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Theora 1.1 (Thusnelda) Is Released
SD-Arcadia writes to tell us that Theora 1.1 has officially been released. It features improved encoding, providing better video quality for a given file size, a faster decoder, bitrate controls to help with streaming, and two-pass encoding. "The new rate control module hits its target much more accurately and obeys strict buffer constraints, including dropping frames if necessary. The latter is needed to enable live streaming without disconnecting users or pausing to buffer during sudden motion. Obeying these constraints can yield substantially worse quality than the 1.0 encoder, whose rate control did not obey any such constraints, and often landed only in the vague neighborhood of the desired rate target. The new --soft-target option can relax a few of these constraints, but the new two-pass rate control mode gives quality approaching full 'constant quality' mode with a predictable output size. This should be the preferred encoding method when not doing live streaming. Two-pass may also be used with finite buffer constraints, for non-live streaming." A detailed writeup on the new release has been posted at Mozilla.
Maybe now Google will use Theora instead of the patent-encumbered H.264 in their new HTML5 Youtube.
That is if the issues have been addressed.
From the FAQ on the website:
Theora is an open video codec being developed by the Xiph.org Foundation as part of their Ogg project (It is a project that aims to integrate On2's VP3 video codec, Ogg Vorbis audio codec and Ogg multimedia container formats into a multimedia solution that can compete with MPEG-4 format).
Theora is derived directly from On2's VP3 codec; currently the two are nearly identical, varying only in framing headers, but Theora will diverge and improve from the main VP3 development lineage as time progresses.
Why? If the video and audio are compressed already, are you really gaining much by trying to compress them again? As for subtitles, aren't you better off with a container that supports them (i.e.: mkv)?
And I mean good support, not just something that works like a stream, but where you can seek and do everything like you can do with actual files.
Afaict the only way to read a portion of a file in a zip is to read and decompress the whole file up to the portion wanted so seeking is going to be pretty damn slow.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I'll just have to ask... why? Except for some holdouts from Usenet I think pretty much everyone uses torrents without any rar/zip compression. And even those are automatically decompressed if you set up something like hellanzb. It certainly doesn't save you any space, it's just for grouping files together and intgrity checking. Except torrents already do that, same with PAR on the Usenet side. It's completely redundant these days.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why? If the video and audio are compressed already, are you really gaining much by trying to compress them again?
Perhaps he's using the zip/rar as a simple container file.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
What's the point? It's free, in both senses of the word.
Unlike H.264, you do not have to pay to use Theora.
Unlike H.264, you can use Theora in open-source software without worrying about being sued or shut down overnight.
Sure, if you don't care about freedom and don't mind paying for the privilege, go ahead and use H.264. But why would you want to, when you can use Theora however you want to, and without paying a cent?
Yep. They are actually zero-compressed files, but still inside multi-archived files. But the subtitle files are as separate. I can load a video file just fine on vlc, but I cant load subtitles in it unless I decompress and they have the same filename.
Dirac strikes me as another codec worth following. It's available to all developers, high-quality, and in production use by the BBC during the Olympics (they said so in their Dirac promotional video). VLC has support for playing back Dirac streams. I'd guessing other players do as well.
I expect Theora and Dirac to be of interest to all who want high-quality free video codecs.
Digital Citizen
You could try mounting the archive(s) using FUSE, and then play the contents with whatever you want.
I hope that this version becomes widely used so that we can eventually read of the triumphs of Thusnelda.
(Oy vey, oy vey...)
Just wanted to let you know that SMplayer lets you load any file as the subtitle file. Of course, Mplayer itself does, too, but some people get intimidated by the command-line. With SMplayer, you go to the Subtitles menu, click on Load, and then pick whichever file you want.
In case anyone doesn't know yet, SMplayer is a user-friendly front-end for the powerful Mplayer program. Mplayer is probably the next best thing to an omnipotent video (and audio) player, but it's a command-line program with a bewildering array of options guaranteed to intimidate the weak of heart. SMplayer is a very well done user interface, just as easy to use as VLC but allows use of most of the features of Mplayer. SMplayer is to Mplayer what Ubuntu is to Debian.
Now, it still doesn't work on zip files. I wish someone had written SMplayer with the KDE toolkit instead of GTK+; then you could use the zip Kpart and just dive right into the Zip file (or even specify the subtitle filename as "fish://mylogin@myhomemachine/mypath/mysubtitlefile" and just pull it off another machine on the SOHO net).
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Folders/Directories are a much simpler container that is more widely supported.
Well unless you don't compress the file in the ZIP (STORE). Then you can just seek directly from the file's offset.
Encoders such as Theora, DVD rippers, and GUIs for these are pretty much separate things. Normally an end user doesn't even end up in any kind of direct interaction with a Theora encoder, or an H.264 encoder implementation such as x264. The article is about encoders, not GUI applications that use them.
