[Vorbis] .ogg extension and Theora

[Hibbs, Phil]

I drafted a slightly warm email this morning, but recalled it. Let's try to
be a little more cool-headed over this. We all want Ogg to succeed, and are
just trying to find the best way forward.

Xiph have come up with two ideas: a container format for various media, and
a bunch of free codecs for various media types.

The first idea is interesting, and may be useful given sufficient software
support.

The second idea is useful, and is being used by the general public right now
in the form of Vorbis audio in files with a .ogg extension.

With the advent of a second Ogg codec, Theora, the first idea is hindering
the second. The general public, with their Microsoft operating systems,
simply isn't ready for a single file format that can contain audio and
video. Maybe they never will be. Right here and now, the general public is
just saying "I want my MP3", and it's hard enough to get them to take any
alternative seriously, let alone confuse them about whether a given file is
music or video.

"Container utopia", where everything is an ogg and the software helps the
user to determine how to play it, may be just around the corner, but the
world isn't ready for it yet. Saying "Their OS is broken" isn't helping.
Some of them know it, most of them don't care because right now they can
double-click on their .MP3 or .WMA and it plays the music, and they can
double-click on their .MOV or .WMV or .AVI and it plays video. Asking them
to put all their media into .OGG files is just asking for failure.

Practicality has to win over ivory-tower perfection. Yes, there are grey
areas, such as audio with subtitles, but I think the answer there is that it
is audio, with subtitles. It's primarily audio. If your audio player can
handle subtitles, then it'll work, no problem, and if you're aurally
impaired, then you will have to get an audio player that can handle
subtitles.

Pathological cases, such as a speex intro, followed by some slides, with a
vorbis soundtrack, then a theora clip, followed by some more speex, can just
be called ".OGG". By the time someone actually creates something as complex
as this in a real-world case, there must by definition be software that can
open ogg containers and process whatever they contain, and it will be able
to handle legacy files such as ".OGV" or ".OGGV".

Personally, I keep my music and my videos in separate directories anyway. I
don't play music on my PC, and I don't have a portable media player that
plays video, so this issue doesn't actually impact me in any practical
sense.

I wonder what iRiver, Neuros, and Rio would have to say about this issue, as
they will also have to deal with the consequences.

Phil Hibbs
Capgemini
Aston, UK


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