Working With Ogg Theora and the Video Tag

An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation's Holmes Wilson is just back from Berlin, where he participated in the Ogg Theora book sprint put on by FLOSS Manuals. Here is a broad look at Ogg Theora and how it fits into the push for free formats: where we're winning, what works, and what could be improved."

Comments

Theora

[ardor]

Unfortunately, Theora will stay irrelevant where it matters most. In sites like Youtube, h264 will prevail. And this time, h264 is the (much) better tech as well.
To get the same quality as h264 video, Theora video needs higher bit rates, which translates to higher traffic, and in the end costs more money. The much higher popularity of h264 compared to Theora doesn't help, either.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. And the OP linked article has a joke-of-a-comparison. I encoded the same video, same dimensions, same frame rate, and was able to widdle h264+AAC bandwidth down to 260 kbps and it still looked better than Ogg/Theora+Vorbis especially where the scene zooms towards the dark cave with sleeping bunny.

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention the lack of hardware acceleration makes it pretty much a non starter. My graphics card that cost a whole $50 (a 4650) came with H264, WMV9, DivX, and MPEG 2 & 4 out of the box. And with the rise of netbooks/nettops, green computing, mobile devices and high def video now more than ever hardware acceleration is the way to go. Is there even a beta driver for Theora that gives ANY acceleration?

Without hardware acceleration, preferably given to the big three (AMD, Intel, Nvidia) so they can integrate it into their drivers so users can get full acceleration easily and out of the box, I just don't see Theora gaining any ground. I know that those that support FOSS find this hard to accept, but Joe user really doesn't care if a codec is free or not, hell most don't even know what a codec is, they just want easy to use and simple. Theora need hardware support like yesterday if they want to gain traction. Although ultimately I think it will be like Vorbis VS MP3. Vorbis might work fine, but my MP3 player doesn't play Vorbis, in fact the majority don't. Folks don't care that MP3 is encumbered because it works for them. So while I wish the Theora guys luck it looks like a seriously uphill battle from where I'm sitting.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mide 90's.

Re:Theora

[Rockoon]

What does Linux development have to do with the obvious advantages of hardware acceleration?

Re:Theora

[gaspyy]

Unfortunately until MS includes video tag support in IE, nothing will matter.
Even if IE share drops to 40-50%, no content provider will be able to say "screw 'em".
And then we can only hope that MS will support H264 and not just VMW or whatever they want to push.

Whether you like it or not, we'll still need to use Flash for video for the foreseeable future (which, by the way, supports H264).

Re:Theora

[0100010001010011]

If google wants the video tag, which Chrome supports, they'll damn well implement the video tag on youtube.

The second something as popular as google, you tube or facebook implements video and leaves no other alternatives is the day that Microsoft will wake up and implement the video tag or be left in the dust.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

That post has more to do with the fact that the state of Ogg-Theora TODAY isn't what it's likely to be in the FUTURE. On the subject of hardware accel, Linux binary blobs didn't always support hardware decode of codecs. Maybe this could change with respect to Theora. Could be implemented via sharders like mpeg was at one stage perhaps.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Theora doesn't need to "win" to be a useful format. My music player plays vorbis, so it doesn't affect me much that others don't. The same principle applies if several devices on the market support theora.

Re:Theora

[moogord]

well. once opencl is more previlant, opencl decoding of anything is perfectly viable.

even then, the end user doesn't care if its accelerated decoding or not, they just care that it plays smooth

Re:Theora

[Lennie]

Why ? If Theora in the future is good (yes: IF) their is no reason you can't just say:

<video src="video.ogv">
    <object classid="classid:something--whatever-flash" >
        <param name="movie" value="ogvplayer.swf">
        <param name="file" value="video.ogv">
    </object>
</video>

Which is perfectly fine, even in IE.

Re:Theora

[Lennie]

Even more likely they'll implement VP6 from On2, the company they recently bought. On2 is the company that released the source and codec-information of VP3 as Theora. Theora has been seperately improved over the years.

Maybe they'll release VP6 as open source, we'll know when we see it.

Re:Theora

[FrostedWheat]

Not to mention the lack of hardware acceleration makes it pretty much a non starter

You say this, but nowhere do you say why it needs hardware acceleration. Have you even tried it? My fairly old machine plays a 1080p Theora video just fine. A completely unscientific test with top shows about 33% CPU usage, peeking at about 40%. The same machine cannot decode 1080p H.264 video in real time.

Theora just isn't as CPU greedy as H.264 -- it doesn't need hardware acceleration. Although it wouldn't hurt ;-)

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm rather waiting for VP8...

Re:Theora

[skribble]

I'm so sick of that argument... "Well just wait... Ogg-Theora will get so much better in the future"... Guess what... h.264 also exist in the that timeline and encoders will improve, hardware acceleration will improve, and by the time OT is where h.264 is today (and it has a long way to go with higher bit rate content), there will be even more reasons to use h.264.

Re:Theora

[Lennie]

My mistake, VP6 in my comment should have been VP8.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

You don't think the optimizations for h.264 will reach the point of diminishing returns before Theora?

Re:Theora

[skribble]

Hardware acceleration (and dedicated hardware in general) is much more efficient (and for manufacturers, much less expensive) then general purpose processing. So while your computer may have a processor that can handle this, many smaller consumer devices don't... additionally, for portable content you need energy efficiency... how long would you computer processor run on a cell phone battery? Also... hardware acceleration isn't just for play back. It's also for video creation/production. Many pro video systems take raw video and encode it to h.264 on the fly in real time (For SD/HD streaming and well as broadcast distribution). And then there's other studio productions where hardware acceleration allows working with real time effects... etc. The reality is that playback is a very small part of the puzzle... If you want to push Ogg-Theroa as a standard then you need the product creators to use this, and... there is no compelling reason to do so. I support much Open-Source software (both with my time & contributions and direct financial support)... that said, in the real world you pick the best solution for the problem, and in this case Ogg-Theroa is not it. And this is no disrespect to the development of this... this is hard stuff to do and it's really incredible that Ogg-Theora is where it is today, unfortunately it falls short of h.264. Also... pushing an inferior standard down the throats of a web viewing public, isn't going to win the open source model any friends.

Re:Theora

[TheTurtlesMoves]

The relevance of Theora was and is like the relevance of ogg. Sure its not going to take over. But without it, the other codec owners (apple, MS etc) would have no "license free" completion to keep them honest. Instead of a debate about licensed and unlicensed codecs, it would have been a debate on how the hell could we afford these kind of license fees to claim any kind of standard in the first place.

As for the higher bitrates arguments. Honestly you tube and co look like such crap I can't believe people ever bother, theora dose not look worse that these bit rates. I have decided most people are in fact blind.

Re:Theora

[jo_ham]

What about your phone? Or your new, and as yet unseen tablet PC that needs 8 hour battery life? Those may not be important to you personally as a consumer, but they are in the bigger picture. Battery life, low power, minimising the energy cost to do any particular task is going to be even more important as time goes on. Your desktop machine has power and cycles to spare, the next "latest and greatest" portable thingermajigger will not.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

You may have a point with respect to some portable devices, but I would think that with it comes to editing of video by studios, etc. any lossy format wouldn't be what they'd want to be using until after there finished, and then render the results to various formats.

Re:Theora

[skyride]

"So while your computer may have a processor that can handle this, many smaller consumer devices don't..."

Ok im sorry, but I keep hearing this arguement and it is pure and utter crap. Nobody, and i mean like, NOBODY, is ever going to want to run 1080p on a tiny little 3" screen. I know we'll the get the arguement of "but what if they want to hook it up to a TV", but in the real world, people don't do that. Heck, most people are amazed at the fact you can plug a computer into a TV. So seriously, yes H.264 is a better standard but stop this arguement for why because its just wrong.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, in my machine, since it has hardware-accelerated h.264 decoding (as have all the machines shipping now - even those with Intel "graphic cards"), h.264 takes 5% of the CPU for 1080p, whereas Theora takes 40%.

It might not need hardware acceleration, but I do sure prefer the low CPU usage, which ironically I get with the most complex codec. Best of two worlds, really.

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

I'm afraid you are the one who is wrong on this one. While you are correct about high def I have found that the vast majority of my customers want to watch videos on their devices. With netbooks/nettops being so popular, and frankly the Atom being so shitty (I had a chance to play with a customer's Atom based netbook not to long ago. Honestly my 1.1Ghz Celeron from 2001 had more oomph than that little thing) you pretty much HAVE to have hardware acceleration to get any kind of decent framerates while keeping a decent battery life.

Think of it this way- Why does my Sandisk get 27+ hour on a dinky AAA battery, while my 3 year old Dell gets a little less than 5 on its big brick? Even with my screen and DVD disconnected? Because the hardware in the MP3 is specialized to do a single job-play MP3 files. Soon we will have ARM and AMD low power chips joining Via and Intel in the new ultra cheap mobile space. I have no doubt that AMD will pair their chip with one of their excellent low power Radeon chips, and the Ion platform looks to give us a HTPC that you can slip in your jacket pocket. But the ONLY way you are gonna get really good battery life out of these devices is to let the GPU, which is designed nowadays for decoding video as much as it is for gaming, to do what it was designed for and offload the video from the low powered CPUs.

Now why would you WANT to use a codec that is gonna use 33%+ of your CPU (in your example) while your GPU sits there twiddling its thumbs, when you could get much better performance and battery life by letting the specialized hardware do the job it was designed to do? And believe me the public does notice the difference. They can't tell you why they like it, but they do. Since switching my builds to the AMD 780v and Nvidia 8400 based boards I have had my customers raving about how smooth everything is and how nice their new machines are for watching videos while doing other tasks in the background. Having the GPU do the video heavy lifting leaves the CPU free to do whatever the customer wants and they notice the difference. So IMHO if Theora wants to really get into this game and make an impact then they need to step up and get hardware acceleration ASAP. Because Joe user don't give a crap about encumbered-they just want simple, easy, and smooth. That is what they get with today's GPUs and DivX, WMV9, H.264, and MPEG.

