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Ogg Vorbis in Quicktime 6.0.2

Posted by Hemos on from the getting-it-to-work dept.

elohim writes "The kind souls at QT Components have released an ogg vorbis component that allows playback of oggs in quicktime 6.0.2 and itunes. Hopefully we'll see ogg encoding integrated in itunes soon. This is a big step forward for vorbis fans! I can hardly wait to pick up a shiny, new powerbook and start blasting my oggs!" CT Yeah, this is a dupe. Whatever. It's the holidays- nothing else is happening ;)

24 comments

  1. Open Sourced too? by ObviousGuy · · Score: 0, Troll

    If there's even a smidgen of GPL code in QT, Apple'd better get their lawyers ready. Using a GPL'd component in a project is equivalent to "basing" the project on that component.

    I'd love as much as anyone else to see what's under that QuickTime hood, though!

    --
    I have been pwned because my /. password was too easy to guess.
    1. Re:Open Sourced too? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What are you talking about? Vorbis libraries AREN'T GPLed, nor are they included in QT. Fucktard.

  2. So they were false reports? by abdulla · · Score: 1

    So all those other reports of QT or iTunes having ogg were completely fabricated or dellusional?

    1. Re:So they were false reports? by =weezer= · · Score: 2, Informative

      The reports of Apple including ogg support in iTunes were "delusional", or more accurately just misinformed. What had actually happened was that the Quicktime Component that supports Ogg (not developed by Apple) had hooked in with iTunes as well. This update just makes the component compatible with the (as far as I know) latest version of Quicktime, 6.0.2.

  3. I'm confused by psyconaut · · Score: 3, Funny

    Didn't we just have a story that claimed iTunes played Oggs.....that infact turned out to be based on the fact that Quicktime can now play Oggs.....and now we're told there's a Quicktime component to play Oggs?

    This is bOGGling my mind! ;)

    -psy

    1. Re:I'm confused by elohim · · Score: 2, Informative

      qtcomponents is one of two projects to play oggs of which i'm aware. the other project is at http://illadvised.com/~jordy/ perhaps the previous story was about jordy's plugin. regardless, it's good to have a little competition. i think i submitted this story a day or two before this story appeared: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/12/25/ 1532236&mode=thread&tid=141

    2. Re:I'm confused by numpins · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're right. We could play Ogg-Vorbis files in Quicktime and iTunes before, using a different component.

      So the headline should read "Now _this_ component can do what you've been doing for a while."

    3. Re:I'm confused by psyconaut · · Score: 1

      Gotcha. Thanks for the clarification.

  4. What about the ipod? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Does this add support so the iPod will play OGG files?

    1. Re:What about the ipod? by elohim · · Score: 1

      no, there is no ogg player for the ipod as of yet. it doesn't sound like there will ever be, either, based on the murmurings i've heard on irc.xiph.org. what a shame. the ipod is a really great box, and has plenty of power to decode oggs (dual ARMs if i'm not mistaken).

    2. Re:What about the ipod? by Daleks · · Score: 3, Informative

      no, there is no ogg player for the ipod as of yet.

      Do you really need one? In iTunes you can play Ogg files. You can also convert them to MP3's by selecting the song, and using the "Convert selection to MP3" item in the Advanced menu. Then just drag the song to your iPod in the source panel.

    3. Re:What about the ipod? by elohim · · Score: 1

      i'd rather not transcode my oggs.

    4. Re:What about the ipod? by dotgod · · Score: 2

      Doing that would involve converting from one lossy codec to another one, which would result in the MP3 having worse sound quality than it would have had when it was in OGG format or if the MP3 had been ripped from the original source.

    5. Re:What about the ipod? by numpins · · Score: 1

      Could you elaborate on these murmurings, please?

    6. Re:What about the ipod? by elohim · · Score: 2, Interesting

      i don't know if i should... try asking in #vorbis on irc.xiph.org. i think attempts to get it included have been greeted with silence. also look into portalplayer.com . they supposedly designed the ipod software for apple, and might be a potential target for an ogg zealot petition. it seems like wishful thinking, however.

    7. Re:What about the ipod? by WatertonMan · · Score: 2
      As a few others mentioned, moving between lossy compression formats is generally a *bad* idea.

      Can the iPod easily be upgraded to play OGG files? I know that most of the software is on the hard drive. So in theory it ought to. I assume everyone has sent Apple feedback on this issue.

      http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

      Fairly good rumor has it that the next iPod will have a good color screen. I admit that I'm not sure how useful it would be to have the iPod acting like a TV. What would you use it for? However I know that some of the iPod competitors have this.

      Personally I'd rather have a mic jack on it over either Ogg play or a color screen. But that's me. . .

  5. ogg in ipod? by dirtmerchant · · Score: 3, Interesting

    methinks (hopes) that this is in fact a laying of the groundwork to add an ogg component to ipod. the firmware is upgradable after all.

    1. Re:ogg in ipod? by batobin · · Score: 2

      Just because an open source codec was released to add quicktime support, doesn't mean Apple is working to add iPod support. If anything, it means Apple probably ISN'T working on Ogg support. After all, these people wouldn't have done it themselves if Apple was going to do it.

      Unless iPods also have the ability to accept open source codecs...

