[Theora] Theora file extension

[Freun Laven]

<001601c453b9$c29ada40$1f649c3f at computername>
<40D0780B.7090405 at sympatico.ca>
Message-ID: <000d01c453c7$4f907100$1f649c3f at computername>

From: "Jon Doda" <jdoda at sympatico.ca>

> Modern file managers use extensions to determine a file's mime-type, so
> the only rational way to do it would be to implement an audio/x-ogg
> mime-type for ogg files who's primary stream is audio and a  video/x-ogg
> mime-type for ogg files who's primary stream is video, with
> corresponding .oga and .ogv file extensions.  application/ogg and the
> .ogg file extension would remain the same, representing an ogg file with
> completely arbitrary contents.

Things like that have been mentioned before, but actually it wouldn't have
to be that complicated.

The goal here is to help the user recognise the differences, not the OS or
application (unless they work based solely on file extension.)

Simply make extra extensions, such as OGM or OGV or whatever you want be
pseudonyms for .ogg

They all behave in the exact same way.  The audio extension doesn't have to
behave any differently than the video or the generic extensions.  No error
checking is done, in case you use the video extension on an audio file.
After all, the container format isn't changing.  Just the *user's
perception* of what the file contains.

Any application that can handle the generic .ogg extension can handle the
others.  Just like current programs do.

The only application changes would be that programs would need to recognise
two or three extensions instead of just .ogg, and depending on the
application, it might suggest the prefered extension.  A vorbis audio
encoder would automatically default to the prefered audio extension.  A
Theora video encoder might automatically default to using the video
extension.

But since all the extensions behave the same, they all behave the same in
any application that uses them.  Even if you use the wrong extension on the
file.

Users that sort based on file extensions get them sorted.

Applications (such as p2p) that use the file extension to decide whether a
file is audio or video can easily do that.

Media applications that expect .ogg as being vorbis can still do so, and if
it's only an audio player, then it doesn't have to bother even knowing about
the video extension.

And so on.

The OS wouldn't have to be able to actually look into the file and determine
whether it had a video part or not.  It just takes the extension at face
value.  Just like they currently do with other extensions.


All that's really needed is the developers to officially say: We recommend
using .ogg for Vorbis audio and .ogv for Ogg Theora video.  Or some such.


But this subject has been discussed several times before and it seems the
developers don't want to create other extensions because they still like the
idea of .ogg being a generic container, even though the rest of the world
associates it exclusively with Vorbis audio.