[advocacy] Re: Re: is this list active?

[Paul Bryson]

I am posting this just as a clarification of some points, particularly regarding
Matroska.  Its placement on this list is only for the sake that this is the
place of the post I am replying too.  If you don't care more about this topic,
you could skip it and still have a good day.  :)

"Arc Riley" wrote...
> I disagree.  Making false statements about other formats to promote your
> own is a very short-sighted way to promote your project.  In the long
> run people learn that you've lied to them and your project becomes
> nothing more than another fad that comes and goes.

Other than a very shameless and inappropriate plug for Matroska, Christian's
post here was a very accurate.  In other places Christian does sometimes say
things that are incorrect, however members of the Matroska team (myself
included) are quick to post regarding the innaccuracy.  We are mostly big on
truth-in-advertising.

> 1) Ogg was designed for non-Vorbis audio, and video, and subtitles, etc.
> It's just that our goals go beyond the container format.  We're doing it
> right, from the start, with real patent-free codecs vs just using what
> everyone else is using.

Ogg was designed as a very very simple streaming transport layer for media
streams.  I'm sure that a lot of thought was put into how to make it work for
Vorbis, but otherwise...  It is somewhat problematic for storing other types of
media, such as video containing B frames, or variable framerate video.  Yes, it
was 'designed' for these other things in a very general sense, but only in that
it is designed to stream data.  OGM proved that it could be done reasonably, but
I'm not sure that OGM would stream very well.

> 2) Ogg, unlike Matroska, was actually designed for live streaming.
> >From what I've seen of the Matroska format it would be difficult, at
> best, to start decoding at any hypothetical part of the stream.

Any reason why?  If you are planning on people hopping on in the middle of a
broadcast, you just need to make sure the track information is repeated every so
often.  Maybe every 5 seconds?  This has already been expiremented with for
ensuring data integrity, so I don't see the problem.

> 3) There are far more applications and tools which support Ogg than
> Matroska.  Lurking on our lists stating otherwise is only going to fool
> the most naive newbies.  Your project is in it's early alpha stages, or
> as you call it, "brand new".  You have, basically, nothing but hype.

I believe his statements were in regard to the tools for the userbase.  If you
have many tools that <5% of the userbase can use, as opposed to a few tools that
>70% of the userbase can use, which is better?  I would say the latter.

Although, in the case of Matroska playback, it works quite well in DirectShow
(greatest userbase), mplayer, VLC, and GStreamer.  For editing and creation you
have a few tools that work in Windows and Linux (together >95% of your practical
userbase.)  The point that Christian was making is that Xiph needs to take an
active part in ensuring that playback and creation tools are made in all
environments, ESPECIALLY where you have the largest userbase.  If not, noone can
use your files.

> >From what I've seen, the only advantage that Matroska has is a powerful
> subtitling format.  But guess what?  http://wiki.xiph.org/OggWrit

A powerful subtitling format?  Its advantage is that it is a general container
that can store ANY subtitling format.  Or rather, ANY format.  Although OggWrit
seems a little redundant with other existing subtitle formats, it will still be
supported in Matroska.

> ... and unlike Matroska, we have a full set of codecs and supporting
> tools already built.  Ogg is a real alternative to the world of
> proprietary royalty-based multimedia.

Yes, let my playback that Vorbis + Theora + OggWrit sample file in WMP9.  Oh
wait....  Heck, lets play it back under any Windows configuration (90% of the
userbase).  You can't.  At this point its NOT a real alternative. That is the
point.  A better statement might be "Xiph is making a real alternative to the
world of proprietary royalty-based multimedia".  Part of that is already here,
but it is certainly a small part.

As an example, when I was setting up a live streaming audio system for a small
government office, I really wanted to use Vorbis in Ogg.  It would have sounded
better at the lower bitrates I was aiming for.  Also, I wanted to be able to get
a nice plug in there about free-opensource software.  However, telling everyone
that they needed to use Winamp to listen just wasn't an option.  In the end I
ended up streaming MP3.  Not because I wanted to, but there simply wasn't
another option.

> While I support your efforts to try something new, I find your methods
> for promoting it not only extremely distasteful but also self-defeating.

Yes, we have to give Christian a good lashing sometimes.  He knows he shouldn't
be placing Matroska plugs on the Ogg.Advocacy list.

> If you want Matroska to survive you need to put more time into code and
> less into empty hype.  Deliver a real viable product first and stop
> making false claims about other projects.

Fortunately there are several talented coders putting what limited time they do
have to spare into coding.  There are now 5 different Matroska libs that people
can choose from and it is usable on at least the three most common platforms, as
well as several others.  At this point I would guess there is more general
support for Matroska than Ogg.  Of course, we are not nearly as far along as we
want to be with many advanced features still unsupported and so there is still
much more time needed.  Fortunately we have Christian, who cannot code and is
therefore allowed to produce empty hype.... I mean, advertise.

I whole heartedly support Xiph, but as Christian said already, there needs to be
some better support on common platforms.

<p>Pamel

<p><p>--- >8 ----
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