The Opus Audio codec is now RFC 6716

[xiphmont]

...oh and we released 1.0 too :-)

Since Jean-Marc went throught the trouble of writing a nice release announcement, I'll quote him here:

Hi everyone,

We finally made it! Opus is now standardized by the IETF as RFC 6716 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6716). See the announcements at:

https://hacks.mozilla.org/2012/09/its-opus-it-rocks-and-now-its-an-audio-codec-standard/

http://www.xiph.org/press/2012/rfc-6716/

Feel free to spread those around :-)

We're also releasing both 1.0.0 (same code as the RFC) and 1.0.1, which is a minor update on that code (mainly with the build system). As usual, you can get those from http://opus-codec.org/

Thanks to everyone who contributed by fixing bugs, reporting issues, implementing Opus support, testing, advocating, ...

Enjoy!

  Jean-Marc

Comments

[gehrehmee.livejournal.com]

A few questions:
1) Does this effectively mean that vorbis and speex are deprecated? Why use them if Opus is better everywhere?
2) Will development of vorbis and speex as seperate products effectively cease?
3) Any signs of adoption of Opus upstream? In particular, is there any reason to expect that Apple and Microsoft will start using them? (I read that Skype will, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything for Microsoft beyond that product)

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

1) Speex is officially deprecated, yes. Vorbis is not, though at this point I think I can recommend using Opus over Vorbis in pretty much any situation.
2) Speex dev already stopped a while ago. Vorbis will not for the forseeable future, although it's not gotten much dev time recently anyway as we're concentrating on next gen.
3) Opus has a considerable amount of buzz, and it's already generated considerably stiffer opposition than Vorbis ever did. Personally I take that as a sign of slowly winning :-)

[(Anonymous)]

What about surround? From what I gather Opus just pairs some channels effectively transmitting several independant stereo signals, whereas Vorbis had more work done in this area. How are they expected to compare?

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

Surround is handled as pairs of stereo channels. This is actually the more typical way of handling surround (Vorbis's parametric coupling is somewhat unusual). Even in Vorbis, more coding gain came from retraining codebook probablilities across channels than from the actual coupling-- so I expect Opus will hold up pretty well.

Has Ghost been shelved due to Opus being good enough?

[(Anonymous)]

Has Ghost been shelved due to Opus being good enough?
(Sorry for crossposting)

Re: Has Ghost been shelved due to Opus being good enough?

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

Officially, no. But practically, as we've got more work to do than time to do it, it's been moved down the priority list somewhat. None of us expected Opus to end up in the same quality ballpark as Vorbis, let alone be a viable replacement.

Re: Has Ghost been shelved due to Opus being good enough?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Monty

You say Ghost has moved down the priority list.

Would be curious to know what things are at the top of the priority list for Xiph for the forseeable future.

By the way, congratulations to you and the other devs on Opus official release. I have transcoded my flac collection to opus at default bitrate of 96kbps and am really impressed by the sound quality.

Re: Has Ghost been shelved due to Opus being good enough?

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

For me:

Video Episode II ("Digital Show & Tell")
transOgg spec and initial implementation
endless paperwork!

Others are still working on Opus (there's much left to do) and Daala, Cristian Adam's begun work on new Windows Media Framework plugins for everything, etc... We've also has some new people start hanging out on IRC and working on related projects, like oneman's KRAD Radio.

We're pretty much doing things like we always have. We pull in the same general direction mostly out of pure coincidence and self-selection.

[(Anonymous)]

Also, is speex better than opus at very low bitrates (4-10 kbps) ?

[xiphmont.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, there is ~ no situation in which Speex beats Opus (regardless what the endlessly reposted graph says :-) You should probably ask JM that question though.