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It should indeed, by rights, be everywhere.
Theora is the only current, competitive video codec that "currently complies with the W3C patent policy."
http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/09/theora-1-1-released/
http://lockshot.wordpress.com/2009/07/30/whats-the-problem-with-ogg...
Yes. The licensing goals articulated by the W3C in Section 2 of the Patent Policy are to promote the widest adoption of Web standards that can be implemented on a Royalty-Free (RF) basis. Thus, to qualify to be a W3C standard for the HTML 5 video tag, any codec must comply with the W3C Royalty-Free (RF) Licensing Requirements. (At the risk of over-simplifying, a bunch of folks who know alot and have many valid opinions have to agree as well). The RF requirements provide in relevant part that “With respect to a Recommendation developed under this policy, a W3C Royalty-Free license shall mean a non-assignable, non-sublicensable license to make, have made, use, sell, have sold, offer to sell, import, and distribute and dispose of implementations of the Recommendation…” The policy further enumerates ten conditions that define detailed terms of the license requirements.
Edited 2009-09-27 10:51 UTC
Awesome; I truly believe that if they can get Theora to at least 95% of what h264 can do, but royalty free - then for those being pillaged by h264 patent holders, Theora might offer a way out in the future.
With the new Theora out of the way, I hope they improve Ogg as well because right now it lags behind AAC and MP3 when it comes to quality versus size. If they can over take MP3 but 95% of what AAC can deliver then it'll strike another blow against MP3 and AAC.
With that being said, they really do need to fix their plugins; their Quicktime one is horrible, and their Directshow one is non-existant. Its all very nice creating wonderful file formats but if the plugins for popular media players is missing, its not going to matter one iota.
Ogg is a container format, not a codec. I assume you're talking about the Vorbis audio codec?
(BTW, this raises another point: Why do Ogg Theora+Vorbis video files have a music note icon in Gnome?)
Also, (smaller file size | higher video quality) = also awesome :-) Pity that my home media box that I just recieved yesterday doesn't do Theora!
(BTW, this raises another point: Why do Ogg Theora+Vorbis video files have a music note icon in Gnome?)
Also, (smaller file size | higher video quality) = also awesome :-) Pity that my home media box that I just recieved yesterday doesn't do Theora!
Good question; I would have thought something like a piece of film with a slight curl in it would be more suitable for a video file type.
It may be related to file names, as .ogg is assumed to be audio aswell as .oga, while .ogv is video. It was found that people didn’t like the same extension/mimetype for both video and audio files, so they registered new mime types but had to retain some legacy for the current market of media players, so .ogg is kept for audio files.
MP3 has never been a state-of-the-art audio codec. Just good enough for most people.
Vorbis (the audio codec used mostly in ogg container) has been ahead in quality for years. It was the video that was missing, and with this release I guess that Theora is probably close enough to h.264 (and probably ahead of DivX and the like).
I agree in the plugins/tools thing, though. It is still not easy to encode/decode theora videos with the usual programs.
True, but LAME has done a pretty good job squeezing every last bit of quality out of the format
From what I understand, the next version of Ogg Vorbis will incorporate AoTuV enhancements. The problem I have though; the devices that support the format leave alot to be desired.
The dream device for me is something that brings Songbird + CD Ripping + Ogg Vorbis Support + Reliable syncronising on a flash based device that has an expansion slot with 64GB being the installed flash memory as standard
Videolan is ok for transcoding - I tend to record all my videos in lossless format, then do the encoding afterwards - I find that if I encode on the fly the fans on my laptop speed up and thus I end up with the sound of a jet engine in the background.
Maybe in the future Videolan transcoding component can be modified or possibly a new front end created so that mere mortals can do ripping, transcoding, encoding etc. via an easy to use interface.
Edited 2009-09-26 13:38 UTC
Actually, from what I understand, Vorbis development has stopped apart from the efforts of AoTuV and others like him.
Still, it has features MP3 doesn't (like 5.1 channel support, finer-grained VBR, better metadata) and sound quality is still excellent. I don't know how well it fares against AAC, but the last time I looked they (AAC, MP3 and Vorbis) were generally indistinguishable at 128 kbps.
Yes, I know the metadata is an Ogg thing, not a Vorbis thing.
Well, I've never been able to produce mp3 files that compare favorably with the quality/size of Vorbis, and that's using the latest lame and vorbis-tools. AAC on the other hand can hang Vorbis up to dry in the sun if you use a high-quality encoder (faac doesn't count by a long shot), and even the one in Quicktime can give Vorbis a run for its money if you use the right parameters.
I guess it depends on the setting; I tend to put the quality of variable encoding to maximum and have the VBR set to -q 8 (using XLD on my Mac). Mind you, on my iPod Touch I use XLD for encoding AAC using true VBR set at quality 100.
