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Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3 196

Posted by Hemos from the frozen-for-usage dept.
ArcRiley writes "For more than a year Xiph hackers have been working on Ogg Theora, an improved version of On2's VP3 video codec. Alpha-3 includes several bitstream changes, VP3 to Theora "upgrade" utilities, and is now supported by Xine, MPlayer, and Real's Helix Player. We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use."
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Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3 More

Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3

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  • Another standard that probably won't get embraced? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ChaoticChaos ( 603248 ) * <l3sr-v4cf&spamex,com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:50AM (#8633362)
    The #1 thing about open source compression standards is how unwilling most of the brand name players are to support them.

    I've got a Creative Labs Nomad Jukebox 3 and Ogg Vorbis is still not supported and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever will be.

    If OV supported on the iPod?

    The unwillingness by the major brands to support all standards really leaves the consumer in the bind. I've got OV encoded music tracks and just can't listen to them on my Jukebox 3. :-(

    • Great, sad, point. But remember that as these devices get more complex, the time when some smart fella or lady throws linux on it get more near. Eventually, it won't matter that The Man doesn't support OV. As technology improves, the open source community has more places to innovate and use the best compression music among other things. It's only because of open sourcers creating such things as OV that arent the most useful now that we will ever have hope of such things being useful ever. I'm just glad

    • Re:Another standard that probably won't get embrac (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:15AM (#8633524)
      My Rio Karma [riokarma.com] works just fine with Ogg. In fact, all I have on the thing is Ogg.

      It works incredibly well, and with 20gigs for $250 shipped, and a Java-based interface program (which runs on FreeBSD and Linux), I'm very happy with it.
    • The Neuros Audio Player [neurosaudio.com] supports Ogg, has a 20Gb hard disk, Linux version of its software and is only $200. You couldn't really ask for more, but if you did want to ask for more they also have a very active community forum and listen to your suggestions and stuff.

      You are right that the 'brand names' don't support these formats very well. This is why you should probably look past the brand names and check out the little guys...

      • Re:Another standard that probably won't get embrac (Score:4, Informative)

        by 10Ghz ( 453478 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @10:05AM (#8634091)
        The Neuros Audio Player supports Ogg, has a 20Gb hard disk, Linux version of its software and is only $200. You couldn't really ask for more, but if you did want to ask for more they also have a very active community forum and listen to your suggestions and stuff.


        That thing looks pretty huge, so no thanks. And besides, if I wanted something with geek-appeal, I would buy Rio Karma [digitalnetworksna.com]

        - Supports Ogg Vorbis
        - Supports FLAC
        - Has _Ethernet_ plug
        - Has 20GB HDD

        Neuros might have a Linux-version of it's software, but if the player appears as a regural HD to the OS, why would you need dedicated software?
        • Neuros might have a Linux-version of it's software, but if the player appears as a regural HD to the OS, why would you need dedicated software?

          Because the Neuros as an on-board database of what songs are installed. Startup times are on the order of just a few seconds while that database is read instead of minutes while it does a search of the entire HDD.

          You can drop non-music files on the Neuros as well and it will act as a portable drive.

        • Neuros might have a Linux-version of it's software, but if the player appears as a regural HD to the OS, why would you need dedicated software?

          You can put the files on the harddrive or ramdisk, but if you want them to show up in the UI, you have to build the appropriate databases. The DB schemas are documented and there are a few different implementations:

          • The windows-only one included with the Neuros
          • Positron, a command line utility in Python.
          • A Multi-platform GUI in Java, whose name escapes me.

          As

    • You forget that the idea of these devices, are to do one thing, and do it well. To keep things efficient and cheap, they design the device to be built from well engineered specifications.

      You CAN (And they do) make more general hardware devices, driven by software, but ultimately the need for that extra juice is all cost that will be passed to you, the consumer.

