Theora

Free lossy video compression format

For the genus of clams, see Theora (bivalve).

Theora

Filename extension|

.ogv, .ogg

Internet media type|

video/ogg

Developed by| Xiph.Org Foundation
Initial release| 1 June 2004 (2004-06-01)[1]
Latest release|

Theora I
3 June 2017[2]

Type of format| Video coding format
Contained by| Ogg, Matroska
Extended from| VP3
Standard| Specification
Open format?| Yes[3]
Free format?| Yes[4]
Website| theora.org
libtheora

Developer(s)| Xiph.Org Foundation
Initial release| 3 November 2008 (2008-11-03) (1.0)
Stable release|

1.2.0 / 29 March 2025; 4 months ago (2025-03-29)[5]

Preview release|

1.2.0 Beta 1 / 16 March 2025; 5 months ago (2025-03-16)[6]

Written in| C
Operating system| Unix-like (incl Linux, Mac OS X), Windows
Type| Video codec, reference implementation
License| 3-clause BSD
Website| www.theora.org

Theora is a free lossy video compression format.[7] It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container.

The libtheora video codec is the reference implementation of the Theora video compression format developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation.[8][9]

Theora was derived from the formerly proprietary VP3 codec, released into the public domain by On2 Technologies. It is broadly comparable in design and bitrate efficiency to MPEG-4 Part 2, early versions of Windows Media Video, and RealVideo while it lacked some of the features present in some of these other codecs. It is comparable in open standards philosophy to the BBC's Dirac codec.

Theora was named after Theora Jones, Edison Carter's Controller on the Max Headroom television program.[10]

## Technical details

[edit]

Theora is a variable-bitrate, DCT-based video compression scheme. Like most common video codecs, Theora used chroma subsampling, block-based motion compensation and an 8-by-8 DCT block. Pixels are grouped into various structures, namely blocks, super blocks, and macroblocks. Theora supports intra-coded frames ("keyframes") and forward-predictive frames, but not bi-predictive frames which are found in H.264 and VC-1. Theora also does not support interlacing, or bit-depths larger than 8 bits per component.[2]

Theora video streams can be stored in any suitable container format, but they are most commonly found in the Ogg container with Vorbis or FLAC audio streams. This combination provided a completely open, royalty-free multimedia format. It can also be used with the Matroska container.[11]

The Theora video-compression format is compatible with the VP3 video-compression format, which consisted of a backward-compatible superset.[12][13] Theora is a superset of VP3, and VP3 streams (with some minor syntactic modifications) can be converted into Theora streams without recompression (but not vice versa).[13] VP3 video compression can be decoded using Theora implementations, but Theora video compression usually cannot be decoded using old VP3 implementations.

## History

[edit]

See also: VP3

Theora's predecessor On2 TrueMotion VP3 was originally a proprietary and patent-encumbered video codec developed by On2 Technologies. VP3.1 was introduced in May 2000[14] and followed three months later by the VP3.2 release,[15] which was the basis for Theora.

### Move to free software

[edit]

In August 2001, On2 Technologies announced that they would release an open source version of their VP3.2 video compression algorithm.[16][17] In September 2001, On2 Technologies published the source code of the VP3.2 codec under the VP3.2 Public License 0.1,[18] a custom open-source license.[19][20] The license only granted the right to modify the source code if the resultant larger work continued to support playback of VP3.2 data.[18][21]

In March 2002, On2 responded to the public's reception by relicensing the VP3 codec under the GNU Lesser General Public License.[22] In June 2002, On2 donated VP3 to the Xiph.Org Foundation and offered it under the Ogg Vorbis BSD-style license.[23][24][25][26] On2 also made an irrevocable, royalty-free license grant for any patent claims it might have over the software and any derivatives,[2] allowing anyone to use any VP3-derived codec for any purpose.[12][27] In August 2002, On2 entered into an agreement with the Xiph.Org Foundation to make VP3 the basis of a new, free video codec, called Theora.[28] On2 declared Theora to be VP3's successor.[citation needed] On 3 October 2002, On2 and Xiph announced the completion and availability of the initial alpha code release of libtheora, Theora's reference implementation.[29]

