Theora I Bistream Format Frozen 329
p80 writes "The Xiph foundation announced today that the 'Theora I bistream format is now frozen,' even though Beta 1 is not out yet and encourage people to try it as 'there's no reason to delay adopting a free alternative any more!' Mplayer and Xine both support Theora. For Windows users, Directshow filters for Ogg Vorbis, Speex, Theora and FLAC are available here. You can get test cases here and transcode Quicktime movies to theora on that page." This freeze, as an anonymous reader puts it, "means that all future versions will support the format as it is now. It will be interesting to see if there is as much uptake for this as there was for the Vorbis sound format."
Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:2)
Microsoft will ship us yet (Score:2)
Especially since Microsoft will not allow the codec to be included in installs ever.
Well, you never know. If they lose the appeal on the EU antitrust case, they may a least be forced to ship RealPlayer [slashdot.org] in that jurisdiction.
And RealPlayer [helixcommunity.org] plays Theora [helixcommunity.org]. :-)
That's the nice thing about being the right choice.
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to get DivX, Theora, Ogg or WHATEVER in WMP, you'd have to pay the same price Intel does. It's not impossible, and if it's important to the community to do so, have a project manager get in touch with Microsoft and we'll start a collection.
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:2)
ONE example.. wooo (Score:2)
Well it's okay... (Score:2)
Re:Well it's okay... (Score:3, Insightful)
From the point of view of the general population, how does MP3 not fulfill their needs? They don't feel the need for anything more, so there's no need for OGG.
Re:Well it's okay... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ONE example.. wooo (Score:3)
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:2)
(It's dumped under a LOT of drm crap though, only their crappy player & etc)
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:3, Interesting)
And oh, whoever moderated the parent funny, that should have been "Insightful". =)
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't bother replying about the degradation in quality; I didn't notice it, and I prefer the oggs anyway for other reasons.
Re:Oh, this will be modded as flamebait... (Score:3, Interesting)
Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Interesting)
Many people create their own content. I consider it much more entertaining than just being a consumer of content, even if my content isn't as flashy as the Matrix or Britney Spears. Because of this, the ability to have free tools to work with is a big deal. I don't care if we never see a movieflix.com movie download site from the MPAA with exclusively Theora content. That isn't the point.
As long as I have access to tools that aren't encumbered by patents, and I can do whatever the fuck I want with them. As long as Fraunhoffer or MS controls things, it means I can't be certain about what happens to my content tomarrow.
Oh, and the guys who are interested in video compression have an interesting toy to hack. That's one step geekier than I currently am, but guys decided to make something cool, and they have done it. Isn't that enough? Why does it have to be a battle. Minix wasn't a battle. Fighting wasn't why it was written. But, because it was more open, and assorted Fins could gain access to the source code to see how things worked, they were able to make some sort of Leenoooks clone with help from the tooth fairy. It doesn't matter than minix didn't win!
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
No, it costs $29.95 [apple.com].
What about the guy using BeOS?
You're joking, right?
Without having a Free standard, MS can ultimately declare WMV dead
There you go. Don't bother constructing a valid or persusive argument. Just bail out of the whole discussion with a "MS SUCKS!" Good job.
Nobody uses Real anymore
Tons of people use Real. The BBC, NPR, and C-SPAN all use Real.
the existing content in the format is as dead as VAX tapes or Video Disc
I keep a Real stream of C-SPAN
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Insightful)
short-sighted moron.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Interesting)
If all else were equal, why not use the tool that isn't patent-encumbered?
And... just as AMD forced Intel to stop charging too much for CPUs, Ogg keeps Frauhofer from getting too greedy with MP3. Even if not that many people use Ogg, it's still keeping us safe.
And... imagine someone puts together a whole collection of stuff on the web in a patent-encumbered format such as MP3. The patent owners can literally tell t
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they are close enough that this is arguable. In any event, Ogg passes the "Good Enough" test. So does AAC, of course.
