Big post with comments from other article about the same matter:
http://www.betanews.com/...o-for-HTML-5/1248278484

>Yet its underlying technology may not only be outmoded, some are arguing, but may also actually still be owned by someone who has yet to assert patent rights.

That holds also true for h264!, why the FUD about the Theora codec?

>If [YouTube] were to switch to Theora and maintain even a semblance of the current YouTube quality it would take up most available bandwidth across the Internet. The most recent public number was just over 1 billion video streams a day, and I've seen what we've had to do to make that happen, and it is a staggering amount of bandwidth.

This is going to be outdated (and become deprecated) in a pretty short time frame.
The current Xiph.org implementation has some pretty big bugs and inefficiencies, libtheora v1.0 that is.

The next version of this library will have better, more efficient encoding.
There is already a comparison with fresh code from some days ago that implements a new efficient fDCT algorithm:
http://people.xiph.org/~...compare/comparison.html

The point of the article:
Theora even outperforms h264 for some files with the new algorithm!
Well, well, well, who would have thought that to happen?

That version of the library (libtheora v1.1) is scheduled to be completed end 2009/begin 2010. (currently that is the roadmap, it can be changed if more or less time is needed)

>Apple is reluctant to provide similar support in Safari, stating its fear that holders of the patents for video technology upon which Ogg is based -- technology that used to be considered proprietary at one time -- may exercise their rights under "submarine patents" and take Mozilla and others to court.

That holds also true for h.264! Why the FUD about Theora?
Because Apple has patents on h.264 and has come up with the idea of making people scared with patent and court ideas. They also count for your codec Apple!
Apple has patents for h.264!
MPEG has asked Apple to provide a free licence, Apple refused and MPEG is taking the blame.

>Presently, Mozilla and Opera Software are the two major players that remain on-board with the idea of Ogg Theora support built into the browser, especially now that Firefox 3.5 is shipping.

Because Google's Chrome doesn't contain ogg in the Linux version YET, it doesn't count or what?!
Google supports ogg by providing it in the Windows version.
(There is no reason why Google won't add it to the Linux and Mac version too.)
Google also has the idea of ogg support in the browser because Google ... euhm ... supports it!!
Why the FUD about it?

Important forgotten feature, h264 needs a lot of processing power.
Theora has lower system-requirements and runs smoother on lower-end hardware.

To Close this of, a nice surprise of ogg.
Ogg uses an audio codec named vorbis that is superior over MP3 in terms of quality-per-bit.

I hope the W3C uses h.264 as the video standard. Firefox can ship without it, and use an add-on if they need to. Or they can work out a deal with the large video sites to basically pay for the client license fees (Which are probably insanely small).

Poor naive soul.

H.264 is not free.

They won't be insanely small.

http://www.theregister.c...07/08/html_5_media_spec/

Quote (falls under fair use):
"IT vendors implementing H.264 must license the codecs from MPEG LA, a process that can cost individual companies millions of dollars. Microsoft has already jumped through this hoop, so it is in a position to make H.264 available codecs available to users of its media player or browser."

And MS is dodging the licence fees by offloading the h264 decoding work to the graphic card.

But Sliverlight 3.0 is a better option then Flash 10 at the moment. I hope Flash can do something in the upcoming version. At least in terms of H.264, Sliverlight 3.0 is handling it much better.

I think HTML should leave out an audio codec. After all HTML is an markup language. It shouldn't force a single codec usage. I strongly believe if Theroa is better then H.264 in everyway, quality, less CPU demanding, Free then no one would object it. But it is completely the opposite. H.264 is better in every way.

"H.264 is better in every way."

Except in some jurisdictions there are patents on the algorithms used, and Mozilla can't afford to license them (not to mention that it is antithetical to their philosophy of openness). Theora, on the other hand,is completely open and free (except the format on which it is based was originally proprietary and patented, but the company has donated it and declared it free). This is why Mozilla and Opera prefer it. Google probably would, too, except they claim that the quality/bitrate ratio is lower (but there have been experiments done with conclusions on either end, so I think it really depends on the video and encoder).

Apple's fear is that Theora *may* depend on as-of-yet *unknown* patents and whose holders may, if use of such patents is discovered in a Theora implementation, demand large sums of money for its use. I think it's unlikely that these patents exist (many have tried to find them but have failed), and I think Apple is mostly doing this because they are more attached to H.264.

