Linux distributions, Firefox, etc should all hook into FFmpeg, Gstreamer, etc.
On MacOS X, Safari (etc) should hook into QuickTime.

They should be acting more like any other media player: Implement the native multimedia API, rather than 'create' your own. This way all browser should be able to support as many codecs as the operating system can support.

Re:Theora FAIL

[sootman]

So you're saying that the submitter linked to a Slashdot story to support his position but, in true Slashdot style, the original submission was inaccurate and, also in true Slashdot style, he didn't actually read the original FA?

Is there something in Slashcode that prevents links to stories from working? I've never clicked one myself, so I can't say for sure. Can someone check and report back?

Re:Theora FAIL

[mabhatter654]

the point is that the codex part of Theora is pretty settled down. Sure it's slow, but it's FREE... really Free just like png or HTML. The HTML5 group isn't mandating that people HAVE to use Theora for commercial sites. What they're really after is that ALL web browsers will support Ogg & Theora as part of the basic specification. Then everybody will be able to have multimedia functions without paying anybody royalties. It's the companies with interest in their own pony that are causing the problems because they like having everybody have to pay "somebody" for multimedia.

Re:Theora FAIL

[mabhatter654]

the spec is designed to be open and to use whatever the vendor wants to include. That's good. Along the way the HTML5 folks are trying to throw Free Software a bone by using Ogg and Theora as the "preferred" spec partly as a matter of philosophy and partly as a matter of pragmatism .

The big problem is Apple and Noika. Both of which build hardware and both have significant browser interests now... webkit and Qt (covering Safari, Nokia phones, and Chrome].Both also have no problem being buddy with the media companies and other patent holders. Unlike Firefox and Opera, Apple and Nokia are part of the patent club and see no need to "rock the boat" for "moral principal" reasons. Hence people keep berating Ogg & Theora simply so that they look "right" by not playing along simply because they don't want to and it conflicts with their other interests.

Re:Theora FAIL

[dirtyhippie]

Exactly. Google would have to implement hardware decoding of theora, and then roll that out to all of its servers. We're talking about a huge investment there, so, lamentably, that's a non-starter. My guess is google is also using H264 for their highest resolution format, which means transcoding to theora would also introduce significant generation loss, whereas downcoding H264 to H264 is doable with far fewer artifacts.

Saying the issue was bandwidth was bogus, but how often are companies straight with customers about their internal reasons for doing or not doing something?

Re:Theora FAIL

[KibibyteBrain]

I think the big factor everyone is missing in terms of quality of these codecs are the tools. Theora encoders are far behind those for x264 in terms of performance and just about everything else, and other associated tools are similar. Even if theora was clearly better than x264 it would still be unappealing to web services doing encoding because of this. Also, good luck finding "hardware theora decoding" in low end computers ever while right now you can get a netbook with hardware h.264 decode. Without efficient decoding, there really would be little reason to leave the status quo of flash, after all.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Anonymous Coward]

It has to have an advantage (and no, being open-source isn't an advantage for most)

That is biggest pile of crap argument out there. Why do people suffer (and do they suffer) stitching together HTML/CSS/Javascript/XMLHttpRequest on top of language/framework/app server/database abstraction layer to produce feature poor anemic applications on top of a page based metaphor that was never ever intended for such use? Programming such applications is painful, slow, and error prone. Why? Because to date, it is the only practicable way to produce platform agnostic applications. People want that; which is why the web is the biggest app platform on the planet. So what makes web apps platform agnostic? They are OPEN. If you don't get that, you don't deserve access to a computer.

Of course, "platform agnostic" gives a certain segment of the industry conniptions, so they keep trying to do anything they can to fuck things up for the rest of us.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Curien]

You obviously didn't bother to look at the spec at all. The DOM for all media elements (which includes video elements) allows you to specify a callback function to execute at certain timestamps.

(You can also just read the current playback position, eg from a timer callback, but that only provides 1-second precision.)

Re:Theora FAIL

[sirsnork]

Why would google be doing any decoding?

All they do is send the file to the client where the client decodes it using whatever method they choose. Now hardware encoding to Theora would help tem cut down the time if they were doing a mass conversion.

Re:Theora FAIL

[tyrione]

Correction: WebKit and QtWebKit, respectively.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Daengbo]

The actual article uses Big Buck Bunny and runs it through YouTube's own low-def (H.263+MP3) and high-def (H.264+AAC) encoders, then compares the videos to the same size videos done in OGG (Theora+Vorbis). The results? Up to personal interpretation, but OGG seems to win handily in both audio and video on low-res and be within spitting distance on high-def.

The goal of the experiment was to disprove the statement that switching to OGG would greatly increase bandwidth costs. It met that goal. Reading more into the experiment is unnecessary.

Re:Theora FAIL

[CowboyBob500]

Given that the patent for the codec is only valid in the US and Japan, I'd say the people affected are in a minority, yes.

Re:Theora FAIL

[CowboyBob500]

Picking a far less free and encumbered format is not a great start.

You need to change your line of attack. Given that any patents on these codecs are only applicable in the US (and possibly Japan), most of the world really doesn't care about whether they are "encumbered" or not and just wants the best codec for the job (which seems to be H.264 in this case). You need to focus on the broken US patent system, rather than the codec being used as your arguments fall on deaf ears for all but the most ardent FOSS supporters once you get beyond the US border.

Re:Theora FAIL

[mad.frog]

The browser venders should be implementing HOOKS to the operating system's native multimedia libraries

That would be awesome!

Then we'd see plenty of websites with "This website looks best when run with Windows Media 23 installed". (Or "Quicktime 13", or "Flash 14", or "libtheora1234"... etc)

It'd be just like 1998 all over again! KEWL!

Re:Theora FAIL

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Its a browser. Not an interface between every computer on the net and my installed library's. Really this sounds like a terrible idea.

Re:Theora FAIL

[moosesocks]

IE will probably render any video tag through Silverlight, forcing you to install it. That's how you make market share for your products in Microsoft land./p>

Uhm. Won't IE just include Silverlight by default? I'm failing to see any grand conspiracy here.

There's no "forcing" either. You're always welcome to use Firefox. (As an aside, Microsoft even semi-officially support Firefox with Silverlight, which is a pretty big step forward for them.)

Re:Theora FAIL

[hairyfeet]

I personally don't give a flying crap if they do it by bashing pixies over the head to squeeze pixie dust into the hardware, all i care about (and I'm guessing 99.995% of the public agrees) is that my CPU isn't being pounded when I'm running 1080p. And since I happen to have the box in front of me I'll be happy to quote from it. Quote-

Multi Code Hardware Acceleration. Enables inloop deblocking, Motion Compensation acceleration for the latest codecs including H.264, WMV9, DivX. programmable video engine with enhanced post processing capabilities.

Now again me and the bazillion other folks buying these things don't give a crap HOW they are doing it, all we care about is we can watch 1080p while doing half a dozen other things because our CPUs aren't being pounded into next week. And my earlier point still stands. with the rise of Netbooks, Nettops, and Ion based platforms more and more of the video decoding is being done on the GPU instead of the CPU. Even on a dual core desktop like mine offloading to the GPU gives the video a nice fast cache of GPU RAM and a processor more designed for video decoding than a general purpose CPU, which lets my CPU do other tasks, as well as cut down on heat as today's GPUs are a lot more heat efficient than CPUs.

If Theora wants to be taken seriously they need a GPU based hardware decoder than works on the big three, Intel, ATI, Nvidia, and they need it yesterday, and they need to start offering it to the GPU manufacturers so they can bundle support like they do for WMV9, Divx, and H.264. Because out of the box with the default drivers my Radeon decodes all of the above as well as Mpeg2. The Nvidia does the same. Folks don't want to go play "hunt the decoder" they just want it to work. So while I applaud the Theora guys for trying to come with a free high def codec I'd say they still got a ways to go for mainstream use. Hardware decoders for the big three should be right at the top of the list IMHO.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Lennie]

I'm not sure, but I think that's called bundeling or tying and the EU might not like it (not that MS ever cared).

Re:Theora FAIL

[Ralish]

Are you confusing open standards with open implementations?

I fully support open standards and think they are the way forward, _especially_ on the Internet where interoperability and platform agnosticism is the very essence of a healthy and vibrant network. But, that doesn't mean the code that implements the standards has to be open by extension. It's fine if it is, go for it, but I see no problem with it being proprietary code either. Of course, if the code doesn't properly implement the standard, then that IS a problem, but open-source software can be guilty of this as well; although, admittedly, closed-source seems to have a much larger black mark against it.

It seems to me that your post is just a knee-jerk reaction against mine purely because I dared suggest that a given _implementation_ doesn't have to be open, I in no way suggested that closed and proprietary software that doesn't conform to open standards is a good thing.

Re:Theora FAIL

[RAMMS EIN]

In the 1990s, we had HTML elements to embed arbitrary multimedia elements into webpages. Browsers generally supported those through plugins.

I don't understand all this noise about Theora vs. H.264 support in the browser, nor do I understand why you would want to wrap your video in Flash, adding another dependency on a proprietary technology.

What's wrong with just using and object-element and a well-supported video format?

Re:Theora FAIL

[redhog]

You have your software patents. We have our Piratpartiet.

US - land of the free, home of the brave.

Re:Theora FAIL

[packman]

THE biggest problems companies like Apple, Nokia & co have with Theora is that is uncertain territory. The makers might claim it is patent-free - but this has never ever been proven in court, and it never will be certain that this is patent-free, even if 1 or 10 lawsuits would be won. Since writing any respectably sized piece of software without violating some patents is simply impossible - this is a very realistic problem. For GPL, there's nothing to catch for potential holders of patents applying to Theora/Ogg, there's no-one big enough worth attacking. The previously mentioned companies however are something else - they are big fish and a lot of money can be made off them if they sue them for patent infringement. H.264 is simple, they already pay royalties for this, they're relatively safe. This has nothing to do with moral or technical superiority for them, but with risks and money - which they should. They provide a job and an income for quite a lot of people, and to have this threatened by some idealistic decision would be morally wrong if you look at it that way.

I absolutely like opensource, but honestly - a major part of the GPL-fanatics are morons with their head in the clouds, who are not in touch with 'the real world' out-there. You just have to accept that the GPL is not perfect. It has noble intentions, but it is idealistic - and idealistic things never work out the way they should, they always conflict with other people's ideals and visions. Compromises on the other hand do pretty well in the real world... GPL already did a lot of good things, but this is mostly due to the "free source code if you give the changes back" principle, not the "I want everything to be free" utopia. As a developer I love how I can look at the code and see how it works. If I find a bug, I give back. As a user, I couldn't care less about the legal implications. I don't want a "free" system, I want a system that works.

Yes there's a problem regarding GPL and H.264 licensing, but a perfect world does not exist - and will never exist. Fact is - getting commercial support for Theora is going to be impossible, opensource browsers who don't have a commercial backing (webkit=google+apple+nokia) will never have a 100% marketshare - there will always be commercial competitors with a relatively large piece of the pie. I personally don't have any sollutions - but if Adobe can pay H.264 licenses for it's millions of flash users - I think Mozilla foundation - which makes a shitload of money through advertising - should be able to do the same and have the H.264 'plugin' optionally downloaded if the user agrees with this. Yes this conflicts with the moral the utopia of 'everything is free' GPL stands for, but this is the real world here. I still prefer an open H.264 MPEG standard being used which commercial companies are willing to support over some completely closed propriatry WMV codec - which I imagine someone is going to push forward. Standards are good, sadly enough - video and audio encoding is quite a specialized field where patent-hungry companies are doing a lot of research in. And face it - without them we would never have had stuff like MPEG (MP3 etc) or even stuff like Theora or Ogg.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Goaway]

They don't have an UI when you embed them through their respective APIs. Adding an UI is up to you, then.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Goaway]

Because it's buggy and usability is horrid.

Like you said, it's been there for a long time, why don't people use it? Because it's bad, that's why.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Goaway]

Sure it's slow, but it's FREE...

We don't really know this. It may be, but there is no public study to support the claim nor has it been tested in court.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Goaway]

No, Flash is the main competitor of the html5 tag. And needs to give a compelling reason for people to switch away from Flash if it's going to be successful.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Hatta]

The browser venders should be implementing HOOKS to the operating system's native multimedia libraries. In Windows, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera should all be hooking into DirectShow, QuickTime if installed, ffmpeg if installed, VLC's libraries, if VLC is installed.

