Message: 1
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2014 12:17:43 +0100
From: Sebastiaan ter Burg <terburg(a)wikimedia.nl>
To: wikivideo-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: [Wikivideo-l] MOX file format
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Hi everyone,
any thoughts on this IndieGoGo campaign?
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mox-file-format/x/4029267
I'm a sucker of supporting this kind of projects (I also backed the
openshot 2 kickstarter
<
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/421164014/openshot-video-editor-for-wi…
),
but I'm not sure if this initiative could fill the gap we experience in
sharing high quality footage. What do you think?
--
Sebastiaan ter Burg
*Projectleider Culturele Samenwerking*
*Wikimedia Nederland*
From their funding page
" MOX will read and
play consistently on Mac, Windows, Linux, or any other
platform. This is because MOX will be an open format based on open
standards"
Ha. If it was really that easy to get interopability we'd be living in the
land of ogg and webm. (Arguably there may be less lock in in the pro
market, but stil-open source is not interopability magic)
So the tech summary of this (afaict. Im not a video expert so correct me if
im wrong) they are taking a container format aimed at pro users named mxf,
which is much like tiff in that it can contain anything and hence has
interopability problems as you never know whats inside. They are taking mxf
making a profile of it called mox which is limitted to free codecs, and
specificly codecs that a pro would want to use (lossless or high quality
lossless) as an intermediary format.
The codecs are one of: Dirac, OpenEXR, DPX,PNG, and JPEG.
Dirac is an interestng choice. I suppose its chosen because it has a
lossless option, but from what i understand its very slow to encode, so i
wouldnt think its suitable for this usage (maybe im mistaken). The other
codecs are just image codecs.
Dpx is an interesting choice given this groups goals as wikipedia describes
it as "non-free SMPTE standard, 17 pages, USD 120" (although maybe that
only refers to the standard. There exists free software implementations)
The audio codecs are: flac, opus and raw pcm. Flac and pcm are lossless,
opus is a high quality lossy codec.
---
Im unsure what exactly the issues with sharing high quality footage are,
but I assume there are three:
* file size - 1gb limit on commons (and realistically >100mb is flaky)
*social -some people worry about dumping source material on commons. I
think this concern is overblown but one should not underestimate social
problems
*inconvinent formats -ogg/webm is hard to convert to. Aimed at end use not
intermediary use.
This could help with the third point potentially (in the far future if it
becomes an industry std, which is a big "if". Open source projects fail all
the time). I think there is probably more we can do on the format front.
Its a complex issue, but im pretty sure not all avenues have been
exhausted, or perhaps even explored.
An approach that may lead to more immediate results is something like
pro-res (if unpatented) which allegedly is decodable in ffmpeg (unpatented
and decodable in ffmpeg is basically the criteria for enabling a new format
on commons), and also has the benefit of existing right now
--bawolff