      I, for one, dont wants a "do everything" device that is overcost and underpowered. I just want an mp3 player that is affordable, that plays Mp3's r
    • That's Creative Labs for you. I'm still waiting for them to make release quality (i.e. not beta ones a year after the fact) Windows 2000 drivers for my DXR3. It works great under NT4, but I haven't used that for years. This issue and their crappy drivers for the Soundblaster Live on SMP systems has convinced me never to buy their products again. They don't fix known problems with their existing products - your only hope is that splashing out more money for the next generation will resolve the problem.
    • OGG Vorbis is acutally making up ground in terms of hardware support:
      • Rio Karma [digitalnetworksna.com] is probably the most popular OGG portable.
      • Roku Soundbridge [rokulabs.com] is a great home player that supports both OGG and Itunes DRMed AAC.
      There are a bunch of other devices that support OGG, but those two are my favorites.
      • The Soundbridge does not support Apple's DRM, only unencumbered AAC files.
        • I was about to post the same thing, except I was going to add that this limitation can be easily overcome by a quick Google search for m4p2mp4.exe. Apart from that, the only formats I'd want supported that this doesn't handle are .ape (could just convert all my .apes to .flacs though) and .ac3 (for rips from music DVDs, I don't like to transcode them if I don't have to). I think I may have just found the digital-music-in-the-den solution for me, thank you (to the grandparent post)!
    • Subject pretty much says it all. It also works with linux via the rio music manager lite java program, and I've seen some free software ports but haven't tried them yet. The base has an ethernet port and the device is smaller than an ipod, 3x3. It's pretty nice.

  • Getting Old... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MalaclypseTheYounger ( 726934 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:52AM (#8633372) Journal
    Developers: Xiph Releases Ogg Theora Alpha-3

    OK, Developers got my attention, because I am one.

    I understood the word "Releases".

    And that's about it, from that title.

    All I can think of is Gary Larson's comic strip where it has the "what you say" vs. "what they hear" when you speak to a dog...

    Blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah GINGER...

    • You're a developer, and you understood the word "releases"? Liar, liar.

    • Re:Getting Old... (Score:5, Informative)

      by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:13AM (#8633517) Journal
      Xiph is a group (I believe European or something to get the odd-to-my-USian-ear names) that puts out codecs.

      Ogg is a wrapper format that they put out. It serves much the same purpose as QuickTime, AVI, or ASF does. One wraps it around an encoded stream of audio or data. Currently, Ogg is mostly commonly used to contain audio data encoded with the Vorbis codec, which is notable for tending to sound better than MP3, being patent-free and having a completely free implementation for anyone to use.

      Theora is a video codec also put out by Xiph. It is based on an older, originally proprietary video codec that was donated to the Xiph project. I'm not sure how it measures up to existing video codecs.

      Alpha-3 is, I think, pretty self-explanatory to a developer. It's an alpha release, so the developers are leaving open the possibility that they will make large changes (unlike beta software, where the software should be considered ready, and only lacks feedback from a broad base of people). It is the third alpha release.

      Oh, yes. I love the Far Side strip about Ginger. Remember, though, that saying "awk", "sed", or "grep", which sound quite reasonable to people on Slashdot, sounds absolutely bizarre to most folks.
      • >Oh, yes. I love the Far Side strip about Ginger. Remember, though, that saying "awk", "sed", or
        >"grep", which sound quite reasonable to people on Slashdot, sounds absolutely bizarre to most folks.

        If those zarking users would just say that they don't grok me, we'd be fine!
    • you read the post fully?! Gosh - I mean, surely you should have simply scanned, saw 'ogg' and started posting about how all those commercial mp3 players don't support the wonderfully clean, efficient, Ogg Vorbis format and how that's a conspiracy by Micro$oft to take over the world with its totlaly rubbish and broken WMV format. That spies on you and reports you to the RIAA if you don't pay the DRM fees.

  • Release Notes (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:53AM (#8633379)

    I'm happy to announce at long last the release of theora alpha 3. This incorporates all the bitstream changes we wanted to make both for future encoder improvements and to permit lossless transcode of VP3 content. This is an important milestone for us on the road to a stable release.

    As this is an alpha release we are again providing sources only. See the files [theora.org] section of downloads. This version requires libogg 1.1 or later and libvorbis 1.0.1 or later.

