New Open Video Codec From Xiph/On2

xercist writes: "Xiph.org, the bringers of the mighty Vorbis codec, have done it again. The patents on On2's VP3 video codec have been effectively neutered, and it is being released under the BSD license for all to enjoy. The combination of VP3 video and Vorbis audio (in an OGG bitstream, of course) will be called Theora, and will soon take over the world. The ETA to a 1.0 release is approximately one year. You can also read an interview with Emmett Plant (Xiph CEO) here. The official press release will be up tomorrow, so don't complain about lack of mention on xiph.org just yet."

very nice but can it overtake DivX?

It's an uphill battle, that's for sure, and the DivX team is sure to come up with new features in a year. But does this open codec have a chance to overtake DivX? This could be another mp3/ogg debate, but more choices in video codecs is always better.

Re:very nice but can it overtake DivX?

I think it is very possible. The reason ogg really hasn't taken a significant portion of the market away from mp3 is that mp3 is so well established. It is so quick and easy to make an mp3. It's very easy to come by software for making mp3s and you can rip and encode an entire album in less time than it takes to play it. Anyone can do it.

By comparison, DivX is widely used, but _not_ established. Here's why:
There are far fewer people making DivX movies than mp3s;
The software is slightly more difficult to come by;
Ripping takes longer because most DVD drives are slower than CD;
The raw video takes a lot of disk space;
Encoding takes a VERY long time compared to mp3.

Overall this means that those making DivX tend to be a few savvy users and it will be easy for those users to switch to a new standard. So that being the case it will only take a few people changing over to a new standard to affect a change. Of course these people will have to see that Xiph/On2's way of doing things is better, but if Xiph/On2 can prove that, I'd say they have a very good chance.

How exactly...

... do you "neuter" a patent?

Re:How exactly...

How exactly do you "neuter" a patent?

With snippy scissors and a cold, cold heart.

"Hold still, little patent, this will only hurt for a second..."

How long until windows users can check it out?

Approximately how long until there's a windows version of a player, and some demos to check out? It'll be interesting to see how well the quality turns out once the algorithm is put into action.

:^)

Ryan Fenton

VP3 and quality

Does anyone know how vp3 compares to other codecs that are already here or emerging, namely MPEG3 and DivX? Ogg is obviously making headway in the technical area of being the best lossy audio codec, and if vp3 can do the same, then hopefully this will give Free Software an edge in the media areas.

One problem here though; I suggest someone adapt the VP3 code to a GPL license, ortherwise Microsoft, Apple, or any other company could simply take VP3 and make it Free Software's worst enemy by not releasing specs on the derivative audio codec. Observe: we are just now beginning to see Sorenson codecs that are open source.

Re:VP3 and quality

Usually, I'm a GPL supporter, but I can understand the reasoning behind using BSD here.

They're trying to establish a new video standard, which isn't easy. So they want to encourage the maximum number of developers to participate. A BSD license will do that.

It's questionable whether someone would spend the effort to take the codec, improve it significantly, and make it proprietary. In any case, such a proprietary version would probably not catch on.

Remember, there are no effective patents in this case, so the Sorenson problem would seem not to apply.

And Xiph now has a track record of actually maintaining their code, making it better, not pulling funny tricks.

Oh, I (or you) can make this new code GPL today. Just download it, change the license at the top, and post it. But what would be the point of that? There'd still be the BSD version, and it would be better-maintained.

Unlikely

Microsoft and Apple already have plenty of proprietary video and audio codecs, some of which are de facto standards, so if they incorporate an incompatible hack of "VP3" that's bad luck, but doesn't actually makes things any worse.

If it's GPL'd, the above isn't possible. However, it's also much more difficult to incorporate unhacked VP3 support into their players and encoders, because they have to write their own code rather than just using the available library. That is bad, because we (the free software using community) *want* them to add VP3 support to their proprietary players. Let me repeat that - VP3 support in proprietary software is a good thing.

Why, you may ask? Because if it is available in the software that everybody uses (which, sadly, at this point is still proprietary software), it might become a de facto standard, become the standard format web video clips, for instance, are encoded in, and thus free software users are no longer second-class citizens when it comes to video codecs. Additionally, it makes the ultimate migration of Windows users over to free desktops that much easier.

