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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."
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.
Monty from Xiph has provided an update on the state of the upcoming 1.1 release. It makes for interesting reading.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mide 90's.
Yes, and when he was called out on his BS and FUD ... he promptly disappeared.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
That's OggKate's job. It also works with any other Ogg embedded video codec.