  6. not a dupe! by elohim · · Score: 1

    two competing projects! this is always good to see in the community. are any of the authors reading these stories? care to comment on the strenghs/weaknesses of your own project and the competition? what kind of problems are you running into?

    1. Re:not a dupe! by toothfish · · Score: 1

      they're not really two projects. the quicktime component folks had a message up on the front page for months that said that oggs didn't play under QT6. from what i can tell, this guy came by, familiarized himself with QuickTime over a weekend, and fixed the component, which is now here.

      ps. if you have an ipod and would like to join a bunch of other people in trying to convince apple to support oggs in ipod hardware (probably in vain), there's a petition. it is theoretically possible via tremor, for you FP naysayers.

  7. Another GD ogg post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yet another God-Damn post about ogg vorbis. How many times do we have to have the same shit posted over and over? Jesus H. Christ, do the Slashdot moderators have any editorial judgement? Or are you trying to make Mac users look like stupid assholes?

    1. Re:Another GD ogg post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope. Mac users don't need any help with that at all.

  8. whats so good about ogg? by ickyfreak · · Score: 0

    if ogg was supported completely by apple and i could encode, playback in ogg. why would i want to?

    whats so wizz bang about it that would make me give a shit. when i come home from work i fire up itunes and i dont really care what type of file it is. (dont talk to me about licensing or lossless vs lossy formats i dont care about all that)

    really. does it sound any better? encode faster? eh?

    --

    ---------------
    100% Australian

    1. Re:whats so good about ogg? by lvdrproject · · Score: 4, Informative
      Vorbis doesn't really encode any faster than MP3. If you believe Xiph (and i tend to do so), then of course it sounds better. Why the Hell would you go through the time and money of creating a new audio codec if it had no advantages? Advantages of Vorbis boil down to:

      + Open-source/free/whatever: You don't care about this, apparently, but the fact is that if you don't pay for your MP3 encoder/decoder (or if the company that makes your MP3 encoder/decoder doesn't pay for it), you are "stealing" if you use it. MP3 is patented. If you create an MP3 encoder/decoder, you are legally required to pay FhG/Thomson for every encoder/decoder you put out. If you don't care about this, fine, but if Apple doesn't have to pay for each piece of MP3-enabled software/hardware they put out, YOU save money. I guess Apple wouldn't phase out MP3 support totally any time soon, but eventually if they did, you would indeed be paying a lower price for your iPod or whatever.

      + Better quality at lower bitrates: Like MP3Pro and (i think) WMA, Xiph has put extra care into lower bitrates in Vorbis. Personally this doesn't matter to me, or the majority of audiophiles, but this can be very beneficial to streaming (i.e. "radio") broadcasts. Remember that bitrate != quality.

      + Bitrate peeling: Bitrate peeling has been planned in Vorbis for a while, and recently they actually implemented the feature. As i understand it, what this essentially does is: say you have some Vorbis files of a given bitrate; let's say (as an example) 160 kbps. Now, let's say you have to stick these Vorbis files on a CD somewhere, or you want to put out a sample on your low-bandwidth Website, or whatever, and you need to make these Vorbis files smaller in size. Before you only had one option: to decode these to Wave, and then re-encode them at a lower bitrate. This isn't a matter of just taking out the "higher" parts of the file. It actually works on the already-encoded parts when you re-encode. That leads to worse quality. To put this into perspective, let me use the example of an MP3, as that's what you seem to be used to. If you rip a Wave off your audio CD, and then convert it into 160 kbps MP3, it's going to be higher quality than that same file that has been ripped to Wave, converted to 192 kbps MP3, decoded back to Wave, and then re-encoded to 160 kbps MP3. Get the idea? So, with bitrate peeling, you essentially skip the decode/re-encode stages, and you just remove the "higher" parts of the file to make them actually the same quality as they would have been if you had encoded to that bitrate in the first place. Confusing, but hopefully you get the idea.

      + Custom tags: MP3 zealots will, of course, claim that MP3's ID3v2 supports custom tags (i.e., you can create any tag you want and put any information into it that you want), but the fact is that very few MP3 decoders (players) actually support this feature. Vorbis, however, natively supports custom tags. You can create any tag you want, and put anything in it, and any respectable media players (for example, Winamp, if you're a Windows user; not sure about Mac/UNIX) should be able to show your custom tags. Maybe this isn't an important feature for some, but i personally like to have as much information as possible on a track. I want a time of encoding, i want to know who encoded it, and with what program, and at what quality. I want to know the EXACT date of release, not just a year. Again, maybe you don't care about that.

      + Better quality: And, of course, Vorbis is designed to be higher quality than MP3. Generally (if the world is a semi-perfect place), a Vorbis file of any given song should be of higher quality than an MP3 of the same song at the same bitrate. (Remember that "bitrate" is a measure of file size, not file quality.) For the sake of simplicity, assume you have a "quality" scale of 1 to 10, 10 being an exact duplicate of the original song. If you have an MP3 that is a 7 on the scale, and an Ogg that is a 7 on the scale, the Ogg should usually be about 20% smaller in file size (this will, of course, vary widely).

      There are other, less talked-about features of Vorbis, but those are the main benefits.