Re:Theora

[RalphBNumbers]

Even more than on "the big three" and desktops/laptops, hardware decoders are essential on mobile hardware.

Apparently an iPhone 3GS can unofficially decode 1080p30 h264, and the ZuneHD can do 720p (and even officially supports it). That's just insane; some modern non-hardware accelerated, or even partially accelerated, desktops and laptops still have trouble playing back 1080p smoothly. Being able to do so on a cell phone, and to do so without killing the battery within seconds, is a big deal.

Lack of hardware decoders on the desktop is a minor annoyance, but for mobile hardware it's a deal breaker. And mobile is a big and rapidly expanding market.
If open source codecs are going to get widespread adoption going forward, they're going to need to get built into hardware codecs.

I actually have some hopes that Google is moving in the direction of radically improving OSS codec quality and providing hardware support via their recent purchase of ON2. If they can release VP8 as open source, along with finishing and releasing a good hardware decoder for it, they'll have put OSS codecs within spitting distance of h264 on most issues.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

One thing for sure, hardware accel for Theora will only come after (if) there is wide adoption of the format. The only likely caveat to this that I can see would be Theora decode via OpenCL produced by the community.

Re:Theora

[Sancho]

There are general limitations to the quality/compressibility of any codec. Otherwise, we should be seeing massive gains in mpeg1/mpeg2 by now.

Generationally, Ogg Theora is comparable to DivX4/Xvid. You'd have to essentially break spec (with respect to current decoders) in order to do an order of magnitude better.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

With any luck, the findings pointed to by http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo8.html may lead to better quality/bit-rate ratios in the future.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

This is slashdot, open source is not relevant here. If it is not made by Apple or Microsoft, no one gives a shit.

Re:Theora

[Sancho]

I'd love to see it happen, but I'm skeptical that they'll reach comparable quality to h.264 at identical bitrates.

Re:Theora

[nine-times]

You say this, but nowhere do you say why it needs hardware acceleration

What about mobile or embedded devices? Think about what a company like Apple has to consider when deciding what video standard to support. Can you play HD Theora videos on an AppleTV? On an iPhone? How quickly will it drain an iPhone's battery life? How hot will an AppleTV run?

I don't really know the answers to those questions, but I would guess that hardware support makes a big difference.

Re:Theora

[nine-times]

Unfortunately, Theora will stay irrelevant where it matters most. In sites like Youtube, h264 will prevail. And this time, h264 is the (much) better tech as well.

I'm surprised I haven't seen any posts talking about Google's plan to acquire On2. Admittedly this is speculation on my part, but I suspect that h264 may not prevail, because Google might very well release On2's more recent codecs as open source patent-free codecs. Since Theora is based on a previous version of On2's codec, these newer codecs could form the basis of something like Theora v2, providing better quality. With Google's support, the codecs may even get hardware support from manufacturers.

On the other hand, maybe Google won't do anything of the sort, or maybe the pressure of an open source codec will just force the patent licensing costs of h264 toward $0, and h264 will still prevail.

Re:Theora

[Hamoohead]

Didst thou forget to lob thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch first? Consultest thou The Holy Book of Armaments 2:9-21 for instructions.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

As for the higher bitrates arguments. Honestly you tube and co look like such crap I can't believe people ever bother, theora dose not look worse that these bit rates. I have decided most people are in fact blind.

Google bothers though, because of that whole 'bandwidth costs money' thing.

Re:Theora

[R2.0]

"Unfortunately, Theora will stay irrelevant where it matters most because of the Open Source community's insistence on weird names.

FTFY.

Re:Theora

[Hamoohead]

damn. wrong parent. this is the comment I was replying to.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

That assumes that Adobe will add Theora support to Flash.

OTOH, you could do that today with H.264.

Re:Theora

[westlake]

And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mid 90's.

Net Applications tracks any device with a measurable global presence on the web. The numbers for Linux are - to put it charitably - not particularly impressive.

I don't think Ogg Theora - advancing at the same glacial pace - has fifteen years to become a contender.

Top Operating System Share Trend, Operating System Market Share

Re:Theora

[CSMatt]

I am sick of this argument. Not because of its merit, but because of its defeatist attitude. Arguments like this one are basically "Theora has no hardware decoders at the moment, therefore it never will, and Theora will die." They may not be saying this explicitly, but the implication is certainly there.

At what point do you think that someone won't step up to the plate and design a Theora decoder? I don't know of any technical reason that they can't. The decoder has been frozen since 2004, so encoder improvements can still continue and will still play on hardware-accelerated devices. The only thing that is needed is sufficient demand for the codec. The codecs you mentioned as now having hardware accelerators started out without any. It was only after those formats became popular that they started being built.

Furthermore, mobile devices may or may not need these decoders, but the overpowered Core Octo machines that the soccer moms and grandmothers of the world are being told that they have to buy for their e-mail and word processing needs will handle Theora without any acceleration. You mentioned your $50 card? Well, my card has no acceleration at all, and I can play web-resolution Theora just fine. In fact, I can play multiple videos at the same time.

Defeatist arguments like this one aren't helping. They are hurting. They only serve to create self-fulfilling prophecies by discouraging Theora adoption on the grounds of something that will never come to pass unless Theora adoption occurs in the first place. If you really do want Theora to succeed, then it needs to grow enough of a base that chip manufacturers will see a high enough demand for Theora chip production.

Re:Theora

[Hurricane78]

Nobody is against the *development* of Theora. We all wish it would beat H.264. And you know it. So your statement is intentionally twisting things to make an argument where none is.

It's that *right now* there is no point in *using* Theora. If you got 100 movies in H.264 on your hard disk, and watch YouTube with that format, you aren't caring about the legality of the possible chance that someone who has a big interest in their format becoming the most used suing its users when that format is used on another website. :)

Re:Theora

[agnosticnixie]

It tracks a small number of computers on the basis of what it can tell, the methodology is statistically poor AND it's made even poorer because it's doing guesswork, and represents only a limited segment of the market.

Re:Theora

[nature_geek]

but Joe user really doesn't care if a codec is free or not

Likewise, Joe/Jane user doesn't care if his/her car emits sulfur dioxide, whether the fish that s/he caught was from a sustainable population, or whether the loan that his bank awarded was properly secured. Fortunately, there are people with vision and understanding who take it upon themselves to address the larger issues and create a broader structure to support those issues (through either legislation, rigid social mores, public humiliation, whatever).

I respectfully feel that it is a red herring to speak about whether "Joe user" cares about something. Joe users adopts applications not technologies. While Joe users does't care about the codecs, Joe user also doesn't care about HTML, HTTP, or TCP, all of which he is still using to access his video entertainment on YouTube.

What the Theora folks seem to be doing is making sure that all of the technical problems are adequately solved first, and then they can really begin addressing openness at a higher level (i.e. making sure that it is supported by the major online video sites, major web browsers, etc.).

The technical problems are often far easier to solve than the the social ones. And if you try and do it in the wrong order, then you're not going to get very far. I wish them the best of as well!

Re:Theora

[CSMatt]

Lack of hardware decoders on the desktop is a minor annoyance, but for mobile hardware it's a deal breaker. And mobile is a big and rapidly expanding market.
If open source codecs are going to get widespread adoption going forward, they're going to need to get built into hardware codecs.

No, the opposite is true. If Theora is going to get built into hardware codecs, it needs to get widespread adoption. Without enough adoption, there is not enough demand to justify the cost of developing and deploying accelerators.

As you mentioned, desktop machines don't need hardware decoders as badly, so Theora can get the necessary demand from those machines.

Re:Theora

[harmonise]

Folks don't care that MP3 is encumbered because it works for them

Another point is that MP3 will no longer be encumbered in a few years when the patents expire. That's another reason for people to not care about MP3 versus other audio codecs.

Re:Theora

[BikeHelmet]

Have to start somewhere. Lets get the DSP/GPU codecs out the door!? ;)

Re:Theora

[beelsebob]

Since when do apple own any codecs? The only one I can think of is apple lossless audio.

Re:Theora

[BikeHelmet]

Also... pushing an inferior standard down the throats of a web viewing public, isn't going to win the open source model any friends.

Inferior codec? Yes, IMO.

Inferior standard? Debateable.

Theora has...
-Superior (lower) CPU usage.
-Superior (smaller) patent minefield and licensing costs.
-Superior (lower) encoding time. You might not think much of this, but I'm sure Youtube does, which probably encodes dozens of videos per second.

Theora lacks...
-Hardware acceleration. (At the moment, although I'm sure DSP/GPU codecs could be designed. Someone just has to do it.)
-Good quality at low bitrates. (Although to be honest, with all the settings Youtube has turned off for H.264, Theora and H.264 might actually be comparable)

I've found that FRAPS'd video between 640kbit and 1500kbit can have identical or better quality than Youtube's 2mbit, if you tweak the settings a bit.

Re:Theora

[Burz]

Um, according to the article the new Theora is targetted at small videos embedded in web pages. Acceleration hardly matters there. Indeed, most of the overhead experienced with Flash-based stuff is inefficiency in passing through from flash to the browser window (that is why playing a saved FLV uses about 1/4 the CPU power that flash+browser needed to play it).

Theora is not being targetted at large, hi-def formats yet so you can save the hot air for now.

Re:Theora

[Goaway]

Not likely. Theora is probably going to hit that wall much sooner, unless it makes radical and incompatible changes to the format.

Re:Theora

[Goaway]

-Superior (smaller) patent minefield and licensing costs.

True on the latter, false on the former. There are a great deal of patents that are known to affect h.264, and you get a license for all of them when you pay up. For Theora, we don't really know. Xiph.org just says not to worry, but expect us to take their word for it. They may very well be right, but companies don't like that kind of uncertainty. They'd much rather pay for a known set of patent than take risks with unknown ones.

Re:Theora

[Goaway]

There is little incentive for Google to use any of the On2 codecs without opening them up first. A codec only they can play is no different from h.264.

Re:Theora

[Goaway]

They totally own half a percent of the patents on h.264!