If I click a link that points to a video file, my browser does exactly that. It launches the appropriate media player for the system it's on. And as a bonus, I get a new window that I can put wherever I want, and scale however I want. And if the video player crashes, my browser doesn't, and vice versa. This, to me, is the ideal situation, and it's worked this way for at least 10 years. WTF is all the pissing and moaning about?

Re:Theora FAIL

[Yvan256]

Yes, but it will require a Phantom console.

Re:Theora FAIL

[master5o1]

Integration of video within a page design is one important style point in web design. Having a seperate window does not allow such integration.

As with the sibling comments above, I understand the potential problems that hooking might create but surely it can't be worse than Firefox supporting only OGG, Chrome supporting whatever, IE supporting jack shit....etc?

Re:Theora FAIL

[CrystalX]

I completely agree. These preexisting native libraries already have support for a ton of codecs. Reimplementing common codecs is a waste of programmer effort leads to unnecessary program bloat.

If I were a developer for one of these browsers that was implementing support for the HTML 5 video element, I would treat the specification as merely a requirement for what the native multimedia libraries should support.

Of course if the native multimedia library doesn't support what the HTML spec says then (but only then) should the browser try to do its own implementation.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Tweenk]

Your post highlights exactly what is wrong with software patents.

Re:Theora FAIL

[hairyfeet]

But let us be honest here: How does Theora compare with the ease of use and picture quality of H.264? My 15 year old makes his own H.264 .flv files to upload to Youtube. Didn't need any help from me either. He just went to Primewares, which has a lousy name but it is one of the best freeware site for Windows IMHO, types "flv converter" into the search box, and voila! He found a nice simple GUI based decoder that lets him turn the videos he makes into .flv in H.264 and upload them to Youtube.

I'm sure I'll get flamed for saying this, but what the hell, I got Karma to burn. The problem with many of the open formats like Matroska and Ogg/Theora, is the same problem I have found with Linux in general. Way too damned much reliance on CLI. You can find tons of great conversion tools in CLI that'll frankly do everything but cook your breakfast in the morning if you are good at or want to learn CLI, but that means you have just removed 95% of your audience and guaranteed you'll stay a niche, because I can tell you that after way too many years in Windows sales/repair that a good 95% of the customers don't even know CLI EXISTS, and even fewer want to have anything to do with it.

I know saying this will piss off a LOT of Open Source guys, but it is true: CLI HAS to die! While you can have CLI as a compliment to the GUI, sadly way too many things in Open Source pretty much the ONLY way to get anything done is CLI. Let's look at the above site, which is the main one I use for finding freeware when I have a specific job to do. Here is the search results when I type in flv converter, here is Theora converter, and Matroska converter. For flv I have 61 to choose from, for Theora I have exactly one that will read but NOT write the format, and for Matroska? A big fat zero. Hell I spent a day last year looking for free Matroska converters and couldn't find a single simple converter to change Matroska to the .avi that my DVD player used that wasn't for pay, and even those sucked compared to the .avi and .mpg converters out there. Tons of .CLI based converters, not that I have the time nor the desire to learn a bunch of CLI commands just to convert from format A to B.

Open Source guys seem to think because they like CLI and find it easy that others will too, but I have found in fact the opposite is true. Hell even as a repair guy who knows his way around a CLI I just ain't got the hours in the day to waste futzing around with a CLI for something that should have an easy to use GUI. Do you think my 15 year old would have a chance with a CLI based converter? or my customers? If Open Source guys want to know why .flv is everywhere it is because ANYBODY can make a .flv file. Even my mother could spend a whole five minutes in Google and find a butt simple video converter that will output .flv from any format. If you want to push something to the masses then CLI HAS TO die, okay? No CLI, all GUI. Because most have never used a CLI, most have no desire whatsoever to ever learn a CLI, and most would look at it as some primitive throwback to DOS if you even showed them a CLI prompt.

So accept that CLI has to die, just as it has on Mac and Windows. Make the GUI FIRST, and make sure it is simple and reliable and THEN you can start pushing the format to those like my 15 year old. Because until then they are gonna stick with what works, and that is H.264 in .flv and .avi.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Ralish]

Proof?

Since the first FF 3.0 point release of 2009 (3.0.6), I count:
* A dozen critical security vulnerabilities
* Six high security vulnerabilities
* 32 vulnerabilities in total patched this year

I'm a Firefox user, and have been for years, but I'm not going to pretend that it's the Fort Knox of web-browsers just so I can have some false sense of security superiority over rival browsers, or worse, pretend it is highly secure and be ignorant of the actual realities. I'm guessing you're one of those people who don't read the security advisories for Firefox point releases, you really should; it might deflate your reality distortion bubble.

At this point, Mozilla's advantage isn't so much in secure code but fast patch response times.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Goaway]

Yes, definitely.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Hatta]

Integration of video within a page is a pain in the ass for anyone who is more concerned with the content of a video than the ads surrounding it. Using a separate window is in every way a superior user experience.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Hatta]

I should have elaborated on my earlier post. In browser video isn't just annoying for those who want to focus on the video and nothing else, it's also a pain for multitaskers. Suppose I'm watching YouTube, and I want to check out some of the comments on the video I'm watching. I can't do it without scrolling down and missing some of the video. With a separate window, I can just click always on top, and do both at the same time.

No user in their right mind would choose to restrict themselves to browser embedded video. It is completely and utterly devoid of merit.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Sinbios]

Since Microsoft has no competitors for SilverLight runtimes, I don't see how this is a problem.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Lennie]

What does it do that is so special ? Because I think their are enough plugins that do similair things (video playback and/or animation, whatever).

Re:Theora FAIL

[Sinbios]

It's not special, it's just another player in that arena. But they're not forcing any developers to use SilverLight by bundling the SDK or something, so it's not anticompetitive.

Re:Theora FAIL

[dirtyhippie]

Sorry, I typoed decoding for encoding, but I'd be surprised if youtube doesn't do decoding too, behind the scenes, for various things (scaling down a video comes to mind).

Re:Theora FAIL

[master5o1]

I didn't think anyone actually cared for YouTube comments. Aren't they all just retarded pieaces of text that make very little sense?

I suppose a great fix for that would be to fix ("position: fixed;") the video in the left (or right) side of the page, in the middle and have the comments on the right (or left). This would allow one to scroll the rest of the page while keeping the video in one place.

Re:Theora FAIL

[tirnacopu]

To look on the bright side, IE6 will finally die.

IE6 runs silverlight just fine, even on Win2k.
I don't like this fact any more than you do, but damn Microsoft is good at this forward-compatibility game.

Re:Theora FAIL

[iMacGuy]

Youtube uses completely stock mencoder from 2005 (+ a handwritten h264 encoder by Skal for fmt=18, which probably isn't faster than x264). They just have way more CPUs than you think they do. I'm actually not sure a hardware Theora decoder could be really efficient - the memory requirements are quite bad for a codec with no multiple reference frames.

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

If your image of video is "Youtube", then you're right. But the other approach lets you do things like these:

http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/green/green.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/mashup/video.xhtml
http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/round/index.xhtml

Having video fully participate in the rendering pipeline (unlike the Flash situation) lets you usefully include video (we're not talking "ads" or necessarily "main content video" a la Youtube, but video that is part of a web app or a web-based game, or that the web page wants to annotate) in your web page without screwing up other parts of it...

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

Name one codec that is suitable for video on the web and is actually implemented on all the platforms a browser other than Win/IE wants to support nowadays?

And if you can't, what's the point of claiming to have "video" support if there isn't actually a video one can put up that your browser will play for all its users?

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

> His argument was that if the OS supports decoding the video format, which it will
> if it's a modern consumer OS

Sadly, that assumption happens to be false. Especially if under "consumer OS" you include the sort of OS running on cell phones, Nokia's N810, etc (which are definitely platforms that browsers are targeting with video). But even if we just look at Window/Mac/Linux, it's hard to find a single video codec that makes sense on the web that all three support out of the box...

> why should every browser then implement its own media stack to provide a service that
> the OS already provides

Excellent question! It shouldn't if the OS actually provides it. I think we'd all prefer it if the OS did, of course; we're just not there yet.

Re:Theora FAIL

[IntlHarvester]

Absolutely, but there's nothing really inherently bad about it, which the wide-use of the Flash plugin demonstrates.

Apple/Real/Microsoft were just more concerned with shoving their logo in people's faces, obnoxious UIs, desktop popups, and stealing all your filetypes, than they were with building a quick-loading and nonbuggy plugin.

HTML5's approach has some real advantages because the video element can be manipulated by the page in ways that simply aren't possible with a plugin.

Re:Theora FAIL

[Hurricane78]

So your argument is... that freedom (of choice) is wrong?
No wonder you only have two parties, who additionally are exactly the same. (They just talk differently.)

Re:Theora FAIL

[CrystalX]

MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg) has been around for eons, so it certainly should be supported everywhere by now. Not the best compression when compared with the latest codecs, but definitely has wide support.

h264 is also a good candidate. Excellent compression. Definitely supported in QuickTime on the Mac and probably in DirectShow in Windows (I haven't tested this). Should be decodable on Linux via ffmpeg. Has hardware decoding support in some chipsets as well.

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

> MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg) has been around for eons

That's a container format, not a codec. Which codec are we talking, specifically?

> Should be decodable on Linux via ffmpeg

Which isn't included by default with Linux distributions, last I checked. Which means you can't actually rely on it being there, have to ship ffmpeg yourself, and then might as well use it on all your platforms...

Which is basically what Gecko does with OGG Theora, say. They just ship liboggplay and use it on all platforms.

Re:Theora FAIL

[bigmammoth]

ah dude... chrome is shipping theora support. If Google is not a big pocket target than what is?

Re:Theora FAIL

[CrystalX]

> MPEG (.mpg, .mpeg) has been around for eons

That's a container format, not a codec. Which codec are we talking, specifically?

MPEG-1 video.

> Should be decodable on Linux via ffmpeg

Which isn't included by default with Linux distributions, last I checked. Which means you can't actually rely on it being there, have to ship ffmpeg yourself, and then might as well use it on all your platforms...

To my knowledge, Linux does not consistently ship with any multimedia framework common to all (or even most) distributions. Due to the fragmentation of the Linux platform, this is unlikely to change any time soon.

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

> To my knowledge, Linux does not consistently ship with any multimedia framework
> common to all (or even most) distributions.

That's correct. At the same time, browsers want to be able to deliver video capabilities on Linux. Therefore they end up having to ship their own code to do so. Once you do that, you have less security bug exposure if you just use the same code on all platforms, since otherwise you're on the hook for not only issues in your code (which you have to ship anyway) but also any issues that might exist in the platform-provided video codecs on on whatever platforms you use them on....

Re:Theora FAIL

[CrystalX]

True.

Implementing video capabilities in-application is a tradeoff in general:
* (+) app developer has full control over fixing security vulnerabilities, since no external libraries are involved
* (-) each application's multimedia implementation has its own set of bugs and vulnerabilities that need to be fixed
** (-) more work for the application developer to fix --- and some developers do not have the time, motivation, or knowledge to fix such security bugs
** (-) less universal gain through fixes (as only the individual app can benefit from the fixes)
** (+) since these are app-specific bugs, they cannot be exploited across the board on the level that bugs in highly-used system-level multimedia frameworks can

Whereas with system-level frameworks:
* (+) applications get multimedia functionality basically for free
* (+) any fixes or improvements to the system-level library can reflected in all client applications
* (-) any flaws in the system-level library are a lot more attractive for exploitation, since they are used by many programs
* (-) your program usually cannot do anything about exploited flaws in the system-level library

Re:Theora FAIL

[BZ]

Yep, that sounds about right as far as the security aspects go.

Re:Theora FAIL

[pdbaby]

And how does one "prove" security again :)?

Oh dear, another person who slept through their formal methods class?

Re:Theora FAIL

[Jonner]

Like a lot of people, you confuse copyright with patent issues. I'm not surprised, since that's the intent of those who push the idea of "intellectual property," which has no basis in logic or law. The problems with video and audio codecs have nothing to do with Free vs. proprietary software or the GPL. There are are fully functional Free Software implementations of H.264 decoders just as there are proprietary ones.

The issue is about open standards rather than Free Software. The web has succeeded so far because it is built on open standards that anyone can implement without having to pay someone for that right. Neither Microsoft, Apple, Opera, Mozilla, or anyone else has to pay the W3C or anyone else to distribute a web browser that implements standards like HTML, HTTP, XML, PNG and CSS. Although the JPEG image format (which is not a W3C standard or required by W3C standards, but is expected to be implemented by web browsers) was encumbered by patents, they seem to have expired.

