Xiph.Org Foundation
The Xiph.Org Foundation ( German Xiph.Org Foundation, after the fish genus Xiphophorus ) is a non-profit organization for the development of free multimedia formats, protocols and standards. The Foundation was founded by Chris Montgomery, who also developed the Ogg container format.
Work of the Foundation
The primary focus of the Xiph.Org Foundation is on the Ogg family of formats and their implementation. These various multimedia formats offer a free replacement for corresponding, but patented formats. The best known example is the free audio codec Vorbis, which is an alternative to proprietary formats such as MP3 and AAC. The current development work focuses on Ogg Theora, an open and patent-free video format that is intended to provide an alternative to the patented formats MPEG -4, RealVideo and Windows Media Video. In addition to the project's development, the Foundation has already brought existing Free Software projects under their auspices, which complement our own range of software. Among these are Speex, an open audio codec designed for speech coding and FLAC, a lossless audio codec.
Xiph.Org projects
The work of the Xiph.Org Foundation is divided into different projects. These are divided into the three areas: container formats, codecs and software. In the Ogg container formats is the default container that is recommended for Xiph.Org codecs. Other containers are also Ogg Skeleton for advanced data stream information, different RTP container and the container for XML - XSPF playlists. The codec projects included next to the lossy audio codec Vorbis and lossy video codec Theora even the lossless audio codec FLAC, languages codec Speex and CELT, an audio codec for real-time applications with high quality and low to medium bit rate. A special feature finally, the CMML codec is being used as a Metadata codec for timed text, for example, to allow as subtitles. In software projects there are, among others, the Icecast streaming server and the associated source client called Ices and the CDDA reading software cdparanoia. Icecast is responsible for ensuring that media content over the network will be sent to appropriate clients. The source client Ices in turn sends it to stream content to the streaming server.
In addition to these major projects, there are also a number of sub - projects or developers. This includes Ogg Tremor, an adapted to specific hardware version of Vorbis, Theora is not in favor of the more advanced video codec Tarkin, and Ogg Writ, a codec for animated text.