What is a OGV file?

OGV — Ogg Video

What is it?

OGV is video in the Ogg format, the free container developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation — the same organisation behind Vorbis and FLAC for audio.

It most commonly carries the Theora video codec, entirely free of patents, paired with Vorbis audio.

History & origin

The project emerged in the early 2000s with a militant goal: to give the web a complete, free video pipeline at a time when everything depended on patented codecs.

It was the first video format natively playable in Firefox. Technically outdated, it was later overtaken by WebM, a more efficient format backed by Google's clout.

Why it is useful

Entirely free, with no royalties involved, and playable in the browsers that adopted it at the time.

It played a historically decisive role in opening up video on the web.

Limits & drawbacks

Its compression quality falls well short of H.264 or VP9: at an equivalent file size, the image is noticeably worse.

Support for it is now marginal, even on the web.

Practical tips

Convert your OGV files to MP4 for compatibility, or to WebM if you want to stay within the world of free formats — WebM does everything OGV did, only much better.

There is no longer any reason to produce a new file in this format.

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