For HTML5 to be a valid W3C standard it has to be implementable without paying royalties just like all other W3C standards. However, the committee working on HTML5 can't agree on codecs that are royalty free and of sufficient quality. If they can't agree on Theora and Vorbis, I doubt they'll agree on anything. That means the video and audio elements in HTML5 will probably end up useless. Without a standard format one can expect to work in a majority of browsers, what's the point? Currently, people use Flash for audio and video since you can make one video or audio clip that will just work in any browser with the Flash plugin installed.

So, contrary to your attacks against "GPL-fanatics" the real is issue is a pragmatic one. The W3C can't require a patent-encumbered codec such as H.264/AVC because of their own standards. As you point out, the real world requires compromise and the members of the committee working on HTML5 seem to have such different goals and priorities that compromise is impossible.

Of course, the real problem is US patent law and how patents on algorithms have been allowed and enforced. I expect media on the web will be held back as long the current system persists. Again, the problem has nothing to do with Free vs. proprietary software; if software patents disappeared, H.264/AVC would be a great codec choice since high quality Free Software implementations of both encoders and decoders already exist.

You seem to think that the current software patent nightmare is necessary. Would you care to support your argument that Theora and Vorbis wouldn't exist without it?

This is the last thing Google needs...

[XPeter]

DiBona responded with concerns that switching to Theora while maintaining quality would take up an incredible amount of bandwidth for a site like YouTube, though he made clear his support for the continued improvement of the project. Greg Maxwell jumped into the debate by comparing the quality of Ogg/Theora+Vorbis with the current YouTube implementations using H.263+MP3 and H.264+AAC. At the lower bitrate, Theora seems to have the clear edge, while the higher bitrate may slightly favor H.264. He concludes that YouTube's adoption of "an open unencumbered format in addition to or instead of their current offerings would not cause problems on the basis of quality or bitrate." They're losing a pretty penny on YouTube. The ad revenue can't keep up with the costs it takes to run YouTube (servers, bandwidth, staff ect). Why

Re:This is the last thing Google needs...

[XPeter]

Damn the enter key. Continuing what I was saying... Why would Google want to spend MORE by adopting HTML5? This means more bandwidth, more servers, more staff. It's obvious Google isn't shy of cash but this isn't smart in a failing economy.

Re:This is the last thing Google needs...

[rfdparker2002]

Probably because Google seem to love HTML5 (look at Wave or their new Android/iPhone web based apps). But certainly they should take the Ogg Theora route, then if it can be pushed back into the HTML5 standard again, we might eventually be able to get Ogg Theora support in IE, and then maybe Ogg Theora and Vorbis support in Windows itself (as MS would probably embed their media player).

Re:This is the last thing Google needs...

[neutrino38]

Exactly. Assuming that Theora is better in terms of quality, HTML5 designers and implementor need to understand that some level of backward compatibility is needed so HTML5 can reach the masses and not repain a geek feature.

Making ogg / theora mandatory is not the issue BUT

First, we need the tag to be able to render FLV in both VP6 / VP7 and H.264 contents.

Then of course support MP4 containers / 3GP2 files for mobile developments.

As a transitional phase, a plugin system would allow any codec provider to add support for a particular codec / container.

And finally, would it be good as a fight to ask for more favorable licencing terms on H.264 codec ?

Re:This is the last thing Google needs...

[mabhatter654]

you miss the point entirely. The Video tag supports OTHER formats just fine. The HTML 5 folks want Ogg & Theora not so much to displace other codex but to guarantee every web browser will have it, so ANYBODY on ANY DEVICE can view free and unencumbered and ANY HOST can broadcast it for free. Just like we have PNG as a replacement for the formerly encumbered GIF format, they want the same thing for audio and video and it's been too long coming.

It doesn't have to be the best, it's good enough and it's free to use, free to host, free to publish.

Decoding Chips

[chonglibloodsport]

Superior in objective PSNR Quality. OK.

How about CPU utilization? Are there any ultra-low-power decoding chips that play Theora?

H.264 already has a large install base of devices that play it. Is there enough of an advantage to Theora to warrant dumping all of those for new ones?

Re:Decoding Chips

[Ant P.]

Is there enough of an advantage to Theora to warrant dumping all of those for new ones?

$.

Re:Decoding Chips

[faragon]

The problem is encoding, not decoding, as the decoding is done in third party hardware (final user). Also in the transcoding process, i.e., decode from whatever to h264/Theora, decoding is much faster than encoding (because of pattern matching and movement analysis). Anyway, bandwidth is the main problem, as uploaded video is reencoded *once*, and played *many* times.

Re:Decoding Chips

[ardor]

No, the problem is decoding. As the GP said, there are loads of h264 playing hardware out there. Theora? Nil.

Re:Decoding Chips

[benwaggoner]

No, the problem is decoding too. Software decode is fine on the desktop, but a non-starter for phones. Good phone video requires and uses ASIC or GPU acceleration. Theora, as a much older and simpler codec will probably decode faster in software than a maxed-out H.264 bitstream, but even if it could get to full-screen on a handset, it'd require a lot more bandwidth, and would run the battery down very quickly.

"Bandwidth is the problem" is also very much Theora's problem. The rather...odd example linked to aside, for any interesting bitrate or quality, Theora will need at least 2x as many bits to hit the same quality level as H.264 High Profile.

The example page is a little confusing. While they compare Theora to H.264 (and admit it wins), their "money" compare is to H.263, which is a VP3 era codec in its own right. If they compared a good H.264 encode to Theora at the 327 Kbps bitrate, H.264 would turn Theora into a thin red paste.

Re:Decoding Chips

[faragon]

It is not a problem for Google.

Re:Decoding Chips

[faragon]

Most newer ARM CPUs inside system-on-chip include SIMD extensions, so while being less efficient than GPU-h264, it should be enough for decoding YouTube-sized Theora video. It is a matter of time of Theora-accelerated on GPU, but demand should be first.

Re:Decoding Chips

[ardor]

It is. Google will not magically turn all these embedded hardware into Theora players. If people can't play anything on it, they turn to other sites which do support h264.

Re:Decoding Chips

[mariushm]

Just as they have now SD, HQ and HD streams there's no problem adding another video encoded with sane settings for mobiles. After all, there are h264 levels designed for mobile phones and lots of phones already decoding them. It's just silly to add yet another format besides h263 and h264.
Current mobile phones probably have chips that do hardware decoding of h264 clips up to a certain bitrate/level whatever probably no phone can do now theora in hardware.

Re:Decoding Chips

[faragon]

Magically no, but embedded device manufacturers would move quickly for: 1) provide "youtube-resolution enough" Theora decoding for software based ARM-SIMD, 2) Hardware accelerated Theora on GPU.

New features are adopted slowly on embedded devices, as example, take the Flash player for browsers. The change will come after demand, and Google could flip the situation at their option, no matter the way they choose, they have the Ace of Spades.

Re:Decoding Chips

[chonglibloodsport]

I doubt it. The SIMD extensions on ARM chips are far less powerful than desktop equivalents.

We're talking about chips that are a pretty small fraction of the speed of desktop chips and only one core.

Re:Decoding Chips

[benwaggoner]

...up to a certainly size/bitrate, yes. But I don't know if it would be enough to fill the screen of 480x320 or VGA phone, particuarly at a high quality.

Re:Decoding Chips

[RailRide]

No, the problem is decoding too. Software decode is fine on the desktop, but a non-starter for phones. Good phone video requires and uses ASIC or GPU acceleration. Theora, as a much older and simpler codec will probably decode faster in software than a maxed-out H.264 bitstream, but even if it could get to full-screen on a handset, it'd require a lot more bandwidth, and would run the battery down very quickly.

Without going full-screen, recent videos have been looking worse on my "primary" computer, a fairly old 2ghz Celeron laptop. Up to about 2/09,(which according to Wikipedia is when YouTube switched to h.264 for pretty much everything), the videos I uploaded ran nice and smooth (I usually didn't run them full-screen, and rarely in HQ). The ones I uploaded after the changeover look like they were shot with a cheap cellphone, with awful amounts of frameskipping, which is painfully obvious in the model-train videos that make up most of my uploads. Downloading these FLV's and attempting to play them also stymies all of the player/converters on my system (although that may be that my install of the K-Lite codec pack is outdated)

Seeing as it takes more horsepower to decode H.264 than the older H.263/Sorenensen/Spark/whatever they were using before, I assume it's my aging PC that's at fault. But buying a new PC just to get 30FPS on YouTube is a non-starter, given that the existing one still does everthing else I need it to do at acceptable speed.

I'm wondering if I transcode my uploads to be identical to YouTube's flavor of .FLV, but with H.263, will it allow them to slide through unmodified, seeing as the older uploads haven't been molested. Otherwise, I'll have lost most of my desire to put stuff up there anymore.

---PCJ

Re:Decoding Chips

[roca]

Where's your evidence? Why is Greg's example odd? Have you done a comparable experiment with a different video clip to justify your 2x claim, or more importantly, show that at the same bitrate Theora looks much worse on your clip?

>>> If they compared a good H.264 encode to Theora at the 327 Kbps bitrate, H.264 would turn Theora into a thin red paste.

Why would it, since it didn't at 499Kbps? Or are you claiming that Youtube uses a bad H.264 encoder? Or do you think that example is rigged?

Re:Decoding Chips

[benwaggoner]

Where's your evidence? Why is Greg's example odd? Have you done a comparable experiment with a different video clip to justify your 2x claim, or more importantly, show that at the same bitrate Theora looks much worse on your clip?

Xiph's own metrics show a 2x advantage on even a very easy short clip:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo7.html

And yes, I've done plenty of my own tests as well on Big Buck Bunny and many other clips.

Why would it, since it didn't at 499Kbps? Or are you claiming that Youtube uses a bad H.264 encoder? Or do you think that example is rigged?

YouTube doesn't use High Profile (no 8x8 blocks or adaptive quantization matricies) or CABAC entropy coding. So they're going to be at least 20% less efficient than the best encodes could be.

Also, they trimmed the clip before the really interesting high motion parts. Most of the shots in the section they did use were static camera, and as animation is noise-free. Toss a nice grainy movie trailer in there and Theora shows basis pattern left and right.

I wish he'd reported the Theora settings used in the encode.

Re:Decoding Chips

[benwaggoner]

Seeing as it takes more horsepower to decode H.264 than the older H.263/Sorenensen/Spark/whatever they were using before, I assume it's my aging PC that's at fault. But buying a new PC just to get 30FPS on YouTube is a non-starter, given that the existing one still does everthing else I need it to do at acceptable speed.

That's the big drawback of H.264 - decoder complexity. And YouTube's encodes aren't the hardest either; there's deeper features yet they aren't using.

One of the design goals for what's likely to become H.265 is a 25% improvements in compression efficiency WITH a 50% reduction in decoder complexity.

Still, what bitrate are you downloading? 500 Kbps should be okay even for that ancient box, if you at least have SSE2.

Re:Decoding Chips

[Eskarel]

So far that's only a theoretical problem, and so long as Theora exists it will probably remain one.

People, for the most part, don't mind paying a reasonable license fee for a product which does what they want. If/when license fees start to apply to internet broadcasters, some of them will switch to Theora, the higher the license fee charged, the more people who will do this. If the license fees become too high a critical mass of people will switch over and H.264 will become worthless.

The largest success of open source has been to provide an alternative to the dominant market players. It doesn't have to be an alternative that anyone uses for it to be successful, it just has to be enough of an alternative that if the dominant players screw over their consumers too hard that they could theoretically switch.

Ogg, PNG, Theora, all have served this purpose well, even if they've never really had any large scale adoption.

So from that perspective Theora is and will continue to be a huge win, even if no one ever plays a Theora video.

Re:Decoding Chips

[ardor]

You are suggesting that google moves into a chicken-and-egg situation and solves it with sheer force. Thing is, google does not have to do that. They don't have to make Theora popular. All they need it to choose h264, which is *already* popular and established. Google has no benefit from using Theora. The licensing issues are non existent, since their video hosting site is free.

Re:Decoding Chips

[ardor]

Anything else other than hardware h.264 decoding is not going to work. Big performance bottlenecks include debinarization and motion compensation. SIMD won't help you much there; a dedicated h264 chip will.

Re:Decoding Chips

[Sycraft-fu]

Software decoding is also NOT fine on desktops in many situations. HD video requires a lot of CPU power to decode. A fast Core 2 Duo can handle it, though not with a whole lot of power to spare, but turns out not everyone has one of those. Plenty of people still using older CPUs, which may not be able to do software decoding of HD streams. However, add even a cheap video card to that and they usually can, since the most intensive calculations can be offloaded to the GPU.

