On 2010-08-27, Ralph Giles wrote:
>> My question to you, What advantages has ogg vs matroska.
>
> They're both free containers, and there isn't a significant
> performance difference, so either one works from a free media
> perspective. [...]
Personally I would add the following points/bullets:
* Ogg has a lesser semantic burden, so that e.g. embedded
implementations which necessarily have to be minimal are easier and
cheaper to build; this of course means that a conforming Ogg
implementation might not be as feature-rich as a Matroska one
* Ogg is a pure streaming protocol, whereas, IMO, Matroska tries to go a
bit beyond that; so I'd argue Ogg is a bit better at "doing just one
thing and doing it well"; I'd say it's "cleaner"
* Ogg goes more with the traditional single-use paradigm than Matroska,
with its EBML and whatnot; it is still extensible in the IETF sense of
the word, but more centralized control is effected; IMO that is a good
thing -- or would you really like such an infrastructure oriented
protocol to be extended willy-nilly? (think what would happen if
people did that to IP? :)
* OTOH, the centralized decision process of Xiph/Ogg is much more open
than Matroska's
* Because it's a stream protocol, Ogg decidedly isn't fit for
bit-for-bit file storage; I tend to dislike the idea that an Ogg
stream is stored as an Ogg file upon transmission
* For one reason or another -- which I'd really like somebody to
research and document -- there are huge differences in the kind of
content that is being disseminated using the two formats; I'm
reasonably sure at least part of the difference has to have something
to do with the specific needs of the communities using the protocols,
instead of just adoption discrepancies
* There might just be a bit more coupling between the multiplexing and
codec design within Ogg than there is with Matroska, which then of
course means better layer separation/win for the latter; from what is
seen in the wild Matroska is certainly used to multiplex a far wider
set of codecs and whatnot than Ogg; but then Xiph/Ogg has its open
source political aspirations as well, which severely limit what
is/can be offered
* As a more centralized and "committee-bound" thingy, Matroska was
much
more tighly engineered at its inception than Ogg, and it also seems
a bit better geared to handle today's
piece-of-media-over-stream-of-media preferences; I'm thinking this
could explain much of its current market value
I'm certain I've left out a *ton* of points, so do continue with the
topic. I mean, the reason I responded in the first place is that I
personally have the tendency to *really* overengineer stuff, which would
make me a Matroska lover, yet then I have a persistent bad feeling about
that tendency because that's "not the internet way". I would
*love* to
learn about some further/finer points, and of course counterpoint.
--
Sampo Syreeni, aka decoy - decoy at iki.fi, http://decoy.iki.fi/front
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