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Media GNOME GUI

World's First Large-Scale Ogg Theora Stream 137

Posted by timothy from the moving-images dept.
Ur@eus writes "The GNOME European Users and Developers conference is currently underway in Kristansand, Norway. The whole conference is available live online as an Ogg Theora stream (the videos of the talks are also archived). This is very exciting as it is a proof of concept that it is possible to do high quality streaming using a fully free format today. The stream is done using the Fluendo streaming server software which will be released under the GPL in a few months. You find information on how to view the streams at the GUADEC streaming website."
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World's First Large-Scale Ogg Theora Stream More

World's First Large-Scale Ogg Theora Stream

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  • Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Bingo Foo ( 179380 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:29PM (#9565529)
    What concept needed to be proved? Does the freeness of a codec affect its scalability?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Perhaps that it could be actually used for something? As far as I've heard, this is the first real-world implementation of Theora - that's definately newsworthy.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by BFaucet ( 635036 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:34PM (#9565585) Homepage
      I believe the significance of this is that now there's a large stream available on the web... that you can point people to. Saying to someone that a ogg streams rock is very different than showing them.

      Hopefully radio stations and Public Radio shows will adopt Ogg. At the moment, most if not all use Real *shudder*.

      • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Psymunn ( 778581 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:44PM (#9565684)
        Forgive me for beign naive, but if i went up to the magority of people i know and said 'hey man, there's this kick ass confrence streaming on the internet, and guess what: it's OGG' i'd receive a whoel lot of WTF.
        Don't get me wrong, i support ogg because it's 'free as in awesome', and i hate realplayer because it's 'annoying as in YAPI' (yet another plug in) but i think another format is just going to confuse new users.
        What's more, joe user isn't truly going to embrace something like ogg until bob porn producer does.

        • Re:Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by aldoman ( 670791 )
          But Real does seem to be making some effort with the Helix community.

          We could soon see Ogg being installed (as both a directshow filter and in RealPlayer itself) on a large amount of computers. I also know that most games now use ogg for sound effects, but I'm not so sure if they install it as a directshow filter (this allows other apps to use it). If they do, then we may already have 25% of the home computer market using ogg.

          BTW: this method of stealth installation is going to be how OS software takes h

        • Forgive me for beign naive, but if i went up to the magority of people i know and said 'hey man, there's this kick ass confrence streaming on the internet, and guess what: it's OGG' i'd receive a whoel lot of WTF.

          Ultimately, the consumers don't matter as much as the content providers - they're the ones that have to be persuaded. As the whole point of Ogg Theora is that it does not require the streamer to pay up as you do with MPEG/Windows Media/Real/etc, there's an incentive for the content providers to

        • [...] if i went up to the magority of people i know and said 'hey man, there's this kick ass confrence streaming on the internet, and guess what: it's OGG' i'd receive a whoel lot of WTF.

          The same could be said of when RealVideo was new or when MP3 began. Novelty is no reason to reject something but being proprietary is. Conversely, as you indicated, being free is a great reason to support this work. My experience is that if you're willing to spend a few seconds explaining the problem with proprietar

        • but i think another format is just going to confuse new users.

          Well... since winamp [winamp.com] (which most people in windows use) supports ogg built in.... where's the confusion?

        • if i went up to the magority of people i know and said 'hey man, there's this kick ass confrence streaming on the internet, and guess what: it's OGG' i'd receive a whoel lot of WTF.

          What's your point? If you go up to the majority of people and say "there's this DVD, with AC3 audio" they'd also say "WTF".

          You are mixing apples and rocks (shaped like oranges)... The public at large are completely ignorant of technical knowledge, and quite frankly, it doesn't matter one damn bit. The public at large are not

        • Well, one step in convincing bob porn producer is having a demo available. If the format is available in common players or has a plug-in, and the quality is good, and the software is cheap, it's a good format. This demo would be useful for evaluating the option.
        • "WTF?"

          They did the same thing to me back in '93 when I said I wanted to check my email before i went to the bars with them. I also got the same responce when they learned i spent around $400 for a multimedia ad-on kit from creative labs back in '94 for a computer that already cost me close to $2000 in the first place.

