[Theora] Theora file extension

[Alen Ladavac]

<1087463776.3244.7.camel at otto.amantes>
Message-ID: <005801c4547c$1338e470$6a00a8c0 at CROTEAM.local>

You can fight as much as you want, but end users will want to have different
extensions for audio and video files, and they are going to rename their
files, this way or another. So it would be best if the Theora team makes up
their mind and clearly states what is the officially recommended extension
for video files stored in Ogg containers.

Just say something like: "We think all files should be .ogg, but those who
don't like it that way should use .xyz for video files and .yxz for audio
files." If that is not done, people are going to start inventing their own
extensions for that purpose, and use a whole set of different extensions and
it's gonna be messy, very messy.

If you can't fight them, and you don't want to join them, at least steer
them. ;)

Just my $0.02,
Alen




----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Vander Stichele" <thomas at apestaart.org>
To: "Jernej Simoncic" <jernej.simoncic at guest.arnes.si>
Cc: "Thomas Vander Stichele on [theora]" <theora at xiph.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 09:16
Subject: Re: [Theora] Theora file extension


On Wed, 2004-06-16 at 17:36, Jernej Simoncic wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 16, 2004, 16:47:49, Thomas Vander Stichele wrote:
>
> > is a wav that contains an mp3 file a wav or an mp3 ?
>
> How often do you see an MP3 file with a WAV header that has WAV extension
> instead of MP3?

As a developer on GStreamer, I often see
mp3-contained-in-wav/riff-header-renamed-to-mp3, which is incredibly
broken on three different points.

You seem to suggest it's actually the right thing to do ?

Let's see - .wav is a well-defined file format, having a riff header,
with an id that says what type of data it is.  If the type of data is
mp3, then the id says so.  So far, so good.  It's clearly established
that this is a fully compliant .wav file that just happens to contain
mp3 audio.

Now you're telling me that the right thing to do is to rename it to have
an .mp3 extension ?

Are you the guy that creates all those files that makes us shake our
heads as developers wondering what the creator was thinking when he
deliberately broke specs and formats ?

> > is an .avi containing only audio an audio file or a video file ?
>
> I haven't ever seen an AVI file that wouldn't contain video.

Why do you give an answer to a question I didn't ask ?

> > is an .mp4 file containing only audio an audio file or a video file ?
>
> Why did extension OGM become popular for Ogg files that contain video?
> Because it's much easier to just look at the file name and know "this
> contains video".

No, because OGM is not Ogg, and the people that hacked up OGM decided to
name it OGM.  That's it.  AFAIK Xiph has *always* declared that files
with .ogg extensions are whatever type of media as long as it uses the
ogg container.

>  Or, if you list files in a graphical file manager, it's
> faster to just look at the icon to tell what kind of file it is. And guess
> what's the fastest way to assign a file type icon to a file?

I'll tell you and it's not what you think.  The fastest way is either
completely random or just use the same icon for everything.  With your
practice of putting mp3-in-wav then renaming to mp3, it will actually be
more often right than what you think is the fastest way, namely checking
the extension.

Thomas

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