Comments sparsely inline below...

On Thu, Aug 26, 2010 at 10:46 AM,
<[email protected]>wrote:

> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:41:41 -0400
> From: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Jon Dowland 
> <[email protected]<jon%[email protected]>
> >
> Cc: [email protected]
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > distribution.
> >
> > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good
> idea.
> > I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
>

i* devices only play mov and mp4 with H.264 and aac or mp3 in them. But you
will need to encode with a different MP4 profile than if you would encode
for the desktop.



> Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> encoders for those formats out of Debian.
>
> Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
>


There is currently no application for iPhone, iPod or iPad that will allow
you to play back Ogg Theora. Wikipedia was considering to develop one, but I
don't think they ever started.



>
> What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
>


They haven't made any public announcements yet, which I take as a very
careful move. I think at this stage they simply don't want to make a public
decision such that if WebM eventually takes off they have a chance to join
without looking bad.



>
> I'm not sure how to think about this issue, but it probably ought to be
> discussed.
>
> -edrz
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:11:09 +0200
> From: Michael Fladerer <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: [email protected]
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> Hi Eric,
>
> On Wed Aug 25, 2010 at 08:41:41 -0400, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > > distribution.
> > >
> > > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a
> good idea.
> > > I that means a C,A,V triplet from
> {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
> >
> > Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> > encoders for those formats out of Debian.
> >
> > Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
> >
> > What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
> >
> as I just read on Wikipedia[0,1] this morning, at least i<Foo>s OSes are
> capable of playing back VP8 video content, when Internet Exploder 9 is
> used and the necessary extra codec is installed.
>

IE9 is not being developed for OS X or for the iPhone OS. Thus, no, you
won't be able to run it on i* unless with a home-compiled application on a
jail-broken iPhone.


>
> [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vp8
> [1]
> http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx
>
> As I understand there are two major reasons for which Apple does not
> support and probably does not plan to support VP8 at the moment:
>
> 1. Apple is one of the major holders in the MPEG H264 patent pool
> (that's why they get royalties from the use of H.264), they won't ever
> be really interested in using a free, open alternatives.
>

This is actually not true. Apple are only a minor patent holder in H.264 -
actually they probably have no patent in the H.264 pool, but only patents on
the container format MP4.

Apple's main reason are extra patent risks - there is no patent pool for
Theora that they could join that would give them some sort of protection
from potential patent trolls. Actually, that's probably also only an excuse
- their main reason is probably much more practical and money-focused: a lot
of stuff runs with MP4/H.264 and a lot of investment has been made which
they want to recoup first and not confuse the market with multiple formats.
Just look at the amount of control they have over their i* device users!
That's certainly a monopoly-like situation that they will want to exploit as
much as possible before the world around them eventually evolves into a more
open world where they get sidelined for their monopolistic behaviour.

But I am starting to rant...



>
> > I'm not sure how to think about this issue, but it probably ought to be
> > discussed.
> >
> Yes, this should definitely be discussed.
>
> Bye,
>  Michael
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:48:45 +0300
> From: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected],    Jon Dowland
>        <[email protected] <jon%[email protected]>>
> Message-ID: <20100825124845.gp1...@apfelkorn>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On 2010-08-25 08:41:41 (-0400), Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > > distribution.
> > >
> > > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a
> good idea.
> > > I that means a C,A,V triplet from
> {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
> >
> > Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> > encoders for those formats out of Debian.
> >
> > Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
> >
>
> Not without 'jail breaking'. Also, I'm not sure the video decoding hw in
> those
> devices can support anything else then those codecs.
>
> > What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
> >
>
> I wouldn't be surprised.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:49:24 +0300
> From: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Jon Dowland 
> <[email protected]<jon%[email protected]>
> >
> Cc: [email protected]
> Message-ID: <20100825124924.gq1...@apfelkorn>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On 2010-08-25 10:10:16 (+0100), Jon Dowland 
> <[email protected]<jon%[email protected]>>
> wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > distribution.
> >
> > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good
> idea.
> > I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
>
> Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter.
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 5
> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:40:55 +0100
> From: Jon Dowland <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <[email protected]>
> Cc: "[email protected]"
>        <[email protected]>,      Jon Dowland
>        <[email protected] <jon%[email protected]>>
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
>
>
> On 25 Aug 2010, at 13:49, Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
> >
> Indeed, and I have, but I was kindly asked not to distribute the
> transcodes, and instead to provide feedback on what codecs should be
> provided on this list, which I have done.
>
> Re: patent issues. I am well aware of the issues, but we are not discussing
> the packaging of software in Debian, but instead the distribution of
> multimedia data, which are not the same thing.
>
> --
> Jon Dowland
> Apologies for the brevity, sent via phone
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 6
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:17:27 +1200
> From: Andrew McMillan <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Jon Dowland <[email protected]>
> Cc: "[email protected]"
>        <[email protected]>
> Message-ID: <[email protected]>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 16:40 +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > On 25 Aug 2010, at 13:49, Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
> > >
> > >
> > Indeed, and I have, but I was kindly asked not to distribute the
> > transcodes, and instead to provide feedback on what codecs should be
> > provided on this list, which I have done.
>
> Any transcoding to non-standard formats is extra work, and our first
> focus is naturally going to be to make the videos available in the
> standard formats.
>
> Once we have the videos up, perhaps we can look to provide a mechanism
> for people to provide contributed additional transcodings which we can
> make available alongside the standard ones.
>
> Is VLC or Mplayer available for Apple laptops?


