Cortado is a java applet that provides support for Ogg Theora/Vorbis to Web publishers. It’s particularly useful to publishers that want to use Ogg Theora/Vorbis in Browsers that do not yet support the HTML5 video element with Ogg.

Cortado was originally developed by Fluendo SA under a LGPL license and contains a re-implementation of Theora and Vorbis in Java (jheora and jcraft). After a few years of low maintenance, the Wikimedia Foundation took it in their hands to undust the code for their use in the Wikimedia Commons, where only unencumberd open video format are acceptable.

As Ralph states in his announcement of the new release: earlier this year, Xiph.org took over maintenance of the Cortado java applet to help concentrate interest and expertise on this important component of the free media codec infrastructure. Therefore, the official website for Cortado is as now part of the Xiph. [If somebody could update the Wikipedia article – that would be awesome!]

So, I am very happy to point to the first Cortado release in three years. Source and sample builds are available from the Xiph.org download site.

Ralph writes further:

The new version is tagged 0.5.0 to indicate both the change in hosting and the significant new support for files from the new libtheora encoder implementation and Kate embedded subtitles.

In particular, 0.5.0 has:

• Support for files encoded with Theora 1.1
• Faster YUV to RGB conversion with better results
• Basic support for embedded Ogg Kate streams
• Seeking fixed for files with an Ogg Skeleton track
• Maintained compatibility with the Microsoft VM

This is an awesome example of the power of open source and what a group of people can achieve. Congratulations to everyone at Xiph, Wikipedia, and anyone else who contributed to the release!