I believe even RMS has agreed, on occasion, that the BSD license can be appropriate if it helps free file formats become the standard.

Re:VP3 and quality

I've used VP3 quite a bit, since DivX hasn't released a mac encoder yet. In my tests (recording on a Tibook G4 667) it encodes more slowly than Sorenson 3 or Apple's Mpeg4 codec, but the quality is very comparable, even better in high-motion scenes.

Mpeg4 and Sorenson 3, even at bit rates nearly half those of an Mpeg-2 DVD stream, still produce pixellation artifacts in very high-motion scenes. VP3, at any bitrate over 30Kps, does not. While it is not as sharp as the other codecs at high bit rates, I found it to be very superior at lower ones.

My only complaint is that, for some reason, any movie encoded at full size (640 by 480) would, not matter what the bitrate, barely play back at all. even though full 30 fps video plays back without difficulty on my G4. It wasn't a case of a few dropped frames, but a total stall down to 4 fps.

Anyway, for high-quality, low-bitrate video, it's the best codec I've had the opportunity to use personally in terms of quality and playback/ kbps. I'm sure that the newest DivX surpasses it, but I won't be able to play around with that codec until they release a mac encoder. VP3's quality is comparable to the DivX movies I have downloaded, though.

With some development, it could be a very competitive offering.

MPEG-3? (MPEG taxonomy)

There was no MPEG-3. That was the working name for the original high definition MPEG format. However, they decided that they could implement HD with extensions to MPEG-2. Thus, MPEG-2 is used in HDTV, and there is no MPEG-3.

MPEG-4 is the new video/audio/streaming/etcetera standard.

http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/standards/mpeg- 4/ mpeg-4.htm

There are no MPEG-5 or MPEG-6

MPEG-7 is a forthcoming media metadata format. It doesn't include video compression technology. You'd still use MPEG-4 codecs within MPEG-7, or even use non MPEG codecs.

(The official link is broken right now)

No MPEG-8 through MPEG-20, at least not yet.

MPEG-21 is a multimedia authoring and delivery format. It's in very early stages, but think more like a competitor to Flash MX, writ large. We're some years from seeing products based on it.

http://mpeg.telecomitalialab.com/standards/mpeg- 21 / peg-21.htm

Theora?

Xiph needs to realise they don't know how to name things. A good name is part of marketting. It doesn't matter if you and all your geek buddies can talk about Ogg Vorbis without feeling akward if all the other kids think it sounds like Klingon. Is it any surprise DivX is so widely used when the name was basically stolen off a product that had commercial marketting?

VP3 is a great name. Most people can even imagine what it stands for - video mp3 - which they would be very comfortable talking about. Why change it?

Re:Theora?

Like all Xiph projects such as Vorbis or Tarkin, Theora is named after a fictional character. Theora Jones was the name of Edison Carter's 'controller' on the television series Max Headroom. She was played by Amanda Pays.

Change?

will we trade .vp3 instead of .mp3?

Porn films

We all know that porn site's choice of encoders dictates the success of media formats!

Re:Porn films

Porn sites' choices of video codecs are based more on installed base and ease of use than technical merit or licensing costs (remember, a decent porn site is profitable and can afford to spend money to make money). Far better to pay for a solution that your clients will be able to use than try to get away with a free solution that will do nothing but cause support headaches and (the bane of adult sites) chargebacks from dissatisfied customers.

Anything that involves a download and/or installation is bad news. People don't trust downloads from porn sites (though, to the best of my knowledge, there's never been a case where a porn site used a download for nefarious purposes). Beyond that, as we all know, some percentage of installations fail for one reason or another. If you have to supply even a link to a third party download, people will blame you if it doesn't work.

For these reasons, Windows Media is clearly winning the battle for porn site content, measured by new clips produced.

Real probably still has an overall lead in clips available for legacy reasons, but nobody is producing new porn in Real format. It comes back to support and chargebacks: Real tries so hard to trick people into the "free 14 day trial, $9.95/month" player that it generates no end of customer support headaches ("You said if I paid $29.95 a month I'd get free video... and now I have to pay another $9.95 a month for the player! You bastard porn sites are all the same! Lying, cheating scum! Why can't you operate like normal, ethical businesses?").