Re:Decoding Chips

[iMacGuy]

SIMD actually helps a lot with motion compensation; it's just a bunch of parallel multiply-adds, after all. But Theora has bitstream reading problems too; you have to decode the whole frame's bitstream before displaying any of it. And there is absolutely no question of it supporting HD (sometimes even SD) because the MV length is broken.

repeat of ogg?

[jd142]

I remember when ogg first came out. I read slashdot regularly, saw all the information about how great it was, how since it was free it would be easily adopted by hardware makers who didn't need to pay for the privilege. I bought into the hype. I ripped my cd's to ogg files, paid extra money for a neuros player because it was one of the few players that handled ogg files.

Now, 5 years later I have a large collection of ogg files that are essentially useless. No one in the mainstream uses ogg, despite the superiority and price. Whenever I get a new player, I have to carefully read the specs to see if it will play my oggs. Few do. Luckily I have the cds and I can simply re-rip them to mp3s as I find the time/care too.

My guess is that the same thing will happen with theora. It may be superior. It may be cheaper. But I just don't think it will catch on. It's another example of the slashdot echo chamber.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[vivaelamor]

Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[maxume]

I've always been pretty skeptical of ogg (Vorbis...) actually catching on, and I'm pretty sure I have said so (my two big data points were the mp3s I had and Apple's complete failure to notice it).

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Egdiroh]

Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?

He wasn't blaming slashdot for mp3/aac he was blaming them for the fact he adopted ogg. The analogous quote would be, "Any chance we can blame slashdot for adopting Betamax too?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[vadim_t]

Rip to FLAC, then encode that into whatever fits the device best.

In my experience, finding a player that does .ogg isn't that hard. Look at the players made by Cowon for instance, they're very nice.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[nxtw]

Ogg Vorbis was better in quality than MP3 - back then (and even today) the most popular compression for music. However, AAC and WMA are also better than MP3 - and people actually sold music in AAC and WMA formats as well as MP3.

Theroa is not better than h264 (the new popular standard for video on the Internet, many Blu-ray discs, HD satellite, and HD broadcast in some parts of the world), so it's not a repeat of Vorbis at all. Theora just scores higher on a scoring algorithm when compared ot a single h264 encoder, the open-source x264.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[BikeHelmet]

Ogg players are still quite common. I got an MP3 player a while ago, and was surprised to find it played ogg. I got it because it advertised FLAC support.

I would take ogg over mp3, and aac over both of those.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[westlake]

Any chance we can blame Slashdot for VHS too?

Extended play trumped video quality.

It was "good enough."

That has always been the geek's first line of defense for the second-rate.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Bagels]

Not to defend ogg vorbis too much, but it has actually achieved success in a few realms - it's the audio format of choice on Wikipedia, which is one of the web's most popular sites, and it's used in tons of video games (precisely because it doesn't need to be licensed, I think). The things that made it successful in those areas (matching ideology and price/compression performance, respectively) don't really mean much to the average MP3 player user, though.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[IntlHarvester]

how since it was free it would be easily adopted by hardware makers who didn't need to pay for the privilege.

Problem is that nobody knows if this is true or not. Major manufacturers such as Apple would rather pay the MPEG tax than deal with a potential lawsuit. I don't know if this figures into Google's thinking, but they're obviously a big target.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[bertoelcon]

What about HD-DVD?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[bertoelcon]

But AAC and WMA have DRM capabilities, I don't think Ogg can, or MP3, making AAC and WMA a higher standard for things that are sold.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[jd142]

I wasn't blaming so much as pointing out that like many blogs, slashdot can be an echo chamber. The same opinions are repeated over and over and treated as if they are held by the majority of people. I was younger then and still thought slashdot had a finger on the pulse of technology. It doesn't. It's really great as a news aggregator and the comments are often a hoot, but it isn't what I thought it was.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[julian67]

There are an awful lot of players which support ogg. Almost anything from Cowon, iRiver or Sansa does. And almost all the Chinese brand/no-name/shop brand players support ogg even though they fail to explicitly state this (preferring to emblazon their players and packaging with mp3 and wma logos). I used to import and sell mp3 and mp4 players and generally it's only the very cheapest mp4 video players which don't support ogg, that's the ones which claim asf container support is something to brag about.....usually these use an old rockchip video processor.

I have 5 personal players. 2 are old iRivers, H140 and H340, 2 are tiny no name Chinese mp3 players and one is a Chinese mp4 video player. Only the iRivers claim to support ogg audio but the cheap mp3 players handle it fine as well. I lived in SE Asia and every cheap mp3 player I ever checked played ogg audio too. Not a single one made mention of it in the instructions, the specs, on the box or on the player.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Now, 5 years later I have a large collection of ogg files that are essentially useless. No one in the mainstream uses ogg, despite the superiority and price.

That's more a function of the "mainstream" being dominated by Apple at ~90% marketshare and their (a) ability to pay the mp3 and aac license fees without even noticing and (b) interest in locking the consumer into the Apple world. If it weren't for mp3's early prevalence making it a pre-requisite for any player, apple probably wouldn't even support that format either.

It seems clear to me that Apple's domination of the market for players is not anywhere near the economically optimal situation. I don't think you can blame the libertarian-leaning slashdot for promoting a world-view that is free-market oriented, especially when, at the time, there was not even a hint that Apple or anyone else would grow to such dominance.

You would probably disagree, but I think it is worth supporting free market standards with as much effort as we can, even if it means we lose sometimes. Because if we don't, we are probably going to lose all the time.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Daniel_Staal]

Bingo. Theora may be equally as good, but it's trying to supplant an already-established format. 'Equally as good' isn't good enough for that: You have to be noticeably better. And Theora isn't. It offers no major advantages, and would just give YouTube headaches, as it either tried to re-encode into a choice of formats, or had to explain to people how to play the videos.

The first of those costs money, the second costs viewers. I'd bet very few people would choose the Theora choice, making the money just wasted money. And YouTube lives on it's viewers: making their site any more complicated than 'click play' is just not acceptable.

It's not worth it. Theora doesn't have enough of a benefit.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[nxtw]

But AAC and WMA have DRM capabilities, I don't think Ogg can, or MP3, making AAC and WMA a higher standard for things that are sold.

If someone was interested in using Vorbis, they could implement their own DRM container or adapt another to work with Vorbis. I don't think AAC itself has DRM capability; Apple implemented it on their own.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Klaus_1250]

and it's used in tons of video games (precisely because it doesn't need to be licensed, I think)

And because a popular package used in games, http://www.radgametools.com/, has very good support for ogg. So there is little reason why video games shouldn't use ogg. Better, cheaper and usable.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[_xeno_]

It's also the audio format that my Garmin nüvi uses. If you go into the About screen it lists licensing information for several components, including an Ogg Vorbis decoder.

As I recall, starting with Unreal Tournament 2003, the "official" music format that Unreal uses is Ogg Vorbis as well. (According to the Ogg Vorbis FAQ, I'm correct.)

So it may not be in wide use in portable media players, but it's out there.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[loufoque]

Who the hell would want to use DRM on a fully open format? It doesn't make sense.
The only thing that makes DRM work is the fact it's closed.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[vivaelamor]

Woosh. The unsaid words in my post were 'the prevalence of'. Context is everything unless you presume everyone is an idiot.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Dutch Gun]

Ogg Vorbis is also used in video games because it has some other advantages: it supports 6-channel audio, and has support for bit-accurate decoding, allowing seamless looping of audio, and it sounds better at lower bitrates. I know MP3s can be kludged to do some of these, but it's easier just to use Vorbis in these cases.

Our upcoming game will actually be shipping with both MP3 and Ogg Vorbis audio. The MP3 decoder we're using is significantly more efficient than the reference Vorbis libraries, and allows us to play more simultaneously decoded channels. However, if a piece of audio needs to loop, to use multi-channel, or if we're encoding a LOT of it (music, voice-overs, etc), we use Ogg Vorbis.

Honestly, the cost of the license isn't really an issue at all. It's all about what does the job best for us, and MP3 and Vorbis each have strengths and weaknesses.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[cheftw]

My ipod plays ogg, but I prefer FLAC.

Just because the guy across the road plays wmvz on his Zune doesn't make your music sound worse.

How often do you buy a new player anway? Every other year maybe?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[nxtw]

Who the hell would want to use DRM on a fully open format? It doesn't make sense.
The only thing that makes DRM work is the fact it's closed.

DRM is a way of controlling access to an encrypted bitstream. It doesn't matter so much what the format is inside. The main difference between something like AAC and Vorbis is that Vorbis is believed to be unencumbered by any known patents and has an easily found and freely available specification. AAC is an ISO/IEC standard and has open-source encoders and decoders available (although I'm not sure if the open-source encoders are as good as others.)

Re:repeat of ogg?

[bertoelcon]

Wanting DRM and having it thrown at you is different, and as Vorbis is an open format and if they did put any DRM in it would that DRM encryption scheme become open too. I do not know what license it has.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Overly Critical Guy]

What amuses me is the bias. The submitter wrote "hideously encumbered H.264 format." Hideously encumbered? Give me a break. It's as "encumbered" as MP3 is, and everybody uses MP3s.

Even Theora's developers say full H.264 edges out Theora. We're just supposed to adopt Theora simply because it's not "encumbered." Well, outside the echo chamber, not a lot of people care about that. Not to mention that H.264 has hardware acceleration support.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[iMacGuy]

> Theora just scores higher on a scoring algorithm when compared ot a single h264 encoder, the open-source x264. It doesn't even do that; it only scored higher when using Xiph's PSNR tool, because it respected a buggy colorspace header written by ffmpeg that didn't match the video. x264 won rather heavily when that was fixed, but /. never retracted the story.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[cdonati]

Even something like an iPod will support ogg files with the right firmware. For example, I put rockbox on my iPod and now it can play ogg, FLAC, and whatever other files I've thrown at it. I don't even have to use iTunes to add music to the player; I can just copy the music files to the iPod's hard drive. Rockbox recognizes them and sorts them by their tags. I didn't even have to format the iPod's hard drive. It just installed alongside the original firmware, allowing me to use whichever one I wished. Rockbox also supports a bunch of other players from Archos, Cowon, iriver, Olympus, SanDisk, and Toshiba.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Ogg Vorbis was better in quality than MP3

As I recall, it also took up a lot more CPU cycles, and portable music manufacturers didn't want to use it because of poor battery performance.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[nxtw]

As I recall, it also took up a lot more CPU cycles, and portable music manufacturers didn't want to use it because of poor battery performance.

Some devices used specialized decoding hardware instead of using a general purpose CPU to perform decoding; even if the device's CPU was fast enough to decode MP3, a separate decoder was able to use less power.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[hedwards]

That's my policy, rip to FLAC or APE, or something else that's lossless. I prefer to rip my discs to images complete with properly formatted and tagged cue sheet, then convert the whole catalog of files to a new format when technology dictates that I need to do so.

Sure it takes time, but I can make my computer do most of that work when I'm not actually at the computer, or focused on other things. With the plus side being that I don't really have to worry about tagging and retagging or file integrity. Just set something like SFV to task to ensure that the copies are still good and rerip the odd disc if I really have to. It really does settle the format and quality decisions.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[gbarules2999]

Sansa players all support ogg, thanks to firmware upgrades. Flac, too.

I rip to ogg when it's a CD I know I won't delete from my Sansa Clip. It actually sounds pretty damn good.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[srussell]

Now, 5 years later I have a large collection of ogg files that are essentially useless. No one in the mainstream uses ogg, despite the superiority and price.

Weird. I started out the same, but I'm still ripping to Vorbis ogg. When I first started, I easily found the Cowon D2, which supported ogg. When I bought my Android G1, hey! Guess what? The native media player supported ogg, too. A quick Google search turns up this page, which lists no fewer than 59 flash based portable media players that will play oggs, and 38 hard-drive based portable media players that do, too. There are 5 smartphone platforms that support it (some of those through third-party apps for the phones). The last two DVD players I've bought have come with support for ... what? Playing oggs off data CDs.

There are many mainstream companies that support ogg. Some don't. "No one," however, is simply incorrect.

--- SER

Re:repeat of ogg?

