<"Dan Miller" <dan@on2.com> wrote in message news:<20021111153459.2AF71532A73@motherfish-II.xiph.org>... <hmm -- you make a good point. However note that Divx is quite popular in spite of having gone with AVI format, so your logic doesn't hold in that case. <Frankly though I sort of agree, in that Divx would have been even more popular and cause less headaches with a .DVX extension rather than AVI. < I 100% agree that the form of the codec that should be distributed for playback is OGG. The reason to support ACM/DSHOW/VFW interfaces is more about <getting inside the popular creation tools -- CD & DVD rippers for the most part, or tools that capture directly like Virtual Dub. The players (WMP, QT, <Real) at this point can all accept file format plug-ins that would directly parse OGG files. < On the creation side, we can provide an end-to-end solution for OGG creation that plugs into popular tools without the support of the toolmakers. For <instance (I'm thinking video here since that's my thing, but it applies to audio too) -- for VDub, you download a Vorbis ACM, a Theora VFW codec, and a <simple drag&drop utility that converts the resulting AVI file into OGG format. < The main problem with my suggestion, and the likely reason there is so much resistance against it, is this: lazy people won't read our instructions; <instead, they'll just make AVI files, send them around, and tell their friends to download the ACM/VFW components. That would in fact lead to the problem <you pose, which is that the OGG format fails to be marketed as a distinct file type. Perhaps we can somehow make this scenario unlikely, and encourage <people to use the proper tools, I dunno. Now we're into the psychology of marketing rather than the capabilities of various API's. < <- dbm <p>You could simply decide to support UCI ( uci.sf.net ) from both Vorbis and Theora, very much like the XviD people are considering now, once its ready to be used. There is a first ( Linux ) version of libuci now in the CVS tree on sf.net , it can be used to test UCI interfaces in codecs or also serve as a basis for apps calling codecs via UCI. Note its early alpha still. VfW and ACM are very limited and should be dropped soon. Modified versions of Virtualdub, being capable of calling codecs via UCI, are already discussed on sf.net/projects/virtualdubmod . Note that UCI will not be related to MCF, the team simply decided to call codecs via UCI and the founder of UCI, Alex Stewart, is giving some input to MCF, thats all. The UCI mod of vdub is also supporting the Ogg based OGM format from Tobias Waldvogel, so it is also not focussed on MCF. Regards Christian --- >8 ---- List archives: xiph.org/archives Ogg project homepage: xiph.org/ogg To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to 'theora-dev-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.