I agree, but the idea behind the OGG formats is to build patent free codecs. Is FLAC really patent-free ? And does the OGG team agree to include FLAC in their specs ? smoerk wrote:> I agree. I think Ogg/Flac does not make sense, if it's not in the > official distribution. the benefits: > > - many ogg players could play flac > - flac could be integrated in oggenc (oggdrop) > - flac streaming would be easy > - you could easily use vorbis tagging > > we need a standard open source lossless format. it's silly to store > digital audio uncompressed. > > On Sat, 2 Feb 2002 17:36:01 -0800, Joshua Haberman wrote: > > >>Have you considered trying to have FLAC become an official part of the >>Ogg project? Ogg has Vorbis but no lossless codec, and FLAC is already >>production quality. You've already written the code to wrap FLAC in an >>Ogg bitstream.
--- Steve Lhomme <steve.lhomme@free.fr> wrote:> I agree, but the idea behind the OGG formats is to build patent free > codecs. Is FLAC really patent-free ?I am getting asked this more and more so maybe I should write up a justification, since I cannot do a full legal patent search and in the U.S. this would probably not make a difference anyway. The short answer is that the FLAC codec is relatively simple and uses theory, formulae, and algorithms that are decades old. Pretty much everything in there has already been done in other free codecs like shorten and squish. I think the reason it caught on is that it is the first open lossless codec to offer features that are common in lossy codecs. Josh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Great stuff seeking new owners in Yahoo! Auctions! http://auctions.yahoo.com
Matt Zimmerman wrote:> > As I understand it, the current Ogg/FLAC implementation simply wraps the Ogg > bitstream format around a normal FLAC stream, thus not utilizing the > features of Ogg, and duplicating various bookkeeping data. If the Ogg folks > were to spec out a FLAC-based codec for Ogg, it would likely look different > from the current implementation. >Right. And to "fix" that in the reference implementation, the API would probably need to expose a new layer of functionality below the "stream" abstraction, so that frame headers and subframes could be processed separately outside the FLAC stream context. Making that change would also open up a whole new world of possibilities of encapsulating FLAC frames in various stream formats. I'd be happy to put some effort into making that happen, but after having looked at the code as it currently stands I realize that this would require some quite substantial changes, and it would probably be wise to have an open discussion about whether and how such a change should be implemented before hacking away on it. What is your opinion about this, Josh? -- Christer Palm
On Sun, Feb 03, 2002 at 02:34:37PM +0100, Steve Lhomme wrote:> I agree, but the idea behind the OGG formats is to build patent free > codecs. Is FLAC really patent-free ?This is in fact one of the goals of the FLAC project. From flac.sourceforge.net: "Free" means that the specification of the stream format is in the public domain (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance), and that **neither the FLAC format nor any of the implemented encoding/decoding methods are covered by any patent**. It also means that the source for libFLAC is available under the LGPL and the sources for flac and the plugins are available under the GPL. (emphasis added)> And does the OGG team agree to include FLAC in their specs ?As I understand it, the current Ogg/FLAC implementation simply wraps the Ogg bitstream format around a normal FLAC stream, thus not utilizing the features of Ogg, and duplicating various bookkeeping data. If the Ogg folks were to spec out a FLAC-based codec for Ogg, it would likely look different from the current implementation. -- - mdz