The Apple Lossless Audio Codec has been released under Apache license 2.0: http://alac.macosforge.org/trac/wiki
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
Last time I checked, we supported OGG + FLAC, however the only browser capable of playing those files was Opera (this was year ago though).
Does that mean that there are no patents over ALAC? IIRC Apache License 2.0 requires that from Apple, but there may be pitfalls.
--vvv
On 28 October 2011 10:46, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 1:33 PM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.com wrote:
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
Does that mean that there are no patents over ALAC? IIRC Apache License 2.0 requires that from Apple, but there may be pitfalls.
ALAC uses an MPEG4 container, which is (sadly) too encumbered for our tastes.
FWIW, libavcodec has included an open source implementation of ALAC for a long time. But it's nice to have an official reference implementation.
- d.
On 28/10/11 20:33, Magnus Manske wrote:
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec has been released under Apache license 2.0: http://alac.macosforge.org/trac/wiki
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
We don't support FLAC, mostly because Cortado doesn't support it. Adding support for Ogg-encapsulated formats would be simpler than adding support for new standalone file formats.
-- Tim Starling
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
We don't support FLAC, mostly because Cortado doesn't support it. Adding support for Ogg-encapsulated formats would be simpler than adding support for new standalone file formats.
-- Tim Starling
Do I understand correctly that Cortado is a Java-based media player which we use as a fallback when native <audio> support is missing?
--vvv
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Magnus Manske magnusmanske@googlemail.comwrote:
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec has been released under Apache license 2.0: http://alac.macosforge.org/trac/wiki
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
I think that puts FLAC and Apple Lossless in pretty much the same boat: we probably ought to allow upload in those formats as nice lossless source material, but it'd be nice if we can consistently automatically transcode them to something that plays consistently in browsers at suitable live-download bitrates. (Ogg Vorbis and, in a world with slightly less patent madness, MP3.)
-- brion
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:42 PM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I think that puts FLAC and Apple Lossless in pretty much the same boat: we probably ought to allow upload in those formats as nice lossless source material, but it'd be nice if we can consistently automatically transcode them to something that plays consistently in browsers at suitable live-download bitrates. (Ogg Vorbis and, in a world with slightly less patent madness, MP3.)
-- brion
Not really, since in case of ALAC we would have to actually parse MPEG-4 container format to ensure this is ALAC and not some other patented MPEG-4 audio.
--vvv
On 28 October 2011 19:24, Victor Vasiliev vasilvv@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 8:42 PM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
I think that puts FLAC and Apple Lossless in pretty much the same boat: we probably ought to allow upload in those formats as nice lossless source material, but it'd be nice if we can consistently automatically transcode them to something that plays consistently in browsers at suitable live-download bitrates. (Ogg Vorbis and, in a world with slightly less patent madness, MP3.)
Not really, since in case of ALAC we would have to actually parse MPEG-4 container format to ensure this is ALAC and not some other patented MPEG-4 audio.
I recall vague plans to allow upload and automatic conversion of encumbered formats ... most such conversions would be lossy, which is problematic, but converting encumbered lossless audio formats to FLAC would be, of course, lossless. What was the barrier to upload autoconversion? Did it turn out to be unfeasible?
- d.
On 28/10/11 22:15, Victor Vasiliev wrote:
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:15 PM, Tim Starling tstarling@wikimedia.org wrote:
We don't support FLAC, mostly because Cortado doesn't support it. Adding support for Ogg-encapsulated formats would be simpler than adding support for new standalone file formats.
-- Tim Starling
Do I understand correctly that Cortado is a Java-based media player which we use as a fallback when native <audio> support is missing?
Yes, that is correct. It's now a Xiph project:
http://www.theora.org/cortado/
-- Tim Starling
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 9:42 AM, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 2:33 AM, Magnus Manske < magnusmanske@googlemail.com> wrote:
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec has been released under Apache license 2.0: http://alac.macosforge.org/trac/wiki
Something to add to the Commons file format portfolio? Do we support FLAC already?
I think that puts FLAC and Apple Lossless in pretty much the same boat: we probably ought to allow upload in those formats as nice lossless source material, but it'd be nice if we can consistently automatically transcode them to something that plays consistently in browsers at suitable live-download bitrates. (Ogg Vorbis and, in a world with slightly less patent madness, MP3.)
I went ahead and tossed in Bugzilla entries for these:
FLAC: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32103 Apple Lossless: https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32104
That TimedMediaHandler extension needs to get finished up and deployed or we're going to miss all this format fun. :)
There's also an older bug entry requesting support for WAV and AIFF uploads with automatic transcoding *to* FLAC (as an archival format, I think): https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20252
Certainly accepting .wav input would be handy at times; .wav transcode *output* may also be useful for short audio clips on mobile (MP3 is also very widely supported, but patents blah bla).
-- brion