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

And don't forget to add heat and power into that equation. Decent GPUs have gotten so cheap it just blows my mind, and they generate less heat and use less electricity then the CPU to boot. My GPU which costs a whole $50 before the $15 rebate (a 4650 with 1Gb DDR2 on card) lets my CPU use less than 5% while watching videos. This translates to less heat in my apartment and lower cooling costs all around.

So in this greybeard's NSHO saying that Theora "doesn't need hardware acceleration" is as nuts as saying "640k ought to be enough for anybody" as you can't just ignore the market trends and the way consumer devices are headed. Just as I pointed out with Vorbis and FLAC, they may have their advantages but even though MP3 is patent encumbered it is pretty obvious to anyone by now that MP3 has clearly won the market. That is because it doesn't matter if you have an iPod, a Creative, or like me a Sandisk, your device supports MP3 out of the box and that is all the consumer cares about. Likewise even the cheapest onboard IGP nowadays supports DivX, WMV9, MPEG, and H264 out of the box. So Theora NEEDS hardware acceleration, and they need it yesterday.

Because with the above codecs I can get hardware acceleration out of the box, no muss, no fuss. So any modern device I can be assured it will play those formats and play them smoothly. With Theora, like with Vorbis and FLAC, lack of support makes that statement much less true. And with the rise of Atom, and ARM, and Via, and soon to be AMD low power cheap computing the more that can be offloaded from the CPU the better as it translates to less heat, less power usage, and a better experience for the customer.

Re:Theora

[Sir_Lewk]

For quite a while hardware accelerated graphics on linux was next to unheard of.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

I guess they could always add "radical and incompatible" changes to the format as newer "profiles" of that format. While only newer versions of decoders would be able to deal with them, requiring updating of ones plug-ins isn't a new concept by any means.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

Way to miss the point completely and turn it into an anti-Linux rant.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Now don't be silly. Who do you think voice those attitudes here? Hint, they're people employed by a large North American company selling proprietary software...

Read all about it at http://msversus.org/

Re:Theora

[DaVince21]

Hardware acceleration on the currently popular formats only happened because these formats were widely used and good for the job. Once (if) Theora becomes better than most proprietary formats and the advantages start outweighing the disadvantages, more and more manufacturers will start deciding whether to make hardware support in their devices for Theora or not.

I mean, come on! The format is still new, and it comes from a non-business niche. How many hardware do you expect to support hardware decoding for it at this point, especially when the encoders and decoders are still in development?

Re:Theora

[DaVince21]

Linux suffered from lack of hardware support, and still suffers from lack of hardware support.

Hah, Linux supports far more legacy hardware than Windows ever will. Because they keep making new driver systems, obsoleting all the old ones.

Re:Theora

[hitmark]

err, to really make use of quality coding, one first have to have quality content...

to me, most youtube videos are to noisy, both visual and audio, to get any useful info from it, vs a couple of stills and maybe a paragraph or two of written text...

Re:Theora

[hitmark]

also, dedicated hardware makes it easier for the patent holders to track the use of their precious IP...

Re:Theora

[hitmark]

even on that size screen, watching anything other then near static nature documentary will be a waste of pixels in high def, as the physical objects represented will be so much smaller thanks to the physical size of the screen...

HD makes sense on a 50" screen, but not a 10"...

Re:Theora

[hitmark]

chicken and egg...

Re:Theora

[hitmark]

in a world where shorted speaker cables can be sold as premium goods, and brand name adds 50% on top of that, its not a cause of practical or imperial best, its a case of fashionable.

H264 have comes, funnily enough, a fashionable "code". its like (G/M)Hz, megapixels, MP3 or whatever, its something you slap on the side of random product X to mark up the price, just like how a pair of jeans jump in price ones a certain brand is on the back pocket, or how a freak show becomes high fashion ones some designer name is one the announcement...

we humans are, sadly, a pretentious lot. peacocks with artificial tails...

Re:Theora

[badkarmadayaccount]

http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php

Re:Theora

[squidinkcalligraphy]

There are a great deal of patents that are known to affect h.264, and you get a license for all of them when you pay up.

And there are an unknown number of patents not covered by MPEG-LA that affect h.264. There's just as likely (probably more likely due to market share) to be a patent troll holding an h.264 submarine patent than a theora submarine patent. Just because some of the patents are licensed doesn't make h.264 immune from further patents - it is in exactly the same boat as theora.

Re:Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it matter as long as the input is only available to you in a HD format?

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

Uuuhhh dude, not trying to troll here, just understand, but WTF? WTF does the open graphics project (yes I know what is is-a project to design a FLOSS GPU) have to do with a discussion of Theora and its need for hardware acceleration?

Seriously, what good is it right NOW, which is the whole point of this discussion? Can I sell my customers a netbook/laptop with an open graphics GPU? Have a new build with an OG IGP? NO. It is barely beyond the talking stage now, so why are you bringing it into the discussion?

Even if it were to become even a little bit popular, which I would argue will never ever happen as the economies of scale thanks to gamers allow the big three (AMD, Intel, Nvidia) to sell a GPU/IGP at a cost the OG project will never ever match, the simple fact is it would help Theora not one little bit. Because nobody gives a shit if Theora has acceleration on some weird ass GPU that they have almost 0% chance of ever owning, all they care about is if they get nice smooth playback on the chip they already have NOW. My GPU cost a whole $50 before rebate, gives me a Gb of DDR2 onboard, and most importantly accelerates H264, WMV9, DivX, and MPEG out of the box. So please explain why a website devoted to a card that is rare as white elephants has anything to do with the previous posts please, because I don't get it.

Re:Theora

[badkarmadayaccount]

Not now, but open source system integrators may find it quite useful. Also, the fact that it is FLOSS on the Verilog level means best docs in the world, which means it has plenty GPGPU potential, in contrast with the pretty much single-purpose GPUs from the big three. Yes, I know about CUDA, etc., but that is vendor controlled, and available on the high-end only, AFAIK. So the OG project has much more potential to reach the consumer than you give it credit for, even if it's not tomorrow. I'm being a bit optimistic, but look where Firefox got in so little years.

Re:Theora

[Goaway]

You can bet that the MPEG-LA has put quite a bit more effort into finding out which patents apply to h.264 than Xiph.org has for Theora.

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

But you argument is the same "but but but....in the future it'll be great!". No offense, but to borrow an expression from the Brits nobody gives a rat's arse about the future. You know why? Because H264 and the other proprietary codecs also exist in the SAME future, and will also get better. More importantly I can pick up pretty much any device on the market, from the boxes I build for my customers to that PMP at the Wally world, and have H264 acceleration right now.

Frankly I would be amazed as shit if the OG project ends up as more than a hobbyist toy like the Gumstix. Not trying to take anything away from the OG guys, it takes brass balls the size of Idaho to even attempt something as incredibly complex as a GPU. but the problem is they will have to compete with the big three, who have an unprecedented economy of scale on their side. Hell most of my customers can't frankly tell you WHAT kind of GPU they have, just if their machine is smooth or not. And with the new AMD A780 platform and the Nvidia 8400 series H264, DivX, MPEG 2-4, and WMV9 is smooth as buttermilk and they can still get great performance and battery life while watching vids, which was my point.

Theora doesn't need something that is gonna possibly maybe be good in the future, they need hardware acceleration right now otherwise I would argue that mobile and low powered green computing will make Theora a non starter. It just ain't the same game as during the Mhz race of the 90s-low power and efficient is the way to be, and Theora ATM just don't fit that bill, thanks to lack of GPU support.

Re:Theora

[badkarmadayaccount]

As I said, I was being optimistic, quit bashing in my dreams, OK? It's bad enough that obsess over this stuff trying to run away from loneliness, but I also have to have my ideology burned before my eyes. Just keep that flame a little cooler, OK? Some of just plain don't have a life.

Re:Theora

[hairyfeet]

Oh....sorry dude. Ever tried a GF? they are real good at keeping you too busy to obsess over the little things. Maybe you are just being too picky? I have found it is better to go after the ones that are a little chubby. They don't bitch because they are starving like the ones on a diet, a lot more friendly because they are not constantly being attacked like the super hotties are, and are nice to cuddle up to in the winter. Oh and they can cook too! Sure they are a little insecure at first, but what woman today isn't.

Try Tagged, there are tons of sweet little chubby girls in their 30s that would just love to date you. And they like guys that are good at tech, as we can fix the bugs they get in their PCs like I did for Brenda last weekend. Don't want to sound like an ad or anything, especially since I don't work for them, but there are a LOT of lonely girls there. Put a couple of pics of yourself, be honest, and watch the hits come rolling in. oh and its free too, always a plus. So give it a try dude, what have you got to lose?

I thought that Internet dating was a bunch of bullshit myself, but I met a sweetie less than 50 miles from my place. We switch back and forth driving out and are getting along great. No reason for you to be lonely if you don't want to be dude. Just one word of safety-uberhot chick that only has one pic of herself and instantly gives you her IM? Scammer. But the scammers there are so lame they all use the same template and wording and are quite easy to spot. The real girls have TONS of pics of the friends, family, etc. Just be yourself and you will find your weekends are too full to be lonely or obsessed with funky GPUs, trust your old pal feet. Life is too short, live it well.

Re:Theora

[badkarmadayaccount]

Thanks man. Though I might find that long-distance relationship a little difficult, by virtue of me being in high-school, with obsessive parents. Not to mention that I doubt that there are 30 y.o. interested in me. Heck, I can't find a girl my age that can stand me (because I'm usually too honest for my own good). Still, I'll see what I can do, at least I didn't get the canned "Your time will come." and "Grow a pair responses.". Thanks again.

Re:Theora

[Rockoon]

The dream of the FOSS fans was for Theora to be selected as the official codec for the video tag. You are suggesting that it should be a moving target, where nobody can remain compliant for long periods.

Think about it.

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

I'm not suggesting it be a moving target. Goaway suggests above that Theora is likely to run out of steam when it comes to quality versus bit-rate before h.264 does.