Not that I'd know anything about that industry.

Cheers
-b

How can it compete?

With the majority of people still using Windows, the DOJ having sold out to Microsoft, allowing them to continue to bundle Windows Media Player with Windows, and the remaining states' lawsuit still a way off from achieving any real results, so it seems, it seems hard for any other media suite to gain mainstream acceptance as a standard. Even if the states get Media Player out of new WinXP releases, there are still many, many people with Media Player on their computers, many of whom don't care enough to download another program. It looks like it's going to be an uphill battle...

excellent!

What the headline implies is that On2 is not helping out. This is incorrect.

"On2 will sponsor work done by the Xiph.org Foundation to combine those projects, plus On2's already open-sourced VpVision personal video recorder, into a product they believe will provide serious, free competition to the increasingly expensive MPEG-4 royalty fees." --from NewsForge

Hats off to On2!
-b


PS. Currently listening to Oggs and ripping them too. tres nice.

just like they do now?

and will soon take over the world.

I don't mean to be negative but....how many people download oggs? or use oggs in their RIO's?

Just a note...

Before anyone praises "On2 Technologies" too much, you should be aware of their product line. VP3 is their old leftovers. They've since improved it and release VP4, and recently made more improvments and released the VP5 codec. They've been giving VP3 away for some time, as more of a demo of what their newer technologies can do better.

While it's better then nothing, (we certainly need an open video codec), but On2 isn't exactly fully on the Open Source wagon.

Just a few facts for those who didn't and won't bother to read the background and articles.

Re:Just a note...

Not entirely true.

VP4 was a set top box codec. It was never released in any form for computer-based playback.

VP5 hasn't yet been released. I don't know what On2's plans are with it.

Pass the crack pipe

This will take over the world?

Sort of how OGG took over the MP3 world? Not likely. Its nice to have an optional patent-unencumbered method for video & audio sharing, but anyone who thinks this will be anything more than a tiny niche product living in the shadow of MPEG4/WMV really needs to get out of his mom's basement more.

Not ment for home use :-/

from the requirements page:
Microsoft Windows ® NT, 2000, XP
Pentium III 800 Mhz recommended
20 GB system drive
256 MB RAM
A/V rated hard disk (able to sustain at least 20 Megabyte data throughput, using a stripe or raid) - disk size depends on how much uncompressed video storage you need. Preferably a separate drive from system drive.
64 bit PCI slot
ViewGraphics VideoPump 701 capture card with SDI input
Graphics card - at least 16-bit
Sound card with either speakers or headphones
Serial port for attaching hardware key

--
who has a 64 bit pci slot in a home pc, much less a hard drive that's a/v quality
the quality looks better then divx but if most people cant even use the encoder I do not see it lasting long

Servers will dictate pace of development

The ETA to a 1.0 release is approximately one year.

Unfortunately, I find this a little optimistic. I've been waiting on Icecast 2 with Vorbis streaming for a long time, and I'm still waiting. (Redirect "build from CVS" replies to /dev/null)

It's my experience that you have to be able to serve/stream this stuff for it to really take off. Sure you can download your pr0n AVIs, MPEGs, ASFs, and WMVs, but where the Ogg and open source movement can make headway is against the streaming servers, namely RealServer.

Don't get me wrong, I think the end results will be good, but they, like most open source projects, will be slow to develop.

But what about more than 2-channel audio?

I'm still waiting for any audio codec that lets me encode more than 2 channels. I just read the Vorbis FAQ and can see nothing there. This could be one way that they could get an advantage over DIVX or MPEG-4... they could be the only file format to include options for, say, 6.1 discrete channels of downloadable, streamable, audio. More and more computers have surround sounds now. Thoughts?

Re:But what about more than 2-channel audio?

Read the last question of the FAQ. "Vorbis does currently support greater than two channels; the default multichannel mapping in the 1.0 release supports up to 255 simultaneous channels." (Mmm. 255 channels.)

another xiph open standard?

they havn't gotten around to polishing vorbis yet, where do they get the time to work on a video codec? will this be the same maneuver as the ogg format?

