Ogg Theora alpha 3 release, Xiph.org video codec on it´s way to Beta Options

[maikmerten]

A message from Ralph Giles on theora-dev mailing list

I'm pleased to announce the alpha 3 release of the theora reference
implementation.

    http://theora.org/files/libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.bz2
    http://theora.org/files/libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.gz
    http://theora.org/files/libtheora-1.0alpha3.zip

The main differences over alpha 2:

    The encoded image has been flipped to match the sense used in VP3,
    with the origin at the lower left. This allows lossless transcoding
    of VP3 content.

    The decoder data tables included in the bitstream header are more
    complete and have more scope for future encoder improvements.

    Some experimental tools are available in the win32 directory,
    including a transcoder for avi vp3 files.

We hope there were be no more incompatible bitstream changes, but as
with previous alpha releases we make no promises that the format will
not change again. Only with the beta 1 release will we promise to
support encoded content, so use this only for content you can re-encode
later.

Experimental playback support is now available (separately) for
Helix/Realplayer 10, Xine and mplayer; you might look at those if you
want a more full-featured player. Be sure to use an alpha-3 compatible
version.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to make this release possible.

SHA-1 checksums:

ae01e03439bce495dc0d124c19de29c7fd4b5ad5  libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.bz2
2a403162c45560f498b1d88ab4f45674e4f8dcbf  libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.gz
d0406ecade7ac6b426a73fdb12cb8ac3a8462633  libtheora-1.0alpha3.zip

MD5 checksums:

96bd0ab761fffde527ac4febf168e9b7  libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.bz2
eab566a0c7fdc21da1ce503edfa43bb4  libtheora-1.0alpha3.tar.gz
49dc6c19ca59ae6dae085a0d5857389f  libtheora-1.0alpha3.zip

The release is tagged as theora1_0_alpha_3 in cvs; some data files from
cvs HEAD were omitted for reasons of space.

Cheers,
-r

[Bonzi]

I hope Xiph puts some or a lot of thought into how Theora works in windows. Directshow encoders and decoders would be best. As you can see if you have played around with Theora is that it holds its own quite nicely against other modern video codecs including mpeg4 IMO. Also, it is quite good speed wise. But the current encoding tools you have to set the frame rate etc at build time or I guess you can use ffvfw which is not updated too regularly anymore unfortunately. Anyway, at the very least I suppose it will soon be able to use it in the real's helix producers which should work quite nicely.

[bond]

great news!

I hope Xiph puts some or a lot of thought into how Theora works in windows.  Directshow encoders and decoders would be best.

at least a dshow decoder/ogg splitter is absolutely a must, otherwise it will vey hardly make its way to the windows masses
afaik there is already theora support in ffdshow, but i never really played around with it (does there exist an ogg dshow splitter able to handle ogg theora files?)

at least a vfw encoder wouldnt be nice, cause i dont really like the idea of putting theora into .avi, this would also exclude the usage of it together with vorbis, hm bad idea

Anyway, at the very least I suppose it will soon be able to use it in the real's helix producers which should work quite nicely.

really? why that?

[maikmerten]

Anyway, at the very least I suppose it will soon be able to use it in the real's helix producers which should work quite nicely.

really? why that?

https://xiph.helixcommunity.org/

Seems RealNetworks is quite interested in Theora as they don't want to make their own codecs open source. With Theora it's possible to build a streaming-solution completely free (beer and speech).

Maik

[Todesengel]

Someone, please, give me binaries...

[maikmerten]

Someone, please, give me binaries...

I haven't seen any Win32 compiles of Theora yet. Perhaps someone at doom9.org will make some....

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?thre...ighlight=theora

However, keep in mind the encoder will only accept uncompresses YUV4MPEG as input. You will need a program to generate fitting files (on linux mplayer is first choice - there is a win32 version too).

Theora encoding mini-HOWTO for linux:

- new xterm
- # mkfifo stream.yuv
- # mplayer -vo yuv4mpeg -nosound test.avi
- another xterm
- # mkfifo audiodump.wav
- # mplayer -vo null -ao pcm test.avi
- yet another xterm
- # encoder_example stream.yuv audiodump.wav > test.ogg

Using fifos there is no need for a billion gigabytes of discspace

Similiar steps will be necessary on win32.

Maik

[QuantumKnot]

I'll try compiling theora for win32. I found this link quite helpful

http://www.xiph.org/archives/theora-dev/200209/0092.html

[maikmerten]

I'll try compiling theora for win32.

Great

I assume there are no theora-enabled mplayer builds for win32...

RealPlayer plugins: https://helixcommunity.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7

[QuantumKnot]

Here it is:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=196301

Compiled using mingw32 and upx'd to make it a nice small download for dialup users like moi

The libogg-0.dll is required to be in the path for these binaries to work.

[ak]

I assume there are no theora-enabled mplayer builds for win32...

There is one: http://4nykey.nm.ru/bin/

I've been trying theora-cvs couple of times, w/o much success: ffvfw encoded content won't play in mplayer, libtheora included samples appeared flipped... Haven't tried alpha3 yet, not sure wether it works at all

[maikmerten]

Here it is:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ndpost&p=196301

You encoder works fine

I didn't manage to make the RealPlayer plugin work.

The splayer (theora-tools) compile from

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?thre...ighlight=theora

also doesn't work for me - the app crashes after displaying the first frame. Could be .dll trouble (had to download some runtime dlls)

Of course everything works perfectly on linux - the only user friendly environment on earth

[maikmerten]

There are now updated binaries in the mentioned doom9 thread (splayer now works). Windows users can now finally test Theora (please don´t encode serious content at the time being!)

This post has been edited by maikmerten: Mar 23 2004, 18:47

[QuantumKnot]

Of course everything works perfectly on linux - the only user friendly environment on earth 

Yep, it compiled without a hitch on Linux. Perhaps I should do an icc compile as well

EDIT: icc compile for linux is here. I haven't done a benchmark to see if this is faster than the gcc one. But it is optimised for pentium 3 so it's SSE enabled.

This post has been edited by QuantumKnot: Mar 24 2004, 13:08