I'm saying that if it were necessary to 'enhance' Theora in any way in order to be relevant there is precedent for doing so. Of course, it goes without saying that there has to be reasonable stability in the format.

I'm not convinced at this stage that Theora will need enhancements such as this, but if it did, I'd rather they do what they need to do without feeling absolutely constrained, only to find the standard become irrelevant and unused in the future.

Here's hoping the optimizations they're working on bear fruit, and give Theora a boost in penetration into the 'market.'

Re:Theora

[Rockoon]

Well it seems to me that they have already had more than a few years (stream format hasnt changed since 2004) to improve Theora (which itself was derived from a mature codec) so it is highly likely that they are already well on their way up their own diminishing returns curve.

Theora is lacking support for some techniques that other encoders take advantage of. I think B-frames is probably a significant one (looks to me like B-frames *double* the amount of context the compressor can use)

Re:Theora

[mugginz]

Well it seems to me that they have already had more than a few years (stream format hasnt changed since 2004) to improve Theora (which itself was derived from a mature codec) so it is highly likely that they are already well on their way up their own diminishing returns curve.

That sounds like a good case for them to be prepared to adopt changes to their standard if that's what's required to say in the game, though some here are saying that they're not even in the game at the moment. :)

Where are we winning?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

FTFA: Ogg Theora is becoming a big deal

I have worked at various companies, from small ventures up to well-known large corporations and have found the same thing at each. Employees think that their company is pretty well-known in their respective fields. While it may be true of some companies (IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, just to name a few), most third party vendors are mere gnats on the backs of those wildebeests.

This is myopia caused by too much focus on a specialized area. Yes, maybe within a very limited sector your technology may be making inroads, in general you are nothing more than a butterfly flapping its wings. Theora is not becoming a big deal. It is just another codec, and one that isn't particularly popular.

There are technical issues that need to be addressed technically, not simply (as the author of the article does) waved away as a future feature to be implemented when the codec becomes more popular. It will never become more popular until it can offer sufficient reason to switch. Relying on the negative influence of patent encumbrance to drive people towards the codec is a losing proposition. It is a reactive strategy that cannot eventually win.

What struck me most about this article was how even the FSF is not particularly behind Theora, per se. They are for "patent unencumbered" codecs, so they have no real inclination to push Theora in the marketplace. Without a proactive strategy to push Theora both in a business sense as well as technically, it will flounder.

Another codec bites the dust. Big deal.

Re:Where are we winning?

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound a bit down today. Cheer up BadAnalogyGuy, things'll get better soon and you'll be back on your feet making new and exciting bad analogies in no time. Like a wheel that has just driven over some shit.

Oh, and it isn't about proactive vs. reactive. The market doesn't care about motives, it cares about relative value. And when proprietary codecs become so expensive and encumbered that the cost of using them versus a free alternative crosses some threshold, Theora's relative value will rise and it will find its niche. Just as Ogg has made inroads with game manufacturers looking for ways to cut costs without cutting corners on quality.

Re:Where are we winning?

[east coast]

most third party vendors are mere gnats on the backs of those wildebeests.

He is Vigo! You are like the buzzing of flies to him!

Sorry, had to do it.

Re:Where are we winning?

[Skapare]

Everything that is new starts out in the not particularly popular phase. Some things rise rapidly, usually because there is nothing else before them. Some things rise more slowly. And, of course, there are lots of failures that never make it. Just because something is new doesn't mean squat one way or the other. Everything was new at one point.

I do agree that if the promotion of Ogg Theora is done strictly on the basis of no patent encumbrance, then it won't gain any significant popularity. That's because most people don't know, and even if they were informed, would not care. They see the other codecs (usually without even knowing the word "codec") as working, and dirt cheap, or free (not knowing they paid for it in some way, either in the computer they bought, or the advertising they see). If Ogg Theora is to live on, it will have to be promoted in a way that is beyond the basis of its current talking points.

Dirac has at least the advantage that it has BBC backing. I personally would like at least one of Dirac or Theora to become widely used. But I'm not in the arena that needs to promote it, so I may not get my wish. But please don't knock it because it is new or not yet popular. OTOH, if it doesn't have any gains in a few years, then it should die off.

Re:Where are we winning?

[Quantumstate]

As the first paragraph of the article says "[Ogg Theora] now works in over 24% of the world's web browsers". From the context it is obvious that this is why they are saying it is becoming a big deal. So maybe it won't ever catch on in other places but it does have a large portion of the browser market by being included in the second most popular browser.

Re:Where are we winning?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Cigarette lighters are available in over 90% of all the world's cars and light trucks.
Sexual reproductive organs are present on over 99% of all Slashbots.
Calculator apps are included in over 90% of all modern OS installations.

Just because something exists in large numbers doesn't mean it is used, and if it isn't used it isn't really a big deal.

Re:Where are we winning?

[Anonymous Coward]

What struck me most about this article was how even the FSF is not particularly behind Linux, per se. so they have no real inclination to push Linux in the marketplace. Without a proactive strategy to push Linux both in a business sense as well as technically, it will flounder.

There are technical issues that need to be addressed technically, not simply (as the author of the article does) waved away as a future feature to be implemented when the codec becomes more popular.

OGG vorbis has been technically superior to MP3 for quite some time, the fact is nobody gives a shit about the technical side of the codec they have installed.

It will never become more popular until it can offer sufficient reason to switch. Relying on the negative influence of patent encumbrance to drive people towards the codec is a losing proposition. It is a reactive strategy that cannot eventually win.

H264 can never make it into the html standard, its just a mater of time till the W3C realise how stupid the idea of allowing a patent incumberd codec into an open (e.g anybody in the world is allowed to implement it) standard.
"HTML5 the standard that can't legally be implemented in certain countries and is not an option for unbacked open source"
That can either lead to W3C no specificity the codec (the currently favoured option)
"HTML5 the standard that doesn't specify stuff so is useless to code for"
or they can make a real standard and specify ogg Theora, thus giving ogg Theroa real importance

Re:Where are we winning?

[squiggleslash]

Yeah, I'd like to know where that figure comes from. According http://en.flossmanuals.net/TheoraCookbook/HTML5 which is linked to by the article, only Firefox 3.5 (which definitely doesn't have a 24% marketshare) natively supports Theora. And all the browsers that don't natively support it support it via a Java plug-in.

I assume the other 76% of browsers support Death Panels instead?

Re:Where are we winning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera 10 (still beta) - iirc Chrome does both That leaves Safari (h264 through Quicktime, which can also do theora if you have xiphqt running anyway) and IE (support fuckall natively)

Re:Where are we winning?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the article I linked to, only the latest betas of Chrome do.

Firefox 1.0-3.0, Safari, IE, all current versions of Opera, and possibly all current Chromes, do not support Theora. There is no way 24% of browsers in the real world support it without using Java hacks.

Re:Where are we winning?

[hitmark]

myopia goes both ways. i wonder how many media people goes myopic over H264 because it got the backing of MPEG, and so has a media lineage that ogg cant show.

but then i wonder if not thats also a reason why certain brand(s) of computers are selected within niches...

Vorbis

[Anonymous Coward]

To stay irrelevant wouldn't Theora need to be removed from browsers that natively implement it? Please provide the references for such plans by Mozilla or Google.
Also, why do people always leave out any comparison of the Vorbis audio? Is it just as irrelevant? The tag is still in the specs.

Re:Vorbis

[DaVince21]

Theora is new where Vorbis is fairly old and actually managed to fight its way into some hardware already, so it kind of makes sense that Theora is discussed about more.

hmmm

[thatskinnyguy]

With regards to the video tag, why not support both h264 and Ogg Theora?

Re:hmmm

[Torrance]

It's all about the IP and the patents!

If h.264 were royalty free, no doubt it would be supported. But as it stands, only those with deep pockets can pay the licensing fees — and that goes for both those providing the decoders as well as those simply hosting (broadcasting) h.264 encoded content.

Re:hmmm

[beelsebob]

The reasoning is that they wanted to put one codec in the spec that they could guarantee that all vendors would support, roughly like flash is now through plugins. That way, the video tag would actually be usable, website authors could guarantee that unless people used crazy browsers from crazyville, they would be able to watch the video.

In the mean time though:
â Mozilla refused to support h264 because it is patent encumbered.
â Apple refused to support ogg because it's technically inferior and they didn't want to put dev effort into something worse than they already have.

The result was that no decission could be made on which one would be supported everywhere.

Re:hmmm

[thatskinnyguy]

Thanks for the clarification. Why I asked in the first place was because I actually tried the video tag out. It's dead simple in theory, but in practice, it's another story. I needed at least 3 video files and two additional scripts for browsers to fall-back on in case the browser didn't support Ogg Theora - one for Safari and one for a Flash player. There was no perceivable difference in quality in any browser.

If things are going to be this way by the time HTML spec becomes a standard, I think I'll just stick with Flash.

Re:hmmm

[broken_chaos]

Royalties? I haven't been paying any royalties... Oh wait, right, some countries actually had the sanity to render business method and software patents as invalid. This entire thing is really a result of the (known, enormous) stupidity of the USPTO.

Of course both the MPEG LA and Xiph.org make no guarantees about the codecs actually not being under patents not controlled by the respective groups. It's, from my understanding (particularly given the USPTO's tendency to act like a drunk co-ed), highly likely that both H.264 and Theora are covered by some sort of patent that isn't a currently known quantity.

Re:hmmm

[FrostedWheat]

Apple refused to support ogg because it's technically inferior and they didn't want to put dev effort into something worse than they already have

I don't believe this is true. They've mentioned the potential for submarine patents as a reason for not using it. If this could be made clearer for them, there's no technical reason why they couldn't support the format. Heck, Webkit already supports the <video> tag and adding a Theora decoder would be trivial for an apple developer. A few hours work.

Regarding quality -- yes it's not just as good, but they don't have to promote the format. They just have to decode it. If a website is using Theora (mine does!) then it'll look the same regardless if they're using Safari or Mozilla, it's not like Apple will be worse off for it. And the difference isn't that great -- it's not like JPEG vs. JPEG2000, and we're still not using JPEG2000.

