[theora] using theora for voice-audio playback

[Basil Mohamed Gohar]

 (I'm including the list in my reply to you.)

Just to clarify, Theora is a video format.  Speex is an audio format. 
There is no obligation in either format definition to support the
decoding of the other (i.e., a Theora decoder doesn't have to support
Speex).  One application that does support that combination is VLC Media
Player, which works across Windows, Mac, & GNU/Linux.

Additionally, it is unfortunate that, while many browsers support doing
so, there is no mandatory, royalty-free format specified by HTML5 for
multimedia.  So we have the situation where Mozilla Firefox, Google
Chrome, & Opera all support Ogg Theora + Vorbis natively, Apple Safari
does not.  Microsoft Internet Explorer also has no plans to support Ogg
formats natively.  Both Safari & IE can be made to support them,
however, but require additional software to enable such support.

On 10/19/2010 11:52 PM, mark wrote:
>
> hi -
>
> thank you for taking the time to answer my question.
>
> i just assumed that speex would be the best way to go because of the
> ultra-small size.  and since theora and speex are on the same website
> i just incorrectly assumed that theora and speex are part of the same
> group, and that perhaps theora would play speex.
>
> it appears that the html5 <audio> tag also uses theora.  or am i wrong
> there?
>
> thanks,
> mark
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Basil Mohamed Gohar <abu_hurayrah at hidayahonline.org>
> *To:* Mark Edwards <mark at EdwardsMark.com>
> *Cc:* Mark Edwards <mark_f_edwards at yahoo.com>; theora at xiph.org
> *Sent:* Tue, October 19, 2010 6:53:27 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [theora] using theora for voice-audio playback
>
> On 10/19/2010 09:36 PM, Mark Edwards wrote:
>> hello all -
>>
>> i wish to use theora for voice-audio website playback.
>>
>> ideally i would be using speex but from what i can tell, i am unable
>> to use theora in html5 to play back speex files.  i know speex can be
>> done with flash, but i want to avoid using flash.
>>
>>
>> i have about 5,000 separate but SHORT audio voice files (most are
>> under 5 seconds).   i have selected ogg-vorbis 32kbps 22,050 mono as
>> my settings.
>>
>> does anybody have any opinions on this?  any better ideas?   note - i
>> need to avoid mp3 for this project.
>>
>> thanks,
>> mark
>>
> Mark,
>
> Theora is a video format.  I think you mean Ogg, which is a container
> format, and it is most commonly used for the popular Vorbis audio format.
>
> While Ogg can be used with Speex, if you are aiming for small
> sized-files and low bitrates, it's more efficient to use the plain
> default container that Speex uses.  However, neither Speex nor its
> native format are supported by any current browsers, to my
> recollection.  You will probably need a plug-in to get Speex playback
> in the browser.
>
> However, since your files are already in low-bitrate Ogg Vorbis files,
> and these are already supported in most browsers, I wonder why you
> need to go to Speex at all?  Do you have any special reason to do so?

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