"The immense popularity of sites like YouTube has unexpectedly turned Flash Video into one of the de facto standards for Internet video. The proliferation of sites using FLV has been a boon for remix culture, as creators made their own versions of posted videos. And thus far there has been no widespread DRM standard for Flash or Flash Video formats; indeed, most sites that use these formats simply serve standalone, unencrypted files via ordinary web servers. Now Adobe, which controls Flash and Flash Video, is trying to change that with the introduction of DRM restrictions in version 9 of its Flash Player and version 3 of its Flash Media Server software."
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VLC Media Player at http://www.videolan.org and its Mozilla-plugin is available for Windows, Mac, Linux, et al and does this fine (I've used it in Windows and Linux for my intranet application that streams Theora video). In Linux also Totem-plugins for Firefox work fine.
Member since:2006-07-15
Member since:2005-08-06
I agree completely and think your ideas are great.
Another core group would be smartphoneproducers who for some reason think Real is an option these days.
THe most likely part to go for some Open Specification is likely BBC I'd say. But now that Google owns Youtube, I'd love to see 'em just "switch" to Theora or similar in the name of righteousness =). This could be a great tactical move as it would definitely hurt the Windows platform quite a bit that information is accessible on other platforms without the Adobe Veto.
Also, if Youtube / Google would do this, then I would seriously claim that would drive many many other sites to follow.
Member since:2006-09-10
The problem with Theora is that in comparison to modern codecs it's awful.
The quality doesn't even begin to approach that of other modern codecs. I believe this is due to them not using patented mechanisms, and more power to them for their attempt to create a fully open source compatible codec, but unfortunately I don't think it has a hope of being adopted until they can find a way of providing similar compression and quality levels as codecs like x264.
Member since:2006-02-01
No, don't do that.
Don't get me wrong, I like the sentiment, but the trouble is that Theora is rubbish. It's rubbish compared even to XVid/DivX, let alone H.264 or WMV9.
Admittedly, work is (finally) being done to improve the quality of the reference encoder, and that's great, but it doesn't solve the problem that Theora is a codec that is (at least) two generations old.
Where the free software/free culture people should be focusing their attention now is Dirac; a state-of-the-art wavelet-based codec developed by the BBC. It is, according to the BBC's lawyers, patent unencumbered, and is on its way to being standardised as VC-2 (Microsoft's WMV9 is VC-1). An MIT-licenced implementation, Schroedinger, has been developed by Fluendo, and has just hit 1.0.
Exciting times!
Member since:2007-08-06
Where the free software/free culture people should be focusing their attention now is Dirac; a state-of-the-art wavelet-based codec developed by the BBC. It is, according to the BBC's lawyers, patent unencumbered, and is on its way to being standardised as VC-2 (Microsoft's WMV9 is VC-1). An MIT-licenced implementation, Schroedinger, has been developed by Fluendo, and has just hit 1.0. "
OMG! I've always known that Dirac is being developed, but it seemed to be in dormant state. Now it looks like that things have moved very fast. And that's only good.
This blog sums up the state of things http://sonofid.blogspot.com/
Did some checking and pretty new Schrödinger is already available in Debian Unstable and Testing. Even first GUI-app is available: http://packages.debian.org/lenny/oggconvert . And GStreamer-aware apps are already able to play Dirac video.
In true open-source manner OGG-container seems to be able to play Dirac+Vorbis http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/OggDirac .
The same time FFmpeg-team is looking for a competing codec with the same feateure set (Snow). These indeed are interesting times.
Looks like I have to stick to my original statement. Just Theora may be needed to swap to Dirac some time pretty soon
Edited 2008-02-25 17:56 UTC
Member since:
2007-08-06
Theora may be not in par with H.264, but it is just right for websites and works fine otherwise. And we never run into this kind of DRM-trouble.
Just some things to do:
- write to your favourite video portal and request full support for Theora videos
- write to your local and national government bodies and request taht they publish their videos in Theora+Vorbis instead of proprietary codecs (after all they use taxpayers money for this and we should expect free and unrestricted access to information produced therein)
- use it in your applications
- vote for bug https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=382267 in Firefox - if would be good if it lands in 3.x (won't be in 3.0)
- ask from Opera for an updated test build that renders Theora+Vorbis inside browser
- use it for your own videos (I've used it for a year, and it's fine)
- promote this approach http://spreadopenmedia.org