Talk:Theora

message: * VP3.2 Public License
I removed the above from the article. The Theora sourcecode isn't based on that license, so it would belong somewhere else. Kjoonlee 04:01, 2004 Dec 15 (UTC)
That is no longer true.  The VP3 article has been merged into Theora.  Rcooley 11:38, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it was, but what's that got to do with anything?  Kjoonlee point remains valid.--Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves talk / contribs (join WP:PT) 14:03, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  VP3 license 

message: It doesn't say if it is lossy or lossless compression, any talk of compression should say that off the bat.  Does anyone know, this is outside my knowledge base but I'll look around. --ShaunMacPherson 22:20, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Since almost all video codecs are lossy most articles in :Category:Video_codecs don't talk about it, except the lossless SheerVideo and Huffyuv. Unfortunatelly the same states for :Category:Audio_codecs. Theora is lossy as well. --Hhielscher 23:52, 2 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Lossy or Lossless ? 

message: Are there any proof ?
I was said that near everything in video is patented (even the arithmetic sum).
Moreover derf experimental theora codec lists some patents : http://svn.xiph.org/experimental/derf/theora-exp/doc/patents.txt
:That link doesn't mean anything. Um, got any proof that Theora infringes on someone else's patents? Besides On2's, that is.
:First of all nobody can guarantee for any product that it does not infringe some patents, which is a major problem for the whole patent system. However, as all basic coding methods used in Theora are well known since the 1980ies (meaning any patents would have expired by now) or are subject to the VP3 patents for which a license was donated up till now noone was able to come up with a patent infringed by Theora. And even if e.g. an encoder was found to use patented compression methods this doesn't mean that other encoders, players or the bitstream specification itself are having this problem, too. --Maikmerten (talk) 13:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  patent-free ? 

message: Ok, this is weird, but did they give licenses to other sentient beings, or just humans? You never know what will come up tomorow, you know.....
:I don't know. However I have made the claim more neutral as below:
::While VP3 is patented technology, On2 has irrevocably given royalty-free license of the VP3 patents to everyone, letting anyone use Theora and other VP3-derived codecs for any purpose.
:However I still feel it might need to be reworked. If On2 did explicitly say they were releasing it to all humanity in their license agreement and therefore technically if you weren't human it wouldn't be release to you, you're welcome to change it back of course Nil Einne 13:03, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Non-humans? 

message: I find the current 'Development timeline' and 'History' sections too verbose and not informative. Anyone interested in the changelogs would likely be looking elsewhere, not on Wikipedia, and for everyone else it fails to be useful and just takes up space. Does anyone agree with me that they're best removed entirely? -- intgr 22:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This information is really unnecessary and do not contribute anything to the article. 130.233.243.229 12:28, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Done. -- intgr 15:39, 10 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Remove history sections? 

message: Hi-
Should we include a link to Tarkin, as it's another codec that the Xiph.org Foundation plans to implement sometime in the future?
Stilroc 02:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a late reply, but alright.  Xiph does not intend to return to Tarkin any time soon.  It was pretty much dropped for Theora.  There's a link to Tarkin in the Xiph Projects template, though, so that should be enough.--Saoshyant talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 13:00, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tarkin 

message: There is no wiki page for "chroma bleeding".  I was going to submit some information after researching the topic, but found little.  Is this artifact more commonly referred to as "colour bleeding"?  And should the the link therefore be updated to reflect this?
Jwitch 13:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Color bleeding. But I removed the text.  Theora used subsampled color, like all the other video codecs anyone cares about today, and also like all the other codecs it operates in YUV space. Subsampled color will always have some bleeding potential, but the use of a color space which is not perceptually linear makes it more likely for the bleeding to be noticed.  Theora could have been designed to use a space with Y gamma corrected to perceptual linearity, but this would have required an additional set of per pixel multiplications on decode side.. removing the advantage of CPU saving hardware YUV to RGB conversion which is widely available and used. We might want to have some text on subsampled color, but to single out Theora on this matter isn't fair or accurate. --Gmaxwell 16:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chroma bleeding or colour bleeding? 

message: The video game Heroes of Might and Magic V uses ogg for its cinematics, complete with Theora for video and Vorbis for audio. Should we mention it somewhere? - Sikon 12:38, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia may not be the best place for this.  Xiph's official Wiki provides pages to list players, software and games that use their formats.  I've just created the page Games that use Theora using your information.  If you'd like to add more information, I believe this is the place.--Saoshyant talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 13:17, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Adoption 

message: With Mediacoder 0.6.0, I can convert to x264 (aka FFH.264) video /w Matroska container, but sound will only work with mp3 (still LAME). Point is everything here is open source so i may use that, because the quality at 350 kbps a lot better then Theroa. Renegadeviking
:"Open Source" doesn't mean "free". x264 is encoding H.264, for which patent fees are collected. Lame encodes to MP3, for which patent fees are collected as well. --Maikmerten (talk) 12:19, 9 February 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  x264 in Matroska 

