[Vorbis] Ogg container format question

[Ralph Giles]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2004 at 02:22:11AM +0200, Horv?th Csaba wrote:

> I've heard, that the ogg container format makes it easier to stream
> vorbis and other formats, but why is that better, than streaming mp3?
> Also, what are the other adventages?

Well, the main reason to stream Ogg Vorbis rather than mp3 is because
Vorbis is a free codec and mp3 is not.

I'm not familiar enough with the mpeg program stream to be sure, but I think
Ogg isn't hugely better for just audio streaming applications. I think it has
better corruption detection, but that's more an issue with files than with 
http streams. It's just a lot more flexible, and of course controlled by the
open source community.

Perhaps someone can correct me if there are other differences.

One major advantage is that vorbis has built-in metadata, so one doesn't have
to do awful hacks like id3 tags (which don't stream) and icy data interleave
(which is how most http mp3 streaming works). With Vorbis you get the metadata
at the start of the stream as a normal part of reading the data from network or 
disk.

> BTW, would the vorbis files work without the ogg container format?

Vorbis requires some kind for container to provide framing (basically keeping
the packets separate). So you could put vorbis in RTP or Quicktime or whatever,
but a 'raw' vorbis stream can't work on its own.

Hope that answers your question,
 -r