[theora] recommendations for web video bit rates

[Henri Sivonen]

> Some people are working on a super-easy to use converter for people to
> 
> be able to convert videos to Theora for the upcoming Get Video on 
> Wikipedia push:
> 
> http://videoonwikipedia.org/

Great to see there's going to be a push to get more Theora video on Wikipedia!

This makes me wonder:
Is there a vendor-neutral site for promoting Theora-playback in browsers? PlayOgg.org seems to be about promoting VLC--not in-browser Ogg playing.

I'd like to see a promo site that authors could point users who don't have HTML5/Theora capable browsers to while still respecting the browser choices the users have already made and without the authors having to maintain browser advice themselves. That is, if the user came to the promo site with a pre-3.5 version of Firefox, the site would show operating system-relevant instructions for upgrading to a Theora-capable version of Firefox. Similarly, users of old Chrome or Opera releases would be instructed to upgrade to new Chrome or Opera. Safari and Epiphany-WebKit users would be instructed to install a Theora decoder. IE users would get a browser ballot-like choice of Firefox, Opera and Chrome. iPhone users would have to get a message explaining why they can't play Ogg.

> (Note that this isn't being pushed yet, and is pre-launch quality!)
> 
> For the converter one thing we'd like to be able to provide is a set
> of 
> profiles for quality, bitrates and sizes that people can use to
> generate 
> Theora videos.  (Michael Dale wants this for Firefogg, too.)

It would be really nice to have reasonably tuned presets for XiphQT, too. (QuickTime's dialog limitations permitting, of course.)

-- 
Henri Sivonen
hsivonen at iki.fi
http://hsivonen.iki.fi/