Xiph.org describes itself as “a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests. (Its) purpose is to support and develop free, open protocols and software to serve the public, developer and business markets.”
With that auspicious introduction, I would like to bring attention to an excellent video presentation by Christopher “Monty” Montgomery, the mastermind behind the Ogg Theora open source video format. This first in a series video bills itself as “a digital media primer for geeks.”
And that is exactly what it is. If you want to get a good understanding of the technical underpinnings of audio and video, in the analog and digital realms, this is the place to start. The associated Wiki is well worth visiting and bookmarking as well.
In keeping with Xiph’s mission of bringing open source ideas to the multimedia world, the video is available for free download. It is encoded in WebM and Ogg Theora, and streamed using HTML5.
My congratulations to Monty, the team at Xiph.Org and Red Hat for undertaking this project and doing such an excellent job.