Ogg Theora In Firefox, With Wikimedia Support 339
An anonymous reader writes "Ogg Theora support for the HTML5 <video> tag is in the Firefox 3.1 nightlies. Theora is the only video format allowed on Wikimedia Commons, so Wikimedia people are pushing Wikipedia readers to download a nightly and try it out. Break it, crash it, report bugs, get it into good shape and nullify Apple and Nokia's FUD the best way possible. They may have gotten the words 'Vorbis' and 'Theora' removed from the HTML5 spec, but the market will tell them when their browsers are sucking."
Theora quality; An exciting battle (Score:5, Interesting)
With the way things are going this sounds like it's going to be quite a fight between the proprietary and open worlds. I can't think of anyone better than Noikia [slashdot.org] and Apple [slashdot.org] to play the side of proprietary. ... Not even Microsoft seems to be able to pull off, well, evil as completely as those two these days. And with Mozilla and Wikipedia on the other side it's not like either side of this fight is hopelessly out-gunned.
Of course, this is interesting to more than just Wikipedia [cydeweys.com], but few other players are both as important and have such a clear long-term vision.
Round TWO! FIGHT!
what are the technical probs with Theora? (Score:5, Interesting)
I keep hearing that Theora has problems. Does it really? Or are these rumors FUD?
Some of the "problems" seem to be misunderstandings. Like, someone encoding at a too low bitrate, and then complaining that the quality is poor. Perhaps encoding isn't very fast either. I know Theora isn't the best codec ever, but it's decent.
I've heard it's difficult to program for the Theora libraries.
But what I've heard the most of is unethical and unwarranted efforts to stop the use of Theora and Vorbis as well. In light of that, I regard reports of "problems" with a lot of skepticism.
Re:Theora still lacks good creation software (Score:5, Interesting)
Since the purpose of ffmpeg is to convert to/from many video formats, why isn't the conversion to Theora simply added as another codec to ffmpeg? I guess I don't understand why ffmpeg2theora needs to exist at all. (I've just used ffmpeg a few times, so I don't know too much about it, just curious.)
Re:Theora still lacks good creation software (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Theora still lacks good creation software (Score:5, Interesting)
The instructions you cite were originally copied from the English Wikipedia guide [wikipedia.org] (and its associated talk page), which I wrote :)
My current solution is a bit more elegant than the ones on that page. I wrote a python script (which wraps around ffmpeg) to convert directories full of quicktime movies (which is what my camera creates) to ogg theora.
What about BBC Dirac Video Format? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Ahh.. the fairness of slashdot. (Score:4, Interesting)
All these magic improvements are in the encoder; the decoder remains unchanged, so none of this affects FF.
Re:YouTube (Score:3, Interesting)
Because the average Jow Sixpack doesn't know about those tools.
We better keep quiet about it then.. and not let these tools get out on the internet where anybody can get to them...Oops. People are not as stupid as you seem to think. I've seen indifferent users express a desire to do something, and not stop trying until they figure it out. If someone has an incentive to do something, they will. Or they will find someone who can tell them how to do it.
You're being a bit disingenous (Score:2, Interesting)
It's "available for Windows" in the same sense that all open source software is -- they provide the source, and (assuming you have a compiler on your windows systems) you do the job of compiling it yourself.
OK, that's techically true - you've just ignored the fact that most windows-compatible open source software has binaries freely available. I don't have any compilers on my windows box and I run dozens of free software packages (I practically live in PuTTY, for example).
That's so far from usable for the vast majority of windows users that I do not count it.
It sound like you are trying to say that the vast majority of windows users are incapable of following any written instructions. I don't think that's a useful observation and I don't think you have the data available to you to be able to make such a judgment anyway - though you are welcome to prove me wrong by posting the datasets from your experiments.
Or, to put this another way, my momma told me if I didn't have anything meaningful to say I shouldna say nothin'.
Re:What about BBC Dirac Video Format? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not yet, not until it's way further developed. But both Wikimedia and WHATWG are watching it closely.
Re:YouTube (Score:5, Interesting)
To top it off, it also taxes the CPU more than alternatives, which is still important for really high bitrate videos.
Which most likely is lack of support for hardware acceleration in the video card drivers. Easily remedied if AMD or Nvidia can be bothered to step away from their Watt eating contests.
Re:Ugh (Score:3, Interesting)
Theora has always been overrated. Now with the C implementation of Dirac and the hardware implementations that existed before there is no reason to still use Theora. Next to this anyone having directshow filters have Dirac or SNOW embedded (I think they are both enabled now), likewise for ffmpeg/avcodec users.
