Working With Ogg Theora and the Video Tag 187
An anonymous reader writes "The Free Software Foundation's Holmes Wilson is just back from Berlin, where he participated in the Ogg Theora book sprint put on by FLOSS Manuals. Here is a broad look at Ogg Theora and how it fits into the push for free formats: where we're winning, what works, and what could be improved."
Theora (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, Theora will stay irrelevant where it matters most. In sites like Youtube, h264 will prevail. And this time, h264 is the (much) better tech as well.
To get the same quality as h264 video, Theora video needs higher bit rates, which translates to higher traffic, and in the end costs more money. The much higher popularity of h264 compared to Theora doesn't help, either.
Where are we winning? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTFA: Ogg Theora is becoming a big deal
I have worked at various companies, from small ventures up to well-known large corporations and have found the same thing at each. Employees think that their company is pretty well-known in their respective fields. While it may be true of some companies (IBM, Microsoft, Amazon, Johnson & Johnson, just to name a few), most third party vendors are mere gnats on the backs of those wildebeests.
This is myopia caused by too much focus on a specialized area. Yes, maybe within a very limited sector your technology may be making inroads, in general you are nothing more than a butterfly flapping its wings. Theora is not becoming a big deal. It is just another codec, and one that isn't particularly popular.
There are technical issues that need to be addressed technically, not simply (as the author of the article does) waved away as a future feature to be implemented when the codec becomes more popular. It will never become more popular until it can offer sufficient reason to switch. Relying on the negative influence of patent encumbrance to drive people towards the codec is a losing proposition. It is a reactive strategy that cannot eventually win.
What struck me most about this article was how even the FSF is not particularly behind Theora, per se. They are for "patent unencumbered" codecs, so they have no real inclination to push Theora in the marketplace. Without a proactive strategy to push Theora both in a business sense as well as technically, it will flounder.
Another codec bites the dust. Big deal.
... wait we already lost!? When did that happen? (Score:2, Insightful)
I dunno but I think "bites the dust" is a bit of a hyperbolic overstatement, don't you? I mean, I doubt Theora's market relevance or market saturation is on any sort of *decline* even if it clearly isn't catching up to h264 in any strategically important way either.
It sounds to me like you're saying here that just because the Ogg Theora team might be somewhat deluded about their codec's visual quality or market potential in the immediate future that it is proof they should just all give up and switch back to MJPEG.
Sure, it would take a lot more for large established companies like youtube to switch to Theora but that doesn't mean that h264 is flawless and everyone should just give up and surrender the entire market to it either. There is a value to the consumer simply in having a variety of video codecs available to choose from, especially ones that are free and tuned to conserve bandwidth.
Re:hmmm (Score:2, Insightful)
It's all about the IP and the patents!
If h.264 were royalty free, no doubt it would be supported. But as it stands, only those with deep pockets can pay the licensing fees — and that goes for both those providing the decoders as well as those simply hosting (broadcasting) h.264 encoded content.
The bigger picture (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think there's any evidence that the video tag is catching on in any meaningful way. Can anyone point me to evidence of the contrary?
Who is to say that Flash's grasp is even weakening among major content providers? Is the video tag DRM friendly?
Re:Theora (Score:5, Insightful)
And staying with that kind of thought process, one wonders why anybody bothered with Linux development from the mide 90's.
Re:The bigger picture (Score:3, Insightful)
Technically inferior (Score:3, Insightful)
The main problem with Theora, is that it is clearly technically inferior.
For instance, Vorbis generates comparable or better quality than MP3 of the same size, so it has a hope to be pushed. Theora doesn't.
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
The reasoning is that they wanted to put one codec in the spec that they could guarantee that all vendors would support, roughly like flash is now through plugins. That way, the video tag would actually be usable, website authors could guarantee that unless people used crazy browsers from crazyville, they would be able to watch the video.
In the mean time though:
â Mozilla refused to support h264 because it is patent encumbered.
â Apple refused to support ogg because it's technically inferior and they didn't want to put dev effort into something worse than they already have.
The result was that no decission could be made on which one would be supported everywhere.
Re:Where are we winning? (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound a bit down today. Cheer up BadAnalogyGuy, things'll get better soon and you'll be back on your feet making new and exciting bad analogies in no time. Like a wheel that has just driven over some shit.
