Xiph.Org Foundation

Last updated

Xiph.Org Foundation
Founded1994;30 years ago (1994)
Founder Christopher Montgomery
Type 501(c)(3)
Location
Area served
Worldwide
Products Free multimedia formats, libraries, and streaming software
Key people
 Christopher Montgomery, Jack Moffitt, Ralph Giles (Theora), Jean-Marc Valin (Speex, CELT, Opus), [1] Josh Coalson (FLAC), Michael Smith, Timothy B. Terriberry [2] [3] [4] [5]
Website xiph.org

Xiph.Org Foundation is a nonprofit organization that produces free multimedia formats and software tools. It focuses on the Ogg family of formats, the most successful of which has been Vorbis, an open and freely licensed audio format and codec designed to compete with the patented WMA, MP3 and AAC. As of 2013, development work was focused on Daala, an open and patent-free video format and codec designed to compete with VP9 and the patented High Efficiency Video Coding.

Contents

In addition to its in-house development work, the foundation has also brought several already-existing but complementary free software projects under its aegis, most of which have a separate, active group of developers. These include Speex, an audio codec designed for speech, and FLAC, a lossless audio codec.

The Xiph.Org Foundation has criticized Microsoft and the RIAA for their lack of openness. [6] They state that if companies like Microsoft had owned patents on the Internet, then other companies would have tried to compete, and "The Net, as designed by warring corporate entities, would be a battleground of incompatible and expensive 'standards' had it actually survived at all." They also criticize the RIAA for their support of projects such as the Secure Digital Music Initiative.

In 2008, the Free Software Foundation listed the Xiph.Org projects as High Priority Free Software Projects. [7]

History

Chris Montgomery, creator of the Ogg container format, founded the Xiphophorus company and later the Xiph.Org Foundation. [8] The first work that became the Ogg media projects started in 1994. [9] The name "Xiph" abbreviates the original organizational name, "Xiphophorus", named after the common swordtail fish, Xiphophorus hellerii. [10] It was officially incorporated on 15 May 1996 as Xiphophorus, Inc. [11] The name "Xiphophorus company" was used until 2002, [12] [13] [14] when it was renamed to Xiph.Org Foundation. [15]

In 1999, the Xiphophorus company defined itself on its website as "a distributed group of Free and Open Source programmers working to protect the foundations of Internet multimedia from domination by self-serving corporate interests." [16]

In 2002, the Xiph.Org Foundation defined itself on its website as "a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests." [15]

In March 2003, the Xiph.Org Foundation was recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization, [17] which means that U.S. citizens can deduct donations made to Xiph.Org from their taxes.

Xiph.Org Foundation projects

OpenCodecs

OpenCodecs is a software package for Windows adding DirectShow filters for the Theora and WebM codecs. It adds Theora and WebM support to Windows Media Player and enables HTML5 video in Internet Explorer. It consists of:

QuickTime Components

Xiph QuickTime Components are implementations of the Ogg container along with the Speex, Theora, FLAC and Vorbis codecs for QuickTime. It allows users to use Ogg files in any application that uses QuickTime for audio and video file support, such as iTunes and QuickTime Player.

Since QuickTime Components do not function in macOS Sierra and above, the project was discontinued in 2016. [22]

Related Research Articles

An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size, often using lossy compression. The data can be a raw bitstream in an audio coding format, but it is usually embedded in a container format or an audio data format with defined storage layer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ogg</span> Open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation

Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality digital multimedia. Its name is derived from "ogging", jargon from the computer game Netrek.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vorbis</span> Royalty-free lossy audio encoding format

Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjunction with the Ogg container format and it is therefore often referred to as Ogg Vorbis.

Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on voice over IP applications and podcasts. It is based on the code excited linear prediction speech coding algorithm. Its creators claim Speex to be free of any patent restrictions and it is licensed under the revised (3-clause) BSD license. It may be used with the Ogg container format or directly transmitted over UDP/RTP. It may also be used with the FLV container format.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FLAC</span> Lossless digital audio coding format

FLAC is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software package that includes a codec implementation. Digital audio compressed by FLAC's algorithm can typically be reduced to between 50 and 70 percent of its original size and decompresses to an identical copy of the original audio data.

Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container.

Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis, and Opus. Therefore, it may be decompressed to a file that is identical to the source material.

xine Multimedia playback software for Unix-like systems

xine is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries from other projects such as liba52, libmpeg2, FFmpeg, libmad, FAAD2, and Ogle. xine can also use binary Windows codecs through a wrapper, bundled as the w32codecs, for playback of some media formats that are not handled natively.

On2 TrueMotion VP3 is a (royalty-free) lossy video compression format and video codec. It is an incarnation of the TrueMotion video codec, a series of video codecs developed by On2 Technologies.

These tables compare features of multimedia container formats, most often used for storing or streaming digital video or digital audio content. To see which multimedia players support which container format, look at comparison of media players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Montgomery</span> American programmer (born 1972)

Christopher "Monty" Montgomery is an American programmer and engineer. He is the original creator of the Ogg Free Software container format and the Vorbis audio codec and others, and the founder of The Xiph.Org Foundation, which promotes public domain multimedia codecs. He uses xiphmont as an online pseudonym.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vorbis comment</span> Metadata container for Ogg file formats

A Vorbis comment is a metadata container used in the Vorbis, FLAC, Theora, Speex and Opus file formats. It allows information such as the title, artist, album, track number or other information about the file to be added to the file itself. However, as the official Ogg Vorbis documentation notes, “[the comment header] is meant for short, text comments, not arbitrary metadata; arbitrary metadata belongs in a separate logical bitstream that provides greater structure and machine parseability.” Instead, the intended function of Vorbis comments is to approximate the kind of information that might be hand-inked onto a blank faced CD-R or CD-RW: a few lines of notes briefly detailing the content.