I don't know about this new thing, but I find it hard to believe that it's as good as MPEG-4 at high bit rates or Sorenson at low bit rates.
It's my understanding that Theora isn't as good as MPEG4 at equivalent bit rates. Not sure about Sorenson. Theora should actually be better than MPEG2, and for many applications MPEG2 passes the "Good Enough" test.
Of course, over time, as people come up with clever tricks, the encoders get better. It happened with MPEG and MPEG2, and Theora still has plenty of room to improve.
But if Theora isn't suitable for your application, you can always license MPEG4 or Sorenson or something. I'm certainly not saying that Theora is the all-purpose answer to everything.
It's a pain in the ass to use a nonstandard codec, so why bother?
Actually, because I am a Debian user, it's more of a pain for me to use IP-encumbered tools. So why should I bother?
And I'm not asking you to use Theora. I'm just telling you that you shouldn't say abusive rude things about the folks who are interested in it.
Fraunhofer's own business plan keeps them from "getting too greedy."
Can you count on that? How do you know that pointy-haired idiots won't make dumb decisions? It would be dumb to pick several of your customers and sue them, and drive away all possible future customers, but SCO did that.
Besides, the very fact that you'd consider a company's pursuit of profit through licensing of patented technology to be "getting too greedy" makes me laugh at you derisively. Ha-ha.
Go back and read what I wrote. I haven't argued that patent holders shouldn't be allowed to charge royalties; I pointed out that if you don't use IP-encumbered formats, no one can force you to pay royalties.
There's absolutely no interpretation of patent law that would result in that interpretation.
Um... how about the ability of patent owners to decide under what terms, and for what fees, they license the patent? If you are using patented technology, you have to comply with the terms of your patent license, don't you?
They can't tell you "AND by the way you also owe us big royalties for last year." They can't change the deal retroactively. But as long as they own the patent, they could set a license fee and license terms that you would need to honor in the future, unless you have some sort of signed agreement with them that took precedence.
Frauhofer let everyone use MP3 for free for a few years, then changed the deal and started charging. Are you saying that could never happen again?
[free software distributions like Debian...] are irrelevant to any serious discussion. We're talking about the real world here, not the lunatic fringe.
You really are a rude troll. No doubt you are laughing at me for taking the time to talk to you. Well, I won't make that mistake anymore.
steveha
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Insightful)
Stop reading in the middle and you end up drawing erroneous conclusions, putz.
That's funny, Ogg seems to be available for every computer platform I care about.
Yawn.
There are many portable music players that don't support it
End of discussion.
AAC doesn't meet my needs better than Ogg, so for me Ogg is better.
Yes, it does. You're just perversely misrepresenting your own needs, either out of sheer ignorance
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
So? Last time I checked, a vendor can't go back and retroactively charge fees for the use of something that's already been used.
You're trying to make it sound like patent-holders are (1) evil and (2) all-powerful. You're not fooling anybody.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Insightful)
More than there would have been had the ogg/vorbis/theora folks decided the task was just too daunting and given up.
Changing the world for the better happens a little at a time.
Classic betamax tale (Score:4, Insightful)
But in the age of $1/gig hard drives, space isn't such a huge issue.
Re:Classic betamax tale (Score:2)
Re:Classic betamax tale (Score:2)
Re:Classic betamax tale (Score:3, Informative)
Perhaps if oggs were particularly small, say 10-20% the size of the standard mp3, you would probably see more people flocking to it. But in the age of $1/gig hard drives, space isn't such a huge issue.
It's all about your situation. I run Linux at home, so mp3 vs. vorbis is a toss-up in terms of "support". (Actually, since mp3 support isn't shipped with RedHat/Fedora by default, Ogg Vorbis is actually *more* supported....) At work, I wrote my own music player software for my computer lab, and I found
Re:Classic betamax tale (Score:3, Interesting)
I do (Score:2)
The Neuros, Rio Karma, and iRiver all support Ogg Vorbis.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Insightful)
Hint to the Vorbis guys: People are more likely to adopt a format when they don't have to change their media player. Start giving people easy links to useful binaries god dammit.