Oh, and it isn't about proactive vs. reactive. The market doesn't care about motives, it cares about relative value. And when proprietary codecs become so expensive and encumbered that the cost of using them versus a free alternative crosses some threshold, Theora's relative value will rise and it will find its niche. Just as Ogg has made inroads with game manufacturers looking for ways to cut costs without cutting corners on quality.
Re:Where are we winning? (Score:3, Insightful)
As the first paragraph of the article says "[Ogg Theora] now works in over 24% of the world's web browsers". From the context it is obvious that this is why they are saying it is becoming a big deal. So maybe it won't ever catch on in other places but it does have a large portion of the browser market by being included in the second most popular browser.
Re:Theora (Score:1, Insightful)
Theora doesn't need to "win" to be a useful format. My music player plays vorbis, so it doesn't affect me much that others don't. The same principle applies if several devices on the market support theora.
Re:Theora (Score:2, Insightful)
well. once opencl is more previlant, opencl decoding of anything is perfectly viable.
even then, the end user doesn't care if its accelerated decoding or not, they just care that it plays smooth
Re:Theora (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Theora (Score:5, Insightful)
As for the higher bitrates arguments. Honestly you tube and co look like such crap I can't believe people ever bother, theora dose not look worse that these bit rates. I have decided most people are in fact blind.
Re:Theora (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok im sorry, but I keep hearing this arguement and it is pure and utter crap. Nobody, and i mean like, NOBODY, is ever going to want to run 1080p on a tiny little 3" screen. I know we'll the get the arguement of "but what if they want to hook it up to a TV", but in the real world, people don't do that. Heck, most people are amazed at the fact you can plug a computer into a TV. So seriously, yes H.264 is a better standard but stop this arguement for why because its just wrong.
Re:Theora (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:hmmm (Score:4, Insightful)
Submarine patents are not a valid reason for choosing H.264 and not Theora. The VP3 codec that Theora was based upon has been around for longer than H.264 so there has been longer for patent trolls to come out of the woodwork. The H.264 license you get from the MPEG-LA doesn't grant you a license to all of the patents required for H.264, it grants you a license to all of the patents that the MPEG-LA knows about required for H.264. Similarly, the (free and irrevocable) patent grant from On2 gives you a license to all of the patents that On2 knows about required for Theora.
Oh, and it wouldn't take a few hours for an Apple developer to add Theora support, it would take zero hours. On my machine, video tags referring to Theora content Just Work(tm) in Safari. Safari doesn't do any video decoding, it delegates it to QuickTime. If you have the (free, provided by Xiph) QuickTime Theora plugin installed then Theora videos work correctly. Installing the codec isn't exactly difficult and once you've done it you never have to think about it again. The problem is on the iPhone, where users can not install their own codecs.
Re:Theora (Score:4, Insightful)
I am sick of this argument. Not because of its merit, but because of its defeatist attitude. Arguments like this one are basically "Theora has no hardware decoders at the moment, therefore it never will, and Theora will die." They may not be saying this explicitly, but the implication is certainly there.
At what point do you think that someone won't step up to the plate and design a Theora decoder? I don't know of any technical reason that they can't. The decoder has been frozen since 2004, so encoder improvements can still continue and will still play on hardware-accelerated devices. The only thing that is needed is sufficient demand for the codec. The codecs you mentioned as now having hardware accelerators started out without any. It was only after those formats became popular that they started being built.
Furthermore, mobile devices may or may not need these decoders, but the overpowered Core Octo machines that the soccer moms and grandmothers of the world are being told that they have to buy for their e-mail and word processing needs will handle Theora without any acceleration. You mentioned your $50 card? Well, my card has no acceleration at all, and I can play web-resolution Theora just fine. In fact, I can play multiple videos at the same time.
Defeatist arguments like this one aren't helping. They are hurting. They only serve to create self-fulfilling prophecies by discouraging Theora adoption on the grounds of something that will never come to pass unless Theora adoption occurs in the first place. If you really do want Theora to succeed, then it needs to grow enough of a base that chip manufacturers will see a high enough demand for Theora chip production.