Mozilla likes Xiph.org Theora 1.0 video codec
p2pnet news view Open Source | P2P:- “The foundations of the Internet today are built of a long, hardy history of open development, free exchange of ideas and unprecedented levels of intellectual cooperation. These foundations continue to weather the storm caused by the corporate world’s rush to cash in.”
And »»»
Closed source and closed protocols don’t serve the public interest. They exist by definition to serve the bottom line of a corporation.
And »»»
The Internet exists today and continues to move forward despite, not because of, corporate self-interest; critical mass passed the point of no return long before Microsoft and Netscape tried to salt the earth of their rivals. The great advances in computer engineering and science came from research labs and universities, freely shared with the rest of the world. You would not be reading this at your PC, workstation or iMac today if Microsoft held a patent on TCP/IP.
Well said. But who said it?
The Xiph.Org Foundation, a 501(c) non-profit organization dedicated to producing free multimedia formats and tools.
Xiph’s formats and software, “levels the playing field for digital media so that all producers and artists can distribute their work for minimal cost, without restriction, regardless of affiliation,” it says, also noting, “May contain traces of nuts.”
p2pnet is bringing this to your attention because the outfit, built by Christopher ‘Monty’ Montgomery, the creator of the Ogg Free Software container format and Vorbis audio codec and others, has just released Theora 1.0, a video codec with a small CPU footprint that offers easy portability and —– REQUIRES NO PATENT ROYALTIES !
What’s that you say? A mistake, surely !!!
But No.
“While the Theora bitstream format was standardized in 2004 and our beta releases have been used by millions, this 1.0 release is an important milestone reflecting the maturity and stability of the Theora codebase,” says Xiph, going on »»»
A number of leading multimedia web groups already support Theora. Upcoming releases of Mozilla Firefox, the world’s most popular open source browser, will support Theora natively, as will releases of the multi-platform Opera browser. Top-10 website Wikipedia uses Theora for all of its video. “Open media formats are critical for ensuring a future where everyone can create and share media freely,” says Kat Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation board member, “and so we congratulate Xiph.org on this important achievement.” Theora’s success in these applications paves the way for wider adoption.
The Theora 1.0 package includes a reference library using the revised 3-clause BSD license, allowing use in all software, free or proprietary. The reference library uses a new decoder which supports the entire Theora specification and is significantly faster than earlier versions. This high-performance decoder is already used on the XO laptop from the OLPC project.
The package also supplies numerous resources for developers: a 190 page format specification, API documentation, example encoder and decoder software, and a draft RTP specification for real-time streaming.
What’s next?
With sponsorship from Red Hat, Xiph.Org has been working on a next-generation encoder, codenamed ‘Thusnelda’, “which has already demonstrated substantial quality improvements without breaking backward compatibility,”" says Xiph, adding:
“While Theora is already the preferred format for applications where freedom, CPU consumption, and cost are important, Thusnelda will make Theora more attractive for applications where quality and bit-rate are the only considerations. The new encoder is slated for inclusion in the upcoming 1.1 release of Theora.”
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer would be tearing his hair out. If he had any.
Meanwhile, Theora 1.0 is available for download from »»»
- http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.0.tar.gz
- http://downloads.xiph.org/releases/theora/libtheora-1.0.zip
Technical support is available through the official general and developer-specific mailing lists.
“Theora is mature software,” says Xiph, so, don’t be afraid to try it.
“This release reflects countless hours of debugging, manual code audits and fuzz testing,” it says, adding:
“A scan by the Coverity static analysis tool revealed only two defects: one false alarm and the other now fixed. We would like to thank all the volunteers involved in this project throughout the years for their hard work. Your dedication helped improve Theora; this release is dedicated to you.”
News 1130 – , November , 2008
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November 4th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
It’s quite idiotic that most of the top branded portable mp3 players don’t support ogg vorbis. It is a superior format and it’s free! Additionally, FLAC support is also needed.
November 5th, 2008 at 1:11 am
There IS one flaw to the Ogg Vorbis design. They didn’t include the gain metadata tag as part of the spec, so running vorbisgain on your audio files won’t have any effect on most Ogg-capable portable audio players. One of the devs of Audacious Media Player for Linux is quite vocal about how big a pain that is.