theora

Key Features

* Suited for internet content delivery: Theora, as every member of the Ogg family, can be streamed easily. Existing solutions do exist (e.g. Icecast or Flumotion streaming server) that have a proven track record and itself are free and open. Of course Theora also can be streamed from virtually any HTTP server, making it easy to provide static streams. On the technological side Theora is well engineered for low-bitrate streaming. Its in-loop deblocking filter is efficient at preventing a distracting, blocky look of the encoded content. Thus perceived video quality usually degrades gracefully as bitrate decreases, which is an essential property for any video codec targeting web video. * Cross-platform: Basically every major Linux distribution ships with support for Theora by default. The licensing terms of MPEG or e.g. VC-1 make those compression schemes inherently incompatible with the idea of truly free open source software. If you want to target the growing number of Linux users shipping your content as Theora is a good idea. Apart from the Linux platform, where Theora is considered "standard", there also exist easy to install solutions for Windows and Mac OS, making authoring and consuming of Theora encoded content easy. * Reliable: In contrast to proprietary codecs with no public documentation available Theora is subject of a specification which is available to everyone at any time without restrictions. The open source nature of Theora makes it very unlikely it'll simply disappear, which may happen to proprietary codecs once their developers decide to leave the codec business.