Nicholas Shanks wrote:
It may be a good idea to specify an either-or-both policy and include a
second video format, allowing vendors a little freedom as to which to
implement.
"Either"? But if one major browser implements one, and another
implements the other, then you end up in the situation that having a
restriction was supposed to avoid!
Dirac (dirac.sf.net) seems like a good alternative format, but I don't
know what licenses are acceptable to closed-source browser vendors.
It's MPL/LGPL/GPL, just like the Mozilla codebase. MPL should be fine
for closed-source vendors; GPL is OK for Konqueror.
I wonder how complete the Dirac code is?
I asked about Theora status in their IRC channel; MikeS said:
"There IS a decoder that I would say is suitable for widespread
shipment. The mainline theora implementation has 3 major problems: 1)
it doesn't implement 100% of the spec. 2) It's not 100% robust against
invalid bitstreams; a maliciously crafted one could crash it. 3) it's
not very fast. derf's theora-exp implementation has an encoder that
doesn't work, but I assume that's irrelevent for a browser. The
_decoder_ fixes all three of those major issues. we haven't done a
formal release of that decoder, but it's in a releasable state - if
someone was seriously interested in giving it widespread use we'd do the
work to release it."
They think you could get ogg + theora + vorbis decoders into 130k
compressed, without too much difficulty.
Gerv