Re:hmmm

[Lennie]

Apple refused to support ogg because it's technically inferior and they didn't want to put dev effort into something worse than they already have

<i>They've mentioned the potential for submarine patents as a reason for not using it.</I>

Actually it was both.

Funny, Apple actually has a free (as in free beer) license granted by On2 (now Google) to use VP3 (which Ogg Theora in based on), so it's kinda strange they complain about patents.

And yes, the iPhone now may not support Theora, but the hardware in the iPhone would possible be able to support it, the hardware isn't hardcoded (hardwired ?). Video-acceleration hardware like that usually has firmware to support different formats.

So some people keep wondering what the real reason is.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I needed at least 3 video files and two additional scripts for browsers to fall-back on in case the browser didn't support Ogg Theora - one for Safari and one for a Flash player.

Have you tried/evaluated the Cortado fallback mentioned in TFA (http://www.theora.org/cortado/)? Not that Java would be my first choice of fallback for anything, but it sounds like it is the only solution that will alleviate the need for 3 different formats on the server...

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

You actually only need 2 videos and 1 JS file for Flash fallback. The JW player is able to play .mp4 files with H264 encoded video. Safari will happily play that .mp4 in its < video > tag and Firefox et al will play the .ogv file.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny, Apple actually has a free (as in free beer) license granted by On2 (now Google) to use VP3 (which Ogg Theora in based on), so it's kinda strange they complain about patents.

Well, it's not On2's patents that would be the problem. It is other companies. All the major people involved in designing video codecs have pooled their patents for H264. I understand that the pooling agreement is blanket - they can't sign the agreement and then turn around and say to their partners "I kept one patent back so now you have to pay me extra". Anyone else has had several years now and if they had a submarine patent why wouldn't they have used it yet? H264 can't get MORE embedded in the marketplace so it's not like they would get any benefit from further delay.

And yes, the iPhone now may not support Theora, but the hardware in the iPhone would possible be able to support it, the hardware isn't hardcoded (hardwired ?). Video-acceleration hardware like that usually has firmware to support different formats.

I'm not sure about that. Sure firmware can cope with minor packing differences in file formats but the fundamental data transformation accelerated have to be in the same family. Otherwise the hardware would be virtually general purpose and you would lose the cost/efficiency advantages of dedicated hardware. If Theora was compulsory in HTML5, not only would there be several months before hardware acceleration chips even started to be available, but all the existing iPhones would be obsolete, despite not having gained any new capabilities from the user's point of view.

Re:hmmm

[beelsebob]

there's no technical reason why they couldn't support the format
Yes there is, there's no hardware ogg theora decoder available. That means that apple's most profitable piece of hardware can't be made to play it.

Re:hmmm

[TheRaven64]

Submarine patents are not a valid reason for choosing H.264 and not Theora. The VP3 codec that Theora was based upon has been around for longer than H.264 so there has been longer for patent trolls to come out of the woodwork. The H.264 license you get from the MPEG-LA doesn't grant you a license to all of the patents required for H.264, it grants you a license to all of the patents that the MPEG-LA knows about required for H.264. Similarly, the (free and irrevocable) patent grant from On2 gives you a license to all of the patents that On2 knows about required for Theora.

Oh, and it wouldn't take a few hours for an Apple developer to add Theora support, it would take zero hours. On my machine, video tags referring to Theora content Just Work(tm) in Safari. Safari doesn't do any video decoding, it delegates it to QuickTime. If you have the (free, provided by Xiph) QuickTime Theora plugin installed then Theora videos work correctly. Installing the codec isn't exactly difficult and once you've done it you never have to think about it again. The problem is on the iPhone, where users can not install their own codecs.

Re:hmmm

[Ant P.]

â Apple refused to support ogg because it's technically inferior and they didn't want to put dev effort into something worse than they already have.

I guess being compatible with much larger players doesn't come into it then, which leads me to wonder why they bothered to put all that dev effort into making an X11 compatibility layer for their OS.

Re:hmmm

[beelsebob]

It's not really an issue â" it's unimplementable on the iPhone, or any other phone for that matter atm. It's also inferior quality, and has unknown patent issues. With all that against it, I can completely understand them not putting any effort at all into it.

Re:hmmm

[CSMatt]

Or it could be that Apple is an AVC patent holder, and stands to gain by pushing a format that they can later cash in on. Given this advantage, Apple is unlikely to support any free formats, and is likely using Theora's shortcomings as an excuse.

Funny how a lot of commenters here are quick to point out the possible ulterior motives of Microsoft, but so few do the same for Apple.

... wait we already lost!? When did that happen?

[Narcocide]

I dunno but I think "bites the dust" is a bit of a hyperbolic overstatement, don't you? I mean, I doubt Theora's market relevance or market saturation is on any sort of *decline* even if it clearly isn't catching up to h264 in any strategically important way either.

It sounds to me like you're saying here that just because the Ogg Theora team might be somewhat deluded about their codec's visual quality or market potential in the immediate future that it is proof they should just all give up and switch back to MJPEG.

Sure, it would take a lot more for large established companies like youtube to switch to Theora but that doesn't mean that h264 is flawless and everyone should just give up and surrender the entire market to it either. There is a value to the consumer simply in having a variety of video codecs available to choose from, especially ones that are free and tuned to conserve bandwidth.

Theora 1.1

[Torrance]

Monty from Xiph has provided an update on the state of the upcoming 1.1 release. It makes for interesting reading.

The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

I don't think there's any evidence that the video tag is catching on in any meaningful way. Can anyone point me to evidence of the contrary?

Who is to say that Flash's grasp is even weakening among major content providers? Is the video tag DRM friendly?

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is getting behind HTML5, so it will probably be an eventuality with youtube.

Re:The bigger picture

[SanityInAnarchy]

I don't think there's any evidence that the video tag is catching on in any meaningful way. Can anyone point me to evidence of the contrary?

Here you go.

Is the video tag DRM friendly?

Hell no, but neither is Flash, realistically.

Re:The bigger picture

[moon3]

Theora is relatively new, recently matured format still under heavy development so people are in waiting mode, they will switch as soon as the format bested the competing H264, if this format outperforms competition in a sense that the bit-rate is better for given quality then lot of people will turn their heads as bandwidth is money these days, this however must happen in concord with the video tag adoption and hardware acceleration support otherwise it really is not very viable format even for the near future.

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

But what's the advantage as a content provider for me to re-encode everything so it only works in Firefox and Chrome?

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

Here you go [youtube.com].

A technical demo? Come on. If this is all it takes to be "catching on," then I would say JavaFX is the future.

Re:The bigger picture

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Oh god I'm so lonely!

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

I don't think they're going to want to re-encode everything to a weaker format that uses more bandwidth, they're bleeding enough money as is. They'll likely only do that if it will play existing h.264 files they have lying around.

Re:The bigger picture

[MartinSchou]

Well, that was anti climactic.

Opera 10 beta 3: Shows the player, but doesn't work "You must have an HTML5 capable browser."
Firefox 3.5.2: Shows the player, but doesn't work. Doesn't give the error message though
Google Chrome 2.0.172: Same as Opera "You must have an HTML5 capable browser."
Google Chrome 3.0.195.6 (latest beta): All player controls work except full screen and the thingie on the right hand side, but none of the "more from" or "related videos" links work at all.
Internet Explorer 8: Only shows the controls for the player, "Done, but with errors on page"
Apple Safari 4.0.3: Can play the video (yay), but nothing else works. Doesn't show the time played or remaining, doesn't move the time indicator, none of the "more from" or "related videos" links work at all.

I've no idea if the issue is with YouTube or with the browsers, but ... it's really not impressive. I installed the latest Chrome beta just to see if that made everything work like it should on that page, and it still doesn't.

I've no doubt that it will work eventually, but for now, I wouldn't use that site as an of course it works, just look at this example.

Re:The bigger picture

[Tubal-Cain]

A technical demo on the most popular video site on the internet. A website that is using so much bandwidth it's losing ~$1 billion/year. Why wouldn't they want to switch to a higher-quality-per-kb option?

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

A technical demo on the most popular video site on the internet. A website that is using so much bandwidth it's losing ~$1 billion/year. Why wouldn't they want to switch to a higher-quality-per-kb option?

Can you recommend one? I thought they were using h.264 already...

Re:The bigger picture

[Tubal-Cain]

This is why we need a standard video format. AFAIK, only Chrome and Safari support h264 (which is the format Google's using on that page). Mozilla, Chrome, and Opera support Ogg. IE must be betting on silverlight or something, because they've stayed out of the video tag debate.

Re:The bigger picture

[Tubal-Cain]

It is my understanding that they transcode to FLV, but still have the h264 availiable.

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

It is my understanding that they transcode to FLV, but still have the h264 availiable.

Isn't FLV a container format? It's not a codec. The videos should all be in h.264 or h.263.

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

25%-30% more marketshare.

Re:The bigger picture

[impaledsunset]

Firefox doesn't show the video because it doesn't support H264. It's funny, because if you have a plugin for the H264 format installed, it still doesn't show the video. But if you right-click on it and select "Show video" from the menu, it opens it in a new window, where it is playing just fine.

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

25%-30% more marketshare.

Assuming none of those people have Flash installed.

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

FLV is a container, it can hold several audio and video formats including MP3, AAC, H.264, VP6(?) and some more obscure formats as well as a custom video format for slide shows or desktop screencasts.

Youtube uses the default codec for standard quality (it's a VP* format, VP6 or VP7 [Successors to VP3 which Theora was built from]) with MP3 22050Hz (128kbit/s) for audio. High Quality is H.264 with AAC 44100Hz (128kbit/s).

Re:The bigger picture

[nixkuroi]

Wait, wouldn't making it so it ONLY works in Firefox and Chrome be 70-75% LESS market share?

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

And Opera, too - which basically leaves Safari and Chrome... Let's face it, without IE, supporting one or the other means half/half :p

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always be an idiot and write a Theora decoder in ActionScript to deploy as a Flash Movie to everyone who isn't using Firefox.

