AW: [vorbis-dev] Re: Final Post/Lack of support

Mon Jul 29 04:21:14 PDT 2002

Hi all,

it was really just a lack of time that I did not respond to all mails and I apologize for that. I just want to give a few statements about ..ogm and further development of the DirectShow filters:

As Christian already outlined it wasn't my idea to change the extension to ".ogm". Anyway I added code for registering this extension due to some requests. I also think that it is not necessary to have different extension. Normally I only start videos with double-click (i.e. the program assigned to the extension). For audio only I prefer to launch WinAmp and use the play list. But even if you assign the same program for playback there will be no problem because DirectShow will always construct a suitable graph and can play whatever contents it has.

Concerning the future of this DirectShow filter project: I'm planning to publish the part which is OS independent (which is quite small). Goal of this project was making the excellent ogg/vorbis codec available to Windows DirectShow (and by this to a lot of DirectShow based programs). Therefore most of the code is DirectShow specific and can not be ported. I've started this project because I wanted to use ogg/vorbis for my recordings from the television (which is legal, at least in Germany). It's quite hard to get VBR audio in sync with AVI and therefore I decided to store video in ogg streams rather than to wrap ogg/vorbis in AVI.

I hope that publishing the platform independent part will help people to use it on other OS, if someone is interested in that. And certainly I will add Theroa support as soon as the specs are ready. I also plan to add filters for streaming support. This will enable all DirectShow based applications to connect to ogg/vorbis live streams. And sure, these filters are and will stay free for any kind of use (Open Source and commercial).

I think also it is not fair to call all users of these filter 'MPEG pirates'. Probably some are using them for making illegal copies from DVDs but maybe they will be in future 'Theora pirates'. It's not the technology but the use, which makes the difference between legal and illegal in this case.

Kind regards,
Tobias

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: ChristianHJW [mailto:christianhjw at users.sourceforge.net] 
Gesendet: Freitag, 26. Juli 2002 13:12
An: vorbis-dev at xiph.org
Betreff: [vorbis-dev] Re: Final Post/Lack of support

<p>"Dirk Knop" <dknop at gwdg.de> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3D3A7477.1000406 at gwdg.de...
> I'm really sorry for the faults on my side, but there's nothing that
> indicates that there will ever be acceptance of an userbase, which is
> BAD for a codec.

<p>koepi,

i do have very similar feelings as you have about .ogm not making its way
into the official Ogg specs, maybe because even if we are not its parents,
we both for sure can be looked at like some of its 'mentors', people that
helped it a lot to be accepted and used by the video encoding community, as
a replacement for outdated AVI.

Being a windows user myself ( in my age you dont get easily used to another
OS, and i hate CLI ;-)  ) i fully agree with you it would have been much
easier to allow .ogm as official extension than to create Ogg Prak, which in
one way or another is nothing else but an extended right click with the
mouse and using the Windows function 'Open With...' , and will lead to
confusion and frustration of possible Ogg users. The fact that OggPrak was
coded by a very good personal friend of mine ( BlackSun ) doesnt change my
point of view here about the use of this program.

Emmett's view here, that we can use whatever extension we want, is no
solution either IMHO, not at all. Coders of Player software will browse the
official Ogg specs when deciding about what extension to register to on
Windows, and they will not care about a bunch of 'MPEG pirates' making
extensions of their own on some dubious boards somewhere.

Nevertheless there is a huge number of .ogms being used right now, and i was
informed unofficially that even p2p software coders now consider to add the
.ogm extension to their search routines, means .ogm would be an allowed
extension for video files on at least some of these programs. ( Sidenote :
Dont make fast assumptions here please, sharing video files over internet
does not necessarily mean pirating !! Who wants to forbid me to share my
last self made vacation movie with other people over internet ?? )

In any case we have to accept Xiph's decision on this issue, we should have
asked them before creating the extension, not afterwards !! Tobias Ogg
implementation ( BTW, we never called it OGM, the users did falsly, for us
it was always OGG, but with a different extension ) made it possible to use
Vorbis as audio codec with our movies, which is impossible in AVI because it
cant handle VBR audio correctly. Vorbis is the best audio codec IMHO for
bitrates 64 - 120 kbps, at least since 1.0 , and this is the ideal range for
use in video compression, making Vorbis the preferred audio codec for the
whole video encoding community.

We can not thank Xiph enough for the fact they created Vorbis, being
opensource, free of cost and with excellent quality. Lets accept the status
quo now as it is and lets avoid to upset the guys .... they dont deserve any
critizism or insulting for giving us Vorbis, nor for giving us Ogg !!

<p>About Tobias' code being opened and the validity of the .ogm files as spec
compliant Ogg files :

I was emailing Tobias about the whole issue, i even inlcuded the IRC log
from last sunday morning. He doesnt respond to my last 5 emails it seems,
allthough i know i am using a valid email adress. Maybe my activity with MCF
or the fact i left Doom9 as mod for the new A/V formats section made him
decide to ignore me, or he doesnt have the time to reply.
As both options are possible i suggest you ( or maybe Blacksun ) write to
him directly about whether he has any plans to make his sources public one
day to allow future development. Note that i will keep out of the matter
from now on.

Best regards

Christian

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