"look, it's free and open. well, unless you want the specs, which don't exist, so you have to use our source. want an integerized implementation (for your rio)? well, since you don't have the specs, we'll be glad to sell you one."

this is why ogg is not in hardware yet. this is why there arn't alternate implementations (LAME ogg, anyone?).

i'd love to see a free, open video codec. mpeg royalties suck ass. but my patience with xiph is running short.

eat more chicken!

GPL? BSD? What's the matter

Is that really important if the implementation is GPL'ed or BSD? If the format and codec is sufficiently documented, I don't see why is that an issue.

Actually, I see that BSD license might have a slight edge, but not much.

Oh, great.

So I take it they gave up on Tarkin then?

FWIW there's a (getting old) codec comparison on Doom9 (http://www.doom9.org/codecs2.htm#test1). VP3 comes out *really* badly.

Dave

Wheels

I hate to be the skeptic, but I think it is necessary. It seems to me that we have enough vidoe formats. We've got MPEG, AVI, QuickTime, RealVideo, DivX... This is just yet another codec that movie viewers have to implement. Grated, it is open sourced under the BSD license, but that is no excuse to reinvent wheels. The formats we have work great for me, and I dont see why I need yet another fancy video format on my hard disk. The failure of UNIX was the splintering of all the different variants. Now it seems no matter where one looks, one can see the splintering of all technology. Instead of unifying standards, everybody is out to make their own "standard" and push it on the rest of the world. This is something many people attribute to Microsoft, but at the same time there are people in the Open Source sector doing the exact same thing.

Re:Wheels

I hate to be the skeptic, but I think it is necessary. It seems to me that we have enough vidoe formats. We've got MPEG, AVI, QuickTime, RealVideo, DivX... This is just yet another codec that movie viewers have to implement. Grated, it is open sourced under the BSD license, but that is no excuse to reinvent wheels.

You have no idea how wrong you are. If Microsoft has taught the world anything, it's that file formats are KING. Who controls the file format, controls the direction the technology goes.

Of the codecs you mentioned, how many let you:

• create your own movies without paying $BIG_COMPANY for patent and/or copyright licensing?
• create your own movies on your non-Microsoft OS of choice (legally)
• implement the codec without getting sued for patent infringement

The companies who own these technologies are not only gatekeepers that require a toll to board the train, but their control of the technology (with the help of the DMCA and patent law) gives them the power to regulate how the technology is used. If they decide, say, to introduce REGION CODING into the format (not that any company would ever do something like that), the users have no recourse to work around it because it's illegal to decode the format without either using an approved player that enforces the rules or paying patent licensing fees (in which case it is probably against the terms of the license to circumvent the rules).

It is immensely important to have open formats and codecs for media. Do you really trust your data to companies who have no regard for you? Every time you encode using a company's format, you are entrusting your data to them, that they will port their decoder to any future OS you decide to use (and that they will even EXIST that far into the future), and that they will be reasonable with the policy they build into the format. I don't know about you, but I have no intention of becoming Apple's hostage every time I dump the contents of a camcorder to disk.

Uh oh...

If anyone has any questions, give me a ring at 215-820-9583, or E-mail me at [e-mail].

I hope this number has been ROT5ed or this is going to be the first case of phone-slashdotting we've seen.

VP3 doesn't perform too well currently..

doom9 ran a comprehensive test [doom9.org] and VP3 didn't perform too well with it. A similar test with VP4 [doom9.org] didn't go well for On2 either. I think the main problem with the the On2 codec is the lack of good 2-pass VBR option. Perhaps now that VP3 has been opensourced we can see people working on that.

Meanwhile, XviD [xvid.org] remains a good open-sourced video codec project to look at but much of the stuff is covered under MPEG4 patents so this project is pretty much like the LAME mp3 encoder. But at least currently I'm getting better quality encodes with XviD, while encoding the audio with Vorbis and mux [everwicked.com] ing [doom9.org] both streams into an Ogg container.

This _is_ important (in a good way)

Alot of people have been saying there's already plenty of good usable video codecs out there...