          Maybe you just need to mention it too them and then it will catch on?
      • the poster didn't do a good job pointing out that ogg theora is VIDEO. ogg vorbis streams [enemycombatantradio.net] have been around on a large scale for quite a while and do rock. ogg theora is still in alpha and rocks until it crashes.

        public radio should go with ogg vorbis or (at least) mp3. they were given some sort of sweet deal which got them to use real (instead of MS).
      • BBC does it for at least a year, they have .ogg streams , British know why they do it (must reach as much of audience possible or something).

        I don't understand how radio stations will adopt it. Bandwidth and License prices (for music) are amazing, they either setup their own subscription system or use http://www.contentcommunity.org from Real Networks RadioPass...

        How will they manage to secure the stream?

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Mr. Bad Example ( 31092 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:35PM (#9565600) Homepage
      > What concept needed to be proved?

      That thousands of people saying "Ogg Theora" all at once sounds like a cat the size of Montana hacking up a hairball.

    • The one that says:
      World's First Large-Scale Ogg Theora Stream
      The concept that is being proved is the "Ogg Theora as a large scale streaming technology" one.
    • "What concept needed to be proved?"

      So who proved that streaming software is only successful if PriceTag > 0.000.
    • I believe the intended meaning was that it is a proof of concept of high quality streaming using Ogg Theora, which is a fully free format. Not a proof of concept of free formats vs patented formats.

      Or at least that is how I interpreted it.

  • I'm willing to help test this (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:29PM (#9565531)
    ...as long as the person in the streaming video is cute, female, and scantily clad.

  • High Quality Streaming (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Yeah, it's about time. This high quality streaming is going to revolutionize ...BUFFERING...

  • Real Problems (Score:4, Interesting)

    by artlu ( 265391 ) <{ten.ultra} {ta} {ultra}> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:36PM (#9565602) Homepage Journal
    Sadly, most of the streaming video is still reliant on Real from my experience. However, most places now have quicktime/mpeg alternatives. Does anyone know if Apple's new codec which will be released with Panther is planning on being Open Source? It is supposedly going to be able to be used for video streams.

    GroupShares Inc. [groupshares.com] - A free and Interactive Stock Trading Community
    • If you mean the H.264 codec, then you can find the MPEGLA licensing terms in PDF format here - http://www.mpegla.com/ Apple is covering licensing costs for OSX (AFAIK), but I have no idea how this codec would permeate to OSS or such flavored development.
    • Panther's out.. I believe you mean Tiger? Too many damn cats to keep track of.

    • Re:Real Problems (Score:5, Informative)

      by Wesley Felter ( 138342 ) <wesley@felter.org> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:52PM (#9565784) Homepage
      Apple releasing an open source codec? Are you kidding? Various people are working on open source H.264 implementations, though. (Just like MP3 and MPEG-4, it's only open source in countried that don't recognize the zillions of patents that cover it.)
      • This might be because marketers aren't particularly interested in straightening it out. There are open STANDARDS and open SOURCE. Not the same thing.

        Open source just means the source is available for public consumption, but these days it also implies under some kind of license such as GPL or BSD that would permit modification and redistribution. There are apps with source that aren't like that. Some compilers, for exmaple, include the source to all libraries, but don't permit you to redistribute that sourc
        • Open source just means the source is available for public consumption, but these days it also implies under some kind of license such as GPL or BSD that would permit modification and redistribution.

          Open Source is what complies with the Open Source Definition, as written by those who came with with the term in the first place. So just because you can get at the source doesn't make it Open Source.
    • I am on G5 running OS X and I don't get how "sad" it could be that we still have real player option.

      On "Mecca" of Multimedia, only non problematic application with all my browsers is Realone for OSX.