Hell. If I was a webmaster for Vorbis there would be a big "DOWNLOAD FOR WINDOWS" button on the front page which is linked to a Directshow codec.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:4, Funny)
In fact me and my friend keith are just going to keep it for ourselves. Keith had a girlfriend once
Very good point (Score:3, Interesting)
From the readme for the acm version which your likely to find several places with the exception of vorbis.com
"Vorbis Sucks, but I found the stupid goddamned folder on some site in Mexico.
Right-
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure that's the case with video. As far as products (not technologies), there's Quicktime/Sorenson and WMV which definitely are not ubiquitous; both are proprietary and somewhat expensive to license. Then there's MPEG-4 which is even more absurd at licensing. Real's format does not really fall into the same category. If anything was "ubiquitous" I would say MPEG-2, but that does not count in the same category either as it does not serve the same purpose as MPEG-4 (MPEG-2 is nearly useless at low bitrates).
Yes, there are free divx/xvid implementations but those are useless in commercial offerings as they are not properly licensed. So as late as Theora would be getting to the market, IMO, the field is still wide open. Not only has the consumer market not been saturated with any single low bitrate high quality video compression technology, but video "sharing" itself has not reached a maturity level of audio streams when Vorbis first beta was released and standard frozen.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people don't do anything on a PC. Most people don't own PC's. What's your point?
Compare this to audio market with CD mixes and portable players - you see the difference.
Nope. I think you're confused about some things. MP3 is the thing that people like you (i.e., shitwits) are complaining about, claiming that it's "encumbered" by patents. And it's the self-same thing you point to as an example of ubiquity. Take a step back and
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:5, Funny)
This is Slashdot. You must be new here.
Oh, you mean the internet! Yeah, there is knowledge there...
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
>Suuuuuuuuure.
Happy?
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:2)
You know, it's funny; I thought I'd miss the "prestige" of the low-id, but no one seems to give a shit. Go figure.
Re:Fighting a losing battle (Score:3, Interesting)
Your "Ogg player" is described thusly on the product webpage
Why? Because only a hand full of people use ogg, its part of the mental snobbery and one upmanship that is ridiculously prevalent in this so called "Co
YANFF (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:YANFF (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people prefer their pc's with all open software. Open standars, and even open src.
this is where ogg comes in. now we have video and audio for free. For some of us, including myself, this is great, as mp3 is isn't an open format, nor is divx (and it's brethern) or mpeg for that matter.
Re:YANFF (Score:2)
divx isn't but xvid is. xvid is also used more often partly for that reason.
Re:YANFF (Score:2, Insightful)
Wha? What's wrong with XVID? (Score:2)
Is this true?
From the FAQ they say:
"XviD is Free Software (licensed under the GNU GPL), open to third-party contributions and aims for standard's compliance, portability and interoperability, high processing speed and superior quality."
and
" We believe that XviD is the best currently available MPEG-4 video codec solution and additionally XviD is free software!"
So, are there actual problems with using XVID or not?
I personally love XVID as
Re:Wha? What's wrong with XVID? (Score:2)
Have questions about this codec? (Score:5, Informative)
.ogg? (Score:2)
Re:.ogg? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd like to see ".ogv" start popping up to signify Ogg video.
Re:.ogg? (Score:2)
I'd like to see ".ogv" start popping up to signify Ogg video
That would still be really confusing, ".ogv" could just as easily stand for ogg vorbis as ogg video.
.asf? (Score:2)
Re:.ogg? (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to be sensible,
If the people who chose file extensions ran a supermarket, it would sell "cardboard boxes", "jars", "cans", and "plastic bags".
