I've been exploring this question in some depth now, talking both to
the Miro team (which is building a free, cross-codec player) and
blip.tv. It seems things are not as simple as this would make it seem.
First, Richard earlier urged me to make sure I was converting to
Theora with the original video, to make sure the quality was good. But
the problem with quality on Theora is not related to the source. It is
related to the poor quality of the Theora codec. That is one reason
many aren't using it.
A second, more significant to the free world, is that many in the
community believe that Theora is in fact patent incumbered; that the
owners of the patent are simply waiting till it becomes a standard
before they pounce. This is slowing the spread of the codec.
Third, for Theora to work in the way Flash is, people would be using a
Java Theora player, which itself is extremely buggy. That makes
deploying it in an environment like blip.tv difficult.
Fourth, blip.tv is in principle eager to facilitate transcoding to the
theora codec. But the last time they checked, only 10-15% of the files
were transcoding properly using the existing free software that
supports it. Were that software better, I'm sure they would at least
enable automatic conversion of everything to Theora. And were the Java
player better, they'd be able to enable that as the default for
playback.
In light of this, it seems to me it would be useful for there to be a
conversation facilitated between the Free Software community, and
Blip.tv/Theora/Miro. For in my view, the real long term solution here
is that free software enable the same crucially important (to freedom)
functionality that is now being enabled by non-free software and
codecs. Miro has all but given up on free codecs just now -- focusing
on free players instead. And while Blip.tv would love to make it part
of their core, the quality is just not there. Some constructive
encouragement from the leader of the free software community might
well induce the right kind of development here. I'm of course not such
a leader, but I'd be happy to connect Richard or whomever to the
people at blip.tv and Miro to initiate that conversation.
On Feb 28, 2008, at 9:30 AM, Lee Braiden wrote:
On Wednesday 27 February 2008 16:07:38 Richard Stallman wrote:
Links to the mpeg4 and Theora files are immediately below the
flash
version. they both immediately download the file.
How about putting the Theora version first?
That is the way to show you are really in favor of it.
This was my thinking too. If one format has advantages for users,
and others
have disadvantages or is associated with an old or ill-conceived way
of doing
things, I think it's only right that the better format should be
promoted,
and the lesser formats should be demoted to a "backwards
compatibility"
or "legacy" page. And I think that'd be nice terminology to use
too, to
convey the message to the average user clearly.
--
Lee
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Stanford Law School
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Stanford, CA 94305-8610
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