There is no formal specification for VP3's bitstream format beyond the VP3 source code published by On2 Technologies. In 2003, Mike Melanson created an incomplete description of the VP3 bitstream format and decoding process at a higher level than source code, with some help from On2 and Xiph.Org Foundation. The Theora specification adopted some portions of this VP3 description.[2][30]

A successor to Theora, Daala, was later merged into AV1.[31]

### Theora I specification

[edit]

Example of a Theora video used on Wikipedia, showing a Polikarpov I-15 biplane at an aerobatic display.

The Theora I bitstream format was frozen in June 2004 after the libtheora 1.0alpha3 release.[1] Videos encoded with any version of the libtheora since the alpha3 will be compatible with any future player.[1][32] This is also true for videos encoded with any implementation of the Theora I specification since the format freeze. The Theora I Specification was completely published in 2004.[33] Any later changes in the specification are minor updates.

The Theora reference implementation libtheora spent several years in alpha and beta status.[32] The first alpha version was released on 25 September 2002 and the first beta version was released on 22 September 2007.[34] The first stable release of libtheora was made in November 2008.[35][36] Work then focused on improving the codec's performance in the "Thusnelda" branch, which was released as version 1.1 in September 2009 as the second stable libtheora release.[32][37] This release brought some technical improvements and new features, such as the new rate control module and the two-pass rate control.

The codename for the next version of libtheora was Ptalarbvorm.[38]

Theora was well established as a video format in open-source applications, and became the format used for Wikipedia's video content before replaced by VP9. However, the proposed adoption of Theora as part of the baseline video support in HTML5 resulted in controversy.[39]

### Legacy

[edit]

In October 2023, Google announced intent to remove Theora support from Chromium (finalizing removal by Google Chrome 123),[40] with Firefox following suit. Google developers claimed that despite lack of adoption, Theora made a case for open and royalty-free codecs like AV1.[41][better source needed]

## Performance

[edit]

### Encoding performance

[edit]

Evaluations of the VP3[42] and early Theora encoders[43][44][45] found that their subjective visual quality was inferior to that of contemporary video codecs. The performance characteristics of the Theora 1.0 reference implementation are dominated mostly by implementation problems inherited from the original VP3 code base.[46] Work that lead up to the 1.1 stable release focused on improving on or eliminating these. A May 2009 review of this work by Xiph developer Chris Montgomery claimed a considerable improvement in quality, both subjectively and as measured by PSNR, by improving the forward DCT and quantisation matrices.[47] More recently however,[when?] Xiph developers compared the 1.1 Theora encoder to YouTube's H.264 and H.263+ encoders, in response to concerns raised in 2009 about Theora's inferior performance by Chris DiBona, a Google employee.[48] They found the results from Theora to be nearly the same as YouTube's H.264 output, and much better than the H.263+ output.[49][50]

The differences in quality, bitrate and file size between a YouTube H.264 video and a transcoded Ogg video file are very small.[51]

### Playback performance

[edit]

There was an open-source VHDL code base for a hardware Theora decoder in development.[52][needs update] It began as a 2006 Google Summer of Code project, and it has been developed on both the Nios II and LEON processors.[53] However, there are no Theora decoder chips in production, and portable media players, smartphones and similar devices with limited computing power rely on such chips to provide efficient playback.[citation needed]

## Playback

[edit]

This section may contain unverified or indiscriminate information in embedded lists. Please help clean up the lists by removing items or incorporating them into the text of the article. (June 2014)

|

### Web browsers

[edit]

Main article: Use of Ogg formats in HTML5

As originally recommended by HTML 5, these browsers support Theora when embedded by the `video` element:

* Mozilla Firefox 3.5 and later versions[54][55] including Firefox for mobile (Fennec).[56] Theora was disabled by default in Firefox 126,[57] and support may be removed in the future due to low usage.[58][59]
* Google Chrome as of version 3.0.182.2[60][61] including Chromium as of 14 July 2009.[62] Chrome 120 disabled support for Theora by default[63] and the complete removal is expected in version 123.[64]
* Tizen browser
* SeaMonkey as of version 2.0.[65]
* Konqueror 4.4.2[66][67]
* Opera as of version 10.50.[68][69] It was also supported in Opera 9.5 experimental video builds.[70][71] Stopped supporting Theora after version 107.
* GNOME Web uses WebKitGTK+ as its rendering engine. As WebKitGTK+ uses GStreamer to implement the HTML5 media player, and all the formats GStreamer supports (including Theora) are available in browser.
* Midori is another example of a browser that supports Theora by using WebKitGTK+.

### Supporting media frameworks

[edit]

* DirectShow with use of OpenCodecs
* GStreamer supported via Theora or FFmpeg module, supports GStreamer based applications e.g. Totem and Songbird
* Phonon
* QuickTime (including but not limited to Safari) with use of Xiph QuickTime Components

### Supporting applications

[edit]

* FFmpeg (own implementation)
* Helix Player
* Miro Media Player (formerly known as Democracy Player)
* MPlayer and front-ends
* Totem, Moovida and all GStreamer-based players
* VLC (native support)
* xine and all libxine-based players like Kaffeine
* Dragon Player and all Phonon-based players

## Encoding

[edit]

There are several third-party programs that support encoding through libtheora:

Name  | Description  | Operating Systems Supported

|
|

Unix-like  | OS X  | Windows

ffmpeg2theora[72]
| A command-line program that transcodes video by decoding with FFmpeg and reencoding with libtheora to encode it  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

VLC
| Can transcode to single-pass Theora 1.0 and optionally stream it  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

FreeJ
| "Video DJing" software that can encode to and stream Theora  | Yes  | Yes  | ?

Kdenlive
| The video editor supplied with KDE | Yes  | ?  | ?

Pitivi
| The video editor supplied with GNOME | Yes  | ?  | ?

LiVES
| Video editing software for Linux. Can edit, encode and stream theora.  | Yes  | Yes  | ?

HandBrake
| Can output to Theora only with the Matroska container  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

RecordMyDesktop
| Records the screen to Ogg Theora with optional Vorbis audio  | Yes  | ?  | ?

The libtheora library contains the reference implementation of the Theora specification for encoding and decoding. libtheora was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The library was released under the terms of a BSD-style license.

Also, several media frameworks have support for Theora.

* The open-source ffdshow audio/video decoder is capable of encoding Theora videos using its Video for Windows (VFW) multi-codec interface within popular AVI editing programs.[73][74][75] It supports both encoding and decoding Theora video streams and uses Theora's alpha 4 libraries. However, many of the more refined features of Theora are not available to the user in ffdshow's interface.
* The GStreamer framework has support for parsing raw Theora streams, encoding and decoding raw Theora streams to/from YUV video[76][77]

## Editing

[edit]

Name  | Description  | Operating Systems Supported

|
|

Unix-like  | OS X  | Windows

LiVES
| Video editing software for Linux. Can edit, encode and stream theora.  | Yes  | Yes  | ?

Kdenlive
| The KDE video editor.  | Yes  | ?  | ?

OpenShot
|  | Yes  | ?  | ?

Pitivi
| The GNOME video editor.  | Yes  | ?  | ?

