Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:41:41 -0400
From: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <eric@zhevny.com>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Jon Dowland <jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org>
Cc: debconf-video@lists.debconf.org
Message-ID: <[🔎] 20100825124140.GA26915@zhevny.com">[🔎] 20100825124140.GA26915@zhevny.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> distribution.
>
> Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good idea.
> I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
i* devices only play mov and mp4 with H.264 and aac or mp3 in them. But you will need to encode with a different MP4 profile than if you would encode for the desktop.
Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
encoders for those formats out of Debian.
Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
There is currently no application for iPhone, iPod or iPad that will allow you to play back Ogg Theora. Wikipedia was considering to develop one, but I don't think they ever started.
What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
They haven't made any public announcements yet, which I take as a very careful move. I think at this stage they simply don't want to make a public decision such that if WebM eventually takes off they have a chance to join without looking bad.
I'm not sure how to think about this issue, but it probably ought to be
discussed.
-edrz
------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:11:09 +0200
From: Michael Fladerer <fladerer@fnb.tu-darmstadt.de>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: debconf-video@lists.debconf.org
Message-ID: <[🔎] 20100825131109.GD16990@fnb.tu-darmstadt.de">[🔎] 20100825131109.GD16990@fnb.tu-darmstadt.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi Eric,
On Wed Aug 25, 2010 at 08:41:41 -0400, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > distribution.
> >
> > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good idea.
> > I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
>
> Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> encoders for those formats out of Debian.
>
> Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
>
> What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
>
as I just read on Wikipedia[0,1] this morning, at least i<Foo>s OSes are
capable of playing back VP8 video content, when Internet Exploder 9 is
used and the necessary extra codec is installed.
IE9 is not being developed for OS X or for the iPhone OS. Thus, no, you won't be able to run it on i* unless with a home-compiled application on a jail-broken iPhone.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vp8
[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ie/archive/2010/05/19/another-follow-up-on-html5-video-in-ie9.aspx
As I understand there are two major reasons for which Apple does not
support and probably does not plan to support VP8 at the moment:
1. Apple is one of the major holders in the MPEG H264 patent pool
(that's why they get royalties from the use of H.264), they won't ever
be really interested in using a free, open alternatives.
This is actually not true. Apple are only a minor patent holder in H.264 - actually they probably have no patent in the H.264 pool, but only patents on the container format MP4.
Apple's main reason are extra patent risks - there is no patent pool for Theora that they could join that would give them some sort of protection from potential patent trolls. Actually, that's probably also only an excuse - their main reason is probably much more practical and money-focused: a lot of stuff runs with MP4/H.264 and a lot of investment has been made which they want to recoup first and not confuse the market with multiple formats. Just look at the amount of control they have over their i* device users! That's certainly a monopoly-like situation that they will want to exploit as much as possible before the world around them eventually evolves into a more open world where they get sidelined for their monopolistic behaviour.
But I am starting to rant...
> I'm not sure how to think about this issue, but it probably ought to be
> discussed.
>
Yes, this should definitely be discussed.
Bye,
Michael
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Message: 3
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:48:45 +0300
From: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@debian.org>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <eric@zhevny.com>
Cc: debconf-video@lists.debconf.org, Jon Dowland
<jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org>
Message-ID: <[🔎] 20100825124845.GP1762@apfelkorn>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On 2010-08-25 08:41:41 (-0400), Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <eric@zhevny.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > distribution.
> >
> > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good idea.
> > I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
>
> Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> encoders for those formats out of Debian.
>
> Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
>
Not without 'jail breaking'. Also, I'm not sure the video decoding hw in those
devices can support anything else then those codecs.
> What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
>
I wouldn't be surprised.
Cheers,
Peter.
------------------------------
Message: 4
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 15:49:24 +0300
From: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@debian.org>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Jon Dowland <jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org>
Cc: debconf-video@lists.debconf.org
Message-ID: <[🔎] 20100825124924.GQ1762@apfelkorn>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
On 2010-08-25 10:10:16 (+0100), Jon Dowland <jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org> wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> distribution.
>
> Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good idea.
> I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
Cheers,
Peter.
------------------------------
Message: 5
Date: Wed, 25 Aug 2010 16:40:55 +0100
From: Jon Dowland <jon@dowland.me>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@debian.org>
Cc: "debconf-video@lists.debconf.org"
<debconf-video@lists.debconf.org>, Jon Dowland
<jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org>
Message-ID: <[🔎] EB49823C-6693-479B-9D47-DE5DE2382F98@dowland.me">[🔎] EB49823C-6693-479B-9D47-DE5DE2382F98@dowland.me>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
On 25 Aug 2010, at 13:49, Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@debian.org> wrote:
>
> Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
>
Indeed, and I have, but I was kindly asked not to distribute the transcodes, and instead to provide feedback on what codecs should be provided on this list, which I have done.
