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

[Brian]

Firefogg is not a very usable solution for most users. It requires far too
much sophistication. Users should be able to just upload video that they
know is under a free license and then everything else happens on the
backend.

On Mon, Jun 8, 2009 at 3:57 PM, Michael Dale <mdale at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> We have done a good amount of work with archive.org to ensure that their
> archive is interpretable. I know from the present vantage point it does
> not seem helpful to have media on archive.org... but as features like
> the add_media_wizard get deployed it will make a lot more sense why it
> does not matter so much where the source media is hosted.
>
> In terms of source files... I think the problem is people don't
> necessarily have the bandwidth to upload their raw DV footage...  If
> they do then we should also upload a copy to archive.org. Using firefogg
> its easy to add a js function call to also send a copy of the raw
> non-ogg encoded footage to archive.org all from within our commons
> upload interface.
>
> Its of course always better to have the original. But I would argue (for
> the time being) we should store that original on archive.org rather than
> build out and maintain all the trannscoder & raw footage storage
> infrastructure internally. In the future if we do have time and or
> resources (volunteer or otherwise) to support transocding on wikimedia
> commons... then thats great and we can support that too.
>
> In terms of encoder updates: Firefogg lets us control the encoder via
> Firefox extension auto updates. Firefogg is already running the
> thusnelda encoder branch. In the future we can push out other free
> encoders (dirac speex etc). This makes it much easier for someone to
> build a collaborative video wiki since they don't need to build out
> transcoding infrastructure.
>
> --michael
>
>
> Tim Starling wrote:
> > 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
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > foundation-l mailing list
> > foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
> >
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>