Vorbis - Jul 2003 - AW: AW: AW: Why the commotion about file extensions?

> > That might be true. However, the main problem I see with this is
> > that by using only the codecs as the extension you make it
> > impossible to filter for audio/video without knowing all the codecs.
> > You cannot easily do file searches without specifying all those
> > extensions either.
> >
> Nor can filter audio/video without specifying all of `wma`, `mp3`,
> etc. versus `mpg`, `avi`, `wmv` etc.  Any good P2P searching program
> should provide preset lists of audio vs. video extensions, so you
> won't have to type them.  MIME types instead of extensions would solve
> most of this but this is not something we can or should fix.
All of these are different file formats, not codecs. Imagine if every .avi
codec had its own extension. You would have dozens of different ones and it
would be all but impossible to manage all of them and keep software
up-to-date.

When defining a standard it is very important to think about the future.
There may be only a handful of codecs right now, but what if .ogg becomes a
widespread file format? If every codec vendor creates its own file extension
you'd end up in a management hell. For one thing, applications would
constantly have to be updated to include the latest additions to the mix
(which is not really feasible). And simple searching on the hard disk would
be almost impossible if the search utility doesn't know all codecs.

It is bad enough having that many different file formats - if you lower the
abstraction level even further by using codec extensions it will get even
worse.

And besides: the shortcomings of others should not be used to justify one's
own shortcomings. Let's try to concentrate on improving things, not making
them worse!

Hauke

--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
'vorbis-request@xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is
needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.

Hauke Duden wrote on 2003-07-17:
> > > That might be true. However, the main problem I see with this is
> > > that by using only the codecs as the extension you make it
> > > impossible to filter for audio/video without knowing all the
codecs.
> > > You cannot easily do file searches without specifying all those
> > > extensions either.
> > >
> > Nor can filter audio/video without specifying all of `wma`, `mp3`,
> > etc. versus `mpg`, `avi`, `wmv` etc.  Any good P2P searching program
> > should provide preset lists of audio vs. video extensions, so you
> > won't have to type them.  MIME types instead of extensions would
solve
> > most of this but this is not something we can or should fix.
>
> All of these are different file formats, not codecs. Imagine if every .avi
> codec had its own extension. You would have dozens of different ones and it
> would be all but impossible to manage all of them and keep software
> up-to-date.
>
Good point.  File extensions normally represent groups of related
formats.  I don't propose differentiating everything (e.g. standalone
FLAC from Ogg FLAC).  I do want as a minimum to tell apart these
categories:

- Lossy audio: Vorbis, Speex.  But speech is useful to distinguish
  from music, so making Speex separate is not a bad idea.
- Lossless audio: FLAC, WAV (not that we can change the later ;).
- Video: Theora, Tarkin.
> When defining a standard it is very important to think about the future.
> There may be only a handful of codecs right now, but what if .ogg becomes a
> widespread file format? If every codec vendor creates its own file
extension
> you'd end up in a management hell. For one thing, applications would
> constantly have to be updated to include the latest additions to the mix
> (which is not really feasible). And simple searching on the hard disk would
> be almost impossible if the search utility doesn't know all codecs.
>
> It is bad enough having that many different file formats - if you lower the
> abstraction level even further by using codec extensions it will get even
> worse.
>
> And besides: the shortcomings of others should not be used to justify
one's
> own shortcomings. Let's try to concentrate on improving things, not
making
> them worse!
>
Right - but you are trying to imporve it for the user who has trouble
remembering codecs, while harming me <wink>.  As a person who is going
to use Xiph (or other open) formats as much as possible, I don't care
for many formats average users do, and I can easily remember all Xiph
codecs ;-).


-- 
Beni Cherniavsky <cben@tx.technion.ac.il>

If I don't hack on it, who will?  And if I don't GPL it, what am I?
And if it itches, why not now?  [With apologies to Hilel ;]
--- >8 ----
List archives:  http://www.xiph.org/archives/
Ogg project homepage: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/
To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to
'vorbis-request@xiph.org'
containing only the word 'unsubscribe' in the body.  No subject is
needed.
Unsubscribe messages sent to the list will be ignored/filtered.