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On2 donates VP3 video technology to Xiph.org

24 June 2002 5:48 by Petteri "dRD" Pyyny | 2 comments

On2 Technologies has announced that it will open-source its multimedia player and server products in addition to its open-sourced VP3 video technology. Company will also hand over the development maintenance responsibility to Xiph.org Foundation, the same body who controls the development of OGG Vorbis audio compression format.

Basically On2 and Xiph.org are trying to develop a complete multimedia suite that would compete against MPEG-4 and RealNetworks' and Microsoft's multimedia delivery products. It also offers a free alternative to those formats mentioned -- specially to MPEG-4 which licensing model is still in middle of chaotic negotiations between various patent holders and companies willing to license the technology.

Xiph.org will be sponsored by On2, who obviously hopes that growing interest towards the new multimedia suite will eventually increase sales of company's proprietary solutions which include more advanced video codec, VP5. Xiph.org estimates that it will take a year before the OGG bitstream can include both, OGG Vorbis audio and VP3 video. But then we should see a rival to the technologies that are based on heavily patented MPEG-4 technology (such as DivX and XviD).

Permalink to this article

Google buyout results in $1.6 million third quarter loss for On2 (2 November 2009)

On2 releases VP6 codec (12 May 2003)

AOL licenses On2's video technology (14 April 2003)

ABC and BBC license On2's VP5 compression technology (23 February 2003)

Real reveals Helix code (29 October 2002)

DivX for GameCube -- kinda.. (1 October 2002)

Real teams with Ogg Vorbis (24 July 2002)

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seanbyrne (Member) 25 June 2002 4:25
I tried out VP3 video and it appears to have a better picture reproduction than both MPEG-4 and Divx 5 pro for the same bitrate. It plays smoothly at full screen on a PII 400MHz PC. Vorbis (RC3) at 96k has a more natural sound than all other audio codecs I've tested at this bitrate and beats some such as WMA, AAC and RA8 at or beyond 128k. Merging these two codecs to give a audio/video codec seems like a very good idea. AS the OGG codec has support for up to 255 audio channels, it would be possible to make an encoder to encode 5.1 sound as well the video, e.g. A movie with DVD quality picture with 5.1 sound on a standard CD. [ + quote]
A_Klingon (Moderator) 25 June 2002 21:40
WoW ! Thanks for the input, seanbyrne. I've just discovered .ogg (vorbis audio)myself, and am presently engaged in transferring gobs of music cds. I am delighted that Xiph.org has found a corporate sponsor to help offset the loss of iCast. I wonder how vp3 (or vp5) will fit into their ogg-tarkin plans? I rarely see much in the way of updates at vorbis.com, and it's gratifying I chose a site (right here) that does provide timely updates! -- Mike, Klingon -- [ + quote]