      Real is years ahead of Apple and Microsoft if we speak about streaming. Lets say, QT automatically selects which stream is good for you based on YOUR preferences and it locks on that rate. While, lets say you have Realone for any OS, if you lag, it drops back to unimaginable low speeds (56k, on T1!) and contin
    • I dont really see the point of getting excited about streams. Unless OGG really revolutionizes streaming (would take a codec roughly 20x as good as real...) everyone will still be better off just downloading a vid and viewing it at leisure later. The only thing streaming has done ov benefit so far is to make suscriber content (read pr0n) available only to members, and no sharing. Unfortunatly the user gets ripped by always getting cut off in the middle, and has to redownload for multiple viewings.

      Ogg wi

  • bork (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    This is very exciting...

    Nope, sorry. Just because something is done with an open source whatever, does not automatically make the event exciting, significant, groundbreaking, or anything else out of the ordinary.

  • Define Large-scale (Score:2, Interesting)

    by konfoo ( 677366 )
    Don't say it, show it. What statistics if any are available for this event?

  • username and password (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bob Loblaw ( 545027 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:45PM (#9565696)
    I particularly like them giving away the username and password of the presentation computer at the end of this archived ogg stream:

    http://stream1.hia.no/ogg/dump/room1/ogg-theora- vo rbis-high.2004-06-27-18:47:39.ogg

    It proves the high fidelity that ogg has to offer :]
  • That's really interesting to see. I'm in Norway, and I've been writing my representatives in the Norwegian parliament "Stortinget" to get them too attend this conference. It is not only about GNOME, mind you, tomorrow, there are a bunch of politicians there, from the starting keynote, then about software patents, EU policies, and finally a big keynote by Dr Edgar Villanueva, our friend from Peru.

    Unfortunately, the guy who was closest to getting there was stuck at his office, in spite of Kristiansand being his hometown.

    That's too bad, but now I can actually try to have them look at the stream instead, and even failing that, there's the archive.

  • Anticlimax (Score:3, Funny)

    by sploo22 ( 748838 ) <dwahler@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:45PM (#9565705)
    It would be a lot more impressive if the stream hadn't GROUND to a SCREECHING HALT within 5 minutes of being posted...

    • Re:Anticlimax (Score:3, Insightful)

      by evilviper ( 135110 )
      It would be a lot more impressive if the stream hadn't GROUND to a SCREECHING HALT within 5 minutes of being posted...

      If you are using a /.ing to prove that a certain technology is not up-to-snuff, then you must also agree that the internet as a whole is a failed technology.

      Nothing can survive having more users than bandwidth.
  • Why does all the links have to stream on port 8000 or above? Of course, I can't see them at work because of this.

    Where are the port 80 mirrors?!

  • How to play Theora in Windows RealPlayer (Score:4, Informative)

    by AlexJeff ( 777401 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:46PM (#9565717)
    Here are the instruction on how to play Theora in your Windows RealPlayer:

    http://stream1.hia.no/instructions/theoraandreal wi ndows.html

    Here is the best link to the free RealPlayer for Windows:
    http://www.real.com/freeplayer/?rppr=hc. org
    • I was just about to ask "but how do windows users play these files on their default media player?"
    • Well, I tried for 5 minutes to make the damn ogg streams work, finally I gave up. There should be an ogg player for Windows that would also enable Firefox to view the streams embedded in the browser, as Quicktime and even Media Player do.

      Instead I am directed to try Real Player, who wants to know everything about me and tries to stuff their "upgraded" version on my throat. What a bummer :-( Every time I have to deal with ogg files it is a problem. Few players understand it.

      That's it. At least I got to vie

  • Excellent (Score:5, Funny)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @05:46PM (#9565724) Homepage Journal
    This is very exciting as it is a proof of concept that it is possible to do high quality streaming using a fully free format today.

    All three people who have software to decode this format and 10 megabit connections are very excited!

    • Not really. Right now they are receiving a choice of messages based on which stream they choose:

      File not founded.
      Server timeout.
      Pre-buffering.

      Some may say that this due to a Slashdotting but, the streams are supposedly mirrored on Icecast (File not found.) which should definitely be able to handle a Slashdotting.

      Sadly, I think that they have proven that their concept is still just that. A working prototype that scales to levels needed for the internet has yet to be realized.

