:If you are visiting this page because your computer can't play a sound file, see How to play Ogg files - OGG is also the abbreviated title of the British mockumentary Operation Good Guys
Ogg is a project producing open-source software for digital multimedia.
1 The Ogg file format
The Ogg bitstream format, spearheaded by the Xiph.org Foundation, has been created as the framework of a larger initiative aimed at developing a set of components for the coding and decoding of multimedia content which are both freely available and freely re-implementable in software. The Ogg bitstream is defined in RFC 3533 and its MIME media type (application/ogg) in RFC 3534.
Various components of the project are intended to stand as alternatives to proprietary codecs such as:
- MP3 and MPEG
- RealAudio and RealVideo
- QuickTime streaming format and its codecs
- The RIFF format and its derivates such as WAV and AVIAVI an acronym for Audio Video Interleave is a file format designed to store both audio and video data in a standard package to allow its simultaneous playback. It was introduced by Microsoft in November 1992, as part of the Video for Windows technology. and their respective codecs
- The Advanced Streaming FormatAdvanced Streaming Format (or ASF later renamed into Advanced Systems Format is Microsoft's proprietary digital audio/ digital video wrapper, especially meant for streaming. ASF is part of the Windows Media framework. The format does not specify how the v with its Windows Media AudioWindows Media Audio (WMA is a proprietary compressed audio file format used by Microsoft. It was initially a competitor to the MP3 format, but with the introduction of Apple's iTunes Music Store, it has positioned itself as a competitor to the advanced au and Windows Media VideoWindows Media Video WMV is a generic name for the set of streaming video technologies developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV is not built solely on Microsoft in-house technology. From version 7 (WMV7), Microsoft has used it codecs
The principal Ogg component to date is VorbisVorbis is a completely open and free audio compression ( codec) project from the Xiph. org Foundation. It is frequently used in conjunction with the Ogg container and is then called Ogg Vorbis . Vorbis was started following a September 1998 letter from Fr, for audio data. Other components include TheoraTheora is a video codec being developed by the Xiph. org Foundation as part of their Ogg project. Based upon On2 Technologies' VP3 codec, and christened by On2 as the successor in VP3's lineage, Theora is targeted at competing with MPEG-4 video (e. XviD a, for video data; SpeexThe Speex project is an attempt to create a free software speech codec, unencumbered by patent restrictions. Speex is licensed under the BSD License and is part of the Xiph. org Foundation Ogg container. The Speex coder uses the Ogg bitstream format, and, for voice data; and FLACFLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec . FLAC is an audio compression codec that is lossless. Unlike lossy codecs such as MP3 and Vorbis, it does not remove any information from the audio stream. On January 29th, 2003, Xiphophorus (now called the Xiph., for high-fidelity audio data.
Ogg Vorbis is a patent-clear, fully open general purpose audio encoding format standard that rivals or surpasses the 'upcoming' generation of proprietary coders ( AAC and TwinVQ , also known as VQF ). For those who don't accept GPL, libvorbis, a BSD-licensed source implementation of Vorbis as a library is available.
It is often assumed that the name "Ogg" comes from the character of Nanny Ogg in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels. Rather, it is jargon that arose in the computer game Netrek, originally meaning a kamikaze attack, and later, more generally, to do something forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future resources. At its inception the Ogg project was thought to be somewhat ambitious given the power of the PC hardware of the time.
