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      "title": "Theora specification",
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  "markdown": "Theora is a legacy lossy video codec from Xiph.Org, derived from On2's VP3. The bitstream was published in 2004 and libtheora 1.0 followed in 2008. It is normally stored in Ogg (`.ogv`) with Vorbis audio, and was the royalty-free web video option before WebM. Today you meet it in old content and some free-software tooling; use AV1, VP9 or AVC for anything new.\n\nIt is 8-bit Y'CbCr only, in 4:2:0, 4:2:2 or 4:4:4, with intra and inter frames. There is no HDR, alpha or high bit depth.\n\n## Encode with FFmpeg\n\nFFmpeg decodes Theora natively. Encoding needs a build with libtheora (and libvorbis for audio):\n\n```sh\nffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v libtheora -q:v 7 -c:a libvorbis -q:a 4 output.ogv\n```\n\n`-q:v` runs from 0 to 10 and higher is better. Without `-q:v` or `-b:v`, FFmpeg's generic 200 kb/s default applies, which looks poor at most resolutions. Stick to 4:2:0 for playback compatibility; the encoder also accepts `yuv422p` and `yuv444p`.\n\n## Support\n\n- libtheora 1.2.0 (March 2025) is the current library release.\n- Browsers have dropped it: MDN lists Theora support only up to Chrome 121, Firefox 126 and Edge 121, and Safari never supported it. See [video codec support](/reference/video-codec-support/).\n"
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