5 ms·

I've never quite understood why the resistance to the various Ogg formats? I certainly falls into that "good enough" category for encoding audio and video, the

I've never quite understood why the resistance to the various Ogg formats? I certainly falls into that "good enough" category for encoding audio and video, the same as Divx and mp3. And it appears to stream at rates a few percentage points lower than the prevalent licensed formats. My little Sansa clip player plays it quite happily and I like that I can stuff more songs onto its little 4GB memory if I reencode everything in Ogg, with really no perceptible different in sound. The few Ogg encoded videos I've seen seem perfectly fine and take up less space and use less bandwidth off of my disk to watch... I was mystified when Google and Chrome went h264. Seems like lots of expensive licenses for something that's cross platform and well supported with no real expense associated with it. seriously, why the hate?

jonknee 17y ago
Hardware decoding makes h264 usable on low-power devices like phones which Google sees as the future of the internet. It's technically superior and also supported out of the box by 97% of new computers. It's not a real surprise that Google built in support for h264--they have petabytes of h264 video and sell phones that play h264 with built-in hardware decoding. Oh and it looks better.
- kevingadd 17y ago
  If one of Microsoft's video codecs like VC-1 offered even better power efficiency and technical superiority, and "looked better" than h264 (whatever THAT means), would you still be a fan of using the "best available" proprietary codec? Would you be in favor of Google and other companies paying Microsoft license fees to use the codec? Or would you be arguing for the use of the "inferior" h264?
  - jonknee 17y ago
    If it was already shipping on 97% of computers and had widespread hardware acceleration support in mobile devices, sure why not? I have no allegiance to h264.
    - greyfade 17y ago
      It does. VC-1 has hardware support in a number of areas and is included in WMP since at least 10, IIRC. h.264 still is not supported on any version of Windows before 7, and is only available in Flash. Supporting h.264, with your logic, makes no sense.
- jrockway 17y ago
  Hardware decoding makes h264 usable on low-power devices like phones which Google sees as the future of the internet. This is true. But, if I had to choose between paying $20 extra for a better processor (that can play Theora) or $20 extra for a patent license (to legally play h.264), I would pick the former. At least I can use the better processor when I'm not watching video; the patent license only works for the 10 minutes a year I feel like looking at Youtube on my phone. It's technically superior and also supported out of the box by 97% of new computers. Nice statistic. What percentage of Internet users have "new computers", though? (I work at a company with 300,000 employees. We still use Windows XP; two versions behind the latest stable version of Windows!) You are right that h.264 is technically superior to Theora. The Space Shuttle is technically superior to my bicycle, but due to cost concerns, I have to ride my bike to work rather than fly there on the space shuttle. Sometimes the best solution is not the one you can afford. (I can't afford an h.264 license. Or rather, I won't afford it. I don't care that much about seeing a cat flushing a toilet on my phone.)
  - jonknee 17y ago
    > Nice statistic. What percentage of Internet users have "new computers", though? (I work at a company with 300,000 employees. We still use Windows XP; two versions behind the latest stable version of Windows!) The same h.264 files can be played with Flash, which is ubiquitous on "old" computers like you have at work. Everyone can watch now and when they upgrade they can watch without needing Flash. Ogg doubles storage requirements for the foreseeable future without any gain.
    - elblanco 17y ago
      I'm just curious, in a number crunching kind of way, what's the per-browser cost for Google for Chrome vs. just buying more hard drives? I'm sure somebody has done the math on this.
      - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
        Part of the problem is that there's a cap on the fees. Google/Youtube and other large conglomerates are already paying that cap ($5 million per year is a figure I've seen thrown around) so they get a pricing advantage compared with smaller startups. This makes sense for those collecting the fees because the big players could move the market by themselves if they switch so there's no use squeezing them for money, when you can use them to lure in large numbers of smaller players.
blasdel 17y ago
The Vorbis audio codec is well worth using: slightly better compression/quality than AAC, and natively VBR. It's widely used in commercial video games. Unfortunately for consumer use, the native container formats are awful, the decoder is computationally expensive, and it can't do CBR. On the other hand the Theora video codec has nothing going for it technically: it's worse than any of its competitors across the board. It was written for the commercial market, but was abandoned after no customers ever bought licenses. There are no independent implementations: there's only a transliteration of the decoder to Java, and a fork of the encoder to not suck quite as pointlessly within the bounds of the spec. Theora's few proponents are pushing it for purely ideological reasons. Has that ever worked?
jrockway 17y ago
I've never quite understood why the resistance to the various Ogg formats? My guess is that because there's no support for Digital Restrictions Management. Apple has already widely deployed software and devices that can play restricted h.264, and that's what the media companies that produce the content "want". (Of course, I never watch "media-company content" on Youtube. I doubt anyone whose videos I watch on Youtube would want Restriction Management on their files.) Incidentally, all of the music I've bought recently has been in FLAC format. Seems like everyone I listen to offers it in addition to mp3s. (It's just video-producers that think I am going to pay them $2 for a TV show I can't watch on my portable device. Haha, fat chance.)
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  I find it interesting that you can now buy music in FLAC format (from well known digital pioneers such as Metallica!) yet you can't play them on your Apple devices, instead they push their own home grown format, which they don't seem to licence widely and so generally undermine the whole concept of lossless audio. Kind of shows up their stance of we want to use the best and most widespread format (as does the crappiness of their H.264 encoder compared with the x264 encoder that they could just adopt). They never made any official announcement, but there were reports of Apple employees claiming that the ever handy bogeyman of patents were preventing them implementing FLAC. Shortly after they implemented their own ALAC (note that's the exact same name with Free replaced with Apple) which reverse engineering showed to be built with the exact same technology they claimed was under a patent cloud with a few extra bits which were actively avoided by FLAC because of patent worries. Having experienced that, and been quite disappointed as an Apple fan and owner, I can't take their stance of H.264 seriously.
  - blasdel 17y ago
    Well it's lossless, so you can transcode it without worry. I'm not sure if you can encode it without Quicktime, but decoder support is widely implemented. Apple originally developed ALAC for their AirTunes WiFi remote-speaker system. It supports low-latency streaming, and seeking works a lot better than with FLAC in every player I've used. FLAC's pointlessly-special container format suffers from the same screwy metadata problems as the other ogg formats: Apple wanted it in a standard mov/mp4 container.
anigbrowl 17y ago
I honestly think part of it is the stupid name. I think it's an outstanding technical achievement and generally wonderful, but while 'Vorbis' sounds (somewhat) hip and cool, talk of encoding your audio as 'ogg files' is a one-way ticket to nerd Siberia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name This obviously has nothing to do with companies like google and their licensing decisions, but I do honestly think it's a major reason the format never caught on with the general public.
scythe 17y ago
I'm surprised Dirac hasn't come up more in this discussion. It's as free as Theora - perhaps freer, since the BBC can guarantee there are no submarine patents - and it's miles ahead of Theora, comparable to h.264.
- ZeroGravitas 17y ago
  Dirac does come up, and it's interesting technology but not suitable for web video, being considerably worse at this task than both Theora and H.264. And no-one, not even the BBC, can guarantee they won't get patent trolled. That's part of the delicious brokenness of patents, you have prove a negative, prove that there are no black swans and while reasonable people will go forward based on probabilities and heuristics, the wider discussion about Theora moved onto politics and business a long time ago, where demanding people prove a negative is a good rhetorical trick even when it applies just as much, if not more, to your own side.