This would give Firefox users something to sneer at others about but there's no real business case for it. (Oh, and a software decoder in ActionScript would be as slow as molasses travelling uphill).

---
Does Chrome actually support Theora? Google threw their chips in the H.264 pot during the HTML5 standard video format debate so I would have expected Chrome to only play H.264 vids.

Re:The bigger picture

[Lennie]

I think someone should make a bugreport.

Heck, I'll do it now, if it isn't.

restarting slow downloads could also use some improvement, I'll do the same for that.

Re:The bigger picture

[FrostedWheat]

For some sites, H.264 licensing costs may end up being more than any savings on bandwidth.

Re:The bigger picture

[impaledsunset]

I'm not sure if that's worth a bug report. A video tag is different from a plugin, which is for some kind of unknown object. The plugin has it's own controls, which Mozilla can't hide, and also Mozilla can't control the playback inside of it, so the plugin _can't_ be utilized for the video tag, as much as I wish it could.

My anecdote might be interesting and funny, but it isn't fixable. Unless, of course, there are changes in the plugin architecture (adding support for video plugins) and (or) in the plugins themselves.

Re:The bigger picture

[SanityInAnarchy]

It's my understanding that their "High Quality" and "HD" videos are h.264, but the rest are actually whatever codec FLV used to be limited to.

Re:The bigger picture

[SanityInAnarchy]

A video tag is different from a plugin,

Indeed, but at the same time...

On Windows, you have DirectShow. On OS X, you have QuickTime. On Linux, you have gstreamer, or if you want something even more meta, phonon.

If this is too much to ask, I would expect someone to add some sort of extension (or just fork Firefox) and wrap up VLC's video support. Obviously, Mozilla can't do this themselves (licensing issues), but it technically can be done.

Re:The bigger picture

[SanityInAnarchy]

They can switch to h.264, yet continue to use the Flash player.

No, I think the point is that Flash can be a bitch to program in (vs html), and they'd much rather be in control of the code -- right now, they're limited in what they can port Chrome to, because they have to wait for Adobe to port Flash. There's also the stability and performance issues that Google can't fix -- again, they have to wait for Adobe.

Or take platforms like the iPhone, which doesn't have Flash support at all, or the Wii, which has an old version of Flash -- not to mention that both of these platforms likely have hardware acceleration for certain codecs. Sure, Google can support them now, but it's not fun -- they have to support old, buggy, broken versions of Flash, and/or write a completely separate, platform-specific interface (as they did for the iPhone).

Contrast this to html5 -- now all they need is a decent browser, and even if they end up waiting for Apple or Nintendo, at least they aren't waiting for Apple/Nintendo and Adobe. And on platforms they control (Android, Chrome OS), they could have YouTube working with minimal effort before Flash is ported at all.

On top of this, Google is the type of company that likes open standards, and likes to advance them. They used Flash because it was needed. Now that it isn't, I imagine they'd love to get rid of it.

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

You could also use Silverlight to pitch theora video, since the upcoming moonlight 2.0 release allows dynamic codecs within the CLR (as does silverlight). Then you'd be writing in fully open source format that works in most usage scenarios while avoiding any proprietary tools.

Even Opera now has silverlight support. Someone tell me you could get theora video to more users in any other fashion...

Oh yes, and unlike the video tag, it completely works in all three platforms.

But then again, theora still uses too much bandwidth for its quality.

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

It should be menial compared to loss involved with offering users an inferior end-user experience and losing customers. Flash is not that expensive to a major content provider.

Re:The bigger picture

[agnosticnixie]

We're talking about youtube on a computer monitor there, not watching a movie on HDTV.

Re:The bigger picture

[malevolentjelly]

So issues of quality v. bandwidth should be absolutely critical, right? Any increase in bandwidth could cost millions of dollars over a short amount of time across the whole site, so the licensing fees should be minimal in comparison.

Re:The bigger picture

[Anonymous Coward]

Is the video tag DRM friendly?

That depends on the codec. Windows Media Video is DRM-friendly, Theora is not particularly (ie. it doesn't specifically stop DRM being layered on top, but I don't know of anyone who's done this). In the same way, Flash is not DRM-friendly, it's simply lacking features.

Try opening any Flash video using the SWFDec plugin instead of Adobe's. If the video works (SWFDec's not complete, but many things do work already) then you can right click, go on "Properties" and save any part of the file, including the video. Where's the DRM in Flash? It's not there, there is only Adobe's decision not to bother adding a save feature to their player.

I watch Flash videos using this technique all of the time (unless I can use an alternative like youtube-dl or a greasemonkey script), since it lets me use any media player I like, including good ones like MPlayer, rather than the particular one which has been chosen by the website (along with whatever "features" it has, like Megavideo's player which refuses to play more than about an hour per IP per day without registering an account).

TBH this isn't suprising, since the last time I played around with Flash (around Flash 6 and 7) the password protection system simply consisted of the Flash authoring tool checking to see if a password had been set in the file, and if so refusing to open it without the password. Other, non-Adobe/Macromedia, Flash editors simply said "This file is password protected. Continue loading? Yes/No" (from which a simple "save as" without turning on the password would allow the official Flash editor to open it). I don't know if this has now changed, but since Adobe are confident in their monopoly I doubt it.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Certainly we are allowed some leeway for hyperbole here on /.!

No, Theora isn't dead yet. But with no true proactive strategy to switch users away from other codecs, Theora must rely on users switching away on their own. Given that Theora is, technically, inferior in many ways to other popular codecs and has no clear industry support to improve the codec, it's not clear to me why they would expect users to accept it on a technical level.

Yes, it has the benefit of being patent-unencumbered. However, this isn't as big a deal to users seeking higher quality with better compression, better streaming ability, and wide end-user support.

Please note that "user" encompasses anyone who would use the codec, including companies like Youtube as well as end users.

Subtitles

[GerardM]

How do you subtitle ogg material. Without it, it does not have the relevance it could have. Thanks, GerardM

Re:Subtitles

[Tubal-Cain]

Thoggen has the option to rip subtitles, so I assume it's possible.

Re:Subtitles

[FrostedWheat]

That's OggKate's job. It also works with any other Ogg embedded video codec.

Technically inferior

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem with Theora, is that it is clearly technically inferior.
For instance, Vorbis generates comparable or better quality than MP3 of the same size, so it has a hope to be pushed. Theora doesn't.

Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Chris DiBona of Slashdot fame now of Google fame had some choice words regarding Theora.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[David Gerard]

Yes, and when he was called out on his BS and FUD ... he promptly disappeared.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[Anonymous Coward]

if by "choice" you mean "totally uninformed" then you are correct.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[FloydTheDroid]

Okay, the parent linked article says FUD, you say FUD, and the article you link to says FUD. I admit there's uncertainty and doubt but where's the fear?

The simple truth is that Theroa has a lot of catching up to do which is completely fair since it's up against a codec family which has been in constant development for, well, ever. In my experience it has a hard time keeping up with motion which is not something which can be shown with single frames like your linked article does. I don't think we'll see the Internet embrace Theroa until its quality is truly comparable to h.264 or when h.264 starts charging for use. Just saying we should use it without any compelling reason other than that it's free isn't going to win any converts since it is always going to be free for the client.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[lab16]

How is the article fud when proof of what it is saying is included? Even if the xiph.org article data were somehow wrong, how is it even fud to begin with? It is dispelling fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Theora, not spreading it. I do not think you know what fud means.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[Trixter]

It's not FUD, it's true. The clip chosen for that particular comparison (Big Buck Bunny) is one of the worst videos you can use to test codecs because it has very little motion (most scenes have a locked camera) and it has zero noise. The author of that page calls it a "real world test case" but nothing could be farther from the truth. Maybe the author of that page should attempt his comparison using actual video corpus test suites before coming to a similar hasty conclusion.

Ogg Theora is a vector quantization-based codec, which is early 1990s tech, and simply can't scale as compared to how H.264 can scale. It's clearly inferior in every way, but just because it's less encumbered by patents, people think it's the holy grail of video codecs.

Re:Google behind HTML5... Not behind Theora

[David Gerard]

It's hardly the Holy Grail. It is, however, unencumbered.

If software patents disappeared tomorrow, everyone would swoop upon H.264 with great glee.

Linux cant even edit it half the time

[nrgy]

Try finding video editing software which can edit (not commandline like ffmpeg, I'm talking gui After Effects style) a Theora file.

Even on Linux where you would think ogg would be strongest is horrible in the ability to edit ogg files. I do screen captures from time to time and recordmydesktop only saves out ogg (ogv in later versions) files of the captures. I constantly have to run ffmpeg on the files and spit them out as png image sequences.

Outside the technical merits I don't know how you can expect to get traction on a format that barely anything if at all can edit the darn things.

Just my 2 cents.

Re:Linux cant even edit it half the time

[jo_ham]

Well you wouldn't edit in your delivery format, ordinarily. Even H.264 isn't really a source format, it's just what you encode into when your project is done and you want to put it on the web. Mpeg2 if you are going to DVD, HDV if your dumping to a DV tape and so on.

While it's possible to edit formats like H.264 or Theora, it's not really ideal.

Re:Linux cant even edit it half the time

[jo_ham]

Edit: I should have added that some current "edit" formats are based on H.264 and Mpeg2 - HDV and XDCAM HD, for example, are both based on MPEG2 and you can edit them natively with certain software (Final Cut Pro, for example). I wouldn't like to edit an MPEG2 clip that had been encoded for DVD, however, although it is possible.

Re:Linux cant even edit it half the time

[WWWWolf]

Try finding video editing software which can edit (not commandline like ffmpeg, I'm talking gui After Effects style) a Theora file.

Cinelerra.

Though I have to say that occasionally, Cinelerra-CV has problems reading all formats with different quirks in each format. I can't remember offhand what weird quirks it had with Theora. Probably some funny inability to find keyframes at times and thus messing things up if you cut at a wrong place. Rendering to Theora works fine, last I checked.

