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- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+52"Nonetheless, Theora will not be able to match the efficiency of its most modern competitors (MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) and VC-1) because of the self-imposed restrictions to get around patent issues."
:( - ropers, on 10/10/2007, -3/+48Freedom isn't free. Would you rather have an unsupportable, patent-encumbered and restricted format allowing for slightly smaller files, or a completely free one?
- jernejovc, on 10/10/2007, -2/+31Well I think MP3 is even worse name, but we all got used to it
- jrepin, on 10/10/2007, -5/+31It's not just a format. You will need to realize the importance of truly open and free means of writing and recording digital data. It's a matter of freedom. Read the introduction here:
http://wiki.transmission.cc/index.php/FOSS_Codecs_ ... - stalefries, on 10/10/2007, -1/+26Ogg Vorbis is the audio codec, Ogg Theora is the video codec. Two different things (although they're associated). Sorry, Vorbis is gonna stick around a bit longer.
- SuperSloth, on 10/10/2007, -1/+24Good to see patents are continuing to spur innovation and benefit everyone.
- billmccartney, on 10/10/2007, -0/+23LOL, and you are writing applications for??? oh yeah, nothing :)
This issue is VERY important for developers. Say you are making ANY kind of product that needs video decoding/encoding. This is a truely viable solution, otherwise you will have to spend an arm and a leg. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -8/+28Excellent news! - Open Source = Freedom
- jrepin, on 10/10/2007, -0/+19No, there is no reason why Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis or any other free and open codec/format wouldn't be supported in any media player. Everyone that has the knowledge can provide support for them without any restrictions. No need to be afraid of patents, no need to pay any fees.
- linkinpark342, on 10/10/2007, -0/+18Its the Hindu swastika to represent auspiciousness (note: meaning found via wikipedia)
- damentz, on 10/10/2007, -0/+14No, it is only not supported on products that are competing against it. Windows Media Player/Quicktime are top annoyances currently as you have to go search for codecs first.
- Protoss, on 10/10/2007, -1/+14Except thats what drives some developers. They develop for the 1% no one else will.
- westyvw, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13Thats not true: Ogg is used in many games to avoid MP3 licensing. Many have been using Theora too, so its odd to see that they are saying its being realeased, it was used as far back as Serious Sam.
- Protoss, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13I'm almost positive that Ogg Theora plays fine in VLC. This is just the source code released.
- praisethelard, on 06/06/2008, -0/+12I use it to encode all my music.
- sybesis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+13Hope one day, ogg vorbis will be over mp3... Hope for a futur of open format ...drm free...etc...
Ogg
Odf
... - HCviolence, on 10/10/2007, -1/+12If you put toast into your computer I'm pretty sure vlc will play it.
- navster, on 10/10/2007, -2/+12mp3!?!?
- nroose, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10According to Wikipedia: "Tarkin: an experimental codec utilizing discrete wavelet transforms in the three dimensions of width, height, and time. It has been put on hold since February 2000, with Theora becoming the main focus for video encoding."
- NJHewitt, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10There's a lot more to the swastika than the Nazis. It's important in some Eastern religions, for one thing. Go read about it.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7Troll attempt: 2/10
- Fergy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7People just want to watch their video without dealing with licenses, patents and other weird restrictions they don't understand. You can freely use, distribute, modify and integrate this codec in everything you want. Just like the audio part Vorbis made sure you could do that for audio.
- ArthurSucks, on 10/10/2007, -1/+7The Theora encoder has been updated to Beta from Alpha, the Decoder (built into VLC for years) can decode it all the same. We're just getting a much higher quality video.
- DigitAl56K, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5It's not so much that you don't "have" to, it's simply that you don't.
MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, Xvid, etc.) and part 10 (x264, etc.) are all covert by a ton of patents and technically there is licensing attached, even though you can find binaries for some codecs using these technologies on the net where no licensing is paid.
It's good to have Theora around if it's truely unencumbered by restrictive patents and risk of expensive licensing. - vault, on 10/10/2007, -8/+13The majority of people don't care about that, and just want to watch their videos. I support the FOSS cause as do many, but that's just a drop in the bucket, I'm sorry to say.
- Krhis, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5If you are running Ubuntu; chances are you already have it installed without even realizing it. :)
$ apt-cache show libtheora0
Version: 0.0.0.alpha7.dfsg-2ubuntu1
... - antitab, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5"It's not like I ever have to pay anything when I encode an mp4 video file."
