Theora

2005-08-16T05:47:14Z

Jan Söderback: A couple of paragraphs about Theora in general. Needs more VLC spcific info.

'''Theora''' is an open video codec based on [[On2]]'s [[VP3]] codec, open sourced in 2001. It's being developed by the [http://www.xiph.org/ Xiph.org foundation] of [[Ogg]] and [[Vorbis]] fame. If you want to be sure there are no legal issues with your software, Theora is a good choice, altough it's technically not as advanced as [[MPEG-4]] or [[WMV9]].

The codec is still (as of August 2005) in alpha, but the video format has been frozen so it's safe to produce Thora files for future use. Encoding performance is still poor, so it might not be a good choice for high volume applications.

Theora uses the [[Ogg]] container format and is usually combined with [[Vorbis]] audio.

Theora files can be streamed using the [[Icecast]] 2 streaming server, available for most recent Linux distributions.

VideoLAN ships Theora support. There are also builtin support or plugins for other media players such as [[Xine]], [[MPlayer]], [[Helix Player]] and [[Windows Media Player]]. See the [http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html Theora FAQ] for more info.

== Links ==
* [http://theora.org/ Offical website]
* [http://icecast.org/ Icecast] streaming server
* [http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ Ogg Direct Show Filters] lets you play Theora files in many Microsoft Windows applications, including Windows Media Player.

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Theora