Open Video on a more Open Internet

[dankles]

The trouble with ogg thedora is that it's shit. I suppose it might compare favorable to, I don't know, old versions of real media, and it can deliver quality at least similar to what's on youtube, but that isn't saying very much.

Still. Better than flash.

Theora isn't as good as say xvid, but that is due to the patent issue that we've been talking about in that last few posts. The ISO Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has so many efing patents on video compression technologies that it makes it damn near imposable to make any really good and Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) compression technology.

At least vorbis was able to best mp3 in quality....

[bloody000]

The trouble with ogg thedora is that it's shit. I suppose it might compare favorable to, I don't know, old versions of real media, and it can deliver quality at least similar to what's on youtube, but that isn't saying very much.

Still. Better than flash.

Theora isn't as good as say xvid, but that is due to the patent issue that we've been talking about in that last few posts. The ISO Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) has so many efing patents on video compression technologies that it makes it damn near imposable to make any really good and Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) compression technology.

At least vorbis was able to best mp3 in quality....

No it's due to VP3 is a piece of crap and On2 know that which is why they donated it and moved on.

[kostya]

patented for the sole purpose of making it freely usable (link is old, but it shows my point)

Wait, so the guy is using a patent to protect the free software comunity? Am I reading that correctly? If so, wow! Thats actually cool. And here I thought all software patents were evil....

It is still extremely evil and proprietary. He went from the normal innovation killing evil to just heavily maiming innovation and telling it that it did not need those limbs.

If you read his legal release carefully, he only allows the use of his patents in programs released under the GNU GPL, which is a very copy left limited license. If you want to release your software under the BSD, Eclipse, Apache, or even LGPL license, you still need to contact him, beg for his permission, and negotiate terms and payment.

Unfortunately, we arrive at the biggest problem in all of free software, there is no way to stop people from abusing it without a very restricted license.

[dankles]

It is still extremely evil and proprietary. He went from the normal innovation killing evil to just heavily maiming innovation and telling it that it did not need those limbs.

If you read his legal release carefully, he only allows the use of his patents in programs released under the GNU GPL, which is a very copy left limited license. If you want to release your software under the BSD, Eclipse, Apache, or even LGPL license, you still need to contact him, beg for his permission, and negotiate terms and payment.

Unfortunately, we arrive at the biggest problem in all of free software, there is no way to stop people from abusing it without a very restricted license.

Well... some people like that idea. It ensures that the code conforms to the famous (or infamous) four freedoms:

   *  The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
    * The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
    * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
    * The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements (and modified versions in general) to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Some may say that forcing the code to be "free" like the GPL does is taking away freedom. Well really that's just a fallacy if your goal is to maintain the 4 previously stated freedoms. How can a rule to keep things free take away freedom? I mean really? It's like saying that a "rule" to freely breath air is taking away our freedom. This is just silly.

If your goal is to not maintain those freedoms then what are you doing trying to bother with the free software in the first place?


And the reason the said software must be GPL has more to do with the code being GPL rather than the patent.
Even without the patent, you still have to keep the GPL license regardless.... If I'm not mistaken. The patent is there simply to protect against other patents that might creep up.
Have you ever heard of patent wars? You fair much better when you have guns to fire back with.

[bloody000]

oh god no... FSF kool-aid! Run while you still can people!!!

[dankles]

oh god no... FSF kool-aid! Run while you still can people!!!

I'm just trying to maintain my infamous title. 

For the record. Not all the software i run is Richard Stallman approved. I'm not *that* extreme. Though I don't think he is exactly wrong either.

[dankles]

Some cool stuff I found on h264 vs theora for doing "youtube" type videos:

http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html
http://people.xiph.org/~maikmerten/youtube/

And some notes on the 1.1-alpha release of theora (obligatory weird codename: Thesnulda)
http://noraisin.net/~jan/diary/?p=77


After seeing stuff like this, I feel much better about having theora live in the HTML5 <video> tag.

Though it seems that for HD content, h264 is still the winner.

[N.Maniac 64]

Someone mentioned On2 and VP3 in their post.  Speaking of which...

Apparently Google will acquire On2 for their video technology. (Press Release)  Google's quote on the matter was:

Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform.  We are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2's team and technology will help us further that goal.

I don't know about you, but to me it sounds like someone wants to use some high-quality video codecs (VP7 and VP8) in HTML5.  If they could even open source them... oh man the internets would EXPLODE.

The only problem is that apparently On2 shareholders aren't very happy with On2's board of directors because of the low selling price, and have even filed a class action lawsuit. :O

[dankles]

Someone mentioned On2 and VP3 in their post.  Speaking of which...

Apparently Google will acquire On2 for their video technology. (Press Release)  Google's quote on the matter was:

Today video is an essential part of the web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the web platform.  We are committed to innovation in video quality on the web, and we believe that On2's team and technology will help us further that goal.

I don't know about you, but to me it sounds like someone wants to use some high-quality video codecs (VP7 and VP8) in HTML5.  If they could even open source them... oh man the internets would EXPLODE.

The only problem is that apparently On2 shareholders aren't very happy with On2's board of directors because of the low selling price, and have even filed a class action lawsuit. :O

I'm a believer in Free Markets, but this issue with the shareholders in one instance in which capitalism fails. Customers will loose, when business men win. 
What I want along with many others is and open video codec standard for the web.  VP7/8 would be great if it was free (completely free like theora) which I'm thinking might actually happen seeing as ON2 is also one of the key sponsors for theora.

And I'm thinking that theora isnt such a bad idea even more after reading those articles I posted.

[bloody000]

Except, they didn't tell you the encoding time of their theora samples and they didn't know the encoder, encoding options and encoding time of Youtube.
Useless BS at its finest.