[whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. wikipedia.org is something like #8 in the world at present, so this is set to be a significant content repository actually used by people. A video tag which can be relied upon to support the format in at least Firefox would be enormously helpful to us and our readers. So far we have had zero patent trolls come calling. I wonder why that is. [note: There was a recent press release about Ogg support in HTML5 which we didn't get it together to be mentioned in. Any further on these, please cc me directly at [EMAIL PROTECTED] and I'll make sure it happens myself.] - d.
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On Dec 12, 2007, at 6:23 AM, David Gerard wrote: FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. wikipedia.org is something like #8 in the world at present, so this is set to be a significant content repository actually used by people. A video tag which can be relied upon to support the format in at least Firefox would be enormously helpful to us and our readers. So far we have had zero patent trolls come calling. I wonder why that is. Because the Wikimedia Foundation doesn't have much money. Patent trolls are opportunistic, not idealistic. -ryan
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote: FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. Why must video just one of many unencumbered formats? So far we have had zero patent trolls come calling. I wonder why that is. Do you have enough money to pay a fine a similar size to what MS got last year? If you don't have enough money, they won't sue you. It isn't worth their time. -- Geoffrey Sneddon http://gsnedders.com/
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote: FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. Why must video just one of many unencumbered formats? Er, what are the others? - d.
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12 Dec 2007, at 17:44, David Gerard wrote: On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote: FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. Why must video just one of many unencumbered formats? Er, what are the others? Technically speaking, Theora is actually unencumbered (it just has a RF license covering the patents from On2). Dirac is in a similar situation. Apart from those two, the others I can think of are those that are in excess of twenty years old (and therefore their patents have expired), such as H.260. -- Geoffrey Sneddon http://gsnedders.com/
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
Geoffrey Sneddon schrieb: Apart from those two, the others I can think of are those that are in excess of twenty years old (and therefore their patents have expired), such as H.260. I couldn't find anything insightful about H.260. Sure you don't mean H.120, which is a 1982 video codec I couldn't find a current implementation of? (Which would explain why Wikipedia is not using it even if it doesn't happen to hopelessly behind in basically every aspect imaginable) H.261, OTOH, is a 1990 standard and thus still a bit away from getting absolutely free. Maik
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
David Gerard writes: In any case, the point remains: Theora is the only practical option for video on Wikimedia sites at present, so that's one top-10 source of video that will greatly be enabled for the end user by HTML5 having a video tag with Ogg Theora as the default (even as a SHOULD). Not quite. That's one top-10 source of video that will greatly be enabled by browsers supporting Theora. Your claim (that it would benefit from the spec saying browsers SHOULD support Theora) is only true if there are browsers which would only support Theora because of the spec saying that. Some browser creators have made it clear they woudln't support Theora, even with a SHOULD. Other browsers will Theora anyway, because they want to, regardless of whether the spec even mentions it -- and the more that Wikipedia uses it, the more that browsers are going to want to support it simply in order to be Wikipedia-compatible (regardless of whether the spec says browsers should be Wikipedia-compatible). Smylers
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12 Dec 2007, at 19:30, Maik Merten wrote: Geoffrey Sneddon schrieb: Apart from those two, the others I can think of are those that are in excess of twenty years old (and therefore their patents have expired), such as H.260. I couldn't find anything insightful about H.260. Sure you don't mean H.120, which is a 1982 video codec I couldn't find a current implementation of? Yeah. I always miscall it H.260 (as it is the precursor to H.261). H.261, OTOH, is a 1990 standard and thus still a bit away from getting absolutely free. Though, by the time we reach LC, it may not be. -- Geoffrey Sneddon http://gsnedders.com/
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12 Dec 2007, at 17:44, David Gerard wrote: On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote: FWIW, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons only allow unencumbered formats on the site. Video MUST be Ogg Theora. Compressed audio better be Ogg. Why must video just one of many unencumbered formats? Er, what are the others? Technically speaking, Theora is actually unencumbered (it just has a RF license covering the patents from On2). Dirac is in a similar situation. Apart from those two, the others I can think of are those that are in excess of twenty years old (and therefore their patents have expired), such as H.260. Dirac is not finished, H.120 has no extant codecs. I may as well call motion PNM an unencumbered video format. In any case, the point remains: Theora is the only practical option for video on Wikimedia sites at present, so that's one top-10 source of video that will greatly be enabled for the end user by HTML5 having a video tag with Ogg Theora as the default (even as a SHOULD). Claims that there are no sources of content are simply factually incorrect. - d.
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12/12/2007, Geoffrey Sneddon [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 12 Dec 2007, at 14:23, David Gerard wrote: So far we have had zero patent trolls come calling. I wonder why that is. Do you have enough money to pay a fine a similar size to what MS got last year? If you don't have enough money, they won't sue you. It isn't worth their time. Not to mention Patent Troll Sues Wikipedia would be second only to Patent Troll Eats Cute Fluffy Kittens for mediapathy. Mind you, the people who hate Wikipedia *really hate* Wikipedia, and I'm amazed none of them have even made noises in this direction, given the ridiculously broad and vague software and business method patents that exist in the US. That said, we do actually go to considerable effort to do the right thing because it's the right thing - we don't allow patent-encumbered formats because they would severely reduce the reusability of our content, and deliberately flouting assumed-valid US patents (as odious as software patents are) would be unseemly. - d.
Re: [whatwg] Ogg content on the Web
On 12/12/2007, Smylers [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Not quite. That's one top-10 source of video that will greatly be enabled by browsers supporting Theora. Your claim (that it would benefit from the spec saying browsers SHOULD support Theora) is only true if there are browsers which would only support Theora because of the spec saying that. Technically this is true :-) But in practice, I can't tell you how happy we were when we heard Ogg Theora would be in HTML5 (even as a SHOULD). Video is important as educational material, and video support in the MediaWiki software has been a major pain in the backside. Current support is a kludgy pile of stuff that degrades somewhat gracefully through a sequence of free-software and not-quite-free-software (VLC plugin, QuickTime plugin, there's JavaScript, there's a bit of Java, there's Flash that sorta works in Gnash, etc - I'm not absolutely clear on the details and I'm sure someone will be along to correct me shortly, but they're pretty murky details ;-). A VIDEO tag that can be reasonably assumed to support Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis would make our lives and our readers' browsing significantly happier. Some browser creators have made it clear they woudln't support Theora, even with a SHOULD. Other browsers will Theora anyway, because they want to, regardless of whether the spec even mentions it -- and the more that Wikipedia uses it, the more that browsers are going to want to support it simply in order to be Wikipedia-compatible (regardless of whether the spec says browsers should be Wikipedia-compatible). Including, I suspect, Safari - which has a Wikipedia link in the default bookmark bar - and Nokia - what use is a phone that can't show you the video on Wikipedia that explains your point precisely when you're arguing over something in the pub? What sorta rubbishy phone is that? Tch! Shoulda got an iPhone! *cough* We're only one site that would significantly benefit from a VIDEO tag that can reasonably be assumed to do Ogg Theora, but we're a reasonably significant one I think. - d.