[TheRaven64]

Slightly more, but not much. Xiph released an integer-only CODEC for Vorbis, which performs very well on cheap ARM chips with no FPU. When you compared MP3 and Vorbis decoding on something like an ARM4 core, there is not much difference. Early portable media players used exactly this kind of hardware. The later generations, however, use something like a TI OMAP which comes with an ARM core drawing around 50mW and a DSP core drawing 15mW. MP3 and AAC can be decoded on the DSP core, while no one has written a Vorbis decoder for it and so you need to use the ARM core instead.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[julian67]

iRiver are not cheap and not crappy.

Cowon are not cheap and not crappy.

Sansa, Archos.....etc etc

It's not enough to say player X accounts for the majority without demonstrating it. If ipod sell more than any other single brand they may still not be the majority. Example: maybe they sell 40% but all other players together account for the other 60%. Even being the biggest seller doesn't equate to monopoly or majority.

But apart from making unsupported assertions and revealing your ignorance of facts, figures and all other competing players that was a fascinating and insightful post. Congrats.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[jedidiah]

And what law would that be?

What "crime" would the local DA charge you with?

What cause of action would the RIAA sue you over?

Stop spreading this moronic nonsense.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[owlstead]

IMHO it's not as much as an echo chamber as a minority viewpoint. Most people don't care (period). They've got other things to worry about.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[iMacGuy]

Man, I suck at formatting.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Anonymous Coward]

'No wireless; less space than a nomad. Lame.'

Yup, slashdot: where the popularity of technologies can be predicted with complete accuracy.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[vadim_t]

Very nice... do you have one to say that ? Sure, they have very good things (like output quality : sounds really very good, with my shure SE420 intra-headset).

Actually yes, I have a Cowon D2 16GB model.

But firmwares suck horribly : on my D2, still no way to load a complete album from the tagged list. I must go through the list of files (which allows loading a complete directory at once), which is a pain, and moreover a stupid one, as my music is divided between the internal flash and a HDSC (16GB+32GB by now : it would totally fit on neither), which forces me to go back and forth between folders.

I'm not really sure what you mean here. The player allows playing by performer, album, song name, song type, or year. You can also go by directory, ignoring the metadata.

I don't have enough music to fill the whole player, so don't know what's it like with a SD card.

This is silly at most, yet, Cowon monkeys prefer putting their efforts into crafting an animated flash UI for upcoming firmwares. Very nice, yeah... sure. Go get one, and we'll talk again about this. Cowon's concept of a bunch of formats, plus very good hardware quality doesn't change the major pain their firmware policy is.

Heard about the flash stuff, never really bothered trying it.

Enthusiasm doesn't imply blindness, dude. Sad, but true. Only one consumer brand allowing to play Ogg and FLAC doesn't make it easy to find a player : this just ties you to them, making it easier for them to mock you.

Well, it works perfectly fine for my needs. YMMV.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[mr_stinky_britches]

I just found this program 2 days ago and I feel compelled to chime in that it is AMAZING! Cheers..

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Sir_Lewk]

My rockbox'd 5th gen ipod is the best music player I've ever had. My greatest fear is that it will die, along with any other 5th gen out there and I'll be forced to find something newer (provided they still don't have alternative firmwares for the newer ipods)

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Kalriath]

What were you expecting from someone who worships at the feet of Jobs?

(And I actually own an iPod. Go figure)

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Daengbo]

I agree with your post except -- iPod doesn't have a 90% market share in most place. In fact, it's quite rare in Asia, as far as I can tell.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[mad.frog]

Theora may be equally as good

Actually, no. It is demonstrably false that Theora is even comparable to H.264.

No, I won't bother posting links with evidence showing this to be the case, as it's pretty damn easy to find.

Consider a thought experiment: if Theora is in fact comparable, why the hell are Apple, Adobe, etc, all paying the license fees for H.264?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I agree with your post except -- iPod doesn't have a 90% market share in most place. In fact, it's quite rare in Asia, as far as I can tell.

Its my understanding that just about every portable audio player in asia can also play ogg vorbis too.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[howlingmadhowie]

Theora may be equally as good, but it's trying to supplant an already-established format. 'Equally as good' isn't good enough for that: You have to be noticeably better.

nope, that's not how the world works. theora's quality is of absolutely no importance and of no relevance to its success. what it needs is support by a monopoly. that's how a data format or codec becomes popular.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[JasterBobaMereel]

...so you re-encode to MP3 a format that is slower more CPU intensive and a very old format ... but well supported

This is not an argument for Ogg but against MP3 which is widely supported mostly because it is widely supported

Nothing has come along to supplant it not because there is nothing better/cheaper/simpler/faster etc but because nothing else is as well supported ....

Theora will be well supported simply because it will be in the HTML 5 spec and so the majority will support it, they will also support other codecs but the default will be theora ....

Re:repeat of ogg?

[r_jensen11]

I wasn't blaming so much as pointing out that like many blogs, slashdot can be an echo chamber. The same opinions are repeated over and over and treated as if they are held by the majority of people. I was younger then and still thought slashdot had a finger on the pulse of technology. It doesn't.

Oh come on, you're full of ****. I've already placed my order for Duke Nukem Forever on the Phantom, and I'm expecting it in 3 months!

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Hatta]

It is a repeat, let me demonstrate:

Ogg Vorbis was better in quality than MP3 - back then (and even today) the most popular compression for music. However, AAC and WMA are also better than MP3 - and people actually sold music in AAC and WMA formats as well as MP3

Theora is better in quality than MPEG4, the most popular compression for video. However h264 is also better than MPEG4 - and people actually sell videos in h264 formats as well as MPEG4.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[nxtw]

MPEG4 ASP (that is, what's implemented by XviD) isn't that popular outside of the Internet, and it's rarely used for HD video.

H.264 (aka MPEG4 AVC) is used in: H.323 conferencing, most HD satellite, high-def HD broadcasts in some countries, IPTV services like U-verse, Apple's video store, AVCHD camcorders, newer Flash streaming videos, Blu-ray, more and more Internet pirated video (especially HD), and more. In many cases, H.264 replaced MPEG2 or H.263. IIRC, Apple was the main user of MPEG4 ASP out of this list.

Re:repeat of ogg?

[Sinbios]

Which monopoly supported MP3? MPEG-4 Part 2? H264? Zip?

Re:repeat of ogg?

[againjj]

Not to defend ogg vorbis too much, but it has actually achieved success in a few realms - it's the audio format of choice on Wikipedia, which is one of the web's most popular sites

Which makes WP sound inaccessible for almost everyone, as the proper codec is not installed on most machines. I know, I know, it's easy to install the right software, but most people will not get past the help page that is rather long. ogg will become widely usable in (not joking) the Year of Linux on the Desktop, because only then will there be a large enough installed base for the network effect to kick in.

hideously encumbered??

[bennini]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3y3QoFnqZc

Look at ThePirateBay

[B4light]

Look at ThePirateBay. The most popular codecs are H.264 and others like Xvid and DivX. There's almost no videos in the .ogg format, and when you do find a video that is .ogg, it's such a huge file size that you go back to look for a smaller file encoded in a better format.

Re:Look at ThePirateBay

[loufoque]

The problem with those codecs are patents. That is completely irrelevant to pirates.

Re:Look at ThePirateBay

[CyberDragon777]

And to anybody not living in the US or in Japan.

Re:Look at ThePirateBay

[loufoque]

Unfortunately, even people outside of US and Japan are concerned, since we share the same web and applications.

Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to go with Mike Shaver on this one. At the bitrates that youtube is advertising it's videos, it's nonsense to say Ogg theora videos would have to be excessively larger. Loking at Shaver's examples and methodology I think DiBona must have been misinformed about Ogg theora.

I also have to agree with Shaver that for all intents and purposes, Google currently *is* the video king, and what Google says, is what goes. It would be disappointing of google to give some lame excuse and not do the right thing. Whatever happened to that motto of theirs, "Do no evil"? There is no reason at the current bitrates to choose a patent encumbered standard over a Free standard.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[benwaggoner]

Reread Shaver's methadology:

A keyframe interval of 250 frames was used for the Theora encoding.

10 seconds is absurdly short for any kind of codec test. That's almost as long as the buffer would be, and current Thusndela builds don't include full buffer management. Plus he picked a pretty low motion section of the clip. He should the full clip. Current Theora builds are plenty fast; it'd be faster than realtime on a laptop.

In a real codec compare, CBR is often the best way to see differences between codecs and implementations, since that's where rate distortion really shows its stuff. How well a codec can preserve quality with high motion in a fixed buffer is a key differentiatior.

That said, I believe that the Theora+Vorbis results are substantially better than the YouTube 327kbit/sec. Several other people have expressed the same view to me, and I expect you'll also reach the same conclusion. This is unsurprising since we've been telling people that Theora is better than H.263

His primary quality comparison is between Theora and H.263, not H.264. H.263 is even older than VP3 which Theora is based on. As to H.264 he says:

In the case of the 499kbit/sec H.264 I believe that under careful comparison many people would prefer the H.264 video.

Yep. And it would be a huge differential if he'd picked a more challenging section of the source.

And while it doesn't have any impact on the comparison, no compressionist would use those frame sizes. We always try to round to the nearest mod16 value, so that we have macroblock alignment.

Thus 480x272 and 400x224 would be more efficient choices in both cases. 400x226 is particulary egregious, as it means the codec is really encoding at 400x240 internally with 14 lines of padding.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Ben Hutchings]

10 seconds is absurdly short for any kind of codec test.

WTFV. The keyframe interval is 10 seconds but the clip is nearly 5 minutes long.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[benwaggoner]

Yep, didn't catch that until after that last post.

Interesting that they cut it off right before the challenging high motion parts, though.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Ben Hutchings]

There are some quick pans, and it's certainly enough to show up the characteristic flaws of each codec. I attempted a blind test by randomising the order of the files, but I could see which was which anyway.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[benwaggoner]

A quick pan isn't that informative without knowing anything about the rate control model they're using. 1 sec of hard video in a 15 sec buffer can be smoothed over.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Daniel Phillips]

Thanks for providing us with the objective point of view from Microsoft's evangelism department, Ben. Your support for Chris Dibona's point of view pretty much confirms for me he's flat wrong.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[benwaggoner]

Thanks for providing us with the objective point of view from Microsoft's evangelism department, Ben. Your support for Chris Dibona's point of view pretty much confirms for me he's flat wrong.

I'm actually not an evangelist anymore; I run strategy for Silverlight media technologies.

And as such, have done a lot of Theora encodes to see how interesting it is. It's be trivial to support as a managed decdoer in the the new Silverlight 3 Raw AV pipeline, so it's fine by me if it turns out to be great, but I think peope have very unrealistic expectations for it.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Daniel Phillips]

I'm actually not an evangelist anymore; I run strategy for Silverlight media technologies.

Color me skeptical about the impartiality of a company named after one of Microsoft's key embrace-extend efforts, particularly when the issue is public access to media via non-proprietary codecs.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[benwaggoner]

Color me skeptical about the impartiality of a company named after one of Microsoft's key embrace-extend efforts, particularly when the issue is public access to media via non-proprietary codecs.

No, I work for Microsoft proper. But I'm speaking as a compression nerd here. Honestly, if Theora was a big sucess that'd be good for Silverlight; we have a codec extensibility model and Flash doesn't. But people seem to think that HTML5 and Theora are going to solve problems that the're not able, or even meant to, solve.

But there's certainly no reason in the world you should or would need to take my word for any of this. x264 and ffmpeg2theora would make a short project out of doing your own comparison.

Make sure to run the lastest Theora alpha 2, and use "-V" to turn on the slowest, highest quality mode.

"Better" is alwasy about context. Try a head-to-head for a scenario of interest to you.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Daniel Phillips]

"Better" is alwasy about context. Try a head-to-head for a scenario of interest to you.

"Better" to me is quite clear: the one that is unencumbered and good enough technically is better. See here for a trustworthy comparison of H.264 vs Theora PSNR, showing Theora running about 2 db behind H.264 currently. Not only is that not enough to bother me, but the other thing you see from the graph is the gap steadily closing. Theora is already good enough for me, versus H.264's huge disadvantage of being heavily legally encumbered, and thus unsuited to use in a web standard.

I will take "good enough" any day over lawyer bait. Sorry, you may be a codec geek but as a Softie you are a geek with an agenda. Cred -1.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[Panaflex]

Hey Ben - thanks for jumping in nevertheless. I'd love to see more "Softies" hop into discussions.

Re:Laziness or Ignorance? You decide

[iMacGuy]

x264 defaults to fast mode; rerunning it with more analysis on that file (basically -A all -m 9 should cover most of it) gains another 2db. Also, that test, like some other Theora tests, is on a 176x144 video. Exactly how often do you watch those?

Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[Saint Stephen]

Why is a standard being created for which Google Gears + Google Video/YouTube seems to be the "main thing" it's for? Somebody please tell me why HTML5 isn't worse than anything Microsoft ever tried to do with the browser - why it isn't platform lock-in.

This is a sincere question, because the previous HTML standards seemed to be really truly designed for multiple implementations, whereas this app-y version seems to already have an end application in mind and is working backwards to create the "standard."

Re:Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[moogord]

html was never really designed to do much more than have a single "document" that can link to other "documents" on the internet. over time dynamic ideas were tacked on such as javascript but it still has never been designed in such a way that 'app-y' ideas can be created without hacking up the 'document' model.

Thus html 5 attempts to correct this by modifying the original 'document' model so that it now supports 'documents' and 'app-y' ideas. its not evil, its progress.

Re:Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[Anonymous Coward]

Every HTML5 feature is OK'd by Mozilla, Opera and Apple. Microsoft has voice there too, but they don't seem to give a damn about it. HTML 5 would have specified Theora as baseline if Apple, Microsoft and Nokia didn't protest. Opera and Mozilla protest H.264 as baseline, thus HTML 5 doesn't specify any codec.

HTML 5 cares about things like YouTube/GMail, because that's where web users spend a lot of time today, and HTML4 is lacking for these types of applications. Ian Hickson (editor of HTML 5) doesn't want to specify science-fiction, but something that real browsers and real websites use, that's why there's a lot of "working backwards" from actual needs and implementations.

Re:Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[beelsebob]

The point is that it *replaces* proprietry things like google gears/google video. Google (and now everyone else) will be able to continue to do these innovative things, and not require you to install flash or gears for them to work.

Re:Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[laird]

"Somebody please tell me why HTML5 isn't worse than anything Microsoft ever tried to do with the browser - why it isn't platform lock-in."

This one's easy. Microsoft creates Windows-proprietary extensions to lock people into their platform. HTML 5 is an open standard that is implemented by all major browsers on all major operating systems, so there is no platform lock-in.

Re:Somebody explain to me why HTML5 != evil

[mad.frog]

HTML 5 is an open standard

By "open", I presume you mean "is controlled with an iron fist by Ian Hickson, who is a Google employee".

Heck, if it's good enough for Hixie, it's good enough for the world!

Stupid stupid stupid...

[93 Escort Wagon]

This is really one of those classic "only on Slashdot" stories. Whatever problems people have regarding h.264 licensing - thinking that somehow Theora support should be tantamount while h.264 support is "nice as an extra"? What color, exactly, is the sky on that world where you're living? Because if you were on this world ("Earth" we call it), you'd realize that stupidity piled on top of zealotry like that is the best, fastest way to render the <video> element irrelevant.

<sarcasm>Yeah, that'd be a great way to drive support for a web where all browsers get to compete on a level playing field.</sarcasm>

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[sakdoctor]

Are those sarcasm tags part of the HTML5 standard?

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[loufoque]

An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video, that is the real issue that people seem to have trouble to understand. That is why the HTML standard only mandates a format that is not impaired by any legal restrictions: Theora.

Not being able to legally play DVDs, Blurays, connect your ipod, etc. on linux are already big problems, we don't need another one.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[timmarhy]

please link to some proof of this, as i understood it h.264 is free to decode with. i suspect you are confusing patented with non free, in the usual RMS style reasoning.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Kjella]

An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video, that is the real issue that people seem to have trouble to understand. That is why the HTML standard only mandates a format that is not impaired by any legal restrictions: Theora.

Most companies obviously prefer to pay a license and avoid the legal risk. Consumers like myself do "apt-get install x264" and it installs from the *buntu multiverse repository. The people that actually seem to care are very, very few. Personally I'd damn near like a ban on everything else, h264 works just perfect under Linux IMO. I guess if you're on Windows it sucks to be you, but I cant' say I care :)

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[benwaggoner]

An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video, that is the real issue that people seem to have trouble to understand.

I keep hearing that, but I don't know why that would be so. MPEG-LA requires a fee for distribution of products. But Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year) and allow as many people to download a H.264-enabled Firefox as they want, no?

That is why the HTML standard only mandates a format that is not impaired by any legal restrictions: Theora.

HTML5 does not mandate any codec or format. Ogg with Vorbis and Theora were proposed, but not included in the current draft, due to concerns by (IIRC) Nokia and Apple.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Super_Z]

This document describes the terms of the H.264 license. The license seems to cover both encoding and decoding.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[gbarules2999]

Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year) and allow as many people to download a H.264-enabled Firefox as they want, no?

I doubt Firefox is straight GPL, so including the decoder wouldn't get that licence up in arms, but I can't imagine Mozilla being too happy with the idea. Maybe IceWeasel will include the thing for us.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[FlyingBishop]

Whatever problems people have regarding h.264 licensing - thinking that somehow Theora support should be tantamount while h.264 support is "nice as an extra"?

I generally try to avoid commenting on grammar issues, but I think you have the word tantamount confused with paramount.

Paramount - on the mountain - says, as I think this construction intends, that most people think Theora support should be the primary goal.

Tantamount - the same amount - says, as I don't think you intended, that Theora support would be about the same thing as h.264. It's possible you understand this and this was just a Freudian slip, since the debate is whether or not the codecs' abilities are the same.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year)

And what about Firefox forks? Other browsers using Gecko? Konqueror? Don't care, doesn't matter?

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

Would paying this fee allow others to modify and redistribute Firefox (including the h264 implementation) without repaying the fee?

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Anonymous Coward]

I keep hearing that, but I don't know why that would be so. MPEG-LA requires a fee for distribution of products. But Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year) and allow as many people to download a H.264-enabled Firefox as they want, no?

So, Mozilla is the only one who can legally distribute the sources and binaries of Firefox*, under your system.

How is that free, again?

*(or to make the branding issue not, replace FF with iceweasel)

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[MalusCaelestis]

Unfortunately, no.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Daniel Phillips]

An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video, that is the real issue that people seem to have trouble to understand. That is why the HTML standard only mandates a format that is not impaired by any legal restrictions: Theora.

It is especially amazing that Google has trouble understanding the importance if this issue. The phrase that comes to mind is "asleep at the wheel".

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[laird]

"An open-source browser cannot legally read h264 video"

Browsers don't "read" any video files - they use CODECs to do so. Pretty much every OS comes with (or can easily have installed) an h.264 decoder at no cost to the user.

Many media formats have licensing costs - MP3, MP4, DivX, etc. Those costs are usually paid by the OS vendor, who covers the licensing costs in the cost of the OS. And if there's a decoder in hardware, the licensing cost is covered in the chip cost. You may not realize it, but every MP3 player pays a fee to the inventor of the MP3 format. And so on for pretty much every CODEC.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[benwaggoner]

So, Mozilla is the only one who can legally distribute the sources and binaries of Firefox*, under your system.

It's not MY system :). And Mozilla would have to ask them about what counts as a "product" in this context. It could be that a company distributing their own binaries based on Mozilla would need their own license or something. Or could link back to a Mozilla decoder lib or something.

IANAL, thank goodness.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[loufoque]

Browsers don't "read" any video files - they use CODECs to do so. Pretty much every OS comes with (or can easily have installed) an h.264 decoder at no cost to the user.

Sorry to disappoint you, but all browsers implementing the <video> element at the moment have purposedly chosen not to rely on any OS-level codec system.

Also, the best video players out there, namely VLC and MPlayer, do not rely on any OS-level codec system either.

Why, you ask? Because those are not good enough.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[loufoque]

I keep hearing that, but I don't know why that would be so. MPEG-LA requires a fee for distribution of products. But Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year) and allow as many people to download a H.264-enabled Firefox as they want, no?

Except people wouldn't be allowed to redistribute it, which would be in direct contradiction of the Firefox license, or any free software license for that matter.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Moldiver]

Safari 4 definitively uses Quicktime to play video...

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[loufoque]

Which certainly doesn't count as the OS-level codec system on Microsoft Windows, another platform supported by Safari 4.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Moldiver]

But on osx it does. Not the fault of Apple that win has no usable multimedia-api.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[loufoque]

Still, they're not using the system of the OS, they're using their own, which happens to be that on the OS on one of their supported platforms.

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[Sinbios]

I guess if you're on Windows it sucks to be you, but I cant' say I care :)

Wait, what?

Re:Stupid stupid stupid...

[BZ]

> But Mozilla could pay the decoder cap fee (maxes out a $5M/year next year) and allow
> as many people to download a H.264-enabled Firefox as they want, no?

Yes, but then it would not be open source anymore. That is, you could download it, but not redistribute it. And you couldn't, say, ship a browser called IceWeasel that does exactly what Firefox does without paying your own licensing fees. Mozilla is not willing to do that.

Note the grandparent was very specific in talking about open-source browsers, not free (as in beer) browsers.

VHS was better

[tjstork]

Everyone has made a mythology about VHS somehow losing to Sony Beta despite being inferior. If you lived in that day, and walked into a store, there was really no significant difference between picture quality between VHS and Beta on the average TV of the day. There just wasn't. And, everyone forgets that the superiority of Beta was achieved by making the tapes only an hour long. VHS vs Beta was a silly argument. Beta claimed superior picture quality on TV's nobody had, but, VHS could store entire movies. To most people, Beta's claims sounded a lot like BS, while VHS was clearly better.

Re:VHS was better

[westlake]

there was really no significant difference between picture quality between VHS and Beta on the average TV of the day

You had RF input only. No comb filtering.

Resolution around, what, 330 lines? Not much changed since the B&W demos at the 1939 New York World's Fair.

Re:VHS was better

[fast turtle]

We bought our first VCR in the mid-eighties, which was a Betamax unit. At that time, the shortest tape you could get for VHS/BETA was T120 (2 hours). The real difference was you couldn't record more then 6 hours on a betamax system where as the VHS units where already offering 8 hours of recording time but the main thing that killed the Beta format was Sony's refusal to license the tech to the Porn industry. Simply put, Porn sold a hell of a lot of VHS tapes and built the market for it.

Re:VHS was better

[wrook]

I was around then. My parents had a Betamax VCR. It was *definitely* better than my friend's VHS. But within a very short time you couldn't rent movies on Beta. When I bought my first VCR it was VHS simply for that reason. My parents still had the Beta for years and years afterwards. If I wanted to tape something I often did it at my parent's place because the quality was noticeably better.

Now I can't comment on exactly caused VHS to win, but that was my experience.

Re:VHS was better

[JasterBobaMereel]

VHS won because slightly more movies *that people wanted to watch* were on VHS ...and so they bought a VHS machine rather than a BetaMAx machine, and so since more people has a VHS machine they bought more movies on VHS, and so there were more movies on VHS .... and so it snowballed ...

The technical differences were minor and not significant (and most were later incorporated into VHS anyway) what mattered was can I get Movie X,Y and Z on this format .... the answer was slightly more often yes on VHS than Beta and so VHS won ...

Re:VHS was better

[YourExperiment]

Everyone has made a mythology about VHS somehow losing to Sony Beta

Beta won? Damn, who does no-one tell me these things? Oh well, it doesn't really matter now - I threw out my VHS and bought an HD-DVD player last week.

Re:Google and Firefox

[selven]

Stop misquoting the motto! It's "don't be evil", not "do no evil". Google is just saying that they don't intend to screw over their own customers, not that they intend to become the moral custodian of justice for the entire world.

MS won't require Silverlight. Too easy.

[iYk6]

An interesting strategy, but I don't think so. It would increase their install base for Microsoft Silverlight, but if they make Windows/IE users install something to watch video, their users would be just as likely to install Firefox.

Regardless of whether MS requires Silverlight to render video, as long as MS honors the video tag according to the spec, they won't be making things difficult for web developers. In order to do that, they would have to require MS specific tags or attributes for video, which is much more their style.

Re:MS won't require Silverlight. Too easy.

[hplus]

Why would they install another browser when they could just click the "Click here to install silverlight and watch this video" button?

Re:MS won't require Silverlight. Too easy.

[binarylarry]

Why would they do that when they could just make it an "urgent system security update" in the first place?

Re:MS won't require Silverlight. Too easy.

[valinor89]

Who says Microsoft can't include Silverlight directly in the next IE? They wouldn't have to promote Silverlight and they could make it compatible with other browsers and then make Silverlight the defacto standard. I'ts nothing they haven't done before...

hardware acceleration

[codename.matrix]

Isn't h.264 the only one of those two that has hardware acceleration. When you want to deliver high quality video on a website for many and even smaller devices it makes a lot of sense to use the format that can be decoded by available hardware decoders. Modern mobile phones can decode h264 in hardware, so can even low-end CPU Netbooks. H264 sounds like the obvious choice for internet video to me.