Cinelerra
| CVS versions of the Cinelerra non-linear video editing system support Theora, as of August 2005.  | Yes  | Yes  | ?

oggz-tools by Xiph.org
| Command line programs to examine and edit Ogg files.  | Yes  | ?  | Yes

Ogg Video Tools by yornstreamnik
| Tools to resize, cut, split, join, and others[78] | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

AVS Video Editor
|  | ?  | ?  | Yes

## Streaming

[edit]

The following streaming media servers are capable of streaming Theora video:

Name  | Description  | Operating Systems Supported

|
|

Unix-like  | OS X  | Windows

VLC
|  | Yes  | Yes  | Yes

Icecast
|  | Yes  | ?  | Yes

LiVES
| Can stream ogg/theora/vorbis in realtime to a file or fifo.  | Yes  | Yes  | ?

## Makers

[edit]

Elphel is the main maker of cameras that record in theora.

## See also

[edit]

* Free and open-source software portal

* AV1 (open and royalty-free video coding format)
* Comparison of video codecs
* Dirac (video compression format)
* FFV1 (Lossless intra-frame video coding format)
* Video editing software

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c Giles, Ralph (1 June 2004). "Theora I bitstream freeze". theora-dev (Mailing list). Retrieved 19 May 2025.
2. ^ a b c d "Theora Specification" (PDF). Xiph.Org Foundation. 3 June 2017. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
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4. ^ "Theora FAQ". Xiph.org. 2016. Archived from the original on 26 September 2020. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
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6. ^ "Theora 1.2.0 beta 1". Xiph.Org Foundation. Retrieved 16 March 2025.
7. ^ Theora.
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10. ^ "Theora FAQ". Xiph.Org Foundation. Retrieved 6 August 2009.
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33. ^ Xiph.Org Foundation (17 September 2004). "Theora I Specification, Xiph.org Foundation, September 17, 2004" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 September 2004. Retrieved 26 September 2009.
34. ^ "CHANGES file". Retrieved 19 May 2025.
35. ^ Giles, Ralph (3 November 2008). "Theora 1.0 final release!". theora-dev (Mailing list). Retrieved 4 November 2008.
36. ^ "The Xiph.Org Foundation announces the release of Theora 1.0" (Press release). Xiph.Org Foundation. 3 November 2008. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
37. ^ Giles, Ralph (24 September 2009). "libtheora 1.1 (Thusnelda) stable release". theora-dev (Mailing list). Retrieved 19 May 2025.
38. ^ Monty (18 May 2010). "Theora: Ptalarbvorm project update 20100518". Retrieved 1 July 2010.
39. ^ McLean, Prince (7 July 2009). "Ogg Theora, H.264 and the HTML 5 Browser Squabble". AppleInsider. Retrieved 1 November 2020.
40. ^ Larabel, Michael (29 October 2023). "Google Chrome To Remove Theora Video Codec Support". Phoronix. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
41. ^ "Intent to Ship: Deprecate and remove Theora support". groups.google.com. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
42. ^ "MPEG-4 Codec shoot-out 2002 – 1st installment". Doom9. 2002. Archived from the original on 23 February 2008. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
43. ^ Codec shoot-out 2005 – Qualification, Doom9, 2005, archived from the original on 31 December 2007, retrieved 19 December 2007
44. ^ Loli-Queru, Eugenia (12 December 2007). "Theora vs. h.264". OSNews. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
45. ^ Halbach, Till (March 2009). "Dirac and Theora vs. H.264 and Motion JPEG2000". Archived from the original on 7 July 2012. Retrieved 22 April 2008.
46. ^ Montgomery, Chris. "Theora "the push for 1.0" update". Retrieved 19 December 2007.
47. ^ Blizzard, Christopher. "Theora Update 7 May 2009". Retrieved 10 May 2009.
48. ^ DiBona, Chris (13 June 2009). "H.264-in-<video> vs plugin APIs". whatwg (Mailing list). Retrieved 19 May 2025.
49. ^ Maxwell, Greg (13 June 2009). "YouTube / Ogg/Theora comparison". Xiph.Org Foundation. Archived from the original on 9 July 2009. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
50. ^ Merten, Maik (15 June 2009). "Another online-video comparison". Xiph.Org Foundation. Archived from the original on 9 July 2009. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
51. ^ Richmond, Gary. "Firefogg: Transcoding videos to open web standards with Mozilla Firefox". Retrieved 19 May 2025.
52. ^ "Xiph Subversion repository: trunk/theora-fpga". Xiph.Org Foundation. Retrieved 10 August 2009.
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57. ^ "Firefox 126 for developers". developer.mozilla.org. Retrieved 21 January 2025.
58. ^ "Mozilla Eyes Removal Of Theora Support In Firefox". www.phoronix.com. Retrieved 1 November 2023.
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73. ^ "ffdshow Summary". 10 March 2019. Retrieved 19 May 2025.
74. ^ Cutka, Milan (4 October 2002). "Theora support in ffdshow a ffvfw". theora-dev (Mailing list).
75. ^ "Theora in .ogg no only .avi – ffdshow tryouts Forum". 15 January 2008. Retrieved 23 October 2009.
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## External links