Re:.ogg? (Score:2)
All modern file formats have distinctive stru
Re:.ogg? (Score:2)
But.......my file manager (and sometimes my browser) is launching the player based on the file extension. Using the same file extension will force me into telling my file manager to always open ogg files in a theora capable player. This might sound trivial if you're already playing all of your mp3s and oggs in xine or mplayer, but I'd much rather use an audio player (xmms) for audio files and a video player (xin
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
My God! (Score:4, Funny)
Think this is likely to have better uptake (Score:5, Insightful)
OGG audio had a few problems - at the start, not as many people knew about it so it was slow to adopt to different players and rippers that people liked to use. The worse problem was that even now it's in almost no hardware, so it made little sense to encode to OGG if you might have wanted to use a portable.
But with video the whole field is still wide open. Getting a Quicktime or Windows media file to my TV is equally hard, so I might as well store my video in OGG as anything - and I am more likley to be able to build a box I am happy hooking to my TV for video than I would have been trying to construct an audio device I would like. And I have a lot more motivation with every consumer video device being generally locked down in very annoying ways.
The other thing that will help is that consumer device makers will have little reason not to adopt this video format since it can be another item on a checkbox and is free to implement. Also the processing power is going to be there in whatever device is created - with OGG audio, for a while there was no good example code for playing OGG files on devices without floating point support (as I remember it).
So, good luck Ogg Theora! I plan to start using it as soon as I can and see how it fares.
Re:Disagree on the video to TV there... (Score:2)
Also I strongly disagree that "the industry" has settled on DiVX. "The industry", meaning the folks who actually have movies to sell legally, settled on MPEG 2 in the form of DVDs. I haven't seen any remotely successful online digital movie ventures, so it's hard to say what The Industry has or has not settled on.
If yo
Great... (Score:3, Funny)
Not sure but... (Score:2)
Sorry to sound so unsure I just have never written a media player by hand and unsure what the standard way to go about it is nowadays, or ho
Mod points to burn. (Score:3, Insightful)
Who honestly cares about or uses Ogg? Really. I have yet to even contemplate it. Sure I have the codec on my machine, but I haven't used it. Nothing is out there in the format that I am interested in or have even ran across accidently. I like portability of my music so I use MP3. (I can't very well install the codec on my machine at work.) I have no intention of recording anything into the format, so it would be a poor choice for me to use it. How many people is it a good choice for? Why?
What about Theora? Probably the same thing, at least for me. Most people already are happy with using DivX, XviD, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, or whatever. Adding another into the mix, while giveing people more choices, probably won't sway one person over. Ogg just didn't do it for me. Theora may not, either.
The only place that I can envision Theora being used is by developers needing royalty free in-game movies.
Or am I completely off base here and it will take the world by storm by sheer ease of use, compatability, support, file size, file quality, consumer knowledge, and/or consumer acceptance?
Clue me up.
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, but that is the slashdot groupspeak - you're just one of the crowd, saying "so what, i got my windoze media player, who cares?"
On the other hand, folks like me love the idea of having more choices...
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
No, I do care about choice. I wonder about saturation in the market preventing adoption. If a free codec came out a few years ago it might have more acceptance. Time will tell with Vorbis and Theora. With the currently used codecs firmly entrenched switching people over may be difficult. I have no use right now for ogg. People who use Linux (I used to be one) will love it. This means that probably 98% of the userbase
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to think that Ogg Vorbis and/or Theora must have massive mainstream success (like MP3) or it is worthless. They're not commercial products. As long as people are maintaining the code base and using the software, then it has "worth". I don't think we'll see mainstream success, at least not for a while. And we shouldn't depend on success in that one market, or the lack of it, to measure the general success of Ogg Vorbis or Theora.
As others have pointed out, Ogg Vorbis is being used by a number of games for the packaged music. I think we'll see the Ogg codecs (Vorbis, Flac, Speex, and Theora) showing up in more embedded packages/devices. Really anywhere there is the need to handle audio and/or video in an application. The application is responsible for playing (and encoding too perhaps) the material. All the user does is install the application and uses it like any other app. It could be VOIP, a training/teaching program, a demo, cutscenes for a game, a TiVO/MythTV/Freevo-like set-top box, etc. You get the idea.