While I don't know much about MediaCoder, judging from screenshots on the site it's clearly a front-end that binds together these features -- ripping, decoding, processing (scaling etc.), and re-encoding, and gives end users a GUI for using them. It might use open source ripping and encoding libraries in its back-end for actually implementing these technical tasks, or it might have its own implementations (which I doubt). How it presents that functionality and workflow to the user in its GUI is independent of the details of how exactly the encoding etc. have been implemented -- or at least it should be.
It's true that most F/OSS GUIs for DVD ripping and encoding suck, Handbrake probably being the closest one I've seen so far to being both featureful and providing a reasonably humane GUI for general video transcoding. However, for actual encoder implementations efficiency is indeed the prime focus. (How easy the actual encoders are to use also has some importance, but that's mostly a direct concern only to power users who use the encoders directly and for developers who write software that uses the encoders as a back-end.)
Because everyone else in the industry is using H.264. If you want your materials to play nice with others hardware, software, etc. you'd better damn well be using H.264.
Generally, the cost of the H.264 license is covered by the software/hardware purchased by the consumer, whether it's a business or personal use. It's licensed by Adobe/Apple/Google/whomever when you buy or use their encoder. I don't have to pay a licensing fee for every video I create in H.264.
I've tested Theora on a few occasions. Everytime, H.264 has beat it in terms of quality for file size plus I can send an H.264 file to anyone else in the industry and I guarantee it will play for them. And today, I can put it out on the web and be pretty much guaranteed that just about everyone can view it.
Not so much with Theora.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Unless it becomes popular, in which case the so-called "submarine" (actually they may not even be submarine) patents will come to the fore, and you'll have to pay.
I don't trust Xiph having read their comments about what exactly they mean by "Patent free", and having seen the silence over, say, Vorbis's apparent infringement of US Patent 5,214,742. Is Theora "safer" than Vorbis? Well, it's another DCT-based codec, just like 99% of the video codecs in use since H.261, and it's essentially doing stuff where everyone else is doing stuff. The chances of it not violating some patent somewhere is minimal to non-existent, as everyone and their brother is trying to come up with ways to improve DCT based algorithms that they can patent and then submit to MPEG or VCEG for incorporation into the next MPEG or H.26* video standard.
There are really only three standards that could be considered free of patent issues, and even then it's not entirely 100% certain. H.261 dates back to the mid eighties. The ITU lists no current patents applying to MPEG-1. (It's worth pointing out that Theora's predecessor, VP3, is considered to be somewhere between H.261 and MPEG-1 in terms of quality.) And finally, the BBC did an extensive search for anything that might hit their Dirac codec and came up blank, as well as proposing (and then withdrawing once published, so they count as prior art) some patents themselves, so Dirac is in the running too.
Theora? If I was a commercial concern, I would avoid it. I'd go for the predictability of a licensable codec ahead of one that almost certainly would be a target for patent lawsuits if it ever achieves critical mass, and possibly earlier.
I might feel differently if Xiph didn't play word games with the term "Patent free", and gave a straight answer on the issues of actual patents people have found, rather than turning around and saying "Yeah, we ran it by a lawyer, and they said we're OK, but we're not going to tell you why because it's our super secret defense we'll use if we're ever sued", which doesn't exactly inspire confidence, especially as nobody will ever sue Xiph anyway (Xiph just writes the software, they leave the packaging, compiling, possible selling, and actual using to everyone else.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
But does it have hardware acceleration for .mkv out of the box?
You don't understand what MKV is... it's not a codec, it's a container format for holding the video & audio stream along with assorted other information. This could mean multiple video and audio streams as is common for many movies dubbed in different languages or alternate video scenes. The hardware acceleration applies to whatever codec is used to create the streams held within the MKV file.. and that could be many different things from MPEG2, h.264, VC1, etc. etc.
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
But does it have hardware acceleration for .mkv out of the box?
No, because mkv is a container format. Hardware acceleration for a container format makes no sense. Other than to demonstrate that you don't know the difference between containers and CODECs (or between Gb and GB) was there a point to your rant?
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And it's also a pain to transfer a "folder" of files to someone over the net. Torrents are the only remotely usable solution and that requires making a torrent, uploading it to a site, and then finding a user you want to give it to who also understands bittorrent...
Totally. Someone should get on this immediately. It would be totally cool to have a program which is able to string a number of files and their associated directories together, and just dump them into one file for ease of distribution! And then, on the other side of the internets, the recipient could use the same program to take all of that stuff from the file he received, and dump it back out, directories and all.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
No. On Mac OS X best shot is the the MPlayer OSX Extended. At H.264 playback it's better than vanilla CCCP, but not as good as commercial CoreAVC.
VLC sadly is as hopeless as it was before. When I heard that they finally supported ASS subtitles I was excited to try it out - only to find that it still sucks at any contemporary media job.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
The first claim of 5,214,742 states (in part): "the improvement comprising selecting the length of the respective window functions as a function of signal amplitude changes", all the other clauses are dependent on this one.
Libvorbis lib/envelope.c, line 87:
The code goes on to NOT select the window length based on a function of the signal amplitude.
