<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Mar 16, 2007, at 5:29 PM, Håkon Wium Lie wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Compared to which formats? I believe Ogg Theora performs better than</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">Flash. Given the video quality of some of the superhits on YouTube, I</FONT></P> <P style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px"><FONT face="Helvetica" size="3" style="font: 12.0px Helvetica">doubt this is the most important factor, though.</FONT></P> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><DIV>Ogg Theora is based on the VP3 codec [1] that flash video uses. [2] The Theora site says the main differences are "architectural." After reading past their techno speak, it looks like Theora MAY be able to create better video with it's encoder than Flash can at a given bit rate.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>If YouTube is what you are basing your comparison on, they probably have pretty crappy conversion settings to save bandwidth. I haven't done / seen any comparisons between Theora and FLV in a controlled environment. They may turn out to create fairly similar video quality at fairly similar sizes.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Hopefully people don't expect super-high-quality video on the web. It's possible, but it isn't practical for most site owners. However, the quality decisions will be left up to the person encoding the video, not the player.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>[1] <A href="http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html#20">http://www.theora.org/theorafaq.html#20</A></DIV><DIV>[2] <A href="http://www.on2.com/technology/flix_praise/">http://www.on2.com/technology/flix_praise/</A></DIV><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>----------------------------------------------------------</DIV><DIV>Robert <<A href="http://robertdot.org">http://robertdot.org</A>></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>