It is unfortunate though given how much of a hand held device that iPod Touch is that Apple doesn't allow programmers to create audio and video plugins for the music player included with iPod Touch. Plugins for audio formats other than AAC and MP3, and the ability to synchronise via an established protocol (MTP) would be nice, but unlikely to happen anytime soon
I think you might find that this new encoder does bring Theora right into the same ballpark of performance as h264.
http://www.h-online.com/open/New-encoder-library-for-Ogg-Theora-ope...
The new, backwards-compatible Thusnelda encoder is designed to allow Ogg Theora to achieve contemporary encoding efficiency.
Ogg is just a container, the Xiph.org audio codec is called Vorbis. Vorbis out-performs mp3 when it comes to quality-versus-size, but I don't know about AAC. Even though there are hardware decoder chips available for Vorbis, many portable players do not include this support in hardware, and if they support it at all then they include only a software decoder, which uses up battery power at a considerably higher rate.
Perhaps this lack of inclusion of hardware support in many portable players is what you are alluding to, because there is certainly no "gap" to be made up insofar as the codec itself is involved.
I have no comment on Apples failings with respect to implementation of Xiph.org codecs. There is no such problem in, say, VLC.
Edited 2009-09-27 10:26 UTC
http://www.h-online.com/open/New-encoder-library-for-Ogg-Theora-ope...
The new, backwards-compatible Thusnelda encoder is designed to allow Ogg Theora to achieve contemporary encoding efficiency.
Looking good; just having a look at GNOME 3.0, Fedora 12, Ubuntu 2009.10 and rumours of 2010.4 - it'll be interesting to see how things develop. Hopefully as the desktop experience improves, the ability to encode videos will be made easier (HAL removal is working well, hopefully Xorg will finally be moved to libudev along with all remaining components - one less battery sucking daemon sitting in the background).
Perhaps this lack of inclusion of hardware support in many portable players is what you are alluding to, because there is certainly no "gap" to be made up insofar as the codec itself is involved.
Maybe as the number of netbooks with moblin Linux increases, the demand for ogg vorbis support will increase - are there any royalty free, DRM free music services using ogg instead of mp3 or aac? i haven't had an investigation so I am wondering.
'they' being a directed point made regarding the lack of decent plugins from Xiph developers for Apple Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player.
Edited 2009-09-27 13:37 UTC
Surely it is up to Apple and Microsoft to properly support Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player respectively. Just as it is up to VLC developers to support VLC.
If VLC can take a Xiph.org codec reference implementation and make it work well in VLC, why is a similar task apparently beyond the abilities of Apple and Microsoft?
There are some sites using HTML5 and Theora.
Here are two:
http://tinyvid.tv/
http://openvideo.dailymotion.com/en
Here is Xiph.org's list of Music sites with ogg vorbis music:
http://www.vorbis.com/music_links/
Enjoy.
Edited 2009-09-27 14:35 UTC
Actually, VLC's implementation of Vorbis needs a bit of work, particularly when handling lower quality content at 22.05 khz or below. It will often clip off the beginning second or so of the file, and rewind and fast forward act very erratically (rewind won't go back after a certain point and fast forward will actually take you several minutes backwards). It's been an issue for years and still is as of the latest vlc.
Surely it is up to Apple and Microsoft to properly support Quicktime and Microsoft Media Player respectively. Just as it is up to VLC developers to support VLC.
If VLC can take a Xiph.org codec reference implementation and make it work well in VLC, why is a similar task apparently beyond the abilities of Apple and Microsoft? "
I suspect it's a case of "don't want to" rather than "can't," because of four words: "Quicktime" and "Windows Media Video."
Precisely.
I am reminded of a phrase (perhaps an urban legend, I don't know) I have seen sometimes on the web:
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Wasn't there a successful lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows 3 (which used to run on top of DOS) such it was discovered that if Windows on starting up detected an underlying DRDOS instead of MSDOS it would simply (deliberately) quit?
It could easily be a similar story here, one might surmise.
I thought the free-enterprise theory was that proprietary software companiens were supposed to try to put the MOST functionality into their code in order to attract customers? Yet we seee, apparently, the exact opposite ... they deliberately refuse to support stuff which would give their customers some freedom and actual choice. Hmmmmm.
For a little more musing on the topic of how proprietary offerrings seem to give you so much less functionality for so much more money, here is an interesting review of the upcoming Windows 7 (Professional) versus some other possible choices of operating systems.
http://www.psy-q.ch/blog/articles/2009/09/13/win7-review-from-free-...
Windows 7 makes a good OS for gaming simply because so many games are available on it. There is no other reason.