Theora actually sux. The developers said so. To be precise, they said that it's hard to improve Theora's quality while maintaining the bitstream compatibility. It would have been easier to work with it if they had the ability to hack freely.
Theora encoder is getting better. But it is nowhere near x264. And with Theora specs being somewhat inferior to H.264, i wouldn't predict that it will tie up with any of the mainstream (x264, MainConcept, Intel IPP) H.264 encoders in 2 years. Well, unless they get a substantial boost in development resources (people). One year ago one of the FFmpeg developers commented that "Theora's quality is comparable to MPEG2". Of course, we've seen 2 Theora releases since then, so now i would say it's closer to XviD...

P.S. I would really like to see real objective codec comparisons (such as the ones from MSU) with x264, Theora, XviD, Snow, Dirac, MPEG2 participating. That would show exactly who stands where and you won't need me commenting on these things with rumors, weasel-words, speculations, estimations and personal opinions.

P.P.S. Nevertheless, i do support Theora as a standard Web video codec. It's better to stick to the principles now. You can improve implementation (in time) and specs (in much more time). But if you stuck with H.264 - you're stuck for a decade or two...And you'll have to pay. All of us will have to pay.

TBH, I've not looked into it much, but I have heard (int he other thread) that libtheora 1.1 is coming out by teh end of the year and could outperform H.264.

....of course, we'll have to wait and see.

I wouldn't say the developers said Theora "sucked," but they *did* admit that sometimes they had to use less efficient algorithms (than, say, H.264) to avoid using patented ones. That means that sometimes it will be either slower, larger, or lower-quality than it could be with a better algorithm--but such is the nature of software patents.

No it is not better in EVERY way.

>Theora has less CPU consumption.
(Less calculations required for decoding.)
Which means smoother playback on low-end hardware.
(somehow netbooks come to my mind)

>Theora is free, doesn't costs anything, can be used for anything.

These are two points where Theora clearly is better than H264.

And about Apple's fear.
Apple has patents on H264!
They are the ones who want to make you pay!
Apple is disguising as the MPEG LA,
the MPEG has asked to drop the royalties and provide everything for free.

Theora and FLV both branched from the same codec by the same company. They're both comparable quality. H.264 is a different beast and not generally used on video websites due to patent issues

Silverlight doesn't work good on everything.
Flash works better actually, just from a productivity standpoint.
And H.264 demands a lot of CPU, much more than Theora.
The only reason it is not demanding much CPU is because a lot of products have special dedicated circuits for it (ASICs). Taking the heat of the CPU.

"Silverlight doesn't work good on everything.
Flash works better actually, just from a productivity standpoint. "

Funny.

Silverlight requires less code, can support more concurrent users, has better performance and less overhead... Yeah. I guess in bizarro world, that would be worse performance, right?

The world needs to get rid of flash infections. So, a good standard which promotes other options will be very welcome.
Oh, silverlight is not a good option either...

This is true and often underlooked. Adobe claims 99% of users have Flash installed, which seems a bit high to me. But if it's even anywhere close to this, that means the number of users who could be victims of attacks like the one publicized yesterday is still almost *everyone*. This is part of the reason we need openness instead of relying on a single implementation.

We saw this was true with mass reliance on a single vendor's implentation of Web browser layout engine (IE/Win), and I think we'll realize this applies just as well to other things like plug-ins from a single vendor, as well.

So we shouldn't be dependent on one standard for the web then either? I mean...this is where the majority of malware comes from, right? ;)

I realize you're probably teasing, but in any case, this is obviously a misinterpretation of what I meant: the problem isn't having one standard, the problem is relying almost universally on one *implementation* of that standard (for sufficiently vague defintions of the word "standard" if we consider Flash to be among these). Or, at least, this has proved itself to be problematic several times in the past, and so it's prudent to be wary about universally relying on anything, "standard" or not, with only one implementation.

*shrug*

Standards, as I see them, are merely suggestions for optimum compatibility. Obviously, if you have a *better* way of implementing something with better performance, less overhead, better licensing, more control...(whatever falls under *your* definition of "better"), then you should be free to do that.

This, in my opinion, is what leads to competition and innovation. If everyone stuck 100% to any specific standard, no-one would ever find those "great ideas" that improve upon them.

Going back to that "optimum compatibility" being the reason a standard exists in the first place, leaving this codec issue wide-open (not being specific) would be a fundamental flaw.