Theora 1.0 Released, Supported By Firefox 310
YA_Python_dev writes "The Xiph.Org Foundation announced Monday the release of Theora 1.0.
Theora is a free/open source video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and requires no patent royalties.
Upcoming versions of Firefox and Opera will play natively Ogg/Theora videos with the new HTML5 element <video src="file.ogv"></video>, and ffmpeg2theora offers an easy way to create content.
Theora developers are already working on a 1.1 encoder that offers better quality/bitrate ratio, while producing streams backward-compatible with the current decoder." Adds reader logfish: "Since its bit-stream freeze in June of 2004 there have been numerous speed-ups and bug-fixes. Although Nokia claimed it to be proprietary almost a year ago, nothing has been proven. So now it's time to help it take over the internet, and finally push for video sites filled with Theora encoded vlogs, blurts and idle nonsense."
Re:Containers... (Score:3, Informative)
Mod me troll if you like, but I speak the truth.
Re:Long test cycle? (Score:5, Informative)
The bitstream format was frozen, not the code.
Re:Containers... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:5, Informative)
There's certainly better quality codecs out there, compared to 1.0. Take a look at the work happening now on 1.1, though, it gets very competitive:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo5.html [mit.edu]
Dirac (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Horray (Score:5, Informative)
Theora is much more flexible than VP3! (Score:2, Informative)
See:
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo5.html [mit.edu]
http://v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/ffmpeg2theora-0.22-thusnelda.exe [v2v.cc]
And this is only the start. Just look at what the Lame encoder was able to do with the MP3 format in quality.
Re:Containers... (Score:1, Informative)
I believe that was the point the parent was trying to make. MPEG has a cost, so Matroska has that benefit of not having those kinds of costs.
Re:Well... (Score:1, Informative)
AVI is not a codec, it's a container. The audio and video of an AVI file could be pretty much any format, with whatever feature sets of those codecs.
Re:Back to the better! (Score:5, Informative)
People and companies likes flash players because it usually just works. The days of embedding video objects are dying because in practice this is what would happen:
1. WMV files would lock up or you would have to spend 20 minutes at windows update downloading the newest wmp or reinstalling the plug-in.
2. Mac users would complain that WMV files arent working.
3. Realplayer would do the same, except the install would crap up your computer and ruin all your file associations. You would also have to troubleshoot plugin issues.
4. Quicktime files would crash the browser and then you would have to install the newest version usually along with itunes in a 60+ meg download. Windows users would complain how crazppy quicktime is.
5. Someone would embed an avi and no one would be able to play it because end users have no idea what codecs are.
6. Some plugins would work in IE but not in Firefox.
What flash did is put all video in one cross-playform container and player. Turns out people like it this way.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
So is MKV, just a container.
Who needs ffmpeg2theora? (Score:2, Informative)
Use Gstreamer as-installed on your existing system. Put this in a simple bash script and have-at:
gst-launch-0.10 filesrc location="$1" ! decodebin name=decoder { oggmux name=muxer ! filesink location="$2" } { decoder. ! ffmpegcolorspace ! theoraenc ! queue ! muxer. } { decoder. ! queue ! audioconvert ! queue ! muxer. }
Add the Fluendo codecs, and you have a properly patent-licensed, legal way to transcode most popular media to no-patent-royalties media types.
Re:christ, not another "cool word" (Score:3, Informative)
Judging by google results, it sounds like "video microblogging", a la Twitter.
Re:Dirac (Score:5, Informative)
They're aimed at different markets. Dirac is a very high-quality CODEC, but it is incredibly CPU intensive. Remember what MPEG-4 was like when it was introduced? A couple of days to encode a film, and you could only just decode it in realtime on a fast computer? Dirac is like that. It will be a few years before you start getting Dirac support in something like an iPhone. If you want to stream HD content, Dirac is a good choice.
In contrast, Theora is very cheap in terms of CPU power. You can run it on very low-power devices. This makes it a good choice for Internet video, where the viewer might be using a massive desktop computer, a mobile phone, or anything in between. You wouldn't want to use Dirac here, because even fast laptops would struggle not to drop frames, and handhelds would just fail.
That said, my mobile phone now has about as much CPU power as the PC I had when I first got an MPEG-4 video, so eventually it will be feasible to run Dirac in low-power devices (sooner if they have dedicated ICs), but in the short term it's not ideal.
Re:Uh? (Score:5, Informative)
Xiph had the Software Freedom Law Center help establish that Nokia's claims were untrue. Mozilla sought counseling from lawyers before supporting Theora. Is that enough?
Re:Why not using the "object" tag? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Royalties for video format? (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, and to answer this question:
The answer is, yes, depending on the codec in question (for example, Microsoft would pay the MPEG-LA to distribute an MPEG2 video decoder). But keep in mind, a file format, in and of itself, isn't subject to patent. It's the methods used to create the file format that are the problem. So exporting to, say, DOC format is fine, since there's no magically algorithm necessary to do that. MPEG2, however, required implementation of patented algorithms, hence the licensing requirements.
