AW: AW: AW: AW: [vorbis] Why the commotion about file extensions?

[Beni Cherniavsky]

Hauke Duden wrote on 2003-07-17:

> > Good point.  File extensions normally represent groups of related
> > formats.  I don't propose differentiating everything (e.g. standalone
> > FLAC from Ogg FLAC).  I do want as a minimum to tell apart these
> > categories:
> >
> > - Lossy audio: Vorbis, Speex.  But speech is useful to distinguish
> >   from music, so making Speex separate is not a bad idea.
> > - Lossless audio: FLAC, WAV (not that we can change the later ;).
> > - Video: Theora, Tarkin.
>
> Well, I think it is important not to make this extension stuff too
> complicated. What would be the benefit of having different extensions for
> lossy and non-lossy audio? Remember that if you think about individual files
> you can always use a utility to see its properties (if you are an "above
> average" user). IMHO the extension should provide just enough information to
> differentiate between the two main categories of audio and video in order to
> be able to handle large amounts of files. The way the codec can be included
> as an optional part may also be something that could be defined. But as is
> always the case in software design it is important to know where to stop.
> Otherwise you end up encoding the whole audio header in the filename.
>
Lossy vs. lossless is very important.  If I have both I can only keep
the lossless and always be able to recreate the lossy one but not vice
versa.  Consider the frequent scenario: you encode a bunch of .wav
files into `.ogg` files.  Then you listen and decide the quality is
not high enough, so you delete the `.ogg` files and reencode them with
higher quality.  Then you are satisfied and delete the `.wav` files to
save space.  Imagine how confusing it would be if the `.wav` files
would also have the same `.ogg` extension.  But FLAC is exactly like
WAV in this rescpect, it's only a bit smaller.

> > Right - but you are trying to imporve it for the user who has trouble
> > remembering codecs, while harming me <wink>.  As a person who is going
> > to use Xiph (or other open) formats as much as possible, I don't care
> > for many formats average users do, and I can easily remember all Xiph
> > codecs ;-).
>
> Wouldn't the scheme with the secondary optional codec extension work for you
> as well?
>
Work - yes, as well - no ;-).  It's inconvenient and not supperted
well enough on windows as already mentioned in this thread.


-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <cben at tx.technion.ac.il>

If I don't hack on it, who will?  And if I don't GPL it, what am I?
And if it itches, why not now?  [With apologies to Hilel ;]
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