jonknee 17y ago

Hardware decoding makes h264 usable on low-power devices like phones which Google sees as the future of the internet. It's technically superior and also supported out of the box by 97% of new computers. It's not a real surprise that Google built in support for h264--they have petabytes of h264 video and sell phones that play h264 with built-in hardware decoding. Oh and it looks better.

kevingadd 17y ago
If one of Microsoft's video codecs like VC-1 offered even better power efficiency and technical superiority, and "looked better" than h264 (whatever THAT means), would you still be a fan of using the "best available" proprietary codec? Would you be in favor of Google and other companies paying Microsoft license fees to use the codec? Or would you be arguing for the use of the "inferior" h264?
- jonknee 17y ago
  If it was already shipping on 97% of computers and had widespread hardware acceleration support in mobile devices, sure why not? I have no allegiance to h264.
  - greyfade 17y ago
    It does. VC-1 has hardware support in a number of areas and is included in WMP since at least 10, IIRC. h.264 still is not supported on any version of Windows before 7, and is only available in Flash. Supporting h.264, with your logic, makes no sense.
jrockway 17y ago
Hardware decoding makes h264 usable on low-power devices like phones which Google sees as the future of the internet. This is true. But, if I had to choose between paying $20 extra for a better processor (that can play Theora) or $20 extra for a patent license (to legally play h.264), I would pick the former. At least I can use the better processor when I'm not watching video; the patent license only works for the 10 minutes a year I feel like looking at Youtube on my phone. It's technically superior and also supported out of the box by 97% of new computers. Nice statistic. What percentage of Internet users have "new computers", though? (I work at a company with 300,000 employees. We still use Windows XP; two versions behind the latest stable version of Windows!) You are right that h.264 is technically superior to Theora. The Space Shuttle is technically superior to my bicycle, but due to cost concerns, I have to ride my bike to work rather than fly there on the space shuttle. Sometimes the best solution is not the one you can afford. (I can't afford an h.264 license. Or rather, I won't afford it. I don't care that much about seeing a cat flushing a toilet on my phone.)
- jonknee 17y ago
  > Nice statistic. What percentage of Internet users have "new computers", though? (I work at a company with 300,000 employees. We still use Windows XP; two versions behind the latest stable version of Windows!) The same h.264 files can be played with Flash, which is ubiquitous on "old" computers like you have at work. Everyone can watch now and when they upgrade they can watch without needing Flash. Ogg doubles storage requirements for the foreseeable future without any gain.
  - elblanco 17y ago
    I'm just curious, in a number crunching kind of way, what's the per-browser cost for Google for Chrome vs. just buying more hard drives? I'm sure somebody has done the math on this.
    - ZeroGravitas 17y ago
      Part of the problem is that there's a cap on the fees. Google/Youtube and other large conglomerates are already paying that cap ($5 million per year is a figure I've seen thrown around) so they get a pricing advantage compared with smaller startups. This makes sense for those collecting the fees because the big players could move the market by themselves if they switch so there's no use squeezing them for money, when you can use them to lure in large numbers of smaller players.