message: Interesting video:  http://coolastory.blogspot.com/2007/03/sv-web-builders-event-world-premier-of.html
Right at the end, the demo of Opera 10, and the mention of Theora.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.174.171.21 (talk) 17:19, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Opera released an experimental Windows version with Theora support, which may be found in here.  It's recommended that you read the instructions at "A call for video on the web" if you plan to try it.--Saoshyant talk / contribs (please join WP:Portugal or WP:SPOKEN) 17:52, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Opera 10 Browser to support Theora 

message: in the intro there is Theora competes with MPEG-4, WMV, and similar low-bitrate video compression schemes
Here we are only talking about video codec, not audio neither container. Mpeg4 is a norm for audio+video(x2)+container+many things
So I guess we should change the intro to Theora competes with MPEG-4 video (H.264) , VMW ...
--88.170.236.224 (talk) 14:48, 30 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: MPEG-4 in the intro

message: To whoever added the On2 history, which is cool: just wondering if we should just use one reference to the On2 news archive, rather than ten zillion individual press releases? Thoughts? Jon (talk) 06:16, 25 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I think there should be the individual references because it is not very easy to find the related press releases on On2 website for any VP3-history fact. (Press releases about VP3 are mixed up in VP4, VP5 and other On2 press releases.) The references could be also suplemented or replaced with links to other sources (which can contain the same or other relevant information). If there is a problem with so many links, maybe the VP3 could be an individual article.--89.173.68.106 (talk) 16:35, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  On2 History 

message: According to http://www.fourcc.org/codecs.php its fourcc identifier is VP31 not VP3. Any comments? --kupirijo (talk) 21:33, 17 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: According to http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=On2_VP3 fourcc identifiers for VP3 compression formats are VP30, VP31 and VP32. Check also some mplayer samples  - fourcc VP30 and VP31 are used. 89.173.68.106 (talk) 08:51, 22 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  FourCC identifier 

message: Is Theora considered an 'editible' format?  Theora seems to be lossy -  Is there a lossless, open format for video for use as a 'source' file type?  There are a couple editors listed, but they seem pretty 'fringe' - anything more mainstream?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.217.148.21 (talk) 15:49, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There are editing options for Theora on Commons at . Theora is not an easy video format to edit.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 16:06, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

text: I losslessly edit Theora video files using oggz-tools. To the article I have added oggz-tools from http://www.xiph.org/oggz/ and Ogg Video Tools from http://dev.streamnik.de/oggvideotools.html. The latter I have not tried but flossmanuals claims them to be lossless too (see http://en.flossmanuals.net/TheoraCookbook/LosslessIntro). Of course converting to Theora is lossy, but once converted there are several basic editing functions that are lossless. However I would also like to know about any lossless format to simplify editing - manipulating sequences of PNGs or TIFFs is awkward and consumes storage. I just tried the lossless Lagarith codec with VirtualDub. It works as far as editing and saving as an AVI file in lossless form, but (1) VLC will not play Lagarith encoded video, and (2) I cannot find a one-step conversion to Theora OGV. -84user (talk) 20:45, 25 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There are few tools available for editing Theora files in their native format. The files can be edited in other formats and converted using freeware programs such as SUPER (a graphic interface for ffmpeg2 theora).--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 21:05, 25 December 2009 (UTC)

text: Most of the available Theora software is listed on Commons at . There is a dearth of editing software for Theora, which is one of the issues for the format.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 09:58, 26 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Editing Theora Files 

message: This was added to the section with the video of the plane:
Note also that this is the wrong way to use video in Wikipedia. The encoded size of this file is 320 pixels wide by 240 pixels tall. This article is showing the movie at 250 pixels wide, which slightly shrinks the video. However, the video is not recompressed to the smaller size on the fly, and so it still consumes the same amount of network bandwidth as if it were shown at the correct 320x240 size.It is very easy to make this mistake using video in Wikipedia articles, and it is worthwhile to illustrate the mistake here. If you want to show the video as a thumbnail the only option available is to download the video file to your computer, recompress it at the smaller size using a theora compression tool, and upload it for use alongside the original larger size file.
:Personally, I would avoid using thumbnail videos as they are far to small to show any worthwhile detail. The 250px size was chosen by another user in this edit as being suitable for the page. Wikipedia is rightly worried about the bandwidth consumed by streaming video, but very small thumbnails give little idea of what is in the video. See also .--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 10:33, 30 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Video size 

