[Vorbis] Extension proposal - partly serious

[noprivacy at earthlink.net]

Alright folks, here's the solution.

1)  Keep extensions to 3 letters for audio & video.  Except for special
situations where the user might be doing a codec specific name.  Since the
official extensions are 3 letters, those can always be used on any 8.3
device.

2) introduce a new extension .OGV for ogg container video.  With a strong
preference for Xiph only codecs.  (If you want 3rd party codecs, there's
always .OGM which currently uses Divx.)  This can handle anything that would
be encountered with an audio or video stream.  (Which means, realistically,
that it's totally generic.  But the extension is for user convenience.)
(Since Theora is the only video codec for the next several years, see
suggestion #7 below.)

And maybe....

3) introduce a new .oga extension for audio, that can handle anything audio
related.  Such as text for song lyrics, or pictures for album art.  No video
though.  With most vorbis decoders being just audio, the .oga could be seen
as an extension, with extra audio friendly abilities.  You could do song
lyrics, multiple pictures (album art), multi-channel sound (for those
surround sound experiences), and so on.  It also has the requirement that
anything the decoder can't understand, it ignores.  That future proofs the
decoders, and allows existing decoders and players to keep working with just
an additional extension.  (Actually, this might be a good thing when
Vorbis-2 comes along, since that would require decoder changes etc. anyway.)

4) any DRM protected ogg file (generic or otherwise) use the extension .ogp
(or some such.)  This just to remind users that it is DRM'ed and not open.
Just like how iTunes does .mp4 and .m4a and .m4p (or whatever it is.  I'm
not an iTunes user.)  Or you could just add "-DRM" to the extension.  Make
it ".ogv-drm" and ".oga-drm"  Any player that can do drm'ed ogg can just be
forced to also deal with the longer extension.  Since there aren't likely to
many DRM'ed files, this isn't really a problem.

Now for some odd-ball not entirely serious suggestions.....

5) abandon ".ogg"  It's been accepted as being Vorbis audio only.  With no
ability to handle anything else.  (Think of the situation with ".AAC".  It's
a raw audio format.  But in the m4a container, you can add song lyrics,
pictures, etc. etc.)  We are achieving the appearance of that by going from
.ogg to .oga

6) Create a new generic extension.  ".XIPH" or ".SNAFU"   [grin]  Since most
users wont ever need to use a generic container on a ISO 8.3 cd, you don't
have to worry about truncated filenames and extensions.  Any player would be
using .oga or .ogv or the older .ogg vorbis audio.

7) Many codecs already have their own extension.  .FLAC, speex (?) and so
on.  And, of course, .mp2, .mp3, .mpc, mpg, etc.  You could also make
unofficial (tolerated but not strongly encouraged) extensions for specific
Xiph codecs.  Such as ".theora"  Not really any great need, but it might
help reduce "hunt the codec" problems that so many p2p users have when
dealing with the .avi container.  You still have 8.3 problems with strict
ISO cd's, but the user could always rename that to .ogv or .oga if that ever
becomes a problem.