On Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 10:37 PM, Tei oscar.vives@gmail.com wrote:
I don't understand why Nokia and other people would "ban" and "block" the adoption of video on internet. Is a bad idea. It don't make sense.. but I can live with it (Note to self: boycot nokia products).
Nokia and Apple (who also opposed Theora in HTML5) are not 'banning' or 'blocking' the adoption of video on the internet, simply look at the success of Apple's iTunes video store and its Quicktime technology. Also, both companies are very active within the free / open-source movement, especially Nokia who bought Trolltech (makers of the popular Qt widget library for Linux). Apple uses and writes lots of open source software, including the kernel for Mac OS X, Darwin.
The more sensible explanation for their rejection of OGG Theora are more logical reasons, such as the lack of tooling within the professional market and the somewhat difficult patent situation.
Anyway here is the important bits: OGG is the way to go for audio, and OGV is the way to go for video. Mostly because... open source tools will support that formats. Thats how stuff like PNG extend, because is supported by your tools.
OGG Vorbis (audio) is definitely a solid standard, but i'm not that sure about Theora. Video encoding is a difficult thing to tackle, and a legal minefield in terms of patents for encoding algorhytms (just try making sense out of the patent situation for MPEG) which Theora might use (i am not a lawyer or an expert on that subject, so if anyone can confirm or disprove this claim, please do so). Also, authoring tooling (especially in popular commercial packages such as Final Cut Pro and Premiere) is nearly unavailable for Theora, as is good support for playback. Currently, Theora is a nice alternative, but i'm hoping that better alternatives such as the Dirac codec (which is financially backed by the BBC) will take of soon.
-- Hay / Husky