Spotify.

[mjrauhal]

While not being a fan (or a user) of Spotify for their DRM stuff (I'm sure it's all mandated by the media lobby, but regardless) and the opaque pricing which the boss of a large (by Finnish standards) local media company Poptori suspected doesn't really get distributed all that well to artists.

However, fact is that it's gotten pretty popular in pretty short time at least in some circles, and guess what: Vorbis. Presumably for royalty and quality per bandwidth reasons (over MP3, in any case).

That's a different situation

[Wesley Felter]

Pirates have the advantage that they don't have to pay for patent licenses, so H.264 and Theora are both "free". But for law-abiding companies like Mozilla and Google, Theora is free and H.264 isn't.

Re:That's a different situation

[benwaggoner]

But the cost of the H.264 licenses are vanishingly small compared to the extra bandwidth cost of using Theora for a company like Google or Apple.

Using H.264 is free as long as clips are under 12 minutes. A number which may sound familiar to YouTube users :).

Here's info on the MPEG-LA licensing terms: http://www.mpegla.com/avc/avc-agreement.cfm

Re:That's a different situation

[Daengbo]

But the cost of the H.264 licenses are vanishingly small compared to the extra bandwidth cost of using Theora for a company like Google or Apple.

You should RTFA since it attempts to rebut that exact statement.

Re:That's a different situation

[benwaggoner]

This?

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html

I read it, and have commented on it at length throughout this thread.

Basically the article briefly says that YouTube's H.264 is better than Theora, and then goes on at length showin how Theroa is better than H.263.

Xiph's own data shows H.264 has a big bitrate advantage at the same quality level even in a test that should favor Theora.

http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo7.html

in the Rate-Distorion graph, note they start the plot at 50 Kbps, so look at the actual numbers.

For example, at 40 dB, x264 needs 70 Kbps and Theora needs 120 Kbps.

The gap would be bigger with higher motion, more detail, longer content, and particular when there are buffer constraints. Also, x264 is (properly) tuned for perceptual quality more than strict PSNR accuracy.

Theora suffers from not being a very mature implementation (which Xiph is making great progress on addressing) and being a 90's era codec design (about which Xiph can't do anything without breaking compatibility). And other codecs are getting better as well; if Theroa is refined enough to be reasonably optimal in a year, it'll be competing against the improved H.264 and VC-1 codecs of a year from now, and H.265 not that far away.

There are all kinds of interesting things about Theora, but competitive low bitrate compression efficiency isn't going to be one of them.

" what the heck Google thinks it's doing."

[JamesP]

That's easy.

Convert the bazillion videos in youtube to Theora and store them in two formats.

Who carries Cowon?

[tepples]

In my experience, finding a player that does .ogg isn't that hard. Look at the players made by Cowon for instance

Some people prefer to shop for electronics close to where they buy their groceries because 1. they get to feel the buttons on the display model, and 2. returning a product doesn't involve paying for shipping. But Best Buy doesn't carry Cowon products, and neither does Walmart*. Do you know of any retail chain in the United States that carries them?

Re:Who carries Cowon?

[vadim_t]

I have no clue, I don't live in the US.

Re:Who carries Cowon?

[gbarules2999]

Some people prefer to shop for electronics close to where they buy their groceries

Those people are stupid. MP3 players are a very liquid online department and prices can fluxuate very dramatically. Unless you're looking at the clearance aisles or Apple's stuff, you will always get a better deal online. Actually, I take the Apple comment back - Amazon has them on sale.

Sure, physical displays are nice, but you can be paying nearly double if you're looking at something outside the Apple/Microsoft arena, if you're not smart.

Re:Who carries Cowon?

[achbed]

Welcome to the real world. MOST PEOPLE ARE INDEED STUPID and buy what is in front of them at the time. You might have realized that by now....

Re:Who carries Cowon?

[tepples]

Those people are stupid.

A lot of parents are stupidly afraid of mail order and thus won't let their kids use their saved-up allowance money to buy something online. They expect their kids to walk into a store and hand over a wad of cash.

but you can be paying nearly double if you're looking at something outside the Apple/Microsoft arena

As I said, for some people, not paying for shipping makes up for it.

Re:Who carries Cowon?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Sandisk's Sansa Clip and Sansa Vuse devices support Vorbis (though you might need a firmware upgrade).

G1 supports it

[bobetov]

Just wanted to put a plug in for the HTC-built G1 phone, which has had built-in OGG support from day one.

Very nice toy, am loving being able to SSH into my servers anywhere there's cell service.

Re:The Failure Of Linux,Open Source And Slashdot

[binarylarry]

I liked this troll better when it talked about tron fanzines and linux web sights.

Maybe there's another reason.

[Perseid]

There's a warning on the comparison site that a number of players, big name free players, don't correctly play Theora. In fact, Media Player Classic doesn't play it that video all. It's been many months since I've encountered a video that program couldn't play, so why if it's this great open source media codec do so many programs, some of them open source themselves, have a problem playing it?

Is embedded video going to be blockable?

[lennier]

That's my biggest concern with embedded video support in Firefox. When everyone uses Flash, it's easy to stop random web pages from auto-running a pointless and loud video clip in my ear. I just install Flashblock. Can I do the same for Theora?

I ask because I just today had a movie review site auto-play a video and I went 'what the? am I running IE again?' It was truly a retro 1990s experience, and not in a good way.

Re:Is embedded video going to be blockable?

[Philip_the_physicist]

I suspect there would be an option in about:config to allow the user to ignore autoplay=true, but it would be harder to prevent a script activating the player without disabling scripting altogether, or using a very complex set of rule to decide whether to respect the command.

Re:Is embedded video going to be blockable?

[asa]

That's my biggest concern with embedded video support in Firefox. When everyone uses Flash, it's easy to stop random web pages from auto-running a pointless and loud video clip in my ear. I just install Flashblock. Can I do the same for Theora?

I ask because I just today had a movie review site auto-play a video and I went 'what the? am I running IE again?' It was truly a retro 1990s experience, and not in a good way.

I'm sure there will be a "disable auto-play" in Firefox about:config or an add-on that does it. There may even be a general preference for it in prefs UI at some point. Not only that, but Firefox itself can know when a background tab is playing video and give some kind of indicator which tab it is, maybe even putting a play/pause/mute control in the tab itself. That's not possible with Flash video because Flash doesn't provide an API that lets the browser know whether it's playing or not.

Re:Is embedded video going to be blockable?

[Jesus_666]

I think it shouldn't be hard to have something Flashblock-like for - the element is completely replaced with a placeholder and only loaded when you click on it.

Subjective viewing quality

[PyrotekNX]

After comparing the 499kbit H.264, and Theora video clips of Big Buck Bunny, clearly H.264 looks better. At this bitrate, there is obvious degradation in both samples, however H.264 is much more watchable. Theora struggles with flat areas such as text, and there is an unacceptable amount of artifacts around these elements. Perhaps in time, Theora will mature to the point where it can compete.

A small javascript extension could amend the autop

[paradisaeidae]

A small javascript extension could amend the autoplay='true' attribute of an inbound video tag.

Hideously encumbered?

[dangitman]

Wow, that's some real balanced reporting there. Theora has not proven itself immune to lawsuits from patent holders, so who knows what issues may arise there? And what is so "hideous" about patents applying to H.264, especially when it is easily licensable?

Re:The Failure Of Linux,Open Source And Slashdot

[thetoadwarrior]

It would have been quicker for you to throw a chair to let off some steam.

Re:x264 sucks

[PhillC]

As far as I know, the only H.264 encoder that is regularly superior to x264 is the offering from MainConcept. Read the Fifth Annual MSU Codec comparison, recently published in May 2009.

For quality comparisons, x264 and MainConcept are clearly the best options, with MainConcept slightly ahead. However, on speed, x264 is quite slow. It depends what it more important to you. For me, it's quality and I'll take the speed hit. x264 is truly fighting it out with the commercial products for market leadership.

While the article summary is, strictly speaking, probably correct in stating that "x264 is NOT the best encoder around", it is pretty damn close to being the best H.264 encoder around, and clearly better than its rivals in some areas.

Here's what I think.

[jocknerd]

"...will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines."

Equally good my ass. H.264 is way beyound what Ogg/Theora is capable of.

the best codec

[dayton967]

I have created codec that beats all of the others out of the water, and it's free and it's been around for a long time. Its called GTFO, and it's so simple to use. To use it, all you need to do is get your butt up outta that chair, and Go The G* Outside!

Tells us basically nothing.

[jcr]

There are a lot of H.264-compliant encoders out there, and their quality is all over the map. With the volume that YouTube is doing, they're probably using a single-pass software encoder.

-jcr

What about snow?

[gr8_phk]

Is anyone working on completing the snow codec? I thought it was supposed to actually compete with 264, or was that just hype too? If it's not hype perhaps Google could finish it and use that for Youtube.

Re:x264 sucks

[InspectorxGadget]

That MSU comparison was seriously flawed, as detailed at length on Doom9's forums.

Compressionist?

[mr_stinky_britches]

Compressionist? That is a new term to me...

Compressionist (as defined by the link yielded by googling define: compressionist):

The job description of the person that compresses audio or video to remove redundancies in digital data to reduce the amount that must be stored. Lossless compression removes only enough redundancy so that the original data can be recreated exactly as it was. Lossy compression sacrifices additional data to achieve greater compression.

Ah...so like you're claiming to be a video-compression/encoding specialist? Cool beans..

Re:Compressionist?

[benwaggoner]

Well, I like to think I've gotten past the point of claiming :).

http://www.bing.com/search?q=%22world's+greatest+compressionist%22&src=IE-SearchBox&Form=IE8SRC

http://www.focalpress.com/Book.aspx?id=7224&terms=%22ben+waggoner%22
(finishing up the second edition right now).

h253 has been around for a decade or so

[Grocks]

It has always been popular in the two-way video conferencing world. I used it in 1998, IIRC.

Re:h253 has been around for a decade or so

[nxtw]

You mean h263, and h263 has been used in videoconferencing since the 90s. It's a generation or two old.

H264 is a recent development; it was completed during the first half of this decade. It is used in new videoconferencing systems, includig HD equipment.

Re:Google has a huge problem on its hands...

[tjstork]

Because financially, Google is NOT a search company, it's an advertising service.

Advertising services ultimately work best when they have quality content.

Re:Google and Firefox

[Daniel Phillips]

Stop misquoting the motto! It's "don't be evil", not "do no evil".

Right, that pretty much fits with the Google ethos now, which goes something like "sure, doing a little evil here and there is ok as long as I myself am not actually evil". It's worth keeping in mind that the gentleman who coined the original left the building some time ago.

Street Performer Protocol Anyone?

[Inflatable Nerd]

After years of ripping DVDs and occasionly trying out Theora, my conclusion is that Theora is crap. Definitely better than H263, but not even close to H264.

So with that in mind, I make the following points:

1. Greg Maxwell's comparison does invalidate You Tube's claim that quality would suffer. Theora is quite close to YouTube's encode, and H264's default deblocking actually makes me prefer Theora in some instances.

2. This does not at all show that Theora is better. It's not. YouTube's encoder has to be fast enough to encode all the video submitted to YouTube, something like an hour every minute. Comparing carefully encoded x264 with carefully encoded Theora would be a fair comparison.

And final, a suggestion.

3. H264 should the same thing Blender did and makes the codec copyright and patent free using the street performer protocol. I would certainly donate at least $100 to free H264.

Of course, the suggestion is probably bad business wise. I'd like to know how much money is being made of patent licensing each year.

Who supports the VIDEO tag with Ogg Theora anyway?

[ivoras]

Is Firefox 3.5 the only browser currently supporting the VIDEO tag with the Ogg Theora codec? Here's what I can see on recently installed browsers:

• FF 3.5 beta: OK
• Google Chrome 2: NO
• Opera 10 beta: NO

Here's a very simple test page: http://lachy.id.au/dev/markup/tests/html5/video/003.html .

Re:A bigger picture than what's being described

[Daengbo]

This doesn't even mention small, independent games, (like any of Reflexive's stuff) which almost always use Vorbis files for the audio. I assume that's because the game can have a decoder without having to pay a distribution fee to someone. No matter the reason, .ogg is huge.

Re:Who supports the VIDEO tag with Ogg Theora anyw

[Cochonou]

It seems to work on Safari 4. If "fail", then "pass" is what it is supposed to show.