Re: patent issues. I am well aware of the issues, but we are not discussing the packaging of software in Debian, but instead the distribution of multimedia data, which are not the same thing.
--
Jon Dowland
Apologies for the brevity, sent via phone
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Message: 6
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 10:17:27 +1200
From: Andrew McMillan <andrew@morphoss.com>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Jon Dowland <jon@dowland.me>
Cc: "debconf-video@lists.debconf.org"
<debconf-video@lists.debconf.org>
Message-ID: <[🔎] 1282774647.3487.1180.camel@happy.home.mcmillan.net.nz">[🔎] 1282774647.3487.1180.camel@happy.home.mcmillan.net.nz>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 16:40 +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
>
>
>
> On 25 Aug 2010, at 13:49, Peter 'p2' De Schrijver <p2@debian.org>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Nothing stops you from transcoding to one of those formats.
> >
> >
> Indeed, and I have, but I was kindly asked not to distribute the
> transcodes, and instead to provide feedback on what codecs should be
> provided on this list, which I have done.
Any transcoding to non-standard formats is extra work, and our first
focus is naturally going to be to make the videos available in the
standard formats.
Once we have the videos up, perhaps we can look to provide a mechanism
for people to provide contributed additional transcodings which we can
make available alongside the standard ones.
Is VLC or Mplayer available for Apple laptops?
Yes, and there is XiphQT which will enable your QuickTime player on the Mac also play back Ogg Theora. Also, all other modern browsers (Opera, Google Chrome, Firefox) will play Ogg Theora out of the box. But the problem wasn't laptops or desktop computers, but rather i* devices.
Can we just distribute
plain audio files for people with Apple computer accessories such as
iPhone, iPod & iPad?
You probably want both, audio and video. Audio could be wav - I believe the i* devices support that. For video, you have to go with MP4/H.264+AAC with the baseline codec - ffmpeg has encoding support for i* devices.
> Re: patent issues. I am well aware of the issues, but we are not
> discussing the packaging of software in Debian, but instead the
> distribution of multimedia data, which are not the same thing.
I'm not entirely clear to which point in the process the royalty
payments apply, but if the software is not in Debian it's inevitably
harder for us to *do* the transcoding.
Right now there are no royalties on publishing MP4 on the Web - you're off that hook until 2015.
Cheers,
Andrew.
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------
andrew (AT) morphoss (DOT) com +64(272)DEBIAN
Give your very best today. Heaven knows it's little enough.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Message: 7
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 2010 01:46:14 +0100
From: Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk>
Subject: Re: [Debconf-video] suggested codecs/formats for videos
To: Eric Dantan Rzewnicki <eric@zhevny.com>
Cc: debconf-video@lists.debconf.org, Jon Dowland
<jon+debconf-video@alcopop.org>
Message-ID: <[🔎] 1282783574.22839.167.camel@localhost>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
On Wed, 2010-08-25 at 08:41 -0400, Eric Dantan Rzewnicki wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 25, 2010 at 10:10:16AM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote:
> > Hi folks,
> >
> > Just submitting some feedback on suggested video formats for final
> > distribution.
> >
> > Like it or loathe it, something that works on apple i* devices is a good idea.
> > I that means a C,A,V triplet from {mov,mp4,avi},{mp3,aac},{h264,qt,xvid}.
I don't know what codec you mean 'qt'. By 'xvid' I think and hope you
mean H.263 or MPEG-4 part 2
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-4_Part_2>.
Quote of what codecs the iPad supports:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/
"H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1
with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in
.m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats; MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by
480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to
160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats;
Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per
second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format"
I am not sure if "MPEG-4 video" means H.263 - but you're definitely better of going straight with H.264 and the x264 encoder in ffmpeg.
ffmpeg in sid supports all those containers and several variants of
H.263 or MPEG-4 part 2, but neither of the audio codecs.
libfaad will support aac.
However,
Reinhard Tartler seems hopeful about enabling the other codecs RSN.
> Until very recently patent and associated royalty concerns had kept
> encoders for those formats out of Debian.
>
> Are i<Foo>s really not able to play theora videos at all?
Freedom is slavery. Theora is ungood.
> What about WebM? Are Mr.Jobs and friends boycotting that as well?
[...]
I expect they'll wait and see.
Ben.
--
Ben Hutchings
Once a job is fouled up, anything done to improve it makes it worse.
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