Re:Linux cant even edit it half the time

[TheRaven64]

Why is this relevant to Theora adoption? If you want to produce professional-looking Theora, install the Theora QuickTime plugin on a Mac and then you can export directly from Final Cut Pro. Presumably the same thing applies with the DirectShow plugin and After Effects on Windows if you're forced to use that.

Re:Linux cant even edit it half the time

[Psyborgue]

You generally don't want to edit temporally compressed video. DV, for example, is a spatial codec. The problem is editing within the GOP (group of pictures). If you access a given frame it has to calculate not just that frame, but all the frames around it going back all the way to the I frame (keyframe). This is further complicated with h264 where b frames are used as reference frames (references of references). It's too much work for your cpu/gpu when you're dealing with multiple video streams at the same time. That's where intermediate codecs come in you can convert to, edit, and then export to a final codec such as h264 or Theora.

GUI editor for Theora: LiVES

[AliasMarlowe]

Try finding video editing software which can edit (not commandline like ffmpeg, I'm talking gui After Effects style) a Theora file.

I've never used After Effects so I'm not sure what features it has. However, if you want a GUI editor which can handle theora files, then try LiVES. It's rather better (in features & interface) than avidemux or kdenlive, neither of which can handle theora. It's cross-platform OSS for BSD-Linux-Mac-Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiVES http://lives.sourceforge.net/

Re:GUI editor for Theora: LiVES

[Sal Zeta]

with all the due respect, it's like replying with "wordpad" to someone who is asking for a substitute to emacs or VI.

Consider After Effects like photoshop, but for whole video reels rather than still Images.

Maybe the OP was thinking of Final Cut, and even in that case we're still talking about very different products, especially if you're using FC with some proficiency at professional level.

Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[gig]

Audio standardization is not only bigger than the Web, it's older, and it's MUCH more successful than any Web standardization to date, including HTML 5, which is still only 35% of desktops and 90% of mobiles.

I think until the Web development community actually creates and follows even just one of their own standards (maybe HTML 5 will be the one), browser makers and other principals should STFU about audio video standardization, which has been highly successful for 30 years.

During the 21st century thus far, you can't make one fucking Web page for all browsers. But the same ISO MPEG-4 audio video plays in both Adobe Flash and QuickTime Player; both iTunes and YouTube; both iPod and Blu-Ray; both iPhone and Blackberry. Camcorders from Sony and Kodak make the same MPEG-4 video format. Editors from Adobe and Apple edit and export the same MPEG-4 video format. Both NVIDIA and AMD GPU's have ISO MPEG-4 H.264/AAC decoders in them. There are MPEG-4 players from literally hundreds of manufacturers.

But consider that Linux and Windows can't play all of that audio video, and so we invoke Flash in a Web page, bring in a proprietary app with questionable security context and crashy history and also it changed owners twice already, just so we can make everyday standard audio video work in Linux and Windows!

And during the 21st century thus far, HTML has been static. The object tag bullshit from 2008 is the same object tag bullshit I used in 1998. The W3C and browser makers have contributed almost nothing to audio and video in the entire history of the Web. If not for the fact Tim Berners-Lee created the Web on a NeXT system that had 8-bit audio, maybe the Web would not have had audio at all from the beginning. The Web is turning 20 and still no consumer level audio, never mind pro audio. I produce music ... how can I express a 5 minute 24-track 24-bit 192kHz song made up of hundreds of synchronized audio clips in HTML so I can store it for posterity? You guys are not even getting started with what needs to be done with audio and video on the Web. And while HTML did nothing over the past 10 years, we got RSS and then podcasts, which are filled with ISO MPEG-4 audio video. Even MSNBC.com is MPEG-4 since podcasts, no more Windows Media. Set-top boxes with MPEG-4 decoders in them are downloading podcasts. These podcasts are viewable already in browsers. The browser today is interacting with a metric shitload of MPEG-4, but it's leaving it all to Flash and then ironically, the browser vendors complain that Flash crashes their browser! Incredible.

Think about the fact that Microsoft could not break MPEG-4 standardization in spite of using Windows and Internet Explorer to push Windows Media. That was years ago when MPEG-2 was changing over to MPEG-4. How is Firefox going to do it now, when all the media is MPEG-4 already?

Understand that music and movie makers are creating content for MPEG-4 in the way they used to make CD and DVD. Authoring tools have had MPEG-4 export for many years, it's extremely old news. And music and movies are not tolerant of format wars. The margins are too low. Most music albums and movies don't make money. A format war kills all the smaller artists who can't double up their production costs to make 2 products. Broken audio video standardization breaks artists. The media that is on iPod and YouTube and Blu-Ray is what is going to be on the Web servers. If Mozilla can't play it then Flash will be invoked perpetually. That is all Flash is used for now it seems, is to wrap MPEG-4 up to make it Linux and Windows safe.

Further, this is all political because there is no technical substitute for MPEG-4 that pleases Mozilla. Ogg is offered, but Google has already said that an Ogg YouTube would require more bandwidth than currently exists in the world today. Are you telling me that YouTube is not part of the World Wide Web? Ogg on iPod would get you one quarter battery life because there are no Ogg decoder chips. Should the audio from the Web not play on iPods

Re:Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[agnosticnixie]

Congratulations, you completely missed the point
1 - it's about licensing fees, jpeg has no such fees and all patents have been dead for years or shot down
2 - You quote a nonsensical piece of FUD (the bandwidth thing)
3 - Congrats, you're another self-important prick. I know plenty of people who still work with mp3, or deal with flac. Similarly, studios rarely encode video before post-processing, so it's moot, they could just as well. The BBC uses Dirac, which as far as I know is also a xiph standard. 4 - Hardware acceleration will become moot with openCL.

Re:Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[Psyborgue]

The point you're missing is that since x264 is a closed format the Mozilla foundation can't include it in their browser because of the patent fees and so forth. It's not idealism of open v. closed. It's just the situation required by the stupidity of US patent law. If the US didn't recognize software patents i'm sure the Mozilla foundation would quickly integrate the x264 project as an h264 excoder/decoder into their browser. Personally I think the answer is to define a video tag like an image tag and leave the browser / plugins and/or system codecs to sort it out. Safari uses the system's quicktime for video (even avi), IE uses directshow, and Firefox in linux an use the vlc plugin to play just about anything. Why is it suddenly the responsibility of the browser to do provide something that already exists?

Re:Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[Ant P.]

how can I express a 5 minute 24-track 24-bit 192kHz song made up of hundreds of synchronized audio clips in HTML so I can store it for posterity?

First tell me how I can write a message board in WAV format?

Re:Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[TheRaven64]

If the US didn't recognize software patents i'm sure the Mozilla foundation would quickly integrate the x264 project as an h264 excoder/decoder into their browser

Not a chance. x264 is GPL'd, Mozilla is triple-licensed GPL, MPL, and LGPL. The GPL is incompatible with two of these licenses.

Re:Compare success of Web vs audio video standards

[lennier]

"everyday standard audio video"

I share your disgruntlement at how broken the media world is, but the problem is exactly that we DON'T have an "everyday standard audio/video" format. We have MPEG-4, which is illegal to use with Open systems, and then other patent-encumbered proprietary codecs like Quicktime, Windows Media, et al.

You're welcome to break the law if you think it will help.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[TheRaven64]

Well, the MPEG-LA is doing a good job with their plan to introduce per-download fees for people using H.264 next year. If you're still using H.264 for streaming video next year, for anything longer than a 10-minute clip, expect to be giving all of your profits away to the MPEG-LA. Or you could switch to some other CODEC like, for example, Theora, which doesn't have stupidly-expensive licensing fees.

To be honest, I'm more interested in Dirac than Theora. VC-2 is a profile of Dirac which, like Theora, is not patent-encumbered. It's based on wavelets and is much higher quality and has a lot more industry backing than Theora (the BBC, for example, are using it for archiving already). Currently, the CPU requirements for decoding Dirac are a bit high. Playing back the Big Buck Bunny example on my 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo uses 100% of one core (although I'm using a slightly old version of the CODEC, apparently the latest one is about 20-30% faster). The BBC is working with hardware manufacturers to get hardware decoders which should make it a lot more attractive. There's also a CUDA-based implementation and a GLSL version which are reported to be a lot faster than the CPU-based version (I've not tried either) and should work on most modern GPUs. Given that most modern handhelds now include an OpenGL ES 2.0 GPU, which means that they support GLSL, it's likely that Dirac playback on handhelds will work nicely soon.

Theora has much lower CPU requirements than even H.264, so using Theora for the low-quality version and Dirac for high quality sounds like a sensible approach.

*sigh*

[nrgy]

I don't know why my post is marked as Troll.

Does no one know how many people rip stuff off youtube, vimeo, insert site X here, and edit the videos into parodies or god knows what else?

If you have a format that can't be readily edited I don't get how its going to go anywhere.

Not saying its ideal but it is a valid point.

VP6

[Anonymous Coward]

VP6 (the current youtube codec) isn't hardware accelerated and it's doing just fine. YMMV.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[squiggleslash]

Well, the MPEG-LA is doing a good job with their plan to introduce per-download fees for people using H.264 next year. If you're still using H.264 for streaming video next year, for anything longer than a 10-minute clip, expect to be giving all of your profits away to the MPEG-LA.

Well, that's not very likely. The advantage of H.264 is that it saves bandwidth, indeed, that's what Google is seeing as the primary advantage, so the balance is going to be "What's the cost of bandwidth + free vs bandwidth - H.264 superiority + licensing fee? Assuming that H.264 genuinely is that much better than Theora, the probability is they'll continue to seriously consider H.264. It's also not entirely clear how large the fees will be, but based upon their general structure, there's a threshold below which no license fees are required and an upper limit on how much anyone can pay for using H.264 to deliver content.

So leaving moral and ethical issues aside and just considering the question of "I run a business, I expect to get $1 per viewer for ten minutes of streaming for my content in subscription fees or advertising, is it worth my while using H.264?", the question is still open, and there's a strong chance many businesses will consider it worth their while, depending on what they're trying to stream.

