[theora-dev] Re: [vorbis-dev] ACM codec

[Christian HJ Wiesner]

<"Dan Miller" <dan at on2.com> wrote in message
news:<20021111153459.2AF71532A73 at motherfish-II.xiph.org>...
<hmm -- you make a good point.  However note that Divx is quite popular in
spite of having gone with AVI format, so your logic doesn't hold in that
case.  <Frankly though I sort of agree, in that Divx would have been even
more popular and cause less headaches with a .DVX extension rather than AVI.
< I 100% agree that the form of the codec that should be distributed for
playback is OGG.  The reason to support ACM/DSHOW/VFW interfaces is more
about <getting inside the popular creation tools -- CD & DVD rippers for the
most part, or tools that capture directly like Virtual Dub.  The players
(WMP, QT, <Real) at this point can all accept file format plug-ins that
would directly parse OGG files.
< On the creation side, we can provide an end-to-end solution for OGG
creation that plugs into popular tools without the support of the
toolmakers.  For <instance (I'm thinking video here since that's my thing,
but it applies to audio too) -- for VDub, you download a Vorbis ACM, a
Theora VFW codec, and a <simple drag&drop utility that converts the
resulting AVI file into OGG format.
< The main problem with my suggestion, and the likely reason there is so
much resistance against it, is this: lazy people won't read our
instructions; <instead, they'll just make AVI files, send them around, and
tell their friends to download the ACM/VFW components.  That would in fact
lead to the problem <you pose, which is that the OGG format fails to be
marketed as a distinct file type.  Perhaps we can somehow make this scenario
unlikely, and encourage <people to use the proper tools, I dunno.  Now we're
into the psychology of marketing rather than the capabilities of various
API's.
<
<- dbm

<p>You could simply decide to support UCI ( http://uci.sf.net ) from both
Vorbis and Theora, very much like the XviD people are considering now, once
its ready to be used. There is a first ( Linux ) version of libuci now in
the CVS tree on sf.net , it can be used to test UCI interfaces in codecs or
also serve as a basis for apps calling codecs via UCI. Note its early alpha
still.

VfW and ACM are very limited and should be dropped soon.

Modified versions of Virtualdub, being capable of calling codecs via UCI,
are already discussed on http://sf.net/projects/virtualdubmod . Note that
UCI will not be related to MCF, the team simply decided to call codecs via
UCI and the founder of UCI, Alex Stewart, is giving some input to MCF, thats
all. The UCI mod of vdub is also supporting the Ogg based OGM format from
Tobias Waldvogel, so it is also not focussed on MCF.

Regards

Christian

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