Hi, I am the CTO of an online e-commerce site selling signed underground music. We're just about to begin with mp3 distribution by download. I have looked into Ogg Vorbis, and it is interesting for us to both avoid the mp3 patent stuff (what's the legal status of Fraunhofer looking into any possible patent infringements by Ogg?), and WMA. However, I still don't think Ogg Vorbis is ready for "production use", is that a correct assumption? Has any hardware manufacturer announced support for Ogg? I believe almost all software players have or will include support for Ogg. This is important for us. The tools are there, we can begin to use Ogg any day we want, but I guess we will have to wait for atleast version 1.0 for production use, right? :) One more question. We will have to include copyright information in any digital musicfile we distribute. Does the standard Ogg package include any tools for manipulating the meta data? -- patrik wallstrom | system design tel: +46-8-7298810 | sonox.com gsm: +46-708405080 | - - - - - - - - - fax: +46-859820060 | a division of new media distribution --- >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.
On Tue, Feb 06, 2001 at 10:17:03PM +0100, Patrik Wallstrom wrote:> Hi, > > I am the CTO of an online e-commerce site selling signed underground > music. We're just about to begin with mp3 distribution by download. I have > looked into Ogg Vorbis, and it is interesting for us to both avoid the mp3 > patent stuff (what's the legal status of Fraunhofer looking into any > possible patent infringements by Ogg?)A Fraunhofer exec shot his mouth off on a subject about which he was uninformed, and FhG publically backed down a bit in a statement a few days later (the exact quote is in an article on www.the451.com if I remember correctly; search their site for 'Vorbis'.)> and WMA. However, I still don't > think Ogg Vorbis is ready for "production use", is that a correct > assumption?We're not at 1.0 because we haven't implemented the complete feature list. The code as it stands is production ready, it's just missing a a few bullet points.> Has any hardware manufacturer announced support for Ogg?Iomega is about to do so. I have and alpha version of a Vorbis software update for their HipZip players. If you have a HipZip, I'll send it to you :-)> I believe almost > all software players have or will include support for Ogg.Yes.> The tools are there, we can begin to use Ogg any day we want, but I guess > we will have to wait for atleast version 1.0 for production use, right? :)Anything you produce now will work forever. Any future developments you'd be concerned with in downloadable content would involve quality improvements. If the current quality is to your liking, you have nothing to wait for. If you evaluate the audio quality and decide there's waiting to do, a few more improvements will be in place by 1.0. My own frank evaluation of Vorbis vs everything else is that right now, Vorbis is inferior only in preecho control; this is due to several of the really obvious good techniques being patented so that we can't use them. In every other respect Vorbis at beta 4 beats the competition (especially with respect to treble and stereo image fidelity), and I'm levelling the R&D guns at the preecho issue now.> One more question. We will have to include copyright information in any > digital musicfile we distribute. Does the standard Ogg package include any > tools for manipulating the meta data?Yes, the file can be tagged at creation time (and COPYRIGHT is one of the 'standard' suggested tags), and the beta 4 release of vorbiscomment can alter the tags of an already-encoded file. Monty --- >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.
Patrik Wallstrom wrote:> > Hi, > > I am the CTO of an online e-commerce site selling signed underground > music. We're just about to begin with mp3 distribution by download. I have > looked into Ogg Vorbis, and it is interesting for us to both avoid the mp3 > patent stuff (what's the legal status of Fraunhofer looking into any > possible patent infringements by Ogg?), and WMA. However, I still don't > think Ogg Vorbis is ready for "production use", is that a correct > assumption?It's absolutely ready for production use. It's not "1.0" yet, but it's very stable, the bitstream spec isn't moving, etc. You can certainly start using it now.> > Has any hardware manufacturer announced support for Ogg? I believe almost > all software players have or will include support for Ogg. This is > important for us.Most of the software players have vorbis support (many built-in). The only significant exception is WMP. There's one hardware player with vorbis support (though the firmware isn't yet public - it will be soon, I understand) - iomega's hipzip.> > The tools are there, we can begin to use Ogg any day we want, but I guess > we will have to wait for atleast version 1.0 for production use, right? :)Not really. If there's some specific feature you want, then waiting for 1.0 might be neccesary, but if the codec does what you want now (and it most likely does), it's fine for serious production use> > One more question. We will have to include copyright information in any > digital musicfile we distribute. Does the standard Ogg package include any > tools for manipulating the meta data?The last beta (beta3) included some old broken example code for manipulating metadata. The upcoming beta4 release will have a (somewhat limited in functionality, but usable) comment editor. There are also people implementing simpler-to-use gui editors on top of it. I believe there's a standard copyright header, too, so you don't even have to make one up. You can also get this tool from cvs or the nightly snapshots. Michael --- >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.