Mozilla backs open video for the web

Mozilla has announced that it will provide a $100,000 grant, administered by the Wikimedia Foundation, to advance an open video format for the web. In a post on his blog Mike Shaver, Mozilla's VP of Engineering, stated that "We believe that Theora is the best path available today for truly open, truly free video on the internet," .

The aim of the grant is to improve the quality, performance, and implementation of online video. In a post on the Wikimedia Blog, Erik Möller, Wikimedia's Deputy Director, said that "The grant will be used to support the work of long-time contributors to the Ogg Theora/Vorbis codebase and related tools, such as libraries for network seeking. The improvements will be made over a 6 month period."

Mozilla will also be building browser "robust support" for both Theora (an open source video compression format) and Vorbis (an open source audio codec) into Firefox 3.1 making it "straightforward for authors to incorporate audio and video media into their pages and applications." One goal is to help make online video more interactive by allowing users to interact directly with the video's, which may include video hyper-links and other interactive features.

The open audio and video standards are important, as they can be used by anyone, without the need to pay royalties and as an open format, will also benefit from the efforts of the community to help improve the quality of the standard.

(crve)