Too bad they don't seem to realize that the licenses for the patents involved are pretty stiff. (mpeg4's "pay as you stream", etc)

We need something we can use freely - or only (employees of) big corporations will be able to create and publish video's. I don't want to be in a situation where individuals can't really afford to create content and publish it.

That's why they felt the need to create ogg vorbis even though there were mp3's already. That's why we need Theora and Tarkin even though there's mpeg2/4, sorensen, MS corona etc.

So, definately a good thing.

As for VP3 being a "leftover" - well, that's being a bit ungrateful.

- Opening the source, and neutering the patents allows people to learn from it, which is quite important since very few people have the expertise to contribute to a project like ogg vorbis or tarkin.
- Why do you expect a company like on2 to give away their latest and greatest for free?
- On top of it all, they doing more than just dumping their code. Their writing a spec (a hard job), funding a developer, and continuing to work on it from their side. Well, if that's not being opensource-friendly, then what is?

Yes, opening up vp3 is a way of getting interest in their more advanced products. But what is wrong with that?

You gotta love On2 Tech.

You've just got to love any company that makes a movie called To Kill a Lawyer [on2.com].

How to help make it popular...

Finally! A formal statement that specs will finally be written for video+vorbis in .ogg

From what little I've seen, VP3 is, overall, not as "good" as the various MPEG4 variants out now, but is a little better (in terms of quality and lack of "artifacts") than the "windows media" implementation [at least, from the one review I looked through].

The important thing from my perspective is that VP3/Vorbis in Ogg will give us a completely "free" way to offer videos...which brings me to my point.

There ARE some "public domain" videos out there. Not just obscure "indy" things but actual commercial movies, cartoons, shows, and so on that matured into the public domain when their owner didn't renew them (back when that was required).

There's a whole mess of them available on LSVideo [lsvideo.com] (which appears to be undergoing a redesign, but offered and will apparently continue to offer a wide variety of public-domain [i.e. you can legally make copies for all of your friends if you want] videos) and RetroFilms [retrofilms.com]. Retrofilms even offers a number of Disney [retrofilm.com] (!) cartoons that slipped through their iron grasp into mature public-domain works. MOST of them are rather old, but many are well known (Metropolis [not the new Anime', the classic silent film], for example, and the classic "Nosferatu"...and, I believe, the insipid [in my opinion] but well known "It's a Wonderful Life".)And, of course, there's a whole mess of interesting and/or bizarre and/or educational things in the Prelinger Archives Movies Online [archive.org].

So....as soon as encoding software becomes available [I suspect ffmpeg and/or MPlayer will be set up to handle it pretty quickly after the initial source code and specs become available, if their recent development speed is any indication] I plan to go through the surprising number of videos that I own that turn out to be Public Domain, encode them into "Theora"-type files, and try making them available peer-to-peer.

At the very least, there are bound to be enough "oddball" videos available in the public domain that making them available in this format, combined with the fact that neither the "content" nor the file format, nor the video codec, nor the audio codec will be legally prohibited from distribution, they could easily become encountered often enough to promote the format to the point that, though it may never actually overtake proprietary formats, it'll pretty much "need" to be supported by any piece of multimedia software and playback unit that intends to bill itself as handling a lot of different formats...

I yearn for the day when my DVD playback unit can handle "Theora" videos and "Ogg/Vorbis" sound in addition to the .mp3's it already does...

Get cracking on that spec, Xiph!!!!!

(P.S. - Are there already IRC channels devoted to serving legal, public-domain videos?...)

10 Years After

Isn't just Alvin Lee anymore. So we may finally have an OSS version of something that's been around for over a decade. Quicktime, I mean. Good, great. But in the real world, nobody cares. In the real world, first counts. First by ten years counts a lot. We'd all like to see OSS be a real contender, if for no other reason than to keep the big boys on their toes, but c'mon. If you think this means anything to anyone outside of a small circle of ubergeeks, you're kidding yourselves.

Maybe it's just me, but I think OSS is never really going to matter until they do it first, not second, and certainly not 10 years after. Real innovation, not catch-up. There are a lot of bright people in OSS, why are they always following, never leading? Seriously.

Bla bla bla No numbers! c'mon people.