OggSquish is one of the first names used for the Ogg project developed from 1994 by the Xiphophorus company. Ogg Squish was also an attempt from the Xiphophorus company to create a royalty-free lossless audio compression codec.

A demultiplexer for digital media files, or media demultiplexer, also called a file splitter by laymen or consumer software providers, is software that demultiplexes individual elementary streams of a media file, e.g., audio, video, or subtitles and sends them to their respective decoders for actual decoding. Media demultiplexers are not decoders themselves, but are format container handlers that separate media streams from a (container) file and supply them to their respective audio, video, or subtitles decoders.

Constrained Energy Lapped Transform (CELT) is an open, royalty-free lossy audio compression format and a free software codec with especially low algorithmic delay for use in low-latency audio communication. The algorithms are openly documented and may be used free of software patent restrictions. Development of the format was maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and later coordinated by the Opus working group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The HTML5 draft specification adds video and audio elements for embedding video and audio in HTML documents. The specification had formerly recommended support for playback of Theora video and Vorbis audio encapsulated in Ogg containers to provide for easier distribution of audio and video over the internet by using open standards, but the recommendation was soon after dropped.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Opus (audio format)</span> Lossy audio coding format

Opus is a lossy audio coding format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and standardized by the Internet Engineering Task Force, designed to efficiently code speech and general audio in a single format, while remaining low-latency enough for real-time interactive communication and low-complexity enough for low-end embedded processors. Opus replaces both Vorbis and Speex for new applications, and several blind listening tests have ranked it higher-quality than any other standard audio format at any given bitrate until transparency is reached, including MP3, AAC, and HE-AAC.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Audio coding format</span> Digitally coded format for audio signals

An audio coding format is a content representation format for storage or transmission of digital audio. Examples of audio coding formats include MP3, AAC, Vorbis, FLAC, and Opus. A specific software or hardware implementation capable of audio compression and decompression to/from a specific audio coding format is called an audio codec; an example of an audio codec is LAME, which is one of several different codecs which implements encoding and decoding audio in the MP3 audio coding format in software.

References

  1. ↑ Xiph.Org people.xiph.org - personal webspace of the xiphs - Jean-Marc Valin, Retrieved 2009-09-11
  2. ↑ Timothy B. Terriberry (2009). "people.xiph.org - Timothy B. Terriberry, Ph.D." Xiph.Org. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  3. ↑ "Summer of Code Mentoring". Xiph.Org. 2009. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  4. ↑ "Minutes of the Xiph.org Monthly Meeting for May 2003". May 10, 2003. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  5. ↑ "Minutes of the Xiph.org Monthly Meeting for September 2003". Xiph.Org. September 16, 2003. Retrieved September 11, 2009.
  6. ↑ "About". xiph.org. Retrieved March 5, 2011.
  7. ↑ "High Priority Free Software Projects". Free Software Foundation. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  8. ↑ "Xiph.org: Contact information". Xiph.org. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  9. ↑ "A Challenger to MP3?". Tristan Louis. January 16, 2001. Archived from the original on June 17, 2013. Retrieved September 2, 2008.
  10. ↑ "naming". Xiph.org. Archived from the original on February 2, 2012. Retrieved August 25, 2008.
  11. ↑ "XIPHOPHORUS, INC. :: Massachusetts (US)". OpenCorporates . Retrieved November 6, 2022.
  12. ↑ Brian Zisk (April 19, 2000). "vorbis - Dvorak Interviews Monty" . Retrieved September 4, 2008.
  13. ↑ Advogado (April 4, 2000). "Interview: Christopher Montgomery of Xiphophorus". Advogado. Archived from the original on June 28, 2017. Retrieved September 2, 2009.
  14. ↑ Xiphophorus company (December 12, 2001). "Xiphophorus home". Archived from the original on December 12, 2001. Retrieved September 2, 2009.
  15. 1 2 Xiph.org Foundation (November 27, 2002). "Xiph.org home". Archived from the original on November 27, 2002. Retrieved September 2, 2009.
  16. ↑ Xiphophorus company (November 28, 1999). "Xiphophorus home". Archived from the original on November 28, 1999. Retrieved September 2, 2009.
  17. ↑ Xiph.Org (2003-03-24) Speex reaches 1.0; Xiph.Org now a 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Organization, Retrieved 2009-09-01
  18. ↑ "Ogg Skeleton 4 - XiphWiki". wiki.xiph.org. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
  19. ↑ Michael Smith (2005-08-29) Tarkin, vorbis-dev mailinglist, Retrieved 2009-09-06
  20. ↑ "Xiph.org :: daala video". xiph.org. Retrieved November 6, 2022.
  21. ↑ "libao: a cross platform audio library". Xiph.Org. Retrieved June 29, 2009. Libao is a cross-platform audio library that allows programs to output audio using a simple API on a wide variety of platforms.
  22. ↑ "XiphQT discontinued". Xiph.org. June 13, 2016.
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