Re:Words (Score:3, Interesting)
Ogg and Vorbis names of characters in Terry Pratchett novels. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discworld [wikipedia.org] I'm not sure where Theora originated.
Ogg did not originate from Discworld, according to Wikipedia:
"It is sometimes assumed that the name Ogg comes from the character of Nanny Ogg in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. However, it derives from ogging, jargon from the computer game Netrek which came to mean doing something forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future resources. At its inception, the Ogg project was thought to be somewhat ambitious given the power of the PC hardware of the time."
Re:Patience grasshopper. (Score:3, Interesting)
If Wikipedia is the only (major) site using Ogg Theora - and as far as I am aware, it is - then this announcement affects only people who visit Wikipedia and and play its media content. But, Wikipedia already has support for embedded Theora and Vorbis. About a year ago, Mediawiki introduced a java player so that ogg Theora and Vorbis videos could be embedded and played within pages.
The built-in Firefox player will effectively replace Mediawiki's java player (for people using Firefox, at least) but functionally it will not affect user experience. So like I said - this is a good step in the right direction, but it's not ground shaking.
Re:YouTube (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you are misinformed. Older Theora was pretty bad, but the current builds are great. If you use ffmpeg2theora well you can actually get better quality with smaller file size than the equivalent h.264 if the content is animated (as in cartoons, CG, etc.). Theora does still suffer with sharpness issues, and in a case where I would need to preserve sharpness I would choose h.264 over Theora. But for web video, h.264 has some definite drawbacks. As for which CODEC is more "web suitable", I'd have to question what type of video you intend to embed. I think in many cases people will want small, easy to handle video (easy to make, easy to distribute, small file size) in which case Theora is in my opinion the superior CODEC. If you want to play DVD quality video in your web browser then h.264 is probably a "good" choice.
If we can use BOTH Theora AND h.264/MPEG4 with the video tag then I think everyone wins. Is that not the issue here?
Re:Theora quality; An exciting battle (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, MP3 is a MPEG-1 era technology (originally called MPEG-1 Layer III, in fact). Vorbis is kind of like WMA 9 in being "somewhat better than MP3" like other late 90's codecs.
However, for an ear-opening difference, try comparing WMA 10 Pro and HE AAC v2 at 48 Kbps to Vorbis at 48 Kbps. Big, big improvement with the more recent codecs.
The Theora decdoer is from a not very competitive late 90's codec (On2's VP3). You can tweak an encoder all you want, but all you can do is asymptotically approach what a compliant bistream is capable of. Moderen video codecs can do a lot more, on top of having much more refinement of the encoders themselves.
Like Vorbis, Theora would only be "good enough" in environments where quality at moderate-low bitrates isn't a major concern. But for web video, other codecs will do much, much better.
Re:YouTube (Score:2, Interesting)
Actually, I think that is an interesting idea. I mean, when am I most likely to buy a movie that I like? I should think just after I saw it and loved it. As an example, think of the new Batman movie -- how many people streaming out of the theaters would have bought a copy before they hit the street? I imagine a lot. As long as you keep the counter inside where only people who have seen the movie can buy it, you would still be safe.
It doesn't have to be a full-featured version -- it wouldn't have to have director's commentary, artwork, etc. Heck it might even be only widescreen format. Make them cheaply and sell them for the price of a new DVD at Blockbuster and you could have yourself a tidy profit. Or mark it down the cost of a ticket so its only $5. Or somewhere in between. And then *dawns sinister capitalist hat* you could sell them the same movie again later, with all the bells and whistles added. */hat* I think it sounds like a good and profitable idea.
Re:YouTube (Score:1, Interesting)
You may as well have your local cinema to give you a copy of the DVD with your movie ticket.
Actually, that's not such a bad idea.
They used to give you some freebies/photo albums. It would make sense to give you a DVD with the movie in it. Families want a fun ritual of going to the movies for the experience and they also want to keep the memory with them. Sure it would be more expensive for the package deal, but that's what they really want.
Ogg Theora acceleration with GPGPU? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, yes, AMD and Nvidia will never write acceleration support for Ogg Theora, so it would be up to the open source community to do that, if at all possible? I had an idea (dangerous, I know, especially at night) that maybe GPGPU could be utilized for this? Maybe I'm just very, very silly...
Re:YouTube (Score:1, Interesting)
You may as well ask why your local cinema doesn't give you a copy of the DVD with your movie ticket.
OK, I'll bite: Why don't they?
I can count the number of times I've seen a movie in the cinema more than once, in my whole life, on one hand.
If they had some kind of promotion where they were handing out the DVD of the movie with your ticket, I'd gladly not only be willing to consider paying a bit more, but I actually might go see more movies in the theater.