    Also new in this release are a set of experimental tools in the win32 directory contributed by Mauricio Piacentini. This includes a transcoding tool for avi-encapsulated vp3 video which also works on linux.

    We hope to not make any further incompatible bitstream changes, but this is still alpha code. Don't use this for content you're not ready to re-encode!

    Thanks to everyone who contributed!

  • Why leading companies (eg. Creative, Apple, etc.) consistently fail to support, or even downright ignore the Ogg format - it's a good, clean, relatively non-lossy, and compact compression system. Why isn't it supported by the mainstream audio hardware manufacturers? With further enhancements, Ogg could be set to draw level with MP3 on a usability and listenability basis (is that a word? it is now!), only sadly not on a compatibility basis. We can only hope that Ogg will grow in popularity and so become a m

    • Re:I've never really understood... (Score:4, Informative)

      by AndroidCat ( 229562 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:57AM (#8633420) Homepage
      I notice that the CBC's Quirks and Quarks [radio.cbc.ca] radio show supports Ogg. Figures that a science program would be clued-in on latest developments. Hopefully the rest of the CBC will catch up--they still only offer the Big Ugly Three (and sometimes only Real).
    • relatively non-lossy

      Relatively? That doesn't make sense. Compression is either lossy or lossless. There's no ambiguity.

      Zip is lossless. JPEG is lossy. PNG is lossless. MP3 is lossy. Ogg Vorbis is lossy. This isn't something to debate about -- lossy compression is neither "good" nor "bad". It's a compression technique which simply trades data integrity for space. If lossy audio compression doesn't suit your needs, there are lossless formats available too (FLAC for example) which don't compromise data int

      • The benefit of this release (from what I've gathered from previous posts) is that it allows bit-shaving. This means that you can take an existing Ogg file and downcode it simply by remove data. You do not have to re-encode the file (and thus make it lower quality due to re-encoding issues).

        For me this could be a real dealbreaker as far as use is concerned. I can keep copies on my PC which are extremely high quality (basically lossless) and bit-shave them on-the-fly as I copy to my Ogg player.

        Now that all
        • basically lossless

          There's no "basically" or "relatively" or "almost" lossless! If it's not lossless, it's lossy.

          I'm not saying that lossy compression can't sound great, even indistinguishable from the lossless master -- what I'm saying is that lossy compression is not lossless compression, by technical definition. They are apples and oranges. They are not on the same scale. Lossless doesn't have a "quality scale" like lossy -- it's simply lossless. Does zip have a quality scale? Of course not.

          • There's no "basically" or "relatively" or "almost" lossless! If it's not lossless, it's lossy.

            Well, in that special case, it "lossless" might even be correct, for a special quality of lossless.
            It might mean that concatenation of encoding transformations is a transitive operation, i.e.

            downcode_to_a(downcode_to_b(original)) = downcode_to_a(original) for quality parameters a < b

            .

            In that sense, downcoding to b would have been "lossless", since normally concatenated downcoding would lead to worse quality

    • Why leading companies (eg. Creative, Apple, etc.) consistently fail to support, or even downright ignore the Ogg format

      Is Rio no longer a leading company?

      Apologies, I've been out of the game for a while, but I've been really happy with my little Karma.

  • DivX popularity (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PingKing ( 758573 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @08:54AM (#8633388)
    While I'm sure this is a great codec, hasn't DivX pretty much sewn up the market on video codecs?

    It's established, popular and gives tight compression. Can new codecs such as Theora break into this market to any significant degree?
    • VP3 was meant to be a Real-killer, rather than a movie format - streaming. How does DivX work at very low bitrates? Is it acceptable at modem speed? Does it stream well?

      • Theora for streaming (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ArcRiley ( 737114 ) <arcriley@gmail.com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:15AM (#8633526)
        It's ironic to think of Theora as a "Real-killer", while it does compete on the same field as Real's proprietary video streaming codecs, Real is adopting Theora for the video format in their Helix suite (and throwing money at Xiph to help get Theora out faster).

