Theora, the open video format

admin — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 06:25:56 +0000

Theora is a royalty-free, open standard, lossy video compression technology being developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation alongside their other open media efforts, most notably the Vorbis audio codec and the Ogg container.

libtheora is a reference implementation of the Theora video compression format being developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation.

Theora is derived from the proprietary VP3 codec, released into the public domain by On2 Technologies. It is broadly comparable firstly in design and bitrate efficiency to MPEG-4 Part 2, early versions of Windows Media Video, and RealVideo, and secondly in open standards philosophy to the BBC’s Dirac codec.

Theora is named for Theora Jones, Edison Carter’s Controller on the Max Headroom television program.

Playback

Embedded by HTML 5

Main article: Use of Ogg formats in HTML5

As originally recommended by HTML 5, these browsers support Theora when embedded by the video element:

Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and later versions
Google Chrome as of version 3.0.182.2
SeaMonkey as of version 2.0
Opera 9.5 experimental video builds and pre-alpha builds of Opera 10.50
Future versions of Konqueror

Browser plugins

Annodex plugin via OggPlay
Cortado, a Java based applet
- Itheora, a PHP wrapper for Cortado
Mv Embed HTML 5 video tag wrapper for numerous plugin types.
VLC media player browser plugin for IE or Firefox

Supporting media frameworks

DirectShow with use of DirectShow filters
GStreamer supported via Theora module, supports GStreamer based applications eg. Totem and Songbird
Phonon
QuickTime with use of Xiph QuickTime Components

Supporting applications