[vorbis] vorbis players (or lack of) for mac

[rillian]

On Mon, 29 Oct 2001 dongoodman wrote:

> >> frankly, i'm rather tired of the lack of free ogg vorbis players for Mac 
> >> OS; it doesn't look like iTunes is going to support the format anytime 
> >> soon (and i have some real issues with its interface, too)...so, since I'
> >> ve decided to learn Mac OS X/Cocoa programming, I have no excuse for not 
> >> writing one.

I for one would love too see one. It's just that we haven't had anyone take charge and write (a free) one. With Cocoa is should be pretty easy.

You're in luck in that Elifarly just posted that he's done a framework build. 

   http://www.xiph.org/archives/vorbis-dev/0188.html

Maybe he could make that code available? Ideally, we could check it into cvs like we do with the win32 stuff. I would be happy just getting the cmdline+dylib tools going, but a Framework build makes great sense for a Cocoa application.

> The interface is everything to me. If it means anything, I'm currently 
> working on my doctorate in cognitive science, so I'm at least moderately 
> well versed in the importance of a good UI, and methodologies for creating 
> and testing them. This is important to me. I enjoy playlists, and I for 
> one like how iTunes imports files from CDs into a nice neat directory 
> structure...I'd like to find a way of combining, if at all possible, 
> directory-structure based organisation with playlists. but i digress...

Glad to hear that. My two complaints with exisiting players is playlist and comment management. Particularly the latter; vorbis' more complex comment header needs a really good ui design to help users take proper advantage of it.

Other things I'd like to see? Integrated Drag and Drop encoder with freedb lookup (if it's from a cd?) The really great thing about iTunes is that it makes ripping so easy. We need support like that for vorbis. :-)

> > As far as MP3 licensing issues, I'd expect that if you use a 
> > non-Frauenhofer based decoding library (libmad?) then you're in the clear.

This is nonsense. You always need a license to use mp3. That's why we wrote vorbis. :) Thompson has a website (mp3licensing.com) that explains what they want. I've occasionally heard of exemptions for freeware, but there doesn't seem to be anything like that listed.

You may be ok using quicktime's mp3 support, since apple did the distribution.

> > Though if you're talking about a one-year time frame to public release, I 
> > should hope a player has come along before then... QuickTime support is 
> > really needed, and soon, IMHO.

I totally agree here. The delays seem to multiple, and not least because the requisite documentation is hard to find and qt internals aren't a great match for the way Ogg works.

I'd also *really* like to see vorbis-over-qt. The standard audio codecs apple ships are REALLY TERRIBLE, but sorenson is quite good for video (aside from being very non-free of course). So this would be a great boost for those of use distributing video over the net.

Cheers,
 -r

> 
> well, yeah i would have hoped there would be one by now, really, with the 
> way vorbis development has exploded on other platforms. but, nay...i'd 
> hope to have something usable out the door in less than a year, but i'm 
> trying to be conservative. I am doing it for fun, and to learn how to 
> program for Mac OS X, but I'm also doing it as a community service (the 
> world needs more Free Software). so...time isn't really an issue for me. 
> if something that meets my criterion comes out before i finish, 
> well...i'll find another project =)
> 
> have fun
> dongoodman
> 
>      %-----------------------------------------------deg3 at msstate.edu|
>      |`I invented the term 'object oriented',              pobox 2516|
>      |and I can tell you                         mississippi state ms|
>      |I did not have C++ in mind.'                              39762|
>      |Alan Kay-------------------------------------------------------%
> 
> 
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