RealNetworks' Helix project spreads support for the Ogg Vorbis
compression standard.
Last week I expressed doubts about the long-term benefit to
RealNetworks of its Helix project, which is making some of its code
available as open source. But that does not mean the move is not
significant. Indeed, it has already had one result that could have
important longer-term implications.
For as the
press
release explains, the forthcoming Helix DNA Client - the
software that sits on the user's computer - will now come with the
Ogg Vorbis audio codec as standard. That is, anyone who uses a
player based on the Helix client will automatically have support
for the Ogg Vorbis compression standard.
This is important because hitherto Ogg Vorbis has been an
interesting free software project to come up with a
non-proprietary, open, patent and royalty-free alternative to the
MP3 standard, but one with little hope of achieving much market
share. Thanks to Helix, though, there will be potentially millions
of players that support the Ogg Vorbis standard, which will make it
much more popular with musicians, for example, who are looking for
an encoding format.
Ogg Vorbis is a creation of the
Xiph.org Foundation. More
about the
organisation
and the
name
can be found online. With fine timing, the
Ogg Vorbis
project has just released version 1.0 of its software. Ogg
Vorbis also has its own
home
page, a
FAQ and an
interesting demo page8 that allows you to compare the quality of
Ogg Vorbis 1.0 with that of other encoding technologies such as MP3
and Microsoft's
Windows
Media Audio.
There are already a number of tools available for all the major
platforms:
Windows,
GNU/Linux and
Unix, and the
Apple
Macintosh.
Ogg Vorbis is part of a broader multimedia suite of open standards.
There is also
Theora, a
multimedia project that combines the Ogg Vorbis audio codec with
the open source
VP3 video
codec from
On2
Technologies. There is a press release about the
partnership and a
Theora
FAQ.
As the FAQ points out, since Theora will be entirely royalty-free,
it possesses a key advantage over the new MPeg-4 standard, which
for all its technological advances is still hamstrung by a costly
licensing scheme.
Not content with these major projects, Xiph.org is also working in
a number of other areas. For example, its
Icecast software is an
open source audio streaming solution that is compatible with the
similar
Shoutcast
software from the creators of the hugely popular
Winamp player (which
also supports Ogg Vorbis now - another indication of the growing
support for this standard). There is more
about
Icecast and a
FAQ.
Other Xiph.org projects include
Paranoia,
an open source CD ripper for GNU/Linux - see the
FAQ -
and the
Moaning
Goat Meter. Despite the latter's splendid name, it is the
Ogg Vorbis project that is likely to have the most impact on
computing, particularly in the broader context of the burgeoning
world of open source software.