I read the discussions here, the interresting subject is the licensing, the FUD subject is how it will take over and so on.

First, before even talking about taking over Divx, please point me to a site that has a codec study, not on the theorical, not on lame useless "tom's hardware" numbers, but on a scientific or scientific-like approach with proper setup and testing.

Nothing like an example to clear things up:

Codec usage, yes it can crunch more than divx for "similar" quality that is "similar" to DVD, which is "similar" to uncompressed video... heh. no, this is totally wrong, what I want to see is uncompressed video, original sequence, then compress Divx with best quality at X bitrate, do the same with that new codec, try at least 3 different kind of video that are abusing codecs differently: High contrast (black and white with sharp edges being the most evil), smooth colors (4:1:1 DV videos can show some serious color bending when you look at it closely, for example) so how is the color bending affecting each codecs?, and finally, motion, low speed, high speed, repeat with the last two example and make all the different mix, and then try different bitrates, then check the results, if they are similar, zoom in, check the pixelization, I don't want just words or lame tests with no numbers, I want a half-decent scientific approach, I wish I had time to make such a thing like I did before with mpeg/mjpg/mpeg4 V1.

Of course we all know that you don't have to be the best to win, there are other factors to consider as well, but in my case, QUALITY will make me switch from a codec to another for my video presentation, so far, I still use DIVX for video-only movies, a good optimized MJPEG codec for software playback of home-made multimedia cd-roms on PC only (divx needs too much cpu juice that I require for other realtime tasks on my video display software for slower machines), and I just wish I would find that perfect codec that wouldn't look like thrash when I display the colors and motion on a plasma screen.

I will jump on anything new if it does the job better than what I have right now, but please, don't just say it's so much better because of [blabla], say actual facts and numbers, it will be very interresting to read.

What file format for Theora?

From reading the announcement, I don't have much idea what file format this is going to use. .ogg as I understand it is really designed as an audio codec/format; I'm not sure how easy it would be to add video samples to it, usefully.

If they're looking to still pick a format, I hope they do QuickTime. QuickTime's file format itself is open and documented, and there are a number of open source projects to implement it. As of QT6, QuickTime itself now has native support for VBR audio encoding, which makes it easier to do an Ogg encoder inside QT (VBR decode has been in there since 4.1).

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/quicktime/qt de vdocs/PDF/QTFileFormat.pdf

With QuickTime support, one immediately inherits a wide installed base of players, and lots of functionality. For example, real time streaming support is availble via the open source Darwin Streaming Server. The codecs just need to have a native packetizer added.

The nice thing about implementing Theora as a QuickTime file would mean folks would have the option of using high-end QuickTime encoding apps like Cleaner for encoding, and generally letting the files work well in both the closed and open source universes.

VP3 is of course already implemented in QuickTime so doing this would mainly be a matter of finishing the Ogg port as a QuickTime codec:

http://qtcomponents.sourceforge.net/

Theora reference

I hope the Ogg team is really geeky and the name is a reference to Amanda Pays' character in Max Headroom, Theora Jones, Edison Carter's controller.

Here's the cart, where's the horse?

C'mon are they serious, I'm glad xiph.org has gotten their hands on this codec, but writing a competitive video codec is much harder than writing a competitive audio codec. Video compression research is moving very quickly and I really don't think xiph.org is equipped to compete in this market, how many people do they have working for them, five? With Monty being the only one working on the core of vorbis. Sure On2 says they will help out, but as some posters have said earlier, it seems like On2 is just passing out the left-overs.

I think before they even compress on frame of video, vorbis 1.0 with spec. should be out the door. That's just my opinion, and as the replies will say, it's open source don't complain help out!

Clichés Away

If I had a dime for every time Emmett Plant used a cliché in his interview [everwicked.com]....

I'd have a least $1.30...

How to give it a chance to become popular

1 - Make it decently stable.

2 - Encode a good number of movies/videoclips with it and release them to p2p networks (porn stuff will help a lot)

3 - Release -now- the player and the encoder in a userfriendly format. No CVS trees, builds or config files to edit (in Linux too).

Theora?

What happened to Tarkin? Time to go visit the ol' Xiph site... I must have missed something...