Digital Media Primer 01 sreenshot 06 crop

Christopher "Monty" Montgomery (born June 6, 1972) is an American programmer and engineer. He is the original creator of the

Ogg Ogg is a digital multimedia container format designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of digital multimedia. It is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and is free and open, unrestricted by software patents. Its name is ...

Free Software container format and the

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

and others, and the founder of The Xiph.Org Foundation, which promotes

public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

multimedia

codecs A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

. He uses ''xiphmont'' as an online

pseudonym A pseudonym (; ) or alias () is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true meaning ( orthonym). This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's o ...

. He holds a B.S. in

electrical engineering and computer science Computer science and engineering (CSE) is an academic subject comprising approaches of computer science and computer engineering. There is no clear division in computing between science and engineering, just like in the field of materials science a ...

from the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

and a M.Eng. degree in

computer engineering Computer engineering (CE, CoE, or CpE) is a branch of engineering specialized in developing computer hardware and software. It integrates several fields of electrical engineering, electronics engineering and computer science. Computer engi ...

from the

Tokyo Institute of Technology The Tokyo Institute of Technology () was a public university in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. It merged with Tokyo Medical and Dental University to form the Institute of Science Tokyo on 1 October 2024. The Tokyo Institute of Technology was a De ...

. A

multimedia Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms, such as Text (literary theory), writing, Sound, audio, images, animations, or video, into a single presentation. T ...

programmer,

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

advocate and musician, Monty resides in the

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

area. He previously worked for

Red Hat Red Hat, Inc. (formerly Red Hat Software, Inc.) is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises and is a subsidiary of IBM. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North ...

on improving the quality of the Ogg

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

format and decoders. In October 2013, he announcedA fond farewell to Red Hat, an exciting hello to Mozilla
/ref> his almost immediate switch to

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

. Work on

Daala Daala is a video coding format under development by the Xiph.Org Foundation under the lead of Timothy B. Terriberry mainly sponsored by the Mozilla Corporation. Like Theora and Opus, Daala is available free of any royalties and its reference ...

will be an important part of his work there. Montgomery was the evening keynote at the

Ohio LinuxFest Ohio ( ) is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Lake Erie to the north, Pennsylvania to the east, West Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Indiana to the west, and Michigan to the northwest. O ...

in September 2010.

References

External links

Montgomery's blog
on

Dreamwidth Dreamwidth is an online journal service based on the LiveJournal codebase. It is a code fork of the original service, set up by ex-LiveJournal staff Denise Paolucci and Mark Smith, born out of a desire for a new community based on open access, ...

Open codec pioneer leaves Red Hat, joins Mozilla to work on next-generation video codec
Gigaom, October 15, 2013
Videos produced by Chris Montgomery to spread techie-level knowledge about digital media
Living people 1972 births Xiph.Org projects {{US-compu-bio-stub