I think it's time to give up on Slashdot.

[mad.frog]

I never expect Slashdot to have an unbiased point of view, but I generally expect something remotely resembling accuracy.

Theora does not entirely suck, but it's just not in the same ballpark as H.264 in terms of quality-per-bandwidth. Period.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is deluded or has some particular axe to grind, be it political or marketing.

The persons making the claims of Theora's competitiveness have HUGE conflict-of-interest claims in making it appear competitive, and an honest article headline and summary would have made this clear.

If your primary concern is "openness", then sure, Theora is for you. But if you want the best codec available today, and don't mind paying for it, don't delude yourself, and more importantly, don't try to delude Slashdot readers... it's dishonest and reflects poorly on your editorial choices.

Re:h.264 will be in hardware

[TheTurtlesMoves]

Total BS. Hardware decoders will do only a few little things so they can claim to be hardware accelerated. These little things will be the bits that don't have patents.

Re:x264 sucks

[PhillC]

Can you post a link to the discussion please?

One word.

[cadu]

Rockbox.

Re:Who supports the VIDEO tag with Ogg Theora anyw

[broken_chaos]

If you have the XiphQT component installed it should work. ..Oh hey, they finally released a new version after almost two years. Maybe someone realized that they should actually provide a maintained component for the system-wide media service in OSX.

Re:A bigger picture than what's being described

[ardor]

Actually, a considerable amount of commercial games use Vorbis as well: http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/Games_that_use_Vorbis

Yes It Can

[cyclomedia]

Yes it can, as another poster pointed out - if i have the codec installed in my system then the browser should be able to play it, the browser should not be shipping codecs and decoders, it should be hooking into my os

Re:Yes It Can

[loufoque]

In which way the browser cannot reliably guarantee being able to play h264, which makes it a bad choice for a standard.

Think also of platforms without those big Operating Systems...

Also

[Sycraft-fu]

Objective tests are worthless on a perceptual codec. The whole point of lossy compression in video and audio is that data WILL be lost, however it will be done in such a way that it is minimally noticeable to humans. That means that the only way to test it is, well, to have humans look at the results and rate them. Doesn't matter if a given codec has a higher SNR, or whatever. If it ends up producing something that looks worse to viewers, it is a worse period since that's the idea here.

So what you need a some proper double blind tests where users rank codecs. Probably do some that are ABX type where you show an uncompressed video, X, and ask which of A or B looks closer to it. Also probably do some other AB types where just two videos are shown and the user is asked to pick the one they like the best.

Do that, compile some results, and you'll have useful data as to which codec actually is the best where best means "Gives the best subjective experience to the end user at a given bit rate." Doesn't matter what objective tests show, since we are concerned about human perception.

Meh. Whatever.

[Millennium]

I suspect that H.264 and Theora will emerge as dual coexisting standards for the video tag, much as GIF, JPEG, and PNG coexist as standards for the img tag. Browsers will eventually support both, either natively or through easy plug-in access, and no one will really care all that much.

Re:Meh. Whatever.

[Yvan256]

Just FYI, JPEG and PNG are complementary to each other (lossy, lossless) while GIF and PNG are competing in the same usage category (with the differences being that GIF supports animation* and PNG supports 24-bit and alpha support).

* MNG doesn't count as basically nothing supports it.

Re:Meh. Whatever.

[Millennium]

Just FYI, JPEG and PNG are complementary to each other (lossy, lossless) while GIF and PNG are competing in the same usage category (with the differences being that GIF supports animation* and PNG supports 24-bit and alpha support).

* MNG doesn't count as basically nothing supports it.

Of course. I assumed that this was a given. They coexist, each in their own niches. I believe the same will happen for video.

Re:Meh. Whatever.

[Yvan256]

I believe Theora will succeed against H.264 as much as Vorbis as succeeded against MP3 and AAC.

Re:Google has a huge problem on its hands...

[tjstork]

And where will you find that on the Internet?

That's ultimately the problem Google has. They might think about becoming a bit of a content company and folding that into their search. They could have a google news page with their own reporting and their own columnists, fold their stuff into the search. They could capture all the meta data so that celebrities, all that stuff, could be put together. They know what their searches are for... why not have their own content? Sure some content providers will be ticked off, but what are they going to do, de-robot themselves so Google can't index them? Why spend hundreds of millions a year on trying to make web based applications when they can spend a fraction of that on good reporters.

Mod parent bat-shit crazy

[RichiH]

1) Google servers have no need for any kind of graphics card (serial does just fine, thank you)
2) They are one of the largest computer manufacturers on Earth (and their own best & only customer) so that I highly doubt they have a GFX card and if they do it will be the cheapest, slowest, passively cooled chip they could find
3) Why does a streaming server need to decode the video stream? We encode videos to _save space_. Storing encoded video (disk is relatively cheap for google), decoding it in real time and then saturating their upstream with artifact-ridden, low-quality video _at the full bitrate of decoded video_ is, well, sorry to say so.. bat-shit crazy.

Re:Mod parent bat-shit crazy

[dirtyhippie]

Re: 1 and 2, Where did you get the idea I was talking about a graphics card? Take a look at the products hauppauge (for example) makes which offload video compression/decompression from the CPU.
Re: 3, I typoed decoding for encoding. I have no idea how you interpreted my post, but it sounds like it took the both of us to make something truly batshit crazy.

Re:Mod parent bat-shit crazy

[RichiH]

Other cards like the Haupauge TV cards etc are even more expensive than a low-level GFX card. If you look at the Google DC video, you will see that they have no extension cards and I doubt they put them onto the motherboard.

As there are more than enough computers at Google, I _heavily_ doubt they care about the encoding overhead. After all, you only have to do that once (per codec & rate).

In any case, thanks for following this up :)

Android Re:repeat of ogg?

[Tryfen]

What's odd is that Android not only allows the playing of .ogg files, all of the included ringtones are in the .ogg format.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=Android+ogg

OpenCL

[DrYak]

If Theora wants to be taken seriously they need a GPU based hardware decoder than works on the big three, Intel, ATI, Nvidia, and they need it yesterday, and they need to start offering it to the GPU manufacturers so they can bundle support like they do for WMV9, Divx, and H.264.

There *ARE* hardware chips developed.

But for GPUs, instead of having yet another bunch of transistors dedicated to yet another hardware accelerator eating up valuable on-die real estate (or an additional chip on the graphic card), having an implementation written in OpenCL could actually be the way to go.
There are already parallel implementations of DCT running on Cuda. And with the increased computing power of the GPU's shader units, this could be the way to go for the future (ATI seems indeed being interested in implementing video acceleration using GPGPU instead of dedicated silicon).

Theora/openCL could be a real killer application, specially since PowerVR people are also in the openCL design board (which probably means OpenCL capable embedable cores - makes a nice CortexA9 + PowerVR/openCL combination).

Ogg "relegated to the sidelines"?

[Anonymous Freak]

... meaning the largest video provider on the Net will make H.264 the primary codec and relegate the equally good open format Ogg/Theora firmly to the sidelines.

Uh, "relegate to the sidelines"? That would imply that Ogg/Theora is already at least on the sidelines. Sorry to burst your bubble, but Ogg/Theora isn't even in the stadium yet.

I'm all for open standards, and I would love it if the Ogg codecs were to become primary; but don't try to tell me it is a serious contender now. No default media player on Windows or Mac OS X can play them, no 'commonly distributed by OEMs' media player (read: QuickTime for Windows and Real,) can play them.

The Ogg community needs to push to either get Ogg support added to Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and Real *BY DEFAULT* (not by plugin,) or else they need to push to have major OEMs (Dell, HP, etc,) include open-source media software, like VLC or Mplayer included by the OEM. (Which won't happen, because VLC and Mplayer aren't big corporations that will pay the OEMs money to include their software.)

Re:Ogg "relegated to the sidelines"?

[lamapper]

I'm all for open standards, and I would love it if the Ogg codecs were to become primary; but don't try to tell me it is a serious contender now. No default media player on Windows or Mac OS X can play them, no 'commonly distributed by OEMs' media player (read: QuickTime for Windows and Real,) can play them. The Ogg community needs to push to either get Ogg support added to Windows Media Player, QuickTime, and Real *BY DEFAULT* (not by plugin,) or else they need to push to have major OEMs (Dell, HP, etc,) include open-source media software, like VLC or Mplayer included by the OEM. (Which won't happen, because VLC and Mplayer aren't big corporations that will pay the OEMs money to include their software.)

Perhaps you were being funny, as your second paragraph seems to note that you understand that historically proprietary companies (hardware and especially software companies) have been purposefully avoiding collaborating with any open document formats. (for well over two decades now) The history is clear and anyone who refuses to acknowledge the historical facts obviously has some other agenda (against open document formats and for vendor lock-in types of solutions).

There was a reason that proprietary companies want you and I to use their software. Oh and by the way, their video player required their browser (Internet Explorer). Oh and by the way their video player which required their browser, required their operating system (Vista). Oh by the way their operating system, which costs you as much as they are able to charge, requires you to purchase new hardware with more memory (RAM) than most computers have ever had to have. Why? Because their operating system is bloated and eats up most of that extra memory. Does anyone run Vista well in less than 2 GB of RAM? Less than 4 GB of RAM? Seems 4 GB or more is required today to run Vista and Windows 7 well.

Of course when they were not able to buy and vendor lock-in the last open source H.264 CODEC, what did they do? Why make sure that their Video players did not use the open video CODEC (Translated formats created by theora and ffmpeg). Why so that anyone using any system except Microsoft might not be able to play videos online.

x264 is a free software library for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

FFmpeg is a complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video and supports H.264, VLC and many more formats and buckets.

If YouTube switches to a proprietary H.264 codec; it would be huge and would very much hurt the open source open document formats, standard settings and interoperability efforts. Google would definitely be moving toward the dark side. Not good for a company, whose mantra is to not be evil.

And your second paragraph seems to demonstrate that you understand that Microsoft will never work with the Ogg Community to get their format included by *BY DEFAULT.

So I guess you were trying to be funny.

For others this says it all, from the Free Software Foundation, Getting started with Ogg:

Increasingly proprietary software companies like Microsoft, Apple, and Adobe are pushing video and audio formats that restrict access and restrict software developers, but there is an alternative that can be played on all computers without restriction â" Ogg

Is it in your (consumers) best interest that any one company c

Re: every walmart has OGG portables in stock...

[qubezz]

Sansa Clip, very good sound quality, ogg and flac support, starting at below $50, sold at every WalMart (although you should buy it ANYWHERE else.)

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=8466133
- $29.88 This might say it's not in stores near you, because the stores have 4GB ones that aren't on the web site..)

Stop the whiny douchebaggery.

Re: every walmart has OGG portables in stock...

[tepples]

Sansa Clip, very good sound quality, ogg and flac support

From the page you linked: "OS Required: Microsoft Windows XP SP2, Microsoft Windows Vista". According to this page, it actually works with Linux, but you might need to borrow someone's Windows PC to update the firmware.

Rediculous

[Touvan]

I understand the desire for Theora support, but calling fowl on Google in this case is downright underhanded. They obviously used h264, because that's what they have laying around! They've been encoding into that format for a while now. This format is nothing new for Youtube.

Theora IS to get hardware decoding

[ianmacfarlane]

Mike Shaver (Mozilla) says in the discussion that one of the things they are funding is hardware decoding for DSPS - see http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2009-June/020381.html

"Separate from the Wikimedia grant we also just started funding work to port Theora to some DSPs, so that we will be able to do off-CPU decode/yuv2rbg/scale on some devices."

Some quality-tuned H.264 v. Theora samples

[benwaggoner]

Given the original comparisons between Theora and YouTube's H.263 and H.264 encodes, I thought I'd do some samples showing what H.264 is capable of doing. YouTube doesn't use High Profile (no 8x8 blocks) nor CABAC entropy coding, and so leaves a lot of bits on the floor.

Note the third sample uses the high bitrate frame size and the low bitrate data rate, and still outperforms all the YouTube and Theora clips in video and audio quality.

http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/BBB%7C_Compare?lc=1033

Re: every walmart has OGG portables in stock...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

you might need to borrow someone's Windows PC to update the firmware.

Nope. You just unzip and copy the update to the device. I don't remember the exact procedure, but I've done it before and it was fairly straightforward. The Sansa gear is pretty sane that way.

Tarkin

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Anyone want to dig up the Ogg Tarkin project? Theora's getting pretty old, and we could use a new codec.