Opera Using GStreamer, Pushing Ogg

by Joe Brockmeier - Jan. 12, 2010Comments (1)

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Opera recently released an alpha of the coming 10.5 release, which includes quite a few improvements and new features. One of the things that most users probably didn't notice is that Opera is now using the GStreamer media framework.

Even though the Opera browser isn't open source, the company is doing some good work to push open standards. In addition to utilizing the GStreamer framework, Opera is pushing heavily for the use of Ogg formats with HTML5. Philip Jägenstedt, a core developer at Opera Software, says that the Web should be built on open standards, and that includes open video and audio codecs.

Using GStreamer, Opera will also be able to use "anything that Gstreamer can handle," which means a pretty hefty swath of content on Linux — if you're willing and able to install some of the GStreamer plugins that handle proprietary codecs. Jägenstedt recommends sticking to Ogg for "anything serious that should be cross-platform and cross-browser."

From Jägenstedt's lips to the content provider's ears! It's great to see Opera (and Mozilla, and others) supporting Ogg and open formats. The question is what can be done to nudge upstream providers into supporting those formats so users can enjoy their favorite videos or music in Ogg? Users typically don't care what format something is delivered in, so long as they can play it. It's too bad there wasn't more success forcing Ogg as the default format for HTML5.

Wondering whether your browser supports the HTML5 audio and video tags? Check out the "Video for Everybody" test page, and the HTML5 <audio> and Audio() Support Tester page, linked off of Jägenstedt's blog. The audio test page gives a full rundown of what audio encodings your browser supports, and provides tests. The video test page embeds a video using the video element from HTML5. If you're using a modern browser, you should be able to see video there.

Opera is making its code available, as required by the LGPL, as a Git repository. Current releases include GStreamer support for Windows and Linux, but Mac support is lagging a bit. Presumably the work going into Opera for the Mac should benefit other projects working on cross-platform development with GStreamer.

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier is a longtime FLOSS advocate, and currently works for Novell as the community manager for openSUSE. Prior to joining Novell, Brockmeier worked as a technology journalist covering the open source beat for a number of publications, including Linux Magazine, Linux Weekly News, Linux.com, UnixReview.com, IBM developerWorks, and many others.


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1 Comments
 

Opera also got other open source projects like Opera Dragonfly, which is under BSD license. http://www.opera.com/dragonfly/documentation/


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