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
The game, City of Heroes, uses Ogg V for audio.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Why I used ogg for audio. (Score:4, Informative)
I used ogg audio to encode my music collection because I didn't have an mp3 encoder and I consider it a lucky break. It was easier to use krecord, audacity and abcde in Debian Woody than it was to get any kind of mp3 encoder. The files turned out to be smaller but of comparable quality to downloaded mp3's. I did it mostly so I would not have to worry about my dying phonograph player and saved out wav files before encoding. abcde worked great for my CDs and the collection, as you know, is much more convenient on a hard drive.
As for devices, having ogg forced me to get a Zaurus as a portable player. My handspring visor, though still useful, needed upgrading. Zaurus plays both ogg and mp3 from CF or MMC and does so without the annoying DRM problems most players have. So, my $250 investment in Zaurus served more than one function, though it might not be as nice and surely is not as rugged as dedicated players that now cater to ogg. Sharp promisses you can sync Zaurus to outlook as well as read Word Docs.
I'm not qualified to talk about video formats yet, but I have a feeling that I'm going to like theora.
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
For fitting more music on a 128 megabyte card, it's fairly cool. Otherwise, I agree, it seems to be just another hot topic here to gain karma. For some reason, preferring OGG/Vorbis has been a status symbol of sorts.
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
Video game designers. They can release their audio in vorbis and their video in theora and not have to pay anyone for that aspect of their game. Which means if you're a game player, you've probably already used vorbis.
Re:Mod points to burn. (Score:2)
Why do people insist on this idiotic preface - it's the only part of your post that makes me want to mod it down.
To answer your question: I rip my CDs exclusively to vorbis. Even I can notice the difference in quality with MP3 (and I am certainly not paying for MP3 Pro). I am quite a fan of the whole software libre thing as well. I can't think of a single advantage to encoding my own stuff in MP3, so i
A reason to delay ... ? (Score:3, Funny)
Hmm. Thinking.... Thinking.... There must be SOME reason... This is tough. Oh, wait! I know! I've got one!!!
Beta 1 is not out yet
Yeah! There we go. See, I knew I could come up with something.
What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:4, Insightful)
For which you may, alas, have to pay a licence fee to MPEG-LA (depending on you usage). I agree that xvid is excellent, but it comes with strings. Theora does not -- probably (nobody can be sure given the current state of the patent system in certain locales).
XviD isn't free (Score:2, Interesting)
We're not talking OGM. OGG is a container itself. OGM was a hack to add extra functionality. Functionality which OggFile2 will supercede. Currently though, the OGG container is plenty powerful enough for the short-term.
VP3 is a base to work from. MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 are MPEG-1 with tweaks and improvements. VP6 and VP3's code are probably a lot closer than you think. Don't be
Uses for Theora (Score:4, Interesting)
You know all those games you have that use MP3 for music? They had to pay a fee to do so. You know all those games you have that use bink video for cutscenes? They had to pay a fee to do so.
Now they don't. If there is a free alternative of comperable quality, the developers will use it instead of paying a $25k technology licensing fee. And the companies that don't will end up priced out of the market.
Like Unreal Tourney (Score:3, Informative)
I predict that many other games will follow suit becuase vorbis is smaller in size while being comparable in quality to mp3, and with modern computers being extremely fast already, the additional overhead that decoding ogg vorbis creates would not be significant.
It's already happening (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Uses for Theora (Score:2)
2 weeks ago (Score:3, Insightful)
Finally... (Score:3, Funny)
I think they mean BITSTREAM (Score:5, Informative)
Google returns Results 1 - 8 of about 17 for bistream theora [google.com] for me, which is few enough for me to consider it a typo. Is it a typo, or does it mean a dual stream of some kind ?
