Free Software Types are Banging the Theora Drum, Hopelessly

http://blog.apphacker.com/2010/05/02/free-software-types-are-banging-the-theora-drum-hopelessly/

by apphacker • 16 years ago

8 25 16 years ago

blog.apphacker.com

teilo3• 16 years ago

Umm... buggy H.264 in Linux? Come again? H.264 playback using Open Source software is not buggy. Far from it. Whether VLC on Linux or MPC on Windows - it works extremely well.

In-browser H.264, maybe, but that's has nothing to do with the quality of open source H.264 decoding. Maybe a plugin problem, and likely a temporary one at that.

I use open-source codecs to watch H.264 all the time. I have watched hundreds of hours of it on Linux-driven devices without a problem. This article is nothing but FUD itself.

And if you want to talk about the quality of H.264 encoding, I'll put x264 up against any commercial product any day, period. It beats the hell out of everything I have seen.

apphacker• 16 years ago

I see, was it easy to install the software you used to play H.264 on Linux? Did it come out of the box with the Linux distro you were using? Maybe I shouldn't have used 'buggy.' I certainly wasn't trying to contribute to FUD, just compiling a likely senario with history of proprietary format support on free software, sprinkled with some over the top sarcasm. I just find it a little far fetched that the tweets and blog posts of people who care about open standards think it will do any good. I mean I support their effort, it just seems like the fight is already over.

teilo3• 16 years ago

Yes and yes. Extremely easy all around. Also extremely easy on Mac and Windows. Double-click an installer, and then run the app. Check it out for yourself. Google VLC for Windows or Mac. Or the K-Lite Codec Pack for Windows which comes bundled with Media Player Classic - full open source high-quality high-speed H.264 playback.

To say the fight is over may be true for Theora. That is a losing battle because, despite its promise, Theora just can't match the quality and efficiency of H.264. But again, you are mixing two things together if you think that the death of Theora is the death of open source video encoding and decoding.

VP8, by the way, has already been open sourced by Google. This will very likely change everything.

EDIT: Correction: No they haven't yet, but multiple sources report that they will at I/O. My bad.

doron2• 16 years ago

Playback isn't a problem usually, but i did encounter problems with encoding H.264, on server side, using ffmpeg of which the build process wasn't trivial.

teilo3• 16 years ago

Doing a high-quality video encode is a non-trivial procedure. Even using a GUI tool like Handbrake effectively, requires understanding a lot of parameters. You could just take defaults, but the results will be nowhere near as good as if you tweak the settings for your particular source material. I encode a fair amount of video using FFMPEG, but usually I am using x264 directly.

As to compiling ffmpeg yourself - again, non-trivial. Better to rely upon good builds or packages. I've done it on occasion to take advantage of some new cutting edge stuff. The thing is, ffmpeg works really well. It is a fabulous tool with a tremendous amount of power and capability. But any complex piece of software, with many pieces and many dependencies, is going to be difficult to build.

jmillikin3• 16 years ago

The set of Linux users who are willing to install a codec which is either closed source or illegal is likely very small. Some people are happy to so. Some people are happy to run on a pirated copy of Windows, but I'm not one of them either.

Also, VLC is easily the single worst media player I've used (on any platform). If I wanted to look at a screen full of blocky green artifacts, I'll write a screensaver -- at least that won't take up a core to do so.

jrockway4• 16 years ago

x264 is not illegal to use. It infringes a patent, in one country (or a few countries), when redistributed in binary form. So to be safe, few commercial distributions redistribute it in binary form from their default repositories. Add the "non-us" repository, though, and then it is a first-class citizen again.

I don't know any Linux user that can't play h.264 videos.

AngryParsley2• 16 years ago

H.264 playback on Linux is a nightmare. Libavcodec can only do single-threaded decoding, which makes playing 1080p content practically impossible. Even my 3.2Ghz Core 2 Duo can't keep up in scenes full of motion or film grain. The same files play fine in Quicktime on my 2Ghz Macbook.

In addition, many postprocessing options are inefficient and actually decrease video quality. For example: the default settings in both VLC and XBMC cause video to slowly get blockier and oversaturated until a new keyframe comes in. Again, the same videos look fine when played in Quicktime, and I've seen this issue across platforms.

Another problem I've had is that I'll often see a single row of green pixels at the bottom of the screen. It's probably caused by some sort of off-by-one error.

All of these sorts of annoyances accumulate to become infuriating. No commercial product would be released in such a state.

aw3c2• 16 years ago

I use mplayer with vdpau (nvidia gpu acceleration) on my Athlon II X2 240 and it happily plays 1080p.

bigiain• 16 years ago

Up until you claimed "No commercial product would be released in such a state.", it sounded like you knew what you were talking about! ;-)

Raphael• 16 years ago

So in other words, sit back and relax while we wait for VP8.

thewileyone• 16 years ago

Isn't H.264 the core of Quicktime? Isn't it obvious that Jobs is just pissed off that Quicktime lost out to Flash as a web video standard? I remember when Flash was for interactive stuff and Quicktime was for anything video.

This is just a second wave of attack for Jobs cause the first one failed.

sandGorgon• 16 years ago

I have a question - I am a linux user and am willing to pay a few dollars to get a patent-encumbered, high quality decoder - if it allows me to watch high def entertainment with low enough internet bandwidth expenditure.

Is it that a vast majority of Linux users are unwilling to _pay_ : for content and software ?

If it is as I suspect, then it could easily sound a death knell for media consumption on Linux. I wonder how much sooner would we have had Linux hardware-assisted H.264 playback (ffmpeg, vlc), if there money to be made off them.

H.264 is evil for content producers - for content consumers, if (and _only_ if) the quality of H.264 >>>>>>>>>> Theora, then I can see why we would have to pay for it.

Free Software Types are Banging the Theora Drum, Hopelessly

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