[Theora] mpeg4/xvid/divx vs. theora

Patrick Aljord patcito at gmail.com
Thu Jun 1 06:55:05 PDT 2006


On 6/1/06, Thomas Kuglitsch <tkuglits at edu.uni-klu.ac.at> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> I have an elementary question.
> Although theora can be placed in the same class of codecs as MPEG-1, -2, -4
> why is there no greater usage of this codec?
> On the bigger part of web sites trailers or short videos are encoded with
> some mpeg codec. Why is theora still so rarely used and unfamiliar although
> it perfomes very well from my point of view?
>
> Is it, because
> - the whole mpeg family is already included in a great bunch of hardware?
> - theora can not be used that easily like mpeg on M$ OSs?
> - it is still a alpha version?
>
> Any comments on my identified reasons?
>
> Do you encounter any other reasons?
some people in the floss comunity (ffmpeg) think that theora sucks
compared to mpeg4, xvid and co. They think that improving theora will
force them to infringe on patents and the only reason to developp
theora is that it doesn't infringe on any patents (for now). So
improving it would take away the only good point of theora and make it
a waste of time. So these devs'd rather work on existing floss codec
that work better than theora and already infringe on patents such as
xvid and the like. Note that I'm a NOT a developper so I have no idea
who's  right or wrong. I personnally like theora cause it's the only
true free codec and the quality seems really nice to me.


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