To be honest, I'm more interested in Dirac than Theora. VC-2 is a profile of Dirac which, like Theora, is not patent-encumbered. It's based on wavelets and is much higher quality and has a lot more industry backing than Theora (the BBC, for example, are using it for archiving already)

The other advantage of Dirac over Theora is that it probably is patent free - the BBC has conducted a fairly exhaustive search by all accounts, whereas Theora probably isn't. Theora exists in the same domain as all of the MPEG standards, which means many organizations have been developing in the same space, and the likelihood that a technology critical to Theora is encumbered by patents, the owner of which hasn't yet revealed it, is pretty high. Unlike the MPEG ISO/ITU standards, there's no incentive for companies to get it out in the open that they have patents on projects like Theora. With MPEG it's "Who wants some money? Get in line! You're going to look pretty silly and have lots of enemies if you don't get in line now!"

The disadvantage of Dirac is that right now current encoders are just not seen as high quality as H.264, and as you say, is extremely CPU intensive.

Personally I think someone should create a kick-ass MPEG-1 encoder, just to piss everyone off.

The display might not be 1080p

[coryking]

But the video itself is 1080p. That means the hardware has to deal with the 1080p video and then resize it to whatever the display resolution is. And guess what? Hardware is better at doing that kind of transform than software.

Re:The display might not be 1080p

[skyride]

No... If this were true, we'd all be playing multi-terabyte 4K video uncompressed on our computers because the studios would simply distribute it at that quality then? No, you downscale the video file, then put the smaller file on the device you wish to play or on the internet to stream.

Re:The display might not be 1080p

[Fred_A]

But the video itself is 1080p. That means the hardware has to deal with the 1080p video and then resize it to whatever the display resolution is. And guess what? Hardware is better at doing that kind of transform than software.

I doubt any user of small portable multimedia devices does this. Few such devices have the processing power to resize video in real time (and therefore require that you do so yourself before storing the file on the gadget) and few users would want to waste the little available memory on a huge file that wouldn't be used anyway.

My Cowon D2 has a QVGA display (roughly equivalent to VHS) so I use iriverter to massage video files before getting them onboard, although Cowon provides some software that might (or not, it runs in Windows so I haven't tried it) be good at it. I have 4 Megs + up to 32 on that device. Why would I waste it on high definition video ? It can be connected to (composite) external displays but I've never used it that way and I doubt many people would consider it.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[TheRaven64]

YouTube currently uses H.263 for all of their standard definition stuff, and only uses H.264 for a few things. Theora is a very strong competitor to H.263, providing better quality at the same data rate or smaller size at the same quality.

Theora exists in the same domain as all of the MPEG standards, which means many organizations have been developing in the same space, and the likelihood that a technology critical to Theora is encumbered by patents, the owner of which hasn't yet revealed it, is pretty high.

I'm not sure why you think this. On2 was selling VP3 for a long time, and Theora is a tweaked version of VP3, yet no one claimed it infringed their patents. A patent troll could just as easily have a submarine patent on H.264 as Theora - the MPEG-LA doesn't (and can't) guarantee that this won't happen. And, given that H.264 is a lot newer than VP3, this seems quite likely.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[squiggleslash]

I'm not sure why you think this. On2 was selling VP3 for a long time, and Theora is a tweaked version of VP3, yet no one claimed it infringed their patents. A patent troll could just as easily

When On2 was selling VP3, it was a proprietary codec and wasn't exactly used that widely. Patent owners had no serious way to know that the codec infringed on any patents of their's and if they did, a lawsuit wouldn't be likely to achieve much.

I addressed the issue about submarine patents that H.264 might infringe upon in the post you responded to. Understanding why is key to understanding why companies like Nokia and Apple describe Theora as "proprietary" and why they're expressing very real concerns when they do.

To re-cap and expand upon what I said a little: The MPEG process is "open" - companies who believe they have technologies that would be useful in the standard can submit them as long as they agree to RAND terms for any licensing. Even if the existence of the technologies and their patents is made known after the technologies are unintentionally incorporated into the MPEG standard, patent owners can register the existence of their patents with the ITU and other similar bodies, and can negotiate with groups like Via Licensing and the MPEG LA to have them collect royalties on their behalf.

In short, having a "submarine patent" in an MPEG standard is completely f--king stupid.

As the Theora process is, by necessity, patent hostile, patent owners (who want to make money on their patents) are effectively discouraged from either suggesting technologies they "own" to the Theora team, or making the existence of their patents known until the standard achieves significant market share. Anyone suing today wouldn't get much. The time to sue is when Theora has taken off so far that there's no going back.

Theora, as I said, exists in the same domain as the MPEG standards. It's essentially based upon DCT transforms and macroblock/vector entropy encoding. It's where most of the research has been done since the mid eighties when H.261 came out and MPEG committee was formed. The Theora folks are trying to do the same thing that those developing AVC are doing, and trying to solve the same problems. The chances that they haven't solved problems the same way as others working in the same field is minimal.

While a fair amount of research has been done on wavelet compression, the research is much smaller, and the BBC is better able to get a handle on what patents cover technologies in the field. Therefore, I think Dirac is probably a safer codec.

Stop Spreading Chris DiBona's Debunked Lies

[Anonymous Coward]

In sites like Youtube, h264 will prevail. And this time, h264 is the (much) better tech as well.
To get the same quality as h264 video, Theora video needs higher bit rates, which translates to higher traffic, and in the end costs more money.

YouTube uses only a subset of h.264. This is likely due to the fact that they want to be able to take advantage of hardware acceleration on mobile devices, and using h.264 to its fullest potential would make most computers, especially mobile devices, use just too much processing power, often more than is available. It also takes longer to encode such streams, which would be less efficient for YouTube.
.
So, what you should be asking yourself is whether YouTube's h.264 is more efficient than Theora. The answer is: no. At the same bitrates, Theora looks just fine, thank you--and it's only going to get better.

The Magical Coalescing ChickenEgg

[Onymous Coward]

Yeah, and who the hell is going to use Phoenix? I mean, Firebird. Oh, I guess it started getting popular. I mean, Firefox. Gee, I guess... things change.

But screw FLAC since it has no hardware support. If there's no audience, why would vendors opt to build in support? Oh, but I guess FLAC did get more popular. And more people adopted it despite lack of hardware support. Gee, I guess now... there is FLAC hardware support, and adoption rate speeds up because of it.

This phenomenon is similar to voting. Third party candidates are treated as not viable because they're not popular enough, so they don't get votes. But they can't achieve popularity without votes showing their viability... (This particular system, U.S. plurality voting, is fucked, though, as incremental progress is squashed by it being a non-preferential voting system. You can't cast a vote to demonstrate viability without disenfranchising yourself from the current round of political decision.)

We must support IE! The year of the Linux desktop will never come! People are just greedy and you can't be generous! Theora doesn't have hardware support! Blah blah blah!

My opinion? Folks fail to grasp that many, many systems are dynamics. Arrangements of smoothly continuous mutual influence. Instead they see only chickens or eggs, or the lack there of fully-formed ones. It's a misperception driven by erroneous expectation. I'm getting pretty sick of that.

Re:The Magical Coalescing ChickenEgg

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up, ffs.

Re:The Magical Coalescing ChickenEgg

[Fred_A]

Yeah, and who the hell is going to use Phoenix? I mean, Firebird. Oh, I guess it started getting popular. I mean, Firefox. Gee, I guess... things change.

Nah, I don't really think that new "web" thing is going to displace Gopher, even if Wired calls it "surfing" (which is so ridiculous it will never catch on). Besides there are plans to add GIF images to Gopher pages. So that web gadget has nothing on it. It's just a short lived fad.

As an aside, and as the "proud" owner of Theora playing devices for the past few years, a regular follower of things digital, and someone who (apparently mistakenly) thought he was pretty much up to date on those matters, I'm glad to learn that there's a Play Ogg! campaign. Apparently it has been pretty successful (*ahem*)

Voting for the most likely winning candidate

[Anonymous Coward]

is the best form exercising our political freedom, philosophy, and participate in democracy. It's really not that complicated. Plus, if you have a bet on who's going to win, you get to add your vote to your bet. Too bad you can't vote for the horses on the track and bet on them too.

Mod parent down

[Burz]

Would you care to read the article and address the claims that the NEW Theora is just as good as H264 for web video (small formats) but not hi-def?

No?? Then you are OT.

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[Narcocide]

The interesting thing I find here is everyone is so concerned with entirely subjective levels of visual quality (which 99% of real end-users don't *actually* care about even though they think they do because they don't have a trained eye or properly calibrated display equipment) and not even remotely concerned with practical issues like the amount of CPU load it takes to actually encode video for a given codec or down-to-the-byte actual bandwidth usage comparisons between different resolutions/quantifiable visual quality levels. I've worked at companies that wholly embraced proprietary codecs like ON2's VP6 for the superior visual quality at higher resolutions but I can tell you that if you're interested in LIVE streams good luck finding any CPU core today capable of encoding even one HD stream in real time, let alone multiple; even more so because multi-pass encoding is mandatory for realizing the full capability of most such codecs.

And this statement doesn't even address the fact that visual artifacts of entirely different codecs will have entirely different visibility depending on display dot-pitch and CRT vs LCD technology choice. Try it... take your favorite awesome codec and compare it with Theora at the same high bit-rate on both an LCD monitor and a high-end high-dot-pitch CRT monitor and tell me if the tables don't turn on effective visual quality.

I guess what I'm saying here is the trivialization of practical concerns other than perceived visual quality comparisons disturbs me. I agree with all the statements of the parent posts in this thread but I think you guys are sill missing the bigger picture - no pun intended. Youtube may be able to pick whatever codec they want but many smaller business entities companies may actually be currently being excluded from the market by lack of adoption of codecs like Theora that can perform well (forgive me here) "ghetto style."

Re:... wait we already lost!? When did that happen

[trawg]

Don't forget Google just bought On2 and thus the VP6 codec. I personally can't waaaaaaaaaait to see what they're going to do with this.