[edit]

* Official website
* main Theora page of the official Xiph.Org wiki
* Examples of Theora-encoded videos
* Why Theora Matters for Internet TV
* Ogg Theora Cook Book on FLOSS Manuals
* RTP Payload Format for Theora Encoded Video – Xiph.Org
* draft-barbato-avt-rtp-theora-01 RTP Payload Format for Theora Encoded Video IETF Internet Draft
* H.264 and Theora codecs comparison

* v
* t
* e

Multimedia compression and container formats

Video
compression|

| ISO, IEC,
MPEG|

* DV
* MJPEG
* Motion JPEG 2000
* MPEG-1
* MPEG-2
* Part 2
* MPEG-4
* Part 2 / ASP
* Part 10 / AVC
* Part 33 / IVC
* MPEG-H
* Part 2 / HEVC
* MPEG-I
* Part 3 / VVC
* MPEG-5
* Part 1 / EVC
* Part 2 / LCEVC

|

ITU-T, VCEG|

* H.120
* H.261
* H.262
* H.263
* H.264 / AVC
* H.265 / HEVC
* H.266 / VVC
* H.267 / Enhanced Compression Model

SMPTE|

* VC-1
* VC-2
* VC-3
* VC-5
* VC-6

TrueMotion and AOMedia|

* TrueMotion S
* VP3
* VP6
* VP7
* VP8
* VP9
* AV1

Chinese Standard|

* AVS1 P2/AVS+(GB/T 20090.2/16)
* AVS2 P2(GB/T 33475.2,GY/T 299.1)
* HDR Vivid(GY/T 358)
* AVS3 P2(GY/T 368)

Others|

* Apple Video
* AVS
* Bink
* Cinepak
* Daala
* DVI
* FFV1
* Huffyuv
* Indeo
* Lagarith
* Microsoft Video 1
* MSU Lossless
* OMS Video
* Pixlet
* ProRes
* 422
* 4444
* QuickTime
* Animation
* Graphics
* RealVideo
* RTVideo
* SheerVideo
* Smacker
* Sorenson Video/Spark
* Theora
* Thor
* Ut
* WMV
* XEB
* YULS

Audio
compression|

| ISO, IEC,
MPEG|

* MPEG-1 Layer II
* Multichannel
* MPEG-1 Layer I
* MPEG-1 Layer III (MP3)
* AAC
* HE-AAC
* AAC-LD
* MPEG Surround
* MPEG-4 ALS
* MPEG-4 SLS
* MPEG-4 DST
* MPEG-4 HVXC
* MPEG-4 CELP
* MPEG-D USAC
* MPEG-H 3D Audio

|

ITU-T|

* G.711
* A-law
* µ-law
* G.718
* G.719
* G.722
* G.722.1
* G.722.2
* G.723
* G.723.1
* G.726
* G.728
* G.729
* G.729.1