        I've seen Theora be streamed with Icecast (check out the last Ogg Traffic [vorbis.com]), I've seen decent quality Theora video at 80kbps (320x240@30 even), and I've seen how well it works in an Ogg container, vs Quicktime/AVI which (unlike Ogg) were not designed for streaming.

        But don't take my word for it, try it out for yourself! That's one of the reasons the Alpha releases are available to the general public. See what it can do, and prehaps, drop us a donation through Paypal [paypal.com] or Affero [affero.net] to help the Theora hackers spend more time hacking.

        • Well, Real is ADDING Theora support, but it's like like it threatens their own proprietary codecs. The new RealVideo 10 is excellent. Backwards compatible with RV9, but with a much enhanced new codec. Better motion searching, and an innovative preprocessing engine coupled to the codec where it basically smoothes out areas in the video that would result in artifacts. The resulting video can look abnormally "clean" but almost never has blocking or ringing artifacts at reasonable data rates.

    • DivX problems (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ArcRiley ( 737114 ) <arcriley@gmail.com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:02AM (#8633450)
      Patents. DivX is just a series of alpha-releases for MPEG-4 and is covered by the same set of patents (from dozens of different companies). They're only being nice about DivX until MPEG-4 comes out, then they're going to "crack down".

      Remember when MP3 was gaining popularity, Frauhofer just let everyone do whatever they wanted with players, encoders, etc... but once they realised they had something worth charging for they cracked down and their lawyers started sending everyone ceise and desist orders.

      Ogg Theora is not encumbered by patents. It is, and will always be, royalty-free. To my knowledge it is the first video codec that can be implemented in truly Free Software.

      • What you are descriping is the old divx3.1 codec that noone uses anymore.
        The modern 4.0 and 5.x codecs are perfectly legal mpeg4 implementation, and divx-nextworks pays the licensing fees.

        • false information? (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ArcRiley ( 737114 ) <arcriley@gmail.com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @10:37AM (#8634433)
          The fact remains that DivX is MPEG-4, because it's patent encumbered it cannot be implemented with Free Software. Many people don't realise this. They think that because there's GPL'ed software available to encode/decode DivX/XviD that the format is free.

          In reality, the royalty requirements of these formats makes GPL'ed software undistributable by anyone but the copyright holder (since it's the copyright holder's responsibility to enforce the copyright they're not going to sue themselves).

          For both commercial and non-commercial uses, royalty-free codecs (such as VP3/Theora) will always top proprietary formats such as DivX.

          • But you have to admit, the FFMPEG project guys are pretty fucking hardcore.

            I give them all my love, despite the shaky legality of their work. And I will hoard their releases for various ISO MPEG standards as I have DeCSS for years to come so I can play with my oh-so-blasphemously encoded and decoded media.
      • I thought the deal with IP was supposed to be that if you didn't defend it, you lost it. (Isn't that the excuse given for companies c&ding fan sites?) Shouldn't that prevent companies from pulling the trick Frauhofer did? I realise US courts are corrupt, but why didn't the European courts tell them to screw off?
        • I believe that only is true for trademarks. You can defend or not the rest of IP law as you see fit (although there have been some interesting cases alleging entrapment).

        • There is no such thing as an Intellectual Property law.

          IP is a political term used to refer transparently to copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets (and spread the meme of them being property rights as opposed to temporary monopolies granted by the people (at least in the US constitution)) so that you have copyright law or patent law but no intellectual property law.

          The form of "IP" that you are thinking of is trademark which can be lost if you do not monitor their use by sending C&D letter

        • Re:IP Law? (Score:5, Informative)

          by rillian ( 12328 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @12:57PM (#8636048) Homepage

          What you describe is Trademark law, which is probably the sanest branch of north american IP at this point. You cannot trademark common words or phrases (modulo certain exceptions [lindows.com]) so an effort is generally made to prevent brand names from becoming same by prosecuting uses of the trademark that don't refer specifically to the actual product.

          Copyrights belong to the author (or sponsor) automatically and can only be given up voluntarily or lost when the rights period expires, which is now some significant time after the author dies.