Re:Containers... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Containers... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:3, Informative)
The question is, can free-as-in-beer, inferior open source compete against free-as-in-beer, superior closed source?
x264 is open source and gives way better quality than Theora - but it is also a patent minefield and you will need to get in contact with MPEG-LA if you plan on doing commercial stuff etc.
Re:Command line is not easy for most users (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Horray (Score:4, Informative)
That's not what "free" means. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, you can consider it to be free, but boy is that ever not what free means.
And a publically available spec means little or nothing. Patents are publically available, but try implementing those and see if you manage to escape the long arm of the litigator.
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:4, Informative)
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo.html
Note that this is before the major changes made this summer and the major changes still coming (in the encoder). The VP3 technology actually puts it between MPEG-4 ASP (xvid/divx) and H264 in theoretically achievable quality, it's just that the encoder has been extremely badly tuned up until this summer, because of lack of interest. If Theora can catch up to MPEG-4 ASP codecs and perhaps even close in on H264, it would make for an excellent patentfree codec.
Re:Thank you very much, Mozilla Corp. (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you for retarding the progress of Good Technology like MPEG-4 H.264/AVC and MPEG-4 AAC.
If their creators hadn't made those codecs prohibitively expensive to license, W3C would probably be advocating them. You're getting mad at the wrong people.
Re:Uh? (Score:4, Informative)
That "nothing has been proven" comment is pretty clearly tongue-in-cheek, just like the "take over the Internet" part.
The video encoding field is crowded with patents, so it's probably impossible to do something like Theora without needing a patent license. But Theora is based on some patented technology (VP3) whose patents have been donated for free use, irrevocably forever. And Theora is free, open source software with a BSD license. If you use the Ogg container format, Theora video, and Vorbis audio, you have a completely free media format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora [wikipedia.org]
So, you can use Theora for any purpose, without needing to pay royalties, without needing to get permission. That's why it's so funny that Nokia claimed Theora is "proprietary"... I do not think that word means what they think it does.
steveha
Re:the new HTML5 element (Score:3, Informative)
This then gets rewritten to java cortado for IE clients. Or if you don't like cortado and would prefer flash fallback:
Or if you want to make the video accessible with multiple downloadable video formats and multiple timed text tracks (annotations, multiple subtitle languages and what have you) all pulled from xml via JSON request (to support remote embedding) all auto-scrolled/updated with javascript based on whatever underlining playback system your browser supports:
(uses ROE [xiph.org] for the xml format) presently in use in blogs such as this one [blogspot.com]
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:3, Informative)
ASP is not obsolete in any kind of sense.
Apple didn't support Mpeg-4 ASP, they jumped from mpeg-4 SP to h264 directly. So that is probably why your iPhone can display h264 but not mpeg-4 ASP. People think Apple does the best mpeg4/h264 apps on planet, it is not true. They support them, they help them take off but it doesn't mean Quicktime or devices based on it (iPhone) is some benchmark/test devices to help you choose what is obsolete or not.
There are major 2 profiles in mpeg-4 (except h264/part 10). One is SP and other is ASP. If you target Quicktime people or low speed CPU devices, you stay away from using ASP forcing features. If you target Sony PSP people or anyone with a decent smart phone, you use ASP features. On 3G, you better stay away from anything having "advanced" in its name :)
BTW mpeg4 isn't proprietary, it is open. It is just patented by lots and lots of vendors/organisations.
Re:Uh? (Score:1, Informative)
It sounds like you don't understand the issue. Proving that a piece of code does not contain patented things is basically impossible.
Re:MPEG 4 LA terms (Score:4, Informative)
You are also forgetting the fees for producing content in H264 that come into effect later.
They are also leaving out a *lot* of fine print. In order to get a license you don't just have to pay, but you must agree to the license terms (aka hardware players must use zone flags, DRM etc). There is more than they tell you without NDAs. Not to mention all the lawyer fees in between.
They are not even going to let you pay a blanket fee for a product that others can use "free" in there own products. No matter what you pay. Because then there is no one else that needs a license and hence no one to tie into these extra terms.
Also what makes you think the fees won't increase at a latter date?
Encumbered means just that. Encumbered.
ps I have talked to them about a license......
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:3, Informative)
'Its just like today we can't imagine someone coming out with a proprietary image format and expecting people to adopt it. ' ... you do realize that the most popular image formats are proprietary right?
Re:Free Is Good, But Quality Is Lacking (Score:1, Informative)
Here you go then. Xvid and Theora 1.1 on the same page. It's catching up in terms of quality.
http://web.mit.edu/xiphmont/Public/theora/demo.html