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First "Firefox Flicks" releasedFirst "Firefox Flicks" releasedPosted Apr 12, 2006 21:26 UTC (Wed) by k8to (subscriber, #15413)Parent article: First "Firefox Flicks" released
As the clips are 'MPEG 4' files, using the compressor mp4a for audio and mp4v for video. I can't figure out if the video codec is H.264, H.263, or otherwise. The audio is certainly an AAC implementation.
Both the audio and video streams in this clip are "open" formats, in that the specifications of them are generally available, if for a fee, for anyone who would like a copy.
The lack of generally available software to play them highlights the difference between the concept of an open format as specification-available, and an open format as unencumbered. While I can play these clips in xine, using open source software no less (libfaad, ffmpeg), the deployment of this software is illegal or legally questionable in various ways.
It saddens me to see the adoption of mpeg4 take off even by the Mozilla organization, who claim to be interested in interoperability, when mpeg4 can never truly address interoperability for all segments.
It does, of course, deliver higher quality results for lower bitrates as compared to all other broadly available options.
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First "Firefox Flicks" released Posted Apr 12, 2006 21:38 UTC (Wed) by moxfyre (guest, #13847) [Link] Theora's pretty darn good already, and would undoubtedly get better with more people working on it. Vorbis already equals or exceeds commercial audio codecs.
I feel that open source projects should try to give each other publicity when possible. Mozilla is a big and successful and well-publicized FLOSS project, but its devlopers certainly owe a lot to GCC and GNU tools and other free software. I'm sure the Ogg/Vorbis/Theora folks would be mighty appreciative for Mozilla to distribute Theora videos :-)
PS- People seem to have the misconception that Apple QuickTime was chosen because it can be played out-of-the-box on Windows. It CAN'T!!! You have to install the annoying Apple QuickTime nag-ware in order to play it. By that standard, the Theora plugin is EASIER to set up on Windows than QuickTime.
choosing Theora Posted Apr 12, 2006 22:09 UTC (Wed) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] After organising a recent free software event in Northern Ireland, myself and the other organisers faced the decision of how to distribute the recordings. So we started off weighing up the problems and benefits of using Theora. Problem
Oh, wait a second, that's a good thing. Decision process ends. If we, the free software community, won't user our works to increase Theora adoption, who will? Who would we be leaving it to, the Theora developers?
choosing Theora Posted Apr 12, 2006 23:40 UTC (Wed) by moxfyre (guest, #13847) [Link] Right on! That's exactly right.
And, for what it's worth, for most *Linux* users they don't even have to install any plugin or anything to watch Theora videos. For Ubuntu, ogg theora/vorbis/flac/speex "just works" ... I double click on one and up pops Totem.
Codec comparson -- a bit offtopic Posted Apr 13, 2006 21:39 UTC (Thu) by k8to (subscriber, #15413) [Link] I agree, Theora is pretty darn good. It's superior in terms of quality per size and absolute quality achievable as compared to MPEG1/2 and similar generation technologies. It's comparable to XVID/DIVX, and perhaps could get better with development of the in-stream codebooks.
It will never be as good or better than H.264 MPEG4 video, and the difference in quality is perceivable by normal humans on normal video files, unlike the subtle differences in relatively high quality audio codecs. H.264 simply has a large number of features which are not available in a Theora style codec such as specifying a large number of subsections of the screen, referring to a much larger number of previous frames, and so on.
The trade-off of course is that Theora is easily playable by nearly all computers out in the field at reasonable resolutions and framerates. A 300mhz pentium will play a reasonable theora download without much of a problem. H.264 can peg the processor on a 2ghz machine easily. I actually have to manually transcode such files into another format to watch them, a multi-hour process. The rapid adoption of H.264 is thus a huge annoyance to me because of a real insurmountable unplayability of the format, as well as the various legal problems it represents.
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