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Working With Ogg Theora and the Video Tag

Posted by samzenpus on from the fighting-the-good-fight dept.

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."

4 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Theora by ardor · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

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    1. Re:Theora by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Theora by TheTurtlesMoves · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

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  2. Where are we winning? by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.