Then you must have gotten the codec from either an extremely generous company that bought all the licenses to distribute MPEG-4 encoders and isn't charging to download them, or from an "academic" project that can't legally put out binaries, only source code, meaning whoever you got it from is committing a crime (in the U.S. at least).
Oh, and I hope you're not thinking of sharing that file. That would mean royalties. Lots. Per person. - Garfunkel, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5actually, i tend to find the file size difference between theora and mp4 encoded at a similar bit rate is marginal at best, and it goes both ways. This can mainly be contributed down to ogg audio being more efficient and better quality then other formats but it's a great format none the less.
- Krhis, on 10/10/2007, -1/+51. Ubuntu users already have the alpha release installed (without even noticing).
2. It's unlikely Microsoft would adopt this into Windows (insert rant here). - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+6It is not a "minus", it is a separator.
- djGentoo, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2And all this time I thought it was final...
- oneoverzero, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3It didn't work :'(
- pHr34kY, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2Ogg Theora is a pretty good format. I'm a fan of the CLI encoder that encodes from MPEG. It's nice and simple and does the job. The quality is quite good too.
I'm not the biggest fan of the CPU overhead. My XBox drops frames on Theora whereas XVid (same resolution) plays back smoothly. It's not really an issue unless you're trying to play video on a dinosaur machine.
Oh, great to see that it's finally reached 1.0! - Werrismys, on 10/10/2007, -2/+4Open Source != Free Software.
- haxor1990, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2didn't you hear that's the WMA slogan
- Buckley, on 10/10/2007, -1/+3"Proprietary" does not mean "it won't run on my system." It means that the intellectual property (e.g. patents, copyrights) covering the format are owned by a private entity. If you read the article, you would see that, although the codec relies on some patents, Xiph.Org has an agreement with the holder of the patents, essentially allowing for their public use. Therefore, the codec is not "proprietary."
To answer your question though, since this is a source code release, it is not specifically tied to a single system as such. Although it may need some minor porting to run on some systems, it should be easy to get it to compile on most common systems. However, I don't think it's going to be too big of a deal. As mentioned in the article, the codec is not as efficient as other, patent-encumbered patents. I expect it will be only used by those who care more about the patents than the size of their files. - ArthurSucks, on 10/10/2007, -0/+2No, it's worked for years.
- TheRemoteViewer, on 10/10/2007, -10/+11I'd rather use the best codec regardless of patent issues. Supportability is part of this, but not the entire story.
- esoterica, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1This doesn't make any sense. By definition, anything of a particular time length and bitrate is going to be the same file size, no matter what the codec.
- lengau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Let's see...
I like Vorbis and Theora. I use both of them daily.
Because of this, on Windows/Mac I use VLC, and on Windows I use Winamp.
Winamp and VLC's competitors have just lost a user.
I give some of my videos out, suggesting people on Windows/Mac use VLC. They like it because it can play my video and all of their preexisting videos.
VLC's competitors have lost more customers.
These people suggest VLC...
Eventually, there comes a point where the big guys say "Wow, we need to support Theora, because we're losnig Marketshare to VLC because of it." - Geaugan, on 10/10/2007, -2/+3But then you have a meaningless equals sign. I think the "!" was a good enough separator. Hooray for throwing in random symbols and meaningless arguments.
- DardanAeneas, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Yeah, I knew they were different. Looking again, I didn't phrase that right.
- lengau, on 10/10/2007, -0/+1Ogg is the container.
Vorbis does Audio compression.
Theora does Video compression (and by default uses Vorbis for the audio). - findhostcoupons, on 03/22/2009, -0/+1Wow, interesting piece of news, thanks for sharing with us!
- Fergy, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1Digg and Firefox have spellcheck, please use either
- DardanAeneas, on 10/10/2007, -1/+1I don't know know. I think people accept acronyms (or abbreviated acronyms), better than "Ogg Vorbis," which seems like cave-man talk.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2FLAC FTW
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -3/+2FLAC FTW
- dougallj, on 10/10/2007, -5/+3I'm with both of you... For my own personal collection, I'll use the best-looking for smallest file, but if I'm programming anything which needs this sort of stuff, then I'll probably use this.
- Fritzed, on 10/10/2007, -11/+7"Excellent news!" minus "Open Source" equals "Freedom"
That comment does not make sense. -
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