IETF|

* Opus
* iLBC
* Speex
* Vorbis
* FLAC

3GPP|

* AMR
* AMR-WB
* AMR-WB+
* EVRC
* EVRC-B
* EVS
* GSM-HR
* GSM-FR
* GSM-EFR

ETSI|

* AC-3
* AC-4
* DTS

Bluetooth SIG|

* SBC
* LC3

Chinese Standard|

* AVS1 P10(GB/T 20090.10)
* AVS2 P3(GB/T 33475.3)
* Audio Vivid(GY/T 363)
* DRA(GB/T 22726)
* ExAC(SJ/T 11299.4)

Others|

* ACELP
* ALAC
* Asao
* ATRAC
* CELT
* Codec 2
* iSAC
* Lyra
* MELP
* Monkey's Audio
* MT9
* Musepack
* OptimFROG
* OSQ
* QCELP
* RCELP
* RealAudio
* SD2
* SHN
* SILK
* Siren
* SMV
* SVOPC
* TTA
* True Audio
* TwinVQ
* VMR-WB
* VSELP
* WavPack
* WMA
* MQA
* aptX
* aptX HD
* aptX Low Latency
* aptX Adaptive
* LDAC
* LHDC
* LLAC

Image
compression|

| IEC, ISO, IETF,
W3C, ITU-T, JPEG|

* CCITT Group 4
* GIF
* HEIC / HEIF
* HEVC
* JBIG
* JBIG2
* JPEG
* JPEG 2000
* JPEG-LS
* JPEG XL
* JPEG XR
* JPEG XS
* JPEG XT
* PNG
* APNG
* TIFF
* TIFF/EP
* TIFF/IT

|

Others|

* AV1
* AVIF
* BPG
* DjVu
* EXR
* FLIF
* ICER
* MNG
* PGF
* QOI
* QTVR
* WBMP
* WebP

Containers|

| ISO, IEC|

* MPEG-ES
* MPEG-PES
* MPEG-PS
* MPEG-TS
* ISO/IEC base media file format
* MPEG-4 Part 14 (MP4)
* Motion JPEG 2000
* MPEG-21 Part 9
* MPEG media transport

|

ITU-T|

* H.222.0
* T.802

IETF|

* RTP
* Ogg
* Matroska

SMPTE|

* GXF
* MXF

Others|

* 3GP and 3G2
* AMV
* ASF
* AIFF
* AVI
* AU
* BPG
* Bink
* Smacker
* BMP
* DivX Media Format
* EVO
* Flash Video
* HEIF
* IFF
* M2TS
* Matroska
* WebM
* QuickTime File Format
* RatDVD
* RealMedia
* RIFF
* WAV
* MOD and TOD
* VOB, IFO and BUP

Collaborations|

* NETVC
* MPEG LA
* Alliance for Open Media

Methods|

* Entropy
* Arithmetic
* Huffman
* Modified
* LPC
* ACELP
* CELP
* LSP
* WLPC
* Lossless
* Lossy
* LZ
* DEFLATE
* LZW
* PCM
* A-law
* µ-law
* ADPCM
* DPCM
* Transforms
* DCT
* FFT
* MDCT
* Wavelet
* Daubechies
* DWT

Lists|

* Comparison of audio coding formats
* Comparison of video codecs
* List of codecs

See Compression methods for techniques and Compression software for codecs

* v
* t
* e

Data compression software

Archivers with
compression
(comparison)|

| Free and
open-source|

* 7-Zip
* Ark
* Expander
* FreeArc
* GNOME Archive Manager
* Info-ZIP
* KGB Archiver
* PAQ
* pax
* PeaZip
* XAD (decompression only)
* Xarchiver
* Zipeg
* ZPAQ

|

Freeware|

* Filzip
* LHA
* Lhasa (decompression only)
* StuffIt Expander (decompression only)
* The Unarchiver (decompression only)
* TUGZip
* ZipGenius

Commercial|

* ARC
* ALZip
* Archive Utility
* ARJ
* BetterZip
* MacBinary
* PKZIP/SecureZIP
* PowerArchiver
* StuffIt
* WinAce
* WinRAR
* WinZip