      • Re:Excellent (Score:4, Informative)

        by Nodatadj ( 28279 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @06:27PM (#9566063) Journal
        It was working for us (the gnome people who aren't at guadec) all day yesterday and this morning, so I would say that yes, these problems are due to the /.ing

      • Re:Excellent (Score:2, Insightful)

        by bazongis ( 654674 )
        Maybe this has to do with the fact that conference rooms in the middle of the night with their lights switched off are not exactly an exciting scene to stream live?

        In other words: the streaming servers are probably switched off. Try again tomorrow morning (Norwegian time).

        I've watched some of the live streams yesterday and today, and overall it was quite impressive (the only comparison I have are realplayer streams of recorded TV newscasts at roughly the same bitrate, which always freeze to refill the buf
  • I am pretty sure Helix is 100% open source and does the same damn thing... why no press on that?

    Complete CCTV [completecctv.com]
    • Helix is a player not a codec.
    • AFAIK, Helix Player does do Theora

      From the Helix Website:

      The Helix Player is the Helix Community's open source media player for consumers. It is being developed to have a rich and usable graphical interface and support a variety of open media formats like Ogg Vorbis, Theora etc.
      Features

      * Gtk+/Gnome interface
      * Accelerated Video and FullScreen Playback
      * Support for free and open mediatypes - Ogg Vorbis/Theora, H261
      * Mozilla browser plug-in
      * RTSP streaming
      * Elegant UI
      * Ins
    • Perhaps because the GNOME group would like to promote its own media framework? The page in the link says the Server is a GStreamer based server.

    • Because you have your facts wrong ? The only thing that is open source about Helix is a) the player and b) part of the framework, including only some of the Ogg codecs. The producer is completely proprietary, so there's no way you can do any open source streaming with Helix as the framework. It's quite obviously not part of their business model. The only reason parts of Helix are being GPL'd is exactly to court the businesses involved in open source. Translated: their marketing guys finally thought it

  • The city name is... (Score:5, Informative)

    by easter1916 ( 452058 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @06:05PM (#9565879) Homepage
    Kristiansand, not Kristansand. Never heard the Tricky song?
    I met a Christian in Kristiansand
    And a devil in Helsinki.

  • Ogg Vorbis, for example, works very well, and its APIs are easy to use. I don't know very much about Theora, but, if the same people are behind it, it's probably pretty good.

    Another proof of concept: Ogg support in OpenAL + big-name game developers using it for cross-platform sound. This is really neat stuff.
  • is that most MP3 players out there don't support it. Generally, people go with technology that is the most useable, which, in this case, isn't Ogg. It's MP3. This stream hasn't solved the primary problem with streaming Real Audio: the annoying buffering stops. Until something can outdo that, it won't become popular.

  • Wikipedia! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Grendel Drago ( 41496 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @07:52PM (#9566640) Homepage
    There was some discussion about video policy [wikipedia.org] for Wikipedia. The conclusion was that they were waiting on a workable streaming free and open codec... so this should be pretty big news for them.

    Now to find video illustrations for the articles on the sixty-nine [wikipedia.org] and the reverse cowgirl [wikipedia.org]...

    --grendel drago

    • I wrote that discussion paper... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Goonie ( 8651 ) * <robert.merkelNO@SPAMbenambra.org> on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @11:46PM (#9568088) Homepage
      Streaming is not that big an issue for Wikipedia. As you'll note from the page, the majority of which seems to have been widely accepted, generally Wikipedia video clips should be short and available in low-resolution versions, so they can just be downloaded in their entirety rather than streamed. The more important issue for Wikipedia was that the bitstream was frozen a little while ago, so anything encoded with the present encoder will be readable into the future.

      Quite frankly, however, nobody has actually sought to place video on the Wikipedia yet. I hope it will happen soon, but right now there's been a fair bit of talk but no action from any contributors.

      As to your suggested topics, see the last section on legalities [wikipedia.org]in the discussion paper. There's a whole pile of extra paperwork you need to keep track of to legally post videos of the kind you wish to post...

