Source

• libtheora-1.0alpha7
• libogg-1.1.3
• libvorbis-1.1.2

• libtheora API reference
• Format Specification

Binaries

• ffmpeg2theora
• VLC player
• Helix Player
• DirectShow plugins

Content

• CTU Prague Archive
• JRoar stream
• V2V network
• EATV

Support us

[ 2006 November 10 - Theora video on Dell.com ]

The Linux section of Dell Computer's collective blog includes Ogg Theora alternatives to their apparently standard wmv vlog entries. Well done, Dell, for realizing no one can watch those!

Recent examples include Logan McLeod advertising their clusters and Michael Dell's Keynote at Oracle OpenWorld.

Now, if they'd just make it the default link...

[ 2006 October 8 - Democracy shipping XiphQT ]

The MacOS version of the excellent Democracy Internet TV platform now ships with and installs to XiphQT components. This means that if you've installed Democracy, you can play Ogg Vorbis and Theora in other Quicktime-based applications!

Way to support open media!

[ 2006 October 3 - EATV switches to streaming theora ]

Archive Entertainment has switched their EATV streaming video feed to Icecast and Ogg Theora! They say the switch to open technology has been very successful for them.

Great news. Check out their streams or read more here.

[ 2006 September 27 - International Free Software Forum video ]

People from International Free Software Forum (the largest brazilian event about FLOSS) have done it two times in a row. They've put online the whole video coverage for this year's event (also online are the videos from last year).

It's almost 300 hours in Ogg Theora. It's a shame there's no subtitles, for most of the lectures are not in English...the English ones are really good, though.

Also posted to digg.

[ 2006 June 20 - libtheora 1.0alpha7 release ]

There's a new release of the libtheora reference implementation.

This release contains build fixes from the alpha6 release. There are no new features. The new MMX asm is enabled by default, and a problem with that same code on SELinux machines has been fixed.

libtheora-1.0alpha7.tar.bz2
libtheora-1.0alpha7.tar.gz
libtheora-1.0alpha7.zip

[ 2006 May 31 - Cinelerra supports distributed theora encoding ]

Cinelerra is a well known nonlinear video editor with support for renderfarms, enabiling use of distributed cpu power to do faster rendering.

A year after getting import and export support for theora, Cinelerra now has distributed theora encoding support, which makes theora content creation much faster.

Thanks to Andraz Tori for this.

[ 2006 May 30 - libtheora 1.0alpha6 release ]

We're pleased to announce a new release of the libtheora reference implemenation. This is an incremental update over alpha 5, consisting primarily of bug fixes and a merge of the encoder optimizations from the theora-mmx branch.

libtheora-1.0alpha6.tar.bz2
libtheora-1.0alpha6.tar.gz
libtheora-1.0alpha6.zip

Changes since the 1.0 alpha 5 release:

• Merge theora-mmx simd acceleration (x86_32 and x86_64)
• Major RTP payload specification update
• Minor format specification updates
• Fix some spurious calls to free() instead of _ogg_free()
• Fix invalid array indexing in PixelLineSearch()
• Improve robustness against invalid input
• General warning cleanup
• The offset_y member now means what every application thought it meant (offset from the top). This will mean some old files (those with a non-centered image created with a buggy encoder) will display differently.

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

[ 2006 March 25 - Live installfest streams ]

The 2006 FLISOL (Festival de Instalacion de Software Libre en Latin America) is webcasting live streams from today's event. See here and here for more information.

[ 2006 March 24 - Malagasy TV in Ogg Theora ]

Browsing the Icecast stream directory today I noticed Telegasy has an online Malagasy language stream in Ogg Theora. Very cool.

[ 2006 January 13 - YSTV webcast in Ogg Theora ]

York Student Television is now available online in Ogg Theora, both as a live stream and downloads of past shows. Take a look or read about how they're using open source technology to distribute their content in open formats.

Way to go, YSTV, this is great to see!

Note that the programs are also generally under a CC license with a wierd additional advance notification requirement. We're not sure how exactly that's intended to work...

[ 2005 August 20 - libtheora 1.0 alpha 5 release ]

We're pleased to announce a new release of the libtheora reference implemenation. This is an incremental update over alpha 4, to draw a line under recent work before we start adding optimization work.