Non-archiving
compressors|

| Generic|

* bzip2
* compress
* gzip
* lzip
* lzop
* pack
* rzip
* Snappy
* XZ Utils
* zstd

|

For code|

UPX

Audio
compression
(comparison)|

| Lossy|

* AAC
* Fraunhofer FDK AAC
* Nero AAC Codec
* FAAC
* Helix DNA Producer
* MP3
* l3enc
* LAME
* TooLAME
* libavcodec
* libcelt
* libopus
* libspeex
* Musepack
* libvorbis
* Windows Media Encoder

|

Lossless|

* ALAC
* FLAC
* libavcodec
* Monkey's Audio
* mp4als
* OptimFROG
* Shorten
* WavPack

Video
compression
(comparison)|

| Lossy|

| MPEG-4 ASP|

* 3ivx
* DivX
* Nero Digital
* FFmpeg
* HDX4
* Xvid

|

H.264|

* CoreAVC
* Blu-code
* DivX
* FFmpeg
* Nero Digital
* OpenH264
* QuickTime
* x264

HEVC|

* DivX
* x265

Others|

* CineForm
* Cinepak
* Daala
* DNxHD
* Helix DNA Producer
* Indeo
* libavcodec
* Schrödinger (Dirac)
* SBC
* Sorenson
* VP7
* libtheora
* libvpx
* Windows Media Encoder

Lossless|

* FFV1
* Huffyuv
* Lagarith
* MSU Lossless
* YULS

* See also: compression methods and compression formats

* v
* t
* e

Media player software

Free software

| Windows|

* Media Player Classic
* MediaPortal
* Mpxplay

|

Linux|

| active|

* JuK
* Kaffeine
* Music on Console
* Noise
* Parole
* Rhythmbox
* GNOME Videos
* Xine

|

inactive|

* Muine
* Ogle DVD Player
* XMMS
* XMMS2
* Guayadeque
* Baudline
* Helix

Cross-platform|

| active|

* Amarok
* Audacious
* DeaDBeeF
* Exaile
* ffplay
* Kodi
* Mpg123
* MPlayer/mpv (IINA, SMPlayer)
* Music Player Daemon
* MusikCube
* qmmp
* Quod Libet
* VLC

|

inactive|

* Banshee
* Miro
* Songbird
* Zinf
* Clementine

Freeware

| Windows|

* AIMP
* Dell MediaDirect
* GOM Player
* Groove Music (discontinued)
* jetAudio
* KMPlayer
* MediaMonkey
* Media Go (discontinued)
* Microsoft Movies & TV
* Microsoft Photos
* Mod4Win
* MusicBee
* MusikCube
* InterActual Player
* PotPlayer
* QuickTime (discontinued)
* Winamp
* Windows Media Player (2022)

|

Cross-platform|

* DivX Player
* foobar2000
* iTunes
* Plex
* QuickTime
* RealPlayer

Commercial (proprietary)

| Windows|

* CD Player
* Connect Player
* DVD Player
* JRiver Media Center
* PowerDVD
* ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre
* WinDVD
* Windows Media Player Legacy

|

macOS|

* DVD Player
* Peel

Mobile|

* Core Pocket Media Player
* doubleTwist
* Music (Xperia)
* Musicolet
* RealPlayer
* Winamp

Lists

* Video players
* Audio players
* Free software audio players
* Personal video recorders

* v
* t
* e

Xiph.Org Foundation

Ogg Project codecs|

* Vorbis
* Daala
* Theora
* FLAC
* Opus
* CELT
* Speex
* OggPCM
* Ogg Writ
* XSPF
* Annodex

Media tools|

* cdparanoia
* Icecast
* Tremor

Related articles|

* Chris Montgomery
* CMML
* Ogg page
* Ogg Squish
* Ogg formats in HTML5
* Vorbis comment
* List of open-source codecs

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