  • Windows users: try VideoLAN (Score:3, Informative)

    by D. Book ( 534411 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @09:25PM (#9567183)
    Oddly, the GUADEC streaming site suggests Windows users install the universally loathed RealPlayer and a patch for it, when the free, open-source VideoLAN Client [videolan.org] specialises in streaming and includes native support for Ogg Theora. While the live streams don't seem to be working in my case (not sure if this is the fault of the client or server), the Theora streams on the archive page work fine.
    • Oddly, the GUADEC streaming site suggests Windows users install the universally loathed RealPlayer and a patch for it

      These people are not idiots. They just are not into perpetuating outdated stereotypes, as some people are.

    • I had tried VLC myself as the first player on Win32 while working on the server. I've asked for information on what could be wrong, because except for not starting on a keyframe in the stream the streams are perfectly fine. Even not starting on a keyframe is something a player should be able to handle.

      Unfortunately time was limited and we cannot test every player when we're getting ready for our first public test. I'm sure that after this conference we can work together with the VLC people to make the

  • Playing Theora files in windows (Score:3, Informative)

    by hsoom ( 680862 ) on Tuesday June 29, 2004 @11:14PM (#9567903)
    I can't get the stream to work so I just tried playing the first file in the archive and it worked.

    I can get the theora files to play under the latest version of VideoLAN client [videolan.org].

    There are instructions [stream1.hia.no] for setting up Real Player to view Theora files. Although some people are saying that the latest version of Real Player is not so bad I still don't want to install it. I must have a grudge :-) and Real Alternative using Media Player Classic (MPC) works fine.

    Is there anyway to get Theora files to play with MPC? I thought that if I installed the Directshow Filters [illiminable.com] it may work but no such luck. This would be really handy because I use MPC for just about everything else.

    • I posted a lot of info in a previous news story [slashdot.org]. The information in that post relivant to your post would be the Directshow Filter for RealMedia.

      i.e. Playback of RealMedia in the Windows media player of your choice. You can even transcode RM files with it.

      There is of course a catch, the DShow Filter does not come with the Real codecs. You can get the codecs by installing RealPlayer (you don't have to use it) or by getting the codecs installed by other means. As I mentioned in that post though, the install

  • Okay, but when are we going to get a stable Theora? The current codec is alpha, which means all the data they save may be unreadable if they ever update the codec. And if they don't, it probably means that no one has a codec.
    • The current codec is alpha, which means all the data they save may be unreadable if they ever update the codec.

      The implementation is alpha, but the specification is freezed with the current alpha3 release. Every file you encode today should work with the future stable implementation. (Says www.theora.org)
  • Hooray! Free video stream codec!!!!!!!

    ....on windows play it with realplayer..

    MediaPlayerClassic and winamp support PLEASE!!!
  • ...there's a Winamp plugin!

    Its a pity that Windows Media Player doesn't have a plugin architecture that lets people create their own input plugins.
    • Actually it does. Those are the codecs you have to install when playing, for example, an XVid or DivX file. The first time you play an unknown file Media Player tries to download the correct codec (plugin).
      • Yep, sorry, I didn't phrase it very well - I was more leaning towards input plugins that allow you to read data over the network in various ways - for example so I could stream stuff from this new streaming network server instead of being limited only to streaming from Windows Media servers.
  • E.g. when I have network lag, will drop from 64 kbps to 32 kbps , after network is ok, it will sense it non intrusive way and go back to 64?

    Real does it for years, MS Media (which I don't use) does it in Version 9...

    Telling how real does it perfectly, I am radiopass member and listen to radios 24/7 here, sometimes it even drops to 11.2 kbps but goes back to 64 or 96.

    If it can't be done, we have a problem with ogg streaming.
  • Hi..

    Media files from GUADEC is going to be publiched on the web. It wil take a while.. The films are on DV..

    For the time beeing, the only thing thats out, is the audio from Dr Edgar Villanueva Nuñez.

    link: http://osys.grm.hia.no/bttrack/

    --
    Michael E. Menk
    GUADEC-2004 film team.

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