[vorbis] Re: Website for Ogg/Vorbis support for MPEG4IP

ChristianHJW christianhjw at users.sourceforge.net
Sun Sep 8 00:26:08 PDT 2002



"Peter Maersk-Moller" <peter at maersk-moller.net> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:3D7A9746.B83DF13D at maersk-moller.net...
> Hi
>
> I have created a small website trying to document my Ogg/Vorbis support
for MPEG4IP.

Hi Peter,

i really dont want to start a flamewar here or such, believe me, in fact i
guess every contribution to opensource community is precious, but i am
failing to see the sense behind doing this ? Are you hoping to raise
people's awareness to Vorbis if it is supported in mp4 container ?

I find it more than questionable to 'hack' support for codecs that are not
in MPEG4 specs into the MP4 container. Whats the sense behind it ?

Again, i am not at all questioning MPEG4IP .. there has to be an opensource
possibility to create valid MPEG4 files, no doubt .... but why at all use
this limited, proprietary container for anything outside MPEG4 specs at all
? Both Ogg and MCF are much better suited for this, Ogg is excellent for
streaming also and MCF is targeted for video editing, also there will be (
free ) conversion tools to allow transmuxing of contents from Ogg to MCF and
vice versa .....

The only real existing advantage MP4 container has to both, is that hardware
support is much more likely to come one day. In any case, those people
dreaming their XviD/DivX5 rips with MP3 or AAC sound will really be playable
in  hardware devices one day, without changes, are dreaming IMHO. MP3 is not
even in official MPEG4 specs, and the way MPEG4IP people hacked suport for
it into MP4 container will certainly not be the one supported by MPEG-LA (
and such by hardware players ), you can bet on that !! If AAC is used, there
are no real free encoders ( in terms of paid licenses to MPEG-LA ), FAAC
cant yet compare to Vorbis at all qualitywise and PsyTel isnt really free.

Another very important point about missing hardware support for existing
.MP4 files is video resolution ! Of course, modern MPEG decoders get more
and more flexible ( just browse SIGMA for their latest decoders ), but by no
means will they be able to support every resolution dividable by 8 ( or even
2 in DivX5 case ), so in the end only a couple of resolutions will make
their way into official MPEG hardware specs, leaving 99% of all existing
MPEG4 files useless !!

Only MCF ( and Tobias' unofficial Ogg implementation known as .ogm ) has a
Dshow/VfW compatibility mode, allowing you to use every existing VfW and ACM
codec in your movies. Only MCF has a Quicktime compatibility mode to allow
same for elder QT codecs.

Please, try to explain that to me :

Whats the hassle about the MP4 container ?
Whats the major advantage of it compared to Ogg and MCF ?
Why is so much energy invested to hack support of non-MPEG standard codecs
into it ?

Both MCF and Ogg are opensource and belong to the community, while MP4
belongs to f..in, greedy, rich MPEG-LA !!!! You like the licensing terms of
MPEG4 they did ? I like them as well !!! They are fair, as they are now !!

How long you think they will stay like this ? Wonna know ? I tell you how
long .....

.... they will just wait until everybody uses MPEG4 and then they will bring
new licensing terms and MPEG4IP will do good to make their CVS disappear
from surface ( same goes to XviD BTW ) or they will risk to pay licensing
costs until the end of their lifetime !!!! The current existing MPEG4
licensing can be changed any time they like to !!!

Why am i writing all of this ???

I'd like you to consider stoping your project and to invite you to join
either Xiph or MCF team, to invest your precious engery into projects that
belong to us, the opensource community ..... not to companies launching
proprietary standards and charging the 'free' world for them !!!

--
Christian

Sites : http://mcf.sourceforge.net
http://sf.net/projects/mcf
MCF mailing lists : news://news.gmane.org
gmane.comp.video.mcf.general
gmane.comp.video.mcf.devel
gmane.comp.video.mcf.mplayer
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gmane.comp.video.mcf.mpc
Soon :  www.corecodec.com

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