Yes, and there is XiphQT which will enable your QuickTime player on the Mac
also play back Ogg Theora. Also, all other modern browsers (Opera, Google
Chrome, Firefox) will play Ogg Theora out of the box. But the problem wasn't
laptops or desktop computers, but rather i* devices.


>  Can we just distribute
> plain audio files for people with Apple computer accessories such as
> iPhone, iPod & iPad?
>

You probably want both, audio and video. Audio could be wav - I believe the
i* devices support that. For video, you have to go with MP4/H.264+AAC with
the baseline codec - ffmpeg has encoding support for i* devices.



>
> > Re: patent issues. I am well aware of the issues, but we are not
> > discussing the packaging of software in Debian, but instead the
> > distribution of multimedia data, which are not the same thing.
>
> I'm not entirely clear to which point in the process the royalty
> payments apply, but if the software is not in Debian it's inevitably
> harder for us to *do* the transcoding.
>


Right now there are no royalties on publishing MP4 on the Web - you're off
that hook until 2015.


>
> Cheers,
>                                        Andrew.
>
> --
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com                            +64(272)DEBIAN
>      Give your very best today.  Heaven knows it's little enough.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
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> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:46:14 +0100
> From: Ben Hutchings <[email protected]>
> Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
> To: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <[email protected]>
> Cc: [email protected],    Jon Dowland
>        <[email protected] <jon%[email protected]>>
> Message-ID: <1282783574.22839.167.ca...@localhost>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 08:41 -0400, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > > Hi folks,
> > >
> > > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > > distribution.
> > >
> > > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a
> good idea.
> > > I that means a C,A,V triplet from
> {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
>
> I don't know what codec you mean 'qt'.  By 'xvid' I think and hope you
> mean H.263 or MPEG-4 part 2
> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_2>.
>


Quote of what codecs the iPad supports:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
"H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with
AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4,
and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30
frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz,
stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up
to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM
stereo audio in .avi file format"

I am not sure if "MPEG-4 video" means H.263 - but you're definitely better
of going straight with H.264 and the x264 encoder in ffmpeg.



>
> ffmpeg in sid supports all those containers and several variants of
> H.263 or MPEG-4 part 2, but neither of the audio codecs.


libfaad will support aac.



>  However,
> Reinhard Tartler seems hopeful about enabling the other codecs RSN.
>
> > Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> > encoders for those formats out of Debian.
> >
> > Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
>
> Freedom is slavery.  Theora is ungood.
>
> > What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
> [...]
>
> I expect they'll wait and see.
>
> Ben.
>
> --
> Ben Hutchings
> Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
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>
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>
> End of Debconf-video Digest, Vol 48, Issue 16
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>

Hope that helps make a decision. If you asked me, I would encode into Ogg
Theora/Vorbis as the baseline and provide a MP4 H.264/AAC for
iPad/iPhone/iPod if it's not too much of an effort. If you don't mind
experimenting with tool chains and applying patches manually etc, you may
even want to go with WebM instead of Ogg Theora - it's ultimately the better
codec and will probably replace Ogg Theora in the long run. But the software
support all around isn't yet as good - e.g. there is no QuickTime component
that would make my QuickTime play back WebM.

Cheers,
Silvia.
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