blasdel 17y ago

The Vorbis audio codec is well worth using: slightly better compression/quality than AAC, and natively VBR. It's widely used in commercial video games. Unfortunately for consumer use, the native container formats are awful, the decoder is computationally expensive, and it can't do CBR. On the other hand the Theora video codec has nothing going for it technically: it's worse than any of its competitors across the board. It was written for the commercial market, but was abandoned after no customers ever bought licenses. There are no independent implementations: there's only a transliteration of the decoder to Java, and a fork of the encoder to not suck quite as pointlessly within the bounds of the spec. Theora's few proponents are pushing it for purely ideological reasons. Has that ever worked?

jrockway 17y ago

I've never quite understood why the resistance to the various Ogg formats? My guess is that because there's no support for Digital Restrictions Management. Apple has already widely deployed software and devices that can play restricted h.264, and that's what the media companies that produce the content "want". (Of course, I never watch "media-company content" on Youtube. I doubt anyone whose videos I watch on Youtube would want Restriction Management on their files.) Incidentally, all of the music I've bought recently has been in FLAC format. Seems like everyone I listen to offers it in addition to mp3s. (It's just video-producers that think I am going to pay them $2 for a TV show I can't watch on my portable device. Haha, fat chance.)

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
I find it interesting that you can now buy music in FLAC format (from well known digital pioneers such as Metallica!) yet you can't play them on your Apple devices, instead they push their own home grown format, which they don't seem to licence widely and so generally undermine the whole concept of lossless audio. Kind of shows up their stance of we want to use the best and most widespread format (as does the crappiness of their H.264 encoder compared with the x264 encoder that they could just adopt). They never made any official announcement, but there were reports of Apple employees claiming that the ever handy bogeyman of patents were preventing them implementing FLAC. Shortly after they implemented their own ALAC (note that's the exact same name with Free replaced with Apple) which reverse engineering showed to be built with the exact same technology they claimed was under a patent cloud with a few extra bits which were actively avoided by FLAC because of patent worries. Having experienced that, and been quite disappointed as an Apple fan and owner, I can't take their stance of H.264 seriously.
- blasdel 17y ago
  Well it's lossless, so you can transcode it without worry. I'm not sure if you can encode it without Quicktime, but decoder support is widely implemented. Apple originally developed ALAC for their AirTunes WiFi remote-speaker system. It supports low-latency streaming, and seeking works a lot better than with FLAC in every player I've used. FLAC's pointlessly-special container format suffers from the same screwy metadata problems as the other ogg formats: Apple wanted it in a standard mov/mp4 container.

anigbrowl 17y ago

I honestly think part of it is the stupid name. I think it's an outstanding technical achievement and generally wonderful, but while 'Vorbis' sounds (somewhat) hip and cool, talk of encoding your audio as 'ogg files' is a one-way ticket to nerd Siberia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorbis#Name This obviously has nothing to do with companies like google and their licensing decisions, but I do honestly think it's a major reason the format never caught on with the general public.

scythe 17y ago

I'm surprised Dirac hasn't come up more in this discussion. It's as free as Theora - perhaps freer, since the BBC can guarantee there are no submarine patents - and it's miles ahead of Theora, comparable to h.264.

ZeroGravitas 17y ago
Dirac does come up, and it's interesting technology but not suitable for web video, being considerably worse at this task than both Theora and H.264. And no-one, not even the BBC, can guarantee they won't get patent trolled. That's part of the delicious brokenness of patents, you have prove a negative, prove that there are no black swans and while reasonable people will go forward based on probabilities and heuristics, the wider discussion about Theora moved onto politics and business a long time ago, where demanding people prove a negative is a good rhetorical trick even when it applies just as much, if not more, to your own side.