          Patents are granted on a first come, first served basis to whoever applies for one and provides a monopoly on the implementation of a particular method for a fixed term.

          Neither copyright nor patent rights are contingent on enforcement the way trademarks are. Holders of these two rights can and do choose which infringements to pursue.

          This is the problem with MPEG-4. We can avoid the copyright issue by writing an open source version from scratch, since the standard is at least published. We don't have to call it MPEG-4 so there are no trademark issues, although while the MPEG logo is trademarked in the US, one can refer to the specification because that itself is not a trademark and because there is no attempt at confusion.

          But there is no way around patents because they grant a monopoly on implementation rights. Just because you wrote your own doesn't mean you don't have to buy a license, or that you won't be forced to buy one sometime in the next 20 years. If you live in a jurisdiction that doesn't enforce patents, you're fine for now. If you just want to trade movies underground, you're probably fine because there's safety in numbers. But if you're like me, and want digital media to be as easy and ubiquitous as webpages; something anyone can do, something you don't need permission for, you need a something that's Free as in Freedom and Free as in Beer. Something like Theora.

      • MP3 and DIVX are mostly used to commit crimes with. People who are using them legally tend to have bought legal software.

        I see the motivation behind patent-free codecs, and I like it, but I doubt that by itself is sufficient motivation to switch. Ogg vorbis has been out for a long time now, and it's still a niche player, despite being a superior codec to mp3 in all ways possible.

    • Re:DivX popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:02AM (#8633451)
      One word - games.

      Need an animated intro or cutscene in a PC game? The options are kind of limited. You can license DivX or Bink, or rely on whatever codecs come as standard with Windows, but the options are either expensive, low-quality or problematic.

      I was commenting on Ogg Vorbis in games [slashdot.org] a few minutes ago, and was wondering how the Xiph people were getting on with Ogg Theora. I clicked to go to the Slashdot front page, and behold!

      I reckon I can sense the future, and I don't even have a Slashdot subscription. ;-]

      • I hardly think a game with a few million dollars of budget is going to think twice about shelling out for a DivX or Bink license.
      • Some major game companies are already using Ogg Vorbis for sound. Others have used MP3, but why pay the royalties if the end-user can't tell the difference (and indeed, you would be paying more for less).

        Of course, PC game cut-scenes are going less and less from video files to actually in-game scenes.
    • DivX doesn't stream, and has a bit of a dicey reputation. I haven't seen much corporate use -- QuickTime, RealMedia, and WMV seem to be what companies go for.

      Frankly, I'd just as soon that everyone uses DivX for everything, but they just don't today.
    • The video codec "market" (unlike the audio) is already pretty diverse as it is - there are 3 generations of DivX, there is XviD, all the other variations on MPEG-4, MPEG-2, etc.
      So there is really no problem with adding yet another codec to the mix.
      BTW, the newer "DivX-playing" chipset started to support Ogg Vorbis, so I'm sure that eventually we will se HW support for Theora as well.

    • Re:DivX popularity (Score:5, Insightful)

      by The Original Yama ( 454111 ) <lists,sridhar&dhanapalan,com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:08AM (#8633491) Homepage
      I've seen an increasing number of video files on the Internet being distributed in Vorbis/Xvid format (i.e. Ogg Vorbis audio and Xvid [xvid.org] video). Which raises the question: why is Ogg Theora always looked upon as the champion open source video format? Xvid is GPL [xvid.org], and from my experience it delivers the best quality/compression performance of all the codecs out there. Most importantly, it works -- now.

      • Re:DivX popularity (Score:5, Informative)

        by MS_is_the_best ( 126922 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:17AM (#8633548)
        Although the code of Xvid of xvid is GPL, XviD is still an ISO MPEG-4 compliant video codec. That means that the patent holders of MPEG-4 can still demand a fee for its use.

        Theora doesn't have such limitations.
        • Last I heard, and things could have easily changed since then, the patent holders for MPEG-4 had decided to charge a fee for each file encoded in MPEG-4 but no fee for encoders/decoders. This decision has been blamed for the slow uptake of MPEG-4 in the commercial world (unlike the online bootleg video world where it is uber-popular) and perhaps making it easier for microsoft to get a foot in the door with VC9 for HD-DVD.

