Theora is a video codec which compress video so that it can quickly and easily be shared or streamed. It can scale tiny images right up to high definition and works well on small bitrates (the bitrate is the ammount of imformation sent per second). Vorbis is an audio encoding and streaming software and can be used with Theora to stream video with sound.
Theora is a multimedia container format, and the native file and stream format for the Xiph.org multimedia codecs that include the free and popular Theora codec, soon to be part of the default set of native decoders on the coming release of the new Firefox release (FF3.1). Ogg Theora video player is implemented as standard video format.
Ogg Theora is the best free software video codec for streaming video available. It is similar to MPEG-4/DiVX. It supports intra coded frames and forward predictive frames but not bi-predictive frames that can be found in many other video codecs.
Previous evaluations have found Theora substantially lacking compared to contemporary video codecs but It is considered competitive at low bitrates and this fits quite well our streaming needs though creates a lag in the workflow in terms of editing ogg files to conform and archive. Editing ogg files is not a straight forward process yet. (see arvhives and editing chapters)
On the server side of things Icecast2 supports Ogg Theora and on the web front side the Cortado java applet allows you to embed live or archived Theora video easily in a webpage. As said before this will become transparent for the user of firefox 3.1 to for whom there wont be a need to use any embedded player. In case theres a need to use one we recommend the cortado wrapper called itheora.
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