Windows 7 makes a reasonable OS for everyday work (office suite, web browser, e-mail, watching media files, simple games). It is RAM-hungry while doing that, although the same could be said about a fully customized KDE 4. Media file support is very weak out of the box. If gaming is not a priority for you, you would be better off replacing Windows with one of the FOSS systems. That gets you freedom in addition to an operating system that does everything you need.
I hope that this review illustrates what I mean. The issue of the media player is discussed.
Apparently, Windows 7 messes up even the very simple text editor included:
I don’t know how, but Microsoft managed to break ASCII text files. That’s an achievement.
It would be funny if it wasn't so tragic. A lot of people have to put up with this sort of stuff.
Hehe...
Getting ASCII files locked into a Microsoft text editor definitely is an achievement.
If I were given the task to do it, I would not know how to pull this off.
The Microsoft Windows text editors have been the worst editors out there anyway, but topping that sad score really makes me think Microsoft is well on it's way to hell.
"Windows isn't done until Lotus won't run".
Wasn't there a successful lawsuit against Microsoft for Windows 3 (which used to run on top of DOS) such it was discovered that if Windows on starting up detected an underlying DRDOS instead of MSDOS it would simply (deliberately) quit?
It could easily be a similar story here, one might surmise.
In this case, they don't even have to actively block Ogg video - by simply not supporting it, Microsoft and Apple can ensure that it will be used less than their respective formats. Which I think is short-sighted, since they've both already lost to Flash video for the vast majority of web video (thanks to the same sort of stubbornness).
The joys of vertical integration.
Indeed. This attitude makes them both a sitting duck for criticisms such as the following: "Media file support is very weak out of the box. The included media player appears to be a resource hog and can only play very few media formats. It couldn’t identify a Matroska file correctly, and then failed to download the appropriate codecs, even though it acted as if it could. A third-party player (like VLC) is necessary if you have any sort of variety in your media collection."
In fact you can easily create a long deficiency list for Windows:
Here is a start:
Support for current and emerging web standards in the default web browser is very weak.
Support for different media file formats is very weak.
Support for various types of office file format is weak or non-existant.
There is no support included for viewing or generating PDF files.
Support for different filesystem types is exceedingly week.
Filesystems that are offered do not support per-file execute permissions.
The partitioner included in the setup disk is very limited.
No support for backup and restore of disk partitions.
There is no support in the bootloader for booting multiple OSes of different types.
Security is lax in not requiring a local user to enter a valid password for escallation of priveleges.
Adding or updating functionality often requires a system reboot.
The included text editor is extremely weak, offers limited functionality, and it is broken.
The included wordprocessor applet is extremely limited.
There is no included spreadsheet functionality at all.
Included support for email is weak.
No support for USB 3.0.
Poor support for OpenGL.
No support for multiple desktops.
Requires a capable and expensive video card for even modest performance.
Incomplete support for 64-bit operation.
Inconsistent GUI, inconsistent theming.
Limited support for multiple user accounts.
Support for "legacy" hardware is very limited.
No support for software development included (no compilers or interpreters).
No permission is given to debug system code.
The owner of the machine is not the trusted user, and there is a "kill switch" called "WGA".
There is a backdoor for the OEM.
Windows supporters act a bit like guppies stranded on the beach when you point out such things to them.
Then they mod your post down.
Edited 2009-09-28 05:23 UTC
Unfortunately I'm still locked-in to H.264. My home media box doesn't support Theora, and besides which, all the programs I've tried lately to create Theora videos have done something wrong (either the videos don't play, or the Vorbis soundtrack is low-quality, or they just crash).
Isn't it ironic that a program like Kdenlive can correctly encode to MPEG-4 or H.264, but not to Theora+Vorbis? Granted I haven't tried this in the KDE4 version, only the older KDE3 version.
H.264 can also be GPU-decoded with VDPAU, and encoded with SMP on FFMPEG, which unfortunately puts it ahead of Theora on those counts.
I use Desktops day-to-day, but it lacks the greatness of *nix desktops. Can't swap programs around, lingering bugs and lost shortcuts in additional desktops, and so on. It's too bad, if I really like one thing when I'm working on linux, it is the awesomeness of WMs like wmii or ion. The exact same functionality on Windows would make me super happy 
"Theora 1.1 (atschuu) Stable Release: Freetards and amateur webtards go nuts, rest of the world doesn't care" I'm sure it's great and all but nobody cares except those few that seems to push unfinished HTML5 tags on sites and handful of freetards who never use it. As long as people use MP3+MKV+H264 for everything they don't care about Theora or Vorbis, it's as intresting as 90% of tweets. Tweet: My dog just made Theora logo turd on carpet.




