[Vorbis-dev] OggDisk?

[Petr Tomasek]

On Sun, May 06, 2007 at 05:10:27PM +1000, Silvia Pfeiffer wrote:
> >>  - having "more levels" - so you can have e.g.
> >> "a film" -> "a collection of films" -> "a collection of collections"
> 
> Here's my take on how to do this, and it mostly agrees with Ian:

Sorry, but I didn't receive any response from Ian (maybe due to some
ant-spam filter?)

> 1) a film with chapter markers: one Annodex file, or alternatively a
> Ogg stream and a CMML file
> 2) a collection of films: XSPF (a playlist) & n Annodex files
> 3) a collection of collections: multiple directories

I'm not sure You understood what I meant.

My main concern is that I think that the various Ogg* technologies
need an equivalent of the DVD/BD-_disk_ structure, so that
if you insert o "OggDisk" enabled media into the PC, it 
could be automaticaly detected, "OggDisk" enabled player would
be started and possibly (according to user's settings) an appropirate
film / audio / ... would be started.

(You can also imagine there could be HW player's which could
"support OggDisk"... and Xiph can even define a logo for it ;-)

I'm definitely for using exiting XIPH standards like Annodex & XSPF,
BUT the question remains, if a user "inserts a disk" into the PC/HW player..,
which file should a player choose from the disk to play?

So my concern is mainly about DEFINING A DIRECTORY STRUCTURE and
calling it something like "OggDisk", that would be more or less
equivalent to the CD/DVD/HD/BD disk definitions.
 
XSPF would definitely be a good candidate the "root element"
of such a directory structure, but it's intended for slightly another
purpose (see the specs, 3.1: "An XSPF playlist describes a __sequence__
of objects to be rendered" [emphasis added]) and has some
shortcommings, most notably:

 * it doesn't allow for "nested" or "tree-like" playlists (which would be
needed e.g. for collections of films sorted according to the genre into several
sub-collections etc.)
[See 4.1.1.2.14: "xspf:playlist elements MUST contain one and only one
trackList element"!]

 * it doesn't describe "graphically" how the playlist is to be displayed
(in contrast with DVD's). DVD's are on the other too much presentation-
oriented and don't expose the "metadata" to the user. So probably
some model that separates the semantics and presentation (in the
same manner like CSS for HTML does) would be ideal for such a playlist.

 * it doesn't have some important elements (like thumbnail image/video
for a/v content and for images)

> If you really want to package a collection into one single file, tar
> will do the job, though make it rather hard to access each of the
> individual components. A file system is much more useful.

A single file was definitely NOT what I intedned!

> Cheers,
> Silvia.

-- 
Petr Tomasek <http://www.etf.cuni.cz/~tomasek>