          How this fee structure affects the GPL status of XviD and FFDshow, I don't know, but

      • Re:DivX popularity (Score:5, Informative)

        by cozziewozzie ( 344246 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:22AM (#8633593)
        Xvid is Free Software, but it's an implementation of MPEG4, which is patent-encumbered. It's the same reason that Ogg Vorbis is seen as the champion of free music, although there are GPL MP3 encoders.
        • It is impressive to see an MPEG4-compliant codec being developed under the GPL-license that is of such a high quality that it rivals most commercial MPEG4-implementations.

          The people working on XVID must be really talented and motivated to deliver such high quality code. In my opinion, it's a shame that these developers don't put their efforts in the Theora-project instead, because of the patent-related restrictions involved with the MPEG4-standard.

          Couldn't it be possible to merge all NON-PATENTED technolo
      • Xvid is GPL

        ...which is, by itself, enough of a problem to hinder uptake. Proprietary manufacturers can use the Vorbis codecs (under a BSD license) in their products without having to open their code. They can't legally do that with the GPL'ed Xvid (remember, GPL != LGPL).

        I use a Free Software-only workstation, but I have zero expectation of buying a hardware media player and getting access to the source code.

    • Re:DivX popularity (Score:3, Informative)

      by benwaggoner ( 513209 )
      DivX has the largest market share for pirated content distributed via P2P networks. But it isn't a meaningful player in commercial markets.

      Among other things, since DivX is based on the AVI file format, it doesn't have native support for streaming. It's really a CD-ROM format at its heart.

      Also, DivX uses the MPEG-4 part 2 video codec, which is being superseded.

      For commercial codecs, MPEG-2 is probably 95% of the market today. And the battle is now raging between Microsoft's VC-9 and MPEG-4 AVC (aka Part

  • Theora's File Size (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TrekkieGod ( 627867 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:11AM (#8633509) Homepage Journal
    I'm really interested in Theora, so I've done some looking around trying to get some more information. Theora, from the faq [theora.org], is a superset of the VP3 codec. I couldn't find much more information on what it is specifically that they improved on.

    The VP3 codec has one major drawback in my opinion. It's designed to keep a constant quality without paying attention to the file size. You can do constant bitrate on it, but you can't use multiple pass encoding with variable bitrates to get that balance of quality while having strict file size control (as with xvid). Is this something that is being added to Theora, does anyone know?

    • Re:Theora's File Size (Score:3, Informative)

      by mzs ( 595629 )
      You might try these options to the sample encoder: --audio-rate-target --video-rate-target --audio-quality --video-quality This is not two-pass but it may be close enough. I always seem to need to some fudge with XVID using mencoder so this might end-up being as close as you need in practice for now.
    • Well, once they've locked down the bitstream, folks can start innovating on building better encoders compatible with the bitstream format. 2-pass encoding would be an obvious initial step.

      Codecs can get a LOT better due to encoder innovation. MPEG-2 has roughly tripled its compression efficiency since standardization.

  • Curios definition of "beta"... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:13AM (#8633516) Homepage
    We're nearing Beta-1 where the format will be frozen, fully documented, and it'll be ready for everyday use.

    Not only beta... but beta-1. And I assume that means there'll be a beta-2 and maybe a few more, before we get to RC1, and perhaps a few of those too. So, what decade is Release 1.0 planned for? And what exactly will happen with the "frozen, fully documented" codec between beta-1 and release?

    Kjella

    • Not totally "with" the whole development scene myself, but I think what it means is that they're about to freeze any feature development for this version of Theora. So it'll be into a few rounds of testing and bugfixing, without any new stuff to muddy up the waters.

      Tiggs

    • "Beta" definition vs Alpha/1.0 release (Score:5, Informative)

      by ArcRiley ( 737114 ) <arcriley@gmail.com> on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:35AM (#8633742)
      What they're doing now is adding fields to the various headers for flexibility down the road. One example of this is that, unlike VP3, each frame can have more than one quality setting (so that large sections of black/etc won't use the same bandwidth as the hero waving the light sabre).

