Re: Fw: [Advocate Play Ogg] Two thoughts: automated conversion, and radio4all.net.

[Michael Fötsch]

Alexandro Colorado wrote:
> [...] youtube-dl script that basically is a perl language script  
> that use mencoder with some flags.
> So the issue is [...] encoding on the theora end.
> [...] it might be an issue of ffmpeg as opposed
> to mencoder.

I don't know. But I can't say I understand all of what you say. And we should 
keep in mind that web site admins might face similar issues when they try to 
add support for Ogg (Theora).

Case Study 1:
One is tempted to believe that everyone who hosts non-free formats is ignorant 
about the issues, or, which might be worse, knows about them but doesn't care. 
But sometimes they just don't know how to go about it *technically*.

Recently, Eben Moglen appeared on a webinar about GPLv3. The "open-source" 
company that hosted the webinar used a Windows-only proprietary audio format. 
When I read this, my first thought was they're on Microsoft's payroll. :-)
But it turned out that they just didn't know how to offer Ogg Vorbis downloads 
unless someone from the community jumped in and lent them a helping hand. 
(http://www.openlogic.com/blogs/2007/05/the-open-source-community-comes-through-again/)

Case Study 2:
On a similar note, here's an excerpt from MIT OpenCourseWare's response to my 
question about supporting Ogg Theora (my notes in brackets):
-----
There are several reasons we have opted to utilize RealPlayer on the MIT OCW
Web site:
* RealPlayer is the most widespread, standardized STREAMING format. We did
not want to require everyone to download complete videos before viewing
them.
* MIT’s existing streaming video facilities were already using/encoding in
the RealMedia format when the MIT OCW initiative launched in September 2002. 
[Conversion possible?]
* RealMedia is supported by our video hosting partner, Akamai Technologies
Inc. [Whatever that support consists of...]
-----
And a link to a (biased?) user survey: 
http://web.mit.edu/ocwcom/MITOCW/About/05_Eval_Full_060806_MITOCW.pdf


Conclusion:

The next time I ask a site to support Ogg Theora, I'd feel more confident if I 
knew where to find more information in case they tell me it's impossible for 
practical reasons. Does anyone here know where I might be able to find this?

Is Ogg Theora within the scope of PlayOgg at all? Or is the campaign only 
focused on audio at the moment?


Kind Regards,
M.F.






 
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