message: obsolete OGM maybe, but not OggUpdated HandBrake Encodes More Than DVDs "convert them to MP4, MKV, AVI, or OGM files"Handbrake Monday, Nov 23, 2009 "OGG/OGM: HandBrake's OGM muxer is just as out of date. It hasn't been actively maintained in years ... For patent-free muxing, HandBrake still has Matroska ..."
With this edit I changed the "Yes" in the Encoding section's table (that Handbrake supports Theora) to the above conditional maybe and included some sources. It was later reverted here as a good faith edit.
I agree that the "maybe" and the last sentence (hidden in the clarification request) is my commentary. The remaining text (except maybe the "not OGG") comes from the sources. The problem is Wikipedia requires reliable sources and needs to avoid Original Research. So, how can we best avoid misleading the readers? The Handbrake release notes themselves admit their OGM support is old. The pcworld.com article uses the word "OGM" but fails to mention that OGM is a now unsupported format. So, is the current "Yes" a product of original research itself? Regardless, the whole table is now unreferenced. What do editors suggest we could do to improve this? An extra column for Theora OGM, maybe? Or just plain "OGM yes"? -84user (talk) 11:05, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I downloaded the latest version of HandBrake, 0.9.4. It supports only MP4, m4v and Matroska containers. The Theora capability existed in previous versions but has been removed. Because of this, it might be a good idea to remove HandBrake from the table altogether, since it is misleading to give the impression that downloading the current version will offer Theora conversion. The download page  does not seem to offer past versions, so for practical purposes HandBrake is no longer a piece of Theora conversion software.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 11:54, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

text: HandBrake seems to be aimed primarily at converting video files to MP4 formats for portable devices. Version 0.9.4 cannot output to OGG, OGM or OGV, but can have VP3 (Theora) with MKV, which is unusual. I converted a test Theora/Vorbis video to MP4 and it came out OK. On balance HandBrake should stay, but it is not the most useful piece of Theora software for the average user.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 18:01, 2 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whether Handbrake supports Theora 

message: I've looked into a few of the references now, and it seems that there is basically two references to the same article. The reference:
* Ref nr. 53 Richmond, Gary. "Firefogg: Transcoding videos to open web standards with Mozilla Firefox". http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/columns/firefogg_transcoding_videos_open_web_standards_mozilla_firefox. Retrieved 14 February 2010.
is pointing to a post at:
* http://hacks.stage.mozilla.com/2009/06/open-video-codecs-and-quality/
which then is just a re-post of the reference:
* Ref nr. 49 Maxwell, Greg (13 June 2009). "YouTube / Ogg/Theora comparison". Xiph.Org Foundation. http://people.xiph.org/~greg/video/ytcompare/comparison.html. Retrieved 10 August 2009. 
I'm not too into the criterias for references, but this can't be good practice. I suggest removing the #53 reference, since it doesn't add anything to the article.
Haakoo (talk) 09:16, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Circle referencing going on? 

message: In the HTML5 video section, the citation for "However, the proposed adoption of Theora as part of the baseline video support in HTML5 resulted in controversy." is a "magazine" (actually a blog post) that is copied wholesale from a blog post from another site.
This is an unreliable source if I've ever seen one.
Can someone find a news article that could be used instead?  I've been searching for the past hour or so and haven't found one yet, but I remember this being discussed on news sites in the past.
--Powerlord (talk) 05:07, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: Possibly here from CNET. It points out that Microsoft, Apple and Google are all less than keen on Theora and prefer H.264 on quality grounds.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 07:09, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Better reference for HTML5 Theora controversy? 

message: According to this article, the MPEG-LA is making some patent "claims". They're claiming that "virtually any video codec" infringes at least one submarine patent (patent application that has not yet been approved), which would be unfortunate for the project. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 22:25, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Theora may not be patent free: For immediate release 

message: At least, mplayer identifies this video file as VP8 not Theora, and running "strings" on the file gives output beginning:
webmB
t@-M
Lavf53.21.0WA
Lavf53.21.0s
which seems to indicate the container is WebM and not Ogg.
46.208.20.202 (talk) 02:00, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: File:I-15bis.ogg is 6.24 MB ogg/Theora on Wikimedia Commons, but Wikipedia has converted ogg videos to WebM format which will work only with HTML5 compatible browsers. It may be that some players are playing the WebM version.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 06:39, 19 April 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  The sample video is not Theora 

message: Try as I might, NOBODY seems to have compared video-codecs in terms of quality (error-rate from original, uncompressed video) and of CPU power. NOWHERE gives a core-mark or Dhrystones value for this and all of the other codecs  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.106.56.145 (talk) 16:52, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  CPU Usage & Quality 

message: I don't have a good reference saying Theora is obsolete, but the folks in the #xiph IRC channel acknowledge that it is, and that's authoritative enough for me.  I provided references to the closed (obsolete) android bug, and wikipedia's own switch from Ogg Theora to WebM. —Darxus (talk) 17:43, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: I can't really argue here. Sourcing or otherwise, Theora is now a dinosaur format in the age of WebM.--♦IanMacM♦ (talk to me) 19:14, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

text: Given the additional 5 years of time since Theora was said to be dead in Xiph IRC, and the fact Chrome removed support for it and Firefox is assessing the same, it's safe to say Theora is dead and we can change the article to refer to Theora in the past tense. Wiki articles for software with much more recent releases but nonetheless dead programs like the Banshee media player do so. Spartan2600 (talk) 22:58, 2 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Obsolete