[vorbis-dev] Multi-stream vorbis...

[Kenji Chan]

I completely agree with Zen, end users won't know what you really means
vorbis, speex, FLAC.....all in one *.ogg ext
Why not just use different file ext for each type, but keep the same
binary/format?? Like speex's *.spx, it is in ogg format, but with *.spx file
ext

And this would be great news for end users and for people who develop player
plugin anyway

> Which gets back to my other point of the file extension again 
> (in case you haven't noticed, i really think something needs 
> to be done about this !). I think it will be a mistake to 
> keep a single extension after theora becomes beta. Windows 
> relies very heavily on file extensions to determine what 
> applications can play something and what kind of content it contains.
> 
> The way i see it, if you have a single .ogg extension and ogg 
> is supposed to be a generic format, you should be able to 
> handle any combination of known codecs. And that aside there 
> are other end-user issues.
> 
> There's two kinds of platforms wrt to file extensions...
> 1) Those that don't care
> 2) Those that do.
> 
> Those that don't care don't matter what you use and those 
> that do will have significant end-user irritation with a 
> single extension. I don't see what advantage the single 
> extension offers. It's no accident that just about every 
> other major media format have different extensions, wmv and 
> wma, mpg and mp3, rm and ra etc. or where they aren't paired 
> formats, you can always distinguish audio from video.
> 
> My personal opinion is that there should be 3 (or more) 
> extensions to distinguish between vanilla audio, vanilla 
> video(theora+vorbis) and anything goes ogg. Because no player 
> can actaully handle ogg as a generic format... only a 
> collection of subsets of it, to me it makes no sense to lump 
> all these together under one extension. Why have a generic 
> format with a single extension when the players only support 
> certain set combinations.
> 
> What you lose by having a single extension is....
> a) The ability to determine a file type at a glance... i've 
> already started double extensioning all my test files, 
> because it annoyed me i had to keep looking at the headers in 
> a hex editor to see what type of file i was testing. People 
> like to know in advance if they are about to open a video or 
> an audio file.
> 
> b) In a networked situation, people may be willing to stream 
> audio, but not have the bandwidth for video... the url alone 
> won't let them make that decision without just trying and see 
> what happens
> 
> c) You lose the ability to have seperate players be the 
> default player for different types of files... for example i 
> have iTunes attached to all audio files, and WMP attahed to 
> all video files. If there is a single extension for ogg, i 
> will have the problem that i will attach .ogg to iTunes... 
> and then have to manually open theora files with wmp. It also 
> means iTunes or other audio only player will also 
> accidentally attempt to bring ogg theora files, or ogg files 
> with other things in them into it's library, and theres no 
> easy way for the end user to realise whether it didn't work 
> because the file is damaged or because it is just the wrong 
> type for the player.
> 
> d) The ability to have distinct icons for different types. ie 
> iTunes shows a different icon for mp3 and aac by overlaying 
> mp3 or aac over the itunes icon.
> 
> e) Abililty for file type filters in applications to show 
> directory subsets of video or audio files.
> 
> And as i see it you don't gain anything by having a single 
> type except some kind of branding.

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