theora - Jun 2006 - Can I recommend theora to my readers yet? Please?

Hi,

I'm working on updates to the WWW FAQ (okay, it's a little much
to use the singular in 2006, but it was the first!).

Embedded multimedia has been a sore spot for a while. I've been
recommending that people embed old-school MPEG, because it
works in all players. But it's awful. Terrible bitrates.

I'm on the verge of recommending SWF instead, even though
it's a hideous mishmash of legal issues, because it really
*works*. Flash Player is in more browsers than anything else.

I'd sure like to recommend Ogg instead, though. In practice,
SWF means FLV, and FLV is dependent on MP3... which means
encoder licenses, or stupid games to avoid them (Fraunhofer
doesn't aggressively pursue open source encoders, but they
go after distribution of binaries, blah blah blah). And
Fraunhofer's made noises about charging extra for streaming,
I believe.

But to recommend Ogg, I've got to be able to tell folks:

* How their Windows users can easily get a working Theora/Vorbis player...
* Embedded in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari...
* On Windows, Linux or MacOS X (as appropriate, with both
   IE and Firefox being critical on Windows).

Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, that's not possible yet.
Or am I mistaken?

To be clear, I understand that Theora is the video codec,
Vorbis is the audio codec, and Ogg is the container format.
I need a solution that works for talkies. (: And for
audio-only, of course.

Thanks for your advice!

--
Thomas Boutell
Boutell.Com, Inc. 
http://www.boutell.com/

Hello,

On 6/23/06, Thomas Boutell <boutell@boutell.com> wrote:
[...]

I'd sure like to recommend Ogg instead


[...]

But to recommend Ogg, I've got to be able to tell
folks:
>
> * How their Windows users can easily get a working Theora/Vorbis player...

VLC supports the playing of Ogg Theora.

http://getvlc.com/

Where I live, most people seem to use it.

The only thing is that the VLC browser plug-in is NOT installed by default
(when you install VLC).  You have to "check a box" if you want VLC to
also
install the browser plug-in.



* Embedded in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari...
> * On Windows, Linux or MacOS X (as appropriate, with both
>    IE and Firefox being critical on Windows).
>
> Unfortunately, as near as I can tell, that's not possible yet.
> Or am I mistaken?


Today AFAICT, the best path for cross-platform and cross-browser Ogg Theora
support is via VLC.

That's what I've been suggesting that everyone install in my question to
get
Ogg Theora supported more
broadly<http://maketelevision.com/log/why_ogg_theora_matters_for_internet_tv>
.

See ya

To be clear, I understand that Theora is the video
codec,
> Vorbis is the audio codec, and Ogg is the container format.
> I need a solution that works for talkies. (: And for
> audio-only, of course.
>
> Thanks for your advice!
>
> --
> Thomas Boutell
> Boutell.Com, Inc.
> http://www.boutell.com/
>
>
>
-- 
    Charles Iliya Krempeaux, B.Sc.

    charles @ reptile.ca
    supercanadian @ gmail.com

    developer weblog: http://ChangeLog.ca/
___________________________________________________________________________
 Make Television                                http://maketelevision.com/
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Hi Thomas!

On Fri, 2006-06-23 at 09:49 -0500, Thomas Boutell wrote:
> * Embedded in Internet Explorer, Firefox or Safari...
> * On Windows, Linux or MacOS X (as appropriate, with both
>    IE and Firefox being critical on Windows).
I had great success using the Flumotion's Java applet Cortado this year
to stream live video and audio from a nestbox camera. Worked like a charm!

http://www.flumotion.net/cortado/

I wasn't able to test it on OS X, but it worked almost everywhere else.
(The exception being x86_64 linux -- Sun seem unable or unwilling to
make a Java plugin there)

-Phil <phil@firestorm.cx>

On Fri, 23 Jun 2006, aphid wrote:
> see also: http://xiph.org/quicktime/
So... is it possible, on each platform, to set things up so that this 
"just works" as long as the browser has been set up correctly?

<embed src="mymovie.ogg">

That's the holy grail here, pretty much.

The world also needs a few decent standardized javascript methods
supported by all plug-ins, but that's another battle. (:

-T