There are two important bugfixes as well, so we recommend upgrading to everyone. This release is source and binary compatible with 1.0 alpha 4.

libtheora-1.0alpha5.tar.bz2
libtheora-1.0alpha5.tar.gz
libtheora-1.0alpha5.zip

Changes since the 1.0 alpha 4 release:

• Fixed bitrate management bugs that caused popping and encode errors.
• Fixed a crash problem with the theora_state internals not being intialized properly.
• new theora_granule_shift() utility function
• dump_video example now makes YUV4MPEG files by default, so the results can be fed back to encoder_example and similar tools. The old behavior is restored with the '-r' switch.
• ./configure now prints a summary
• simple unit test of the comment api under 'make check'
• misc code cleanup, warning and leak fixes

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

[ 2005 June 5 - Cinelerra edits Theora ]

The Cinelerra video editor which has supported encoding to theora for some time, recently got decode support as well. This means you can edit theora video clips in Cinelerra!

Thanks to Andraz for adding this new feature.

[ 2005 May 29 - Live streams of Guadec talks ]

Fluendo is again streaming all the talks from the Guadec conference this year in Ogg Theora format.

Live streams are available and will be posted to the archive as they are available.

[ 2005 May 23 - systm episodes in Ogg Theora format ]

Kevin Rose of The Screen Savers and G4 tech tv, is doing a new show for direct internet distribution. The first episode is up and available in a number of formats, including Ogg Theora.

Here is a torrent link to the large format version.

[ 2005 May 14 - Cinelerra adds export support for Ogg Theora ]

The latest CVS version of Cinelerra non-linear edit and compositing tool for Linux supports exporting video in Ogg Theora format.

See cvs.cinelerra.org to try out the code.

[ 2005 Apr 23 - Elphel Theora camera in Xcell magazine ]

Andrey Filippov has an article on his FPGA Theora encoder in Xcell Journal this month. While the earlier article at LinuxDevices focussed on the software, this one covers in more detail the hardware and use of the FPGA to achieve the elphel camera's remarkable encoding speed.

Andrey and other hackers will be demonstrating the cameras at the Open Source Forum in Moscow next weekend.

[ 2005 Apr 17 - Ogg Theora decoder ported to C# ]

Ogre developer pjcast has a C# port of the Ogg Theora decoder, based primarily on the JOrbis and Cortado java decoders.

He reports both video and sound are working, and performance is pretty good. The decoder components should be usable under any of the C# frameworks, but the example playback application is still a bit rough and not portable outside MS Windows.

A development snapshot is available for those who would like to try out the code.

[ 2005 Mar 24 - Fedora Conference Video ]

Video from the Fedora Users & Develper Conference last month in Boston is up in Ogg Theora format. The files are available here, or you can get a complete torrents of the Developer and User tracks. Versions with only Ogg Vorbis audio are also linked.

It's great to see stuff like this going up.

Update as of 20050405, the direct file links no longer work, but the torrent is still available.

In related news, Seth Nickell has video of the experimental Luminocity OpenGL compositing engine and window manager in Theora. Video screenshots! Quite cool.

[ 2005 Mar 23 - Elphel FPGA camera encodes Theora ]

Andrey Filippov has an article today on LinuxDevices describing his open source hardware theora encoder, embedded in the reconfigurable network camera he designed, which is also open source. Now this is what computing should be like!

[ 2005 Mar 22 - JRoar streaming server ]

The JRoar streaming server now supports Ogg Theora. Has for a while actually, but then have a nice set of test streams up.

JRoar is a pure Java Ogg streaming server from the folks at JCraft. I can serve static files, mirror external streams, or serve a source stream from a number of clients. It can also serve the JOrbis Ogg Vorbis player directly, for a pure-url playback experience.

Thanks to the JRoar team for putting up such a nice demo of theora.

[ 2005 Jan 21 - Katiuska 0.7 for KDE released ]

Katiuska can now rip dvds by simply selecting subtitle and audio language + audio and video quality. Katiuska also allows you to transcode any video file to oggtheora.

Requires:
KDE with kommander1.1development2
mplayer
lsdvd

Get it here:
kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17831

[ 2005 Jan 13 - Thoggen 0.2 released ]

Thoggen is a DVD backup utility ('DVD ripper') for Linux, based on Gtk+ and GStreamer. It creates ogg/theora video files and features an extremely easy and intuitively to use interface. Thoggen supports picture cropping and resizing.

Get Thoggen 0.2 from:
thoggen.net/download/

[ 2005 Jan 3 - GeeXBox live CD supports theora playback ]

The GeeXboX bootable CD media player/linux distribution now supports Ogg Theora playback. Thanks guys!

[ 2004 Dec 24 - Cortado 0.1.0 released ]

Fluendo announces the first public release of Cortado, a java-based media player applet. Since it's a first release, building it might still be rough around the edges, but should be possible using at least Jikes with GCJ classpath libraries, or the Sun compiler. You can also download built .jar files of this release.

Visit Fluendo zoo to have a look at cortado in action.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from everyone at Fluendo !

[ 2004 Dec 15 - libtheora 1.0 alpha 4 release ]

We're pleased to announce a new release of the libtheora reference implemenation. This is an incremental update over alpha 3, in support of Icecast's use of some new utility calls to provide theora streaming support.

libtheora-1.0alpha4.tar.bz2
libtheora-1.0alpha4.tar.gz
libtheora-1.0alpha4.zip

Changes since the alpha3 release:

• first draft of the Theora I Format Specification
• API documentation generated from theora.h with Doxygen
• fix a double-update bug in the motion analysis
• apply the loop filter before filling motion vector border in the reference frame
• new utility functions: theora_packet_isheader(), theora_packet_iskeyframe(), and theora_granule_frame()
• optional support for building without floating point
• optional support for building without encode support
• various build and packaging fixes
• pkg-config support
• SymbianOS build support

We still plan to make incompatible api changes before the first beta release, but this new alpha provides a stable base including all the work that has happened up to those changes.

Thanks to everyone who contributed!

[ 2004 Dec 11 - Theora support in LiVES ]

Theora is now fully supported in LiVES is a Video Editing System (LiVES), as of version 0.9.1. If you are interested in having a nice, user friendly interface for testing out theora, then download LiVES and try it.
(lives.sourceforge.net)

The encoder plugin for theora is written in Python and can be found here: cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/lives/lives-plugins/marcos-encoders/theora_encoder.py

[ 2004 Dec 6 - Fluendo funds RTP streaming of Theora and Vorbis ]

Streaming media startup Fluendo.com announced today they will be funding a spec and reference implementation for encapsulation of Theora video and Vorbis audio over the RTP streaming protocol, important for multicast, digital broadcast, and conferencing applications.

A press release was issued this morning.

While HTTP streaming of Ogg-encapsulated multimedia has been supported for most of the history of our free codecs, RTP support is an oft-requested feature that we've never had a good solution for. We're very happy to see Fluendo driving this new work.

Phil Kerr will be managing the developement of the new drafts. The development process is open, with discussion taking place in the new xiph-rtp mailing list. Please join if you're interested in these issues.

[ 2004 Nov 21 - Theora encoder, Katiuska 0.6.1, released ]

Katiuska is a theora encoder frontend that runs on KDE. It uses ffmpeg2theora, mencoder, the encoder_example that comes with the theora libs and a little gpl bash script. It can encode mostly any kind of video that ffmpeg and mencoder can (avi, mpeg4 and 2, quicktime etc).

On a KDE system, first install libtheora (see navigation links to the left).

Make sure Kommander is installed:
prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kommander/kommander-executor-1.1devel2.tar.bz2?download

Then download Katiuska, and install it by unpacking it, change to the katiuska directory, use "su" to login as root, and then enter the command "./setup.sh". Katiuska can be downloaded from:
www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=17831

[ 2004 Nov 20 - Windows installer for RealPlayer plugins ]

A Windows installer for version 0.5 of the Helix Theora & Vorbis plugins for RealPlayer 10/10.5 and RealOne Player has been released. There are no code changes from the 0.5 zip file that was posted earlier. This just replaces the zip file with an installer. You can get the installer at:

https://helixcommunity.org/download.php/713/xiphplins_win32_0_5.exe

[ 2004 Nov 11 - Flumotion streaming media server updated ]

Flumotion 0.1.3, Fluendo's streaming media server based on Theora, was released today.

It is available from www.fluendo.com/downloads.

Packages for FC3 are available from the GStreamer repository.

This release features a lot of end-user polishing based on the feedback from our brave testers. If something didn't work in a previous release, please try this one and give us some feedback.

[ 2004 Oct 30 - new Theora and Vorbis plugins for RealPlayer 10 ]

New versions of the Helix Theora and Vorbis plugins are now available for RealPlayer 10. The major feature of this release is adding chaining support.

The new plugins can be downloaded at:
https://helixcommunity.org/project/showfiles.php?group_id=7&release_id=361

[ 2004 Oct 29 - Kino 0.7.4 exports in Ogg Theora format ]

Kino, an actively developed non-linear video editing program for Linux, now supports the export of video in Ogg Theora format.

The Kino website is at: kino.schirmacher.de/

[ 2004 Oct 20 - Flumotion streaming media server ]

The first release for public consumption of Fluendo's Flumotion streaming media server is available.

Yes, there will be bugs. Feel free to report them. But there are also lots of cool features, for which Fluendo owes a debt of gratitude to both the GStreamer and Twisted developers.

The Fluendo website is at: www.fluendo.com
The development site is at https://core.fluendo.com/trac/cgi-bin/trac.cgi
The tarball is at: www.fluendo.com/downloads/flumotion-0.1.0.tar.bz2

[ 2004 Sept 30 - Fluendo test stream ]

Fluendo has posted a stable test stream for those wanting to try theora's network aspect. It's mostly just a webcam of their office, and often rather dull at night (or when the power is out) but it's nice to have something that's generally available for testing. Thanks, Fluendo!

The stream url is mirror.fluendo.com:8800/, or click here to open the stream in your player application.

[ 2004 Sept 28 - v2v posts theora content ]

Florian Schneider has posted video from the neuro conference this past February in Munich, all in theora format. This includes a panel discussion with Enno Patalas, revered film preservationist; Brian Holmes; Sebastian Lütgert; and Ralph Giles, one of the theora developers. General documentation of the conference and its other sessions is available here.

Florian has also posted versions of a programme he produced for the German French tv station arte. Torrents for unorg and world are available.

[ 2004 Sept 11 - interview with Fluendo CEO, Julien Moutte ]

OSNews has an in inteview with Julien Moutte discussing upcoming products and services based on Ogg Theora, including a java version of the Theora client that will allow viewing of Ogg Theora format video inside web browsing windows.
www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=8218

[ 2004 Aug 28 - kfile_theora 0.2 announced ]

kfile_theora is a KDE kfile plugin that will display infos about ogg theora video files in konqueror & meta data dialog.
Currently gives info about size, length, quality and some audio settings.
Requires libogg, libvorbis and libtheora.

For more information, please go to:
www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=15553

[ 2004 Aug 25 - Richard Stallman on software patents ]

Videos in Ogg Theora format of Richard Stallman of FSF + Christian Engström and Marco Schulze of FFII visiting the Estonian Information Technology College, and talking about the danger of patenting software have been put on the net.

General info:
kwiki.ffii.org/Tallinn040722En
www.itcollege.ee/koostoo/avalikudloengudarhiiv.php

Videos themselves:
www.itcollege.ee/dl/OGG/avaloeng10_1.ogg
www.itcollege.ee/dl/OGG/avaloeng10_2.ogg

Mirror:
www.nightlabs.de/anti_swpat/BalticTour/040722/avaloeng10_1.ogg
www.nightlabs.de/anti_swpat/BalticTour/040722/avaloeng10_2.ogg

Videos are encoded as described in ogg-theora-microhowto. They are half of the original size, and qualities are Vorbis: 2/10 and Theora: 4/10.

[ 2004 Aug 21 - aKademy broadcast in theora ]

Streaming startup fluendo.com is doing it again.
This time live from the KDE World summit in Ludwigsburg, Germany.

During the conference, the live streams are available from streamingserver.akademy.kde.org/ along with viewer suggestions.
Archives are available at ktown.kde.org/akademy/

[ 2004 Jun 29 - Guadec broadcast in theora ]

Streaming startup fluendo.com has been demonstrating their encoding and server application at GUADEC this year, broadcasting the presentations live in theora. This is a great demonstration of open media technology. Congratulations to fluendo and a big thanks to everyone who made this possible!

During the conference, the live streams are available from stream1.hia.no/ along with viewer suggestions. Archives are available at the same url if you missed something.

What a change a year makes. Last year, we were very sad to see GU4DEC 2003 broadcasting the talks in the proprietary RealVideo format. Now, not only are the talks in a free video format, but you can use RealPlayer to watch them!

[ 2004 Jun 15 - Creative Commons videos ]

In honor of our slashdotting, we've made torrents available for small and large versions of the top three winning promotion videos for the Creative Commons licenses, encoded in theora. Free content in a free format.

We also have a feature film, David Ball's edgy relationship drama Honey. You can download both small and large versions via bittorrent. These are distributed under an Attribution-NoDerivs-NonCommercial license.

Share and enjoy!

[ 2004 Jun 1 - Theora I bitstream freeze ]

Big news. The Theora I bitstream format is now frozen! This means it's safe to start distributing videos in the theora format.

Files produced by the alpha 3 reference encoder will be supported by all future decoders.

Beta 1 was going to be the official freeze point, but was delayed by continuing work on the draft specification document; however we have reviewed enough of the design in writing the spec that we no longer need to reserve the right to make corrections to the encoder behavior.

So go ahead, there's no reason to delay adopting a free alternative any more!

[ 2004 Mar 20 - Theora alpha 3 release ]

We're pleased to announce the alpha 3 release of the theora reference implementation.

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

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.

[ 2004 Mar 20 - source now in subversion ]

We've switched our version control system to subversion from cvs, along with all the other Xiph.org projects.

Please make a fresh checkout if you're following the development tree:

svn checkout svn.xiph.org/trunk/theora

as cvs is no longer updated. You can also mount the dav url directly on your desktop for read-only access.

See our instruction page for details. You can find more information about this great new tool at definitive reference book's website.

[ 2004 Jan 26 - status update ]

There hasn't been much progress of late. Derf has been working on a new encoder, and in doing so came up with some suggested bitstreams changes to increase the scope for future encoder improvements. These will be integrated into the reference encoder and released as 'alpha 3' for testing.

The main hold-up for the beta release is still a draft spec. Everyone's waiting for this because it means the format will be frozen and encoded files will be supported by future versions of the reference implementation. So if you want to help things along pull out the code and help with the documentation, or donate something to help pay for the work.

[ June 9, 2003 - Theora alpha 2 release ]

The libtheora reference implementation has reached its 'alpha 2' milestone. A lot of bugs have been fixed and new features added, including all the planned changes to the bitsteams format.

This is more of an internal milestone than a public release, but we are making a source tarball available for convenience. Nevertheless we recommend using the svn version if possible. This release also requires svn libogg and libvorbis to compile; you might try the svn nightly tarball if you don't already have these checked out. You will need to build and install the 'ogg' and 'vorbis' modules.

[ May 8, 2003 - VP3 Legacy Codec binaries ]

Mauricio Piacentini has been maintaining the original VP32 sources upon which theora is based. He's pooling his efforts with Xiph a bit and has decided to keep his work in xiph.org svn, in the 'vp32' module where the code was originally released. We hope this will help concentrate efforts related to theora and bring additional focus to both projects.

He is also making his binary builds for Quicktime 6 and Video for Windows available on this site. Please visit the legacy VP3 page for file links and complete information.

[ May 7, 2003 - Status update ]

Things have been slow for some time, so we just wanted to say what's been happening. Monty's been busy with unrelated contract work since finishing the zero-copy libogg, and no one has stepped up to act as maintainer in the meantime. We've been working on a wiki todo for theora and for xiph generally. So feel free to look (and contribute) there.

[ January 13th, 2003 - Test Suite ]

We've posted a test suite for your encoding pleasure. Feel free to post comments and questions to the Theora mailing lists.

[ December 16th, 2002 - Robot Roll Call ]

The first part of Theora Alpha Two, the delicious Video Layer FAQ is now available on the FAQ page, written by Dan Miller. The second part is libogg hacking, the results of which will be posted just a little after December 27th. Alpha Two is really more of an informational release than a big downloadable install-fest, so don't fire up the testbeds just yet.

Welcome to theora.org, the official website for Ogg Theora, a video codec and integration project maintained and supported by the Xiph.org Foundation for the benefit of all humankind.

What is Theora? Theora will be a video codec that builds upon On2's VP3 codec. While Ogg Vorbis has reached 1.0, Theora is currently being integrated into the Ogg multimedia framework, as well as being optimized from the VP3 codebase at its heart.

Theora will be released in June of 2003, with three major milestones, the first being released today, September 25th, 2002. Today's piece is available for download in the 'theora' module of the Xiph.org SVN repository, as well as a UNIX tarball available here.

There's a lot of useful information under the hood, so please have a look around by using the navigation links at the top of the page. If there's anything you think that we need on this page, please contact us and let us know what you'd like to see.

For the legal terms on the usage of the VP3 codec, please check out the SVN page. If you would like to help sponsor the development of Theora and other open technologies from the Xiph.org Foundation, please consider a donation! More information is available at this link.

Thanks for stopping by, and happy hacking!