[Foundation-l] Why don't we re-encode proprietary formats as Ogg?

[Tim Starling]

Peter Gervai wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 17:26, David Gerard<dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> It would be a simple matter of programming to have something that
>> allows upload of encumbered video and audio formats and re-encode them
>> as Ogg Theora or Ogg Vorbis.
> 
> As a technical sidenote, it should be mentioned that recoding a lossy
> format to another lossy format results _always_ a worse quality output
> than the source lossy format. The amount of quality loss depends on
> countless factors and usually do not render the result useless, but
> the quality difference may be still audible/visible.

But if we can do resizing and quality conversion post-upload, then we
can encourage users to upload their videos with the best possible
quality, they won't be forced to upload at a quality suitable for web
download. We can store the source video unconverted for archival
purposes. When we reduce the quality of a video for a web user, the
process will be under server control and can be incrementally
improved, instead of using whatever outdated software the user has on
their computer. So the net effect of the feature should be a
significant improvement in video quality.

-- Tim Starling