Never mind the fact that block switching transform codecs pre-dated that patent significantly and that switching based on amplitude changes is the most obvious criteria since the primary purpose of block switching is to reduce movement of signal energy from high amplitude parts into previous low amplitude parts.
So, how much do they pay you to spread bullshit? Are there openings available? My soul is also for sale, at the right price...
The old scene follows obscure rules to be l33t like ftping around rars, but they're a fraction of a fraction of the people downloading.
Sure. But they are supplying 95% of what other people are downloading.
The topsite network was never meant to supply a large number of people, but was and is a *fast* and *secure* distributed exchange system for those who are in, *and* are contributing.
There's also a new scene that's not so lame, I can tell you there's original releases that go on private torrents first but are packed up to make the old scene happy.
Sure, I know and I respect them. They often fill the many holes left by the old scene these days. But still, these new scenes are *mostly* supplying mp3/cam/ts/scr/rips. No technical knowledge in there, just a matter of having fresh meat working for you. Yes, I also know exceptions to this, but these can be counted on your two index fingers...
The Scene is dimming. People in get older, get real life. New people are not allowed to get in for security reasons/are not motivated to do so with all the easy-to-get-into p2p stuff.
But it still is the real deal.
-xded
Anybody who uses Vorbis and h.264 together deserves to be smacked.
The MPEG-LA license only protects you against the MPEG-LA members. In no way does it provide any sort of guarantee that someone who isn't in MPEG-LA won't start suing at any point in time. The argument against Theora in this regard can really be made against any codec.
As for your "safe" codecs, MPEG-1 may not be patentable my MPEG-LA's standards anymore, but that doesn't mean someone hasn't patented some part of the format at a later time than the standard came out, thus making the patent still valid today. Would such a patent pass the test of prior art? It depends on what they patented, but even if it didn't all it takes is for a patent grant by the USPTO to allow a lawsuit, and the patent must be invalidated afterwards. You still can get sued, even if the claim can be found baseless.
The BBC may have done research about Dirac and came up with nothing, but are they more open about what exactly they did than Xiph? If they are, please give a link showing what you considered acceptable for Dirac but not for Theora.
I made a few samples using the latest versions of x264, VC-1, and Theora, testing both offline VBR and real-time CBR encoding.
http://cid-bee3c9ac9541c85b.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.Public/Theora%5E_1.1
Theora is defintely improved, but I see a lot of basis pattern throughout these samples. Theora would be well-served by a postprocessing filter. Theora's 1-pass CBR encoding definitely needs a LOT of tuning before it'd be viable for real-world content; I don't think we'll see it used effectively for live encoding this version.
My video compression blog
You don't understand how acceleration works.
It's up to the media player to ensure the streams are accelerated by picking a proper codec. It's also up to the media player to understand the container format. These things aren't very difficult, because of the codec frameworks that exist. On Windows, the most common one is DirectShow. (or whatever they've renamed it in Vista/Win7)
The media player has to pipe the stream data through to wherever it has to go - the Codec handles this, so once the media player picks a hardware accelerated codec, you're set!
VLC usually just sends it to its own CPU-based codecs, but other media players (like MPC, loaded up with directshow codecs for different formats) will send parts of it to the GPU to be decoded/accelerated. MPC-HC also has GPU shaders that can enhance the quality, regardless of the codec.
H.264 will be accelerated in .MKV, .MOV, and .MP4 unless your media player doesn't know what to do, which is unlikely because of the codec frameworks. The biggest issue is either going to be a missing codec(solved by using a pack like the klite mega codec pack) or your media player of choice(VLC) favouring compatibility over performance. VLC likes to choose CPU-decode codecs rather than GPU-decode ones. As far as I know, it also lacks GPU shaders.
Side-note: Recently I was uploading H.264/AAC to Youtube. There was a glitch on Youtube's end that it thought VBR-AAC was longer than it really was, so it rejected the video. After switching to .mp4(h.264/mp3), I had problems with audio desyncing. Then I switched to .mkv(h.264/mp3), and it worked fine. Seems like youtube has solid mkv support, just like most desktop software I've tested.
Your question is just as stupid the second time around... MKV is a container, just like AVI, MOV/MP4, etc. You can put any codec in it that you want, including H.264.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I wonder if it is time for me to reconvert all my HD movies again into this now. It takes hours to rip them, and even more to convert them. It could be worth it if it can be higher quality at the same bitrate or same quality at a lower bitrate. Some of my movies get a little messy in the high motion areas, but I didn't have much choice if I wanted all of them to fit on the same 1.5tb drive.
> And today, I can put it out on the web
Something that may cost you money starting 2011. MPEG-LA has indicated that it's likely to require royalties for streaming (not encoding; simply making available in a streamable fashion) H.264 starting then, with the final decisions on pricing and such to be made in December 2009, last I checked.
Of course for the next year or so you're ok.
The fact is, the video codec landscape on the web just doesn't look very good.