      These things are not implemented yet, and will probobally not be useable on earlier Beta releases either, but as of Beta-1 the bitstream will not change in future-compatable ways. That is, while some optimisation fields won't be supported yet, no new fields will be added. Future players will always be able to play media encoded by the Beta releases. The same is not true for movies encoded with the Alpha libraries, so Beta-1 is really the first point where it should be used for distributed movies.

      The 1.0 release will include support for atleast decoding these optional fields, it'll likely use them all too for encoding, and should be considerably higher quality than the VP3.2 codec from which it started with. It'll always, however, be able to upgrade VP3.2 media to Theora and, again, always be able to play media encoded with the Beta releases.

    • At beta-1, the format of the Theora bitstream will be "frozen and fully documented". The reference software that implements the format will continue to be bugfixed/improved/tweaked, but they will not make any incompatible changes to the data format. Ogg files encoded using the beta software will be compatible with v1.x decoders - this isn't necessarily true of the alpha releases.

      ('twas the same with Vorbis audio, as it was developed, if I recall correctly).

  • Whatever happened to Tarkin? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cozziewozzie ( 344246 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:16AM (#8633532)
    Slashdot used to report on Ogg Tarkin (next-generation, wavelet-based video codec) a lot in the past, but since Theora showed up as a stop-gap solution, nobody's mentioning Tarkin. Is this project still alive?

    • Re:Whatever happened to Tarkin? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hsoom ( 680862 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:52AM (#8633950)
      From the Theora FAQ [theora.org]:
      Q: What about Tarkin?


      A: Tarkin is essentially a proof-of-concept wavelet-based codec. Its experimental nature means it will not be ready for general use for some time. VP3 is a high-quality codec that can meet today's video needs now, so Xiph.org will be focusing its efforts on Theora for the near future.

    • I'd imagine Tarkin's been put on hold until Theora's finalised. Seeing as Theora's meant to be a stop-gap solution before Tarkin, that'd certainly make sense. Get something good out as soon as possible, and something great out when it's ready.

    • Re:Whatever happened to Tarkin? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you want a free wavelet based codec the BBC have just released one under the GPL. Its called Dirac and its on sourceforge. Its still alpha code but...

      http://sourceforge.net/projects/dirac/

  • Impressive! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Maljin Jolt ( 746064 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @09:25AM (#8633634) Journal
    I have a positive feeling about Ogg Theora. Three days ago I installed binary only DivX for linux (closed source), and I am not very happy about it. I want video codec at top performance, optimized for CPU and maybe even 64bit platform later this year, not a 32bit binary pentium-only crap with possible vulnerabilities.

  • ogg vorbis internet radio (Score:3, Informative)

    by eatmadust ( 740035 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @10:47AM (#8634523)
    Virgin Radio has been broadcasting in 96k ogg vorbis for quite a while now
    http://www.virginradio.co.uk/thestation/liste n/ogg .html

    The advantages for them are quite clear: no patent costs and more listeners who just want to support ogg (ok, maybe not many, but still ;))

  • Getting Xiph's FLAC to work with Theora? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Wills ( 242929 ) on Monday March 22, 2004 @11:12AM (#8634835)
    Has anyone managed to configure and compile any version of FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) after having installed all the prerequisites like ogg* and theora*? I get the errors below despite having the recommended version of ogg devel installed and despite having tried various versions of FLAC from 2001 tarball thru to current CVS FLAC.