Re:I think they mean BITSTREAM (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I think they mean BITSTREAM (Score:2)
Not too bad, thanks for asking.
I wasn't sure if it was, hence asking. It could have been referring to a dual channel stream of some kind, which would be interesting to me, if that was the case. Since no one's said that's the case, I'm going with typo.
Why another format? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not ubiquitous, so what? Do you have to commit to using just one format, and no other?
If you prefer better, free, and open, when you see an ogg in the list of downloads, choose it over the WMP/QuickTime/Real file. If you don't, then pick the one you prefer.
If you're worried about the web becoming more complex, don't. MS, Apple and Real will just have to work to make things easier than ogg--they have to in order to keep the money flowing in.
If you're bothered that there's some people out there whose idealism you find disconcerting, just remember, you made a pragmatic choice (you gave up a little money and control in exchange for ease-of-use), these ogg (vorbis, theora, flac, etc) people are working to make it so that you won't have to make that pragmatic choice. They're trying to make the world how you'd really like it to be if you had the choice (unless you are all about acquiring money by controlling access to technology, in which case they are your worst enemy, and you are right to fear them--they will ultimately win).
Matroska (Score:2)
wow (Score:2)
Keep up the great work!
"WTF does 'Theora' mean?!?" (Score:4, Informative)
Now I don't wanna hear another fewl asking about it
Sample Videos (Score:5, Informative)
be pro-active (Score:4, Funny)
Tips on Theora usage... (Score:4, Informative)
First, to get Theora playback for any players on Linux, you need to compile and install the alpha3 snapshot first, and to do that you need the CVS version of all the "vorbis-tools" as they are called. Once you've done that, you just have to re-compile your video playing programs (like MPlayer) with something like "--enable-theora" passed to configure...
As for encoding, you're probably going to have sync problems... I don't want to waste my time getting in-to details, but suffice it to say you need a version of MPlayer newer than 1.0pre4 (CVS right now), and you need to use the "-vf softdup" option when you are dumping the video to the fifo (from which the Theora encoder is fetching the source video).
Also, trying to have mplayer dump to video and audio fifos at the same time is guaranteed not to work... You need to either dump the audio to a real file (wastes space), or launch two instances of MPlayer, one dumping audio from the source file, one dumping video from the source file.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, you haven't started encoding video with Theora, so just keep these tips at the back of your mind, because you'll need them when you do start.
The only other tip I've got, is to wait until a better encoding program is written. The libraries are fine, but the wimpy example programs leaves a lot to be desired. When other media programs (mplayer, or transcode) start doing encoding via the Theora/Vorbis libs, we'll be a lot better off.
Just hope that Theora/Vorbis encoding support finds it's way into MPlayer (or transcode I suppose), then you won't need to worry about all of these issues ('softdup' will likely still be needed though).
Re:sigh. (Score:3, Interesting)
What is with the compression ratio? (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC the MPlayer lead developer (Alex) said that he reckons Theora will never get close to MPEG-4.
Re:What is with the compression ratio? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ogg isn't a format (Score:5, Informative)
Recipe for confusion - Re:Ogg isn't a format (Score:2)
Highly recommend: alternate extensions for audio and vide.
Wondering: What MIME type(s) are used for ogg theora video?
Re:Recipe for confusion - Re:Ogg isn't a format (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Can Someone Explain What this is? (Score:5, Informative)
Theora is a video codec.
Ogg is the transport layer that both are stored in, so a video file will be Theora-encoded data inside an Ogg file, while audio is normally Vorbis-encoded data inside an ogg file.
Ogg can/is used for other audio codecs, too, like FLAC.
Re:My Mplayer does not support it?! (Score:5, Informative)
You can also emerge libtheora first, just to make sure. mplayer/xine will only build with Theora support if you have libtheora on the system, and that may or may not happen automatically if you have the "theora" use variable in place first.