Hello, I took the liberty of quickly slamming together http://www.theora.org/benefits/ . This is supposed to answer the "why should you use Theora" question in some detail. This section is not yet included in the navigation bar and I'd like to get confirmation that this information can be considered "canon" before making it "visible" (oh, and of course someone speaking the english language should give it a read to iron out at least the most outstanding language bloopers). bye, Maik
On 10 Sep 2007 at 21:16, Maik Merten wrote:> Hello, > > I took the liberty of quickly slamming together > http://www.theora.org/benefits/ . This is supposed to answer the "why > should you use Theora" question in some detail."The Theora specification is in the public domain, its reference implementation is open source and subject to a license which permits inclusion in commercial products." I believe you mean "proprietary" here, as even copyleft licenses permit commercial products. Of course, the Theora FAQ commits the same error. Overall, this document seems geared toward developers, content producers, and distributors - not much information for general users. Is that what you intended? -- -:-:- David K. Gasaway -:-:- Email: dave@gasaway.org -:-:- Web : dave.gasaway.org
Maik Merten wrote:> This section is not yet included in the navigation bar and I'd like to > get confirmation that this information can be considered "canon" before > making it "visible" (oh, and of course someone speaking the english > language should give it a read to iron out at least the most outstanding > language bloopers).How much critique are you looking for?
J.B. Nicholson-Owens schrieb:> How much critique are you looking for?No fixed limit. If you think you found something weird feel free to express your concerns. Maik
Otan schrieb:> What is the blurred thing in the image in that page? Is it a penis? Ow > no! Whether it is or it is not, you better change that image. LOL!It's a hand. A fast moving hand (video of sign-language). Actually with the imagination necessary to see male genitalia in that picture basically everything in my room undergoes an unsettling mutation. ;-) But well, as only like 5-10 people saw that page and we already have that genitalia topic on the table I shall better fix that. Text in images is evil anyway from an accessibility point of view. Maik
I have issues with the following info on the page On the technological side Ogg Theora is well engineered for low-bitrate streaming. Its in-loop deblocking filter is pretty efficient at preventing a distracting, blocky look of the encoded content. Thus perceived video quality usually degrades gracefully as bitrate decreases, much in contrast to compression schemes still widely used such as MPEG-4 Part 2 (best known for DivX and XviD), H.263 (often used as video codec for Flash video) or Windows Media Video 8. In my opinion I believe that these claims are anecdotal at best. Has anyone actually done a true bake off between Theora and the codecs mentioned? Has anyone done PNSR vs bitrate or similar comparisons across a large and diverse body of content? For me these types of comparisons are far more compelling than a zoomed in area of a single frame where the deblocking filter happened to do a good job. Don't get me wrong. I'd like to see Theora succeed. I just don't think your going to win over a whole lot of people unless you provide hard data that shows that Theora is truely a viable competitor performance-wise with the other popular formats. I don't think the touchy feely "I'm using an open codec" is going to be enough. Making claims that can't be backed up or turn out to be false will only hurt your cause. Aaron Maik Merten wrote:> Hello, > > I took the liberty of quickly slamming together > http://www.theora.org/benefits/ . This is supposed to answer the "why > should you use Theora" question in some detail. > > This section is not yet included in the navigation bar and I'd like to > get confirmation that this information can be considered "canon" before > making it "visible" (oh, and of course someone speaking the english > language should give it a read to iron out at least the most outstanding > language bloopers). > > bye, > > Maik > _______________________________________________ > theora mailing list > theora@xiph.org > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/theora >
Hi all, even, if this thread was not opened to discuss Theora Marketing at all. I however, think it is time to discuss this issue on another level: In my view, the weakness of theora is neither the video quality to datarate issue nor a theora is free and open subject. Fact is, there is only one real reason for the usage of one format over another: simplicity. 1) It must be simple to view videos (e.g. via a web-browser) 2) It must be simple to produce videos If one goal of theora is to compete with popular web formats like flash-video, it must be as easy as this (No plugin installation etc.). And if Theora want to convince somebody to change from flash to Theora, it needs good arguments. I see the cortado player as the only serious attempt to have something in that direction to compete with flash. But the cortado development is stalled afaik even if there are a lot of things that could be improved as the quality is not as good as with the realplayer, mplayer etc. Java (where the cortado player bases on) might have the potential to beat flash as there are a hundred times more java programmers than flash programmers out there and java is promesing for this kind of web applications because it has a huge library and much more security features than flash. However Java does not look as "fancy" as flash. To conclude: What I want to say with this text is, - that theora is a perfect format for web-videos - theora on the library side is well engineered to compete against other popular formats - theora is not ready for the users, who could push this format to the same level as e.g. flash So what Theora need are developers for this area (front ends, tools, webapps etc.), and more than a hand full of early adaptors to populate Theora. Yorn Am Montag, 10. September 2007 21:16 schrieb Maik Merten:> Hello, > > I took the liberty of quickly slamming together > http://www.theora.org/benefits/ . This is supposed to answer the "why > should you use Theora" question in some detail. > > This section is not yet included in the navigation bar and I'd like to > get confirmation that this information can be considered "canon" before > making it "visible" (oh, and of course someone speaking the english > language should give it a read to iron out at least the most outstanding > language bloopers). > > bye, > > Maik > _______________________________________________ > theora mailing list > theora@xiph.org > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/theora