    cd flac ./configure
    checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin6/ginstall -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes
    checking for gawk... gawk checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
    checking whether to enable maintainer-specific portions of Makefiles... no
    checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
    checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
    checking for style of include used by make... GNU checking for gcc... gcc
    checking for C compiler default output... a.out
    checking whether the C compiler works... yes
    checking whether we are cross compiling... no
    checking for suffix of executables...
    checking for suffix of object files... o
    checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
    checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
    checking for gcc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
    checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
    checking for ld used by GCC... /usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld
    checking if the linker (/usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes
    checking for /usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld option to reload object files... -r
    checking for BSD-compatible nm... /usr/bin6/nm -B
    checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /usr/bin6/sed checking whether ln -s works... yes
    checking how to recognise dependent libraries... pass_all
    checking command to parse /usr/bin6/nm -B output... ok
    checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
    checking for egrep... grep -E
    checking for ANSI C header files... yes
    checking for sys/types.h... yes
    checking for sys/stat.h... yes
    checking for stdlib.h... yes
    checking for string.h... yes
    checking for memory.h... yes
    checking for strings.h... yes
    checking for inttypes.h... yes
    checking for stdint.h... yes
    checking for unistd.h... yes
    checking dlfcn.h usability... yes
    checking dlfcn.h presence... yes
    checking for dlfcn.h... yes
    checking for ranlib... ranlib
    checking for strip... strip
    checking for objdir... .libs
    checking for gcc option to produce PIC... -fPIC
    checking if gcc PIC flag -fPIC works... yes
    checking if gcc static flag -static works... yes
    checking if gcc supports -c -o file.o... yes
    checking if gcc supports -c -o file.lo... yes
    checking if gcc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions... yes
    checking whether the linker (/usr/i486-slackware-linux/bin/ld) supports shared libraries... yes
    checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate
    checking whether stripping libraries is possible... yes
    checking dynamic linker characteristics... GNU/Linux ld.so
    checking if libtool supports shared libraries... yes
    checking whether to build shared libraries... yes
    checking whether to build static libraries... yes
    checking whether -lc should be explicitly linked in... no
    creating libtool checking for g++... g++
    checking whether we are using the GNU C++ compiler... yes
    checking whether g++ accepts -g... yes
    checking dependency style of g++... gcc3
    checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... (cached) yes
    checking for getopt_long... yes ./configure: line 8616: syntax error near unexpected token `have_ogg=yes,' ./configure: line 8616: `XIPH_PATH_OGG(have_ogg=yes, { echo "$as_me:$LINENO: WAR
    NING: *** Ogg development enviroment not installed - Ogg support will not be bui
    lt" >&5'

    yes, it is

    dnl check for ogg library
    XIPH_PATH_OGG(have_ogg=yes, AC_MSG_WARN([*** Ogg development enviroment not inst
    alled - Ogg support will not be built]))
    AM_CONDITIONAL(FLaC__HAS_OGG, [test x$have_ogg = xyes])
    if test x$have_ogg = xyes ; then
    AC_DEFINE(FLAC__HAS_OGG)
    fi

  • Plugins for RealPlayer 10 available (Score:5, Informative)

    by robla ( 4860 ) * on Monday March 22, 2004 @11:24AM (#8634965) Homepage Journal
    In addition to support in the Helix Player [helixcommunity.org] as mentioned, we've posted plugins for RealPlayer 10 for Windows [helixcommunity.org] as well.

    Rob Lanphier
    Developer Support Manager [realnetworks.com]
    RealNetworks

  • The Xiph.org project is producing some amazing software including Theora. One of the components of the Xiph.org multimedia architecture is FLAC - aka the Free Lossless Audio Coder. Could someone kindly moderate up the interesting question about how to configure FLAC [slashdot.org]? I'm not the only person who'd like to be able to start using Theora with FLAC but being prevented by configuration difficulties but right now the poster's question is languishing at -1 Off-topic when it's really totally on-topic.

  • Theora / VP3 probably better than you think (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bigberk ( 547360 ) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Monday March 22, 2004 @07:17PM (#8640237)
    I've got a bit of a surprise for y'all... have you tried the incredible 'Internet TV' (real-time video streaming) available in the Media Library feature in winamp [winamp.com]? The quality is really good; the streams are relatively low bitrate, and they stream beautifully. Well, Nullsoft's NSV [nullsoft.com] format is really just MP3 + VP3. So that's what VP3 looks like, and I think it's pretty damn good -- this is by far the best streaming video I have ever experienced. If Theora is an improvement on this, looks like they're heading in the right direction for streaming video.

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