theora in mkv?

[pyropir]

With Ogg Theora being finalised now, I was wondering : is/will it be possible to use theora streams in mkv files? Would such a mkv file still be patent-free if it has a vorbis audio stream?

Hope I didn't miss anything when I did the search and looked at the core codec site.

pir

[bond]

Originally posted by pyropir
With Ogg Theora being finalised now, I was wondering : is/will it be possible to use theora streams in mkv files?it should be possible to store theora in mkv, yes

Would such a mkv file still be patent-free if it has a vorbis audio stream?the used container doesnt change anything regarding if a technology is patented or not

[bill_baroud]

with the actual VFW version of ffmpeg, i'm pretty sure you can already store Theora in matroska with the VFW compatibility mode. It's perhaps not the best way to do so, but theora is just a vp32 "ogg'ized" (a bit like vorbis) so you have to store ogg frame inside of matroska anyway.

[bond]

theora is based on vp3, yes, but it doesnt mean it wasnt further developed

for example you can losslessly convert any vp3 stream to theora, but you can not losslessly any theora stream to vp3 (dont ask me why, but that is what was told me on #theora :D )

[ChristianHJW]

Implementing Theora into MKV is not easy at all.

Besides all the technical work we had to do for that, there are also other considerartions to be taken into account.

Those of you who are around here since some time will know that in the past the relationship between Xiph and the matroska people has not always been the best. I am actually quite happy that there has not been any incident over the last couple of months, and i guess the main reason for that was that there hasnt been any real contact between the two teams.

Who knows how Xiph will react if we really implemented Theora into matroska, maybe they would have a bad feeling about that, like if a neighbour is eating the cherries from your tree ;) ......

[unmei]

bill_baroud wrote
with the actual VFW version of ffmpeg, i'm pretty sure you can already store Theora in matroska with the VFW compatibility mode

yes, of course this works. I store all sort of stuff i test/use in MKV, like VBLE, Milk, rududu, blox and h.264. The VFW compatibility is a great thing, but also the cheap way. But i feel this is not what should be aimed at, VFW comp. can only be a temporary solution for codecs that could take advantage of the features matroska offers additionally to the 'AVI mode'.
Also i could understand such resenting feelings from xhiph even if i think it's stupid - after all they work hard on the codecs and they could feel Matroska defeats the purpose of theora in that it was designed to be stored in ogg streams (only that exactly the actual state of that container -apart from audio- is imo the 'weak point' of Xhiph).

[Lobuz]

Any news on that project? I think that Theora in MKV should be one of the first codecs supported properly in Matroska. It's free and useful for free projects.

Unfortunatelly development of Ogg is progressing really slow and there are almost no useful tools for windows. Compatybility of Theora encoded with ffdshow with Illiminable dshow tools is questionable - didn't work.

I have a feeling that Xiph doesn't care much about it's face. Hyped transition Vp3->Theora resulted only in delays and disappointment of final users. It took a lot of time to rewamp working VP3 codec into new Theora but what about container?

Windows support is quite important but Xiph doesn't care. Only few persons outside the project(for example ffdshow) and Illiminable are trying to make Theora reality for anxious masses. Releasing compiled code of Theora is some kind of tabu.

Anyway